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Of the factions, only the Therians stood out for me. Their society was basically the Internet with post-human powers. Individuals spent their lives in endless MMO games, forums, chats, or VR simulations. The vast majority of their society's energy output was spent in running these things as well as using nanotechnology to create real landscapes to suit their whims. Basically their fighting forces were composed of that small fraction of them that cared about the fighting and their equivalent of FPS game players, controlling robots. Some of whom got so addicted that they would download the only copy of themselves into combat shells thereby risking actual death in order to score bragging rights.
As above, the Therians were probably the most interesting and remarkable faction, especially because some aspects of their society are now being preached by some of Silicon Valley's Tech honcho's.
The UNA and Karmans were made compelling because of their internal political dynamics and how their subfactions played off against eacother. Come to think of it the idea of subfactions with a distict army pattern and their own advantage and disadvantage is something that should get back in other games.
The Red Blok was probably my least favourite of the orignal four races. They were quintessentially communists in space with their main purpose being to serve as foil UNA. Ingame their balance was terrible and they'd pretty much always end up on the losing side.
The Cogs and the ONI were rather uninspiring from a story point personally. The ONI might actually have worked in place of the Red Blok, but the evil corporation stuff was cringeworthy to the point even the Red Blok had a more nuanced portrayal.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Y
I really recommend any potential new readers of the rulebook pdfs read UNA and Red Blok before the Therian book.
Ok, I have read the rulebook and the three army books because of this. Pretty nice universe, but as I was looking for clues I instantly realized what Therians where when
Spoiler:
they talked how the Trauma changed the days and years in Ava
So I'm curious, but also lazy. What was the big revel?
Spoiler:
Well, the story takes place in a similar-yet-different universe, with humanity forming on a planet named Ava. Only, it turns out it isn't a different universe. The Therians are the posthuman descendants of humanity, millions of years into the future, and they seed human life on fertile worlds, like Ava, for nefarious purposes. The uplifted gorillas known as Karmans were one of their earlier projects, considered unsuccessful because they formed a stable, more or less peaceful society. Something also went wrong with the humans on Ava, who have somehow not wiped themselves out through rampant industrialized warfare, so now the Therians are getting more directly involved.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I hope I am remembering the finer points correctly.
Yup and
Spoiler:
Therians, or us, have transferred our consciousnesses to the internet, basically, millions of years ago. All the physical stuff, like golems, etc, are nanomachine creations. The overwhelming majority of Therians don't even know or care about Ava, they're just sitting around talking about stuff on forums and living virtual reality lives. Only a handful who like to play videogames do - they are basically playing an RTS against races in real life, with the Therian overseers being the Therians actually controlling the Overseer body directly, their consciousness wifi'ed into the body from a node. Since Therians are immortal, the only thing they fear now is the eventual end of the universe. This is why giant dyson's spheres are created, such as Damocles. They put all of a solar system's matter into a giant dyson's sphere around the system's star and then use it's energy to control it's movement. Their plan is to keep the universe from expanding from the big bang, or contracting into the big crunch, so that they remain immortal forever, and the universe never ends. The BIG CRAZY THING that happened during the Operation Damocles campaign, when the Damocles planet-ship thing was on it's way to Ava to harvest it's matter, is that the combined forced of UNA and Red Blok invaded Damocles, captured an overseer, and cut off the Therian node (basically a big wifi thing that transport their consciousness), basically capturing an actual Therian in a physical body. That made the Therians take notice, because, whoa, they're supposed to be immortal.
Thanks, guys!
Wow what an excellent read. I was only tangentially aware of the game and setting as I was out of gaming during that period (small crumbsnatchers eating up all my time) and by the time I got back into it, it was already gone. I had thought that it was just some type of Weird WW2 setting (justified as it originally was) and having never spotted a Therian I somewhat wrote it off and never really bothered to check it out until this thread.
What a huge loss this was. While I am sure there's plenty of balance issues having just an initial version, the visual look and style is wonderful and even holds up well today, where increasingly everything is just a 40k clone or proxy.
"Gaze ye not into the abyss less the abyss' boyfriend get narky" - Nietzsche (slightly paraphrased)
