[Snail]

Hold on, does that mean the Vishnans only exist in one universe? They don't have alternate universe counterparts?

[Raiden]

Hold on, does that mean the Vishnans only exist in one universe? They don't have alternate universe counterparts?

I think he's implying that there's only one 'group' of Vishnans, who are able to move between universes at ease. ie. the Vishnans in the 'apocalypse' universe would be one and the same as any possible Vishnans in the 'main' universe.

[Snail]

Okay so as I understand it, they can move freely between universes, but there's only one group of them. (?)

[Androgeos Exeunt]

What about the Shivans?

[Snail]

I assume they exist in all universes but can't travel quite so freely between them. (?)

[General Battuta]

Edging so close to dangerous secrets here.

[Darius]

Secrets that sent the Jester mad.

[Buckshee Rounds]

I assume they exist in all universes but can't travel quite so freely between them. (?)

Maybe they need to blow up stars to do so?

[SpardaSon21]

Secrets that sent the Jester mad.

Sanity is for the weak and uninformed.

[Ravenholme]

Secrets that sent the Jester mad.

Madness or Enlightenment? Those of us confined purely to this level can never tell the difference.

[Destiny]

I assume they exist in all universes but can't travel quite so freely between them. (?)

Maybe they need to blow up stars to do so?

If they did, when they invaded from Ross 128, there would be lots and lots of lights in the sky. Maybe they chose Capella since it was immediately out of Gamma Draconis, but why couldn't they just blow up Gamma Draconis's star? If there was no star, the entire map should be...pitch black, 'cept for the glowmaps, the fighter's lights and stuff.

[Luis Dias]

And a fourth: shivans and vishnans from a reality are different from the other. Vishnans from one dimension may not be aware of the same things vishnans from the other are.

The Vishnans were described as being able to move between universes as we move between rooms.

Yeah, I heard this too. Doesn't mean there aren't other Vishnans in the other rooms. I mean, I walk out the room I'm standing right now, to the other room and there are other people there other than me.

I understand though you are implicitly saying that this is not the case, and since you are one of the writers of BP, I'll take your comment as canon .

We'll see what you have come up with when you release the next part of the story. As long as it is good stuff, good for me.

[General Battuta]

And a fourth: shivans and vishnans from a reality are different from the other. Vishnans from one dimension may not be aware of the same things vishnans from the other are.

The Vishnans were described as being able to move between universes as we move between rooms.

Yeah, I heard this too. Doesn't mean there aren't other Vishnans in the other rooms. I mean, I walk out the room I'm standing right now, to the other room and there are other people there other than me.

Right, but you could then speak about the conditions in your rooms, making it pretty unlikely you'd all have a different room agenda and awareness.

I understand though you are implicitly saying that this is not the case, and since you are one of the writers of BP, I'll take your comment as canon .

Nope. Only material delivered in the campaigns and posted fluff stuff is canonical.

[The E]

In fact, any uttering by a team member may be misinformation.

[MatthTheGeek]

In fact, any uttering by a team member may be misinformation.

Of course. You're deliberately feeding us counter-intelligence in order to keep the surprise as real as possible. Clever boys.

Right, but you could then speak about the conditions in your rooms, making it pretty unlikely you'd all have a different room agenda and awareness.

No, but the other people that usually work on those rooms might have a - more or less slightly - different agenda than me. We don't know if the Vishnans are a 100% unified entity, from the in-universe and the cross-universe point of view.

[Luis Dias]

The idea of an inter-universe federation of vishnans with their own agendas, purposes, desires, and internal metrics and so on, is very interesting and funny.

Funny in the sense of mind-gobbling. It's just so far ahead of my brain that I can't parse any kind of policies, strategies or tactics that may come out of such state of affairs. As far as I can ('t) see, they could well do nonsensical monty pythonesque things and it would all make perfect sense in vishnans' point of view.

[Ravenholme]

The idea of an inter-universe federation of vishnans with their own agendas, purposes, desires, and internal metrics and so on, is very interesting and funny.

Funny in the sense of mind-gobbling. It's just so far ahead of my brain that I can't parse any kind of policies, strategies or tactics that may come out of such state of affairs. As far as I can ('t) see, they could well do nonsensical monty pythonesque things and it would all make perfect sense in vishnans' point of view.

Well, AoA made it very clear that Subspace allows one to access different universes (and may even have given the GTVA some idea of how to achieve it), so all it would take is for the Vishnans to be able to utilise it more proficiently to step between universes. Once you assume that level of ability, it doesn't become any different to the GTVA using it to move between star systems, just that it opens grander vistas of territory.

It also implies that Subspace itself might be a territory, a vast inter-universal sea, and perhaps that wars are fought in them (Certainly, the Vishnans/Shivans talked about the Brahmans in the past tense, so something must have happened to them. Of course, I'm assuming that the Brahmans of old were travellers between universes, and imparted that knowledge to the Shivans/Vishnans, whom I see as their children/servants), and perhaps it has it's own host of "organisms", and maybe the GTVA have just been incredibly lucky that asides from the Shivans/Vishnans, they've not bumped into anything else coming out of the azure of Subspace.

Edit:

I just mind****ed myself - what if the UEF project is an attempt to get reinforcements from a Paralell universe? (UEF/GTVA Paralells)

[Luis Dias]

That's probably what I dislike most about the BP universe, the coincidence between the religious mythology of that trinity and the actual occurrences in BP universe.

Consider. Shivans were first named as such by earthlings in the first few encounters in the first great war in FS1. They *couldn't* have known anything about their nature and their relations with these other species, their importance, etc. The naming of this species was a completely different process, one in which we had to "invent" a name for them, and someone picked "shivans" because it was cool and resonated a little with the mythos.

Now, the writer decided that it would be very cool to include the other races depicted in the mythos, the Vishnans and the Brahmans. And indeed it is, but it creates the whole problem of coincidence. Is it a pure coincidence that these new species are actually performing as an aproximate render of the human mythos, or does this imply that Hindus in BP universe were in fact "the true religion on Earth"?

It's a problem for me, personally. When finding new things about the universe, I don't expect it to render itself into some pre-conceived almost numerological narrative that I coincidently picked when I named a certain species with a certain name 50 years ago. I expect it to be a little more surprising than that. Because otherwise, we suffer from the StarGate syndrome.

Having said that, I fully understand the writer. He had to cling on to some structure and he found that he could bring an interesting story with which he could work with.

And it's very entertaining, so I should just shut up

[General Battuta]

You could well have your causation backwards. The Vishnans presented themselves to Sam Bei (including their own name) using information from his brain. They knew humanity had named the Shivans, and knew the mythological resonance to the name. From there they could present a package that appealed to him.

It doesn't even necessarily have to involve deceit, just a talent for using what the subject already knows to make the story easy to understand. And there's plenty about Vishnan behavior in AoA that doesn't seem to make them out as goody-two-shoes friends.

[Luis Dias]

You could well have your causation backwards. The Vishnans presented themselves to Sam Bei (including their own name) using information from his brain. They knew humanity had named the Shivans, and knew the mythological resonance to the name. From there they could present a package that appealed to him.

Just to clarify what I said, because I don't think I was sufficiently good expressing it (and I still can fail it again), I didn't say that these other species were coincidentally close to the mythos because of their names or general status, but that their behavior, structure and numbers rendered pretty much close to the mythos at hand. Which is always a coincidence, even considering all the excellent caveats that you bring up.

There could have been millions of species. There could have been 30. 42. There could have been 5 species. The whole story was, probabilistically, bound to crack the overall structure of the human mythos.

It doesn't even necessarily have to involve deceit, just a talent for using what the subject already knows to make the story easy to understand. And there's plenty about Vishnan behavior in AoA that doesn't seem to make them out as goody-two-shoes friends.

Well, since I see all gods as eternal enemies of mankind, that isn't necessarily a contradiction .