[An4ximandros]

 I remember extracting the Vishnan audio files and listening to them all the time.

 With Tenebra I did the same thing... for the Shivan's.

 They just sound that awesome.

 One thing though... If the Nagari Dream can be interpreted as a visual metaphor for the information Laporte's brain is receiving, does that mean that the GD is within the Shivan mind hive? Like a computer Worm in a (Nagari) network?

Edit: Fine, ya win folks.

[CommanderDJ]

I remember extracting the Vishnan audio files and listening to them all the time.

I still do this. Got them right here.  What I wouldn't give to know how to apply that effect to voice samples...

Ahem. Off topic.

One thing though...

Spoiler:

If the Nagari Dream can be interpreted as a visual metaphor for the information Laporte's brain is receiving, does that mean that the GD is within the Shivan mind hive? Like a computer Worm in a (Nagari) network?

Spoiler:

It definitely strikes me as something that's really not meant to be there. The Shivans and Vishnans both seem to steer clear, if not fear it.

Also, do we still need spoiler tags in this thread?

[niffiwan]

Also, do we still need spoiler tags in this thread?

Given the title has "spoilers" in it, I'd say not.

[MP-Ryan]

The subtle hints about the Shivans from the comm nodes in UT are interesting.  A fair bit of that dialogue essentially harkens them to a supremely advanced immune system on a universal (and trans-dimensional) scale.  They are random actors that carry out certain heuristics.  Their purpose has become a great deal clearer than was ever previously establish in FS - essentially, they are the universe's chaotic actors to prevent outside infection.  Based on the comm node discussions however, they appear to be extremely intelligent but non-sentient... or at least, non-sentient in terms of the usual usage of the term sentient.  That's somewhat contradicted by the Bei flashback to the alternate universe.  Lending further credence to the theory that the Shivans are actually a form of universe immune system is their statement that only they are eternal - implying that no matter the circumstance, the Shivans are a guaranteed mathematical outcome in any parallel universe throughout all temporal points.

That leads me to believe that the so-called Great Darkness is an external 'infection' with universe-destroying consequences that the Shivans can't actually deal with.  Ken alludes to this - talking about the consequences being catastrophic when discussing the randomized, non-efficient action of the Shivans.  He implies that to be rational and methodical is to be predictable and the outcome of the Shivans behaving in that manner would be essentially unspeakable.  Therefore, I think the Great Darkness is a force of chaos that destroys sentience.  The Shivans exist to preserve sentient life through their heuristics.  The Vishnans are essentially the highest form of sentient life known following the First Apocalypse.  The Great Darkness is the counterpoint to that - while it can never destroy the Shivans, the Shivans are a mathematical tool that ensures the ongoing preservation of all sentient life; while it cannot fight the Great Darkness, it can't destroy it either.  Meanwhile, humanity must be the potential Nagari link by which the Great Darkness could destroy all sentient life, Vishnans included.  The Shivans are unable by their nature to accept that outcome.

I could be totally off base here, but I keep getting hung up on the biological parallels in the text of the Shivans and Ken which liken the universe as a whole to an immensely complex organism (The Shivans even talk about containment to the Orion arm).

[perihelion]

The thing I keep seizing up on is when Ken says, "The Shivans weren't created.  They were calculated into existence."  Calculated.  By what / whom?  I more or less think I have a handle on "why."  All the terminology used in by the Comm Nodes in Unversal Truth seem to refer to the Shivans as a universal immune system.  But I still don't have a handle on how they could just be "calculated" into existence.  The implication there is that, unlike us, they didn't have to go through all that mess of evolution and not nuking themselves into oblivion before they finally reached space.  No, they were "calculated" that way from their first "manifestation."

FYI, having a very hard time deciding which thread I should post this in.  Others make more sense, but this one is getting more interesting discussion right now.

Edit: aaaaaand MP ninja'd me on the whole immune system bit, and sounded a lot more competent talking about it.  Kudos to you, sir.

[MP-Ryan]

"The Shivans weren't created.  They were calculated into existence."  Calculated.  By what / whom?

I took calculated to mean they were a definite outcome of the nature of the universe as it exists.  Much like gravity, like the speed of light, the Shivans are a manifestation of the rules of the universe and exist due to mathematical probability.

The way the Vishnans, Shivans, and Ken talk about the universe and the history of it leads me to believe that they are treating the existence of the universe and everything in it as a non-random event.

[Doko]

The Vishnans are essentially the highest form of sentient life known following the First Apocalypse.  The Great Darkness is the counterpoint to that - while it can never destroy the Shivans, the Shivans are a mathematical tool that ensures the ongoing preservation of all sentient life; while it cannot fight the Great Darkness, it can't destroy it either.  Meanwhile, humanity must be the potential Nagari link by which the Great Darkness could destroy all sentient life, Vishnans included.  The Shivans are unable by their nature to accept that outcome.

Its a pretty good interpretation but if we consider humanity (or any other sentient life capable of nagari) an entry point for the great darkness I find it hard to believe in context that the shivans would've stopped the attack after the first war and would've simply made sure nothing remained that could endanger the universe which seems to be their greatest concern.
 Granted... the vishnan seem to have a plan (that eventually fails) at that point the best scenario for the shivans still remains to cleans our area of space, Bosch doesn't seem like a convincing enough figure to persuade them otherwise, for the shivans what is another 10.000 years wait to find some other species that hasn't already failed once.

It would also make the terminal protocol completely useless as eventually any race sufficiently advanced might create a nagari link and without knowing kill themselves and the universe while being the most peaceful of creatures, which brings me to the next point... the shivan's main way of judging races seems to be by their actions towards their galactic neighbors almost exclusively at no point to they seem concerned about nagari sensitivity beyond using it as a way to extract information from the poor guy with the antenna on his head.

[Qent]

Its a pretty good interpretation but if we consider humanity (or any other sentient life capable of nagari) an entry point for the great darkness I find it hard to believe in context that the shivans would've stopped the attack after the first war and would've simply made sure nothing remained that could endanger the universe which seems to be their greatest concern.
 Granted... the vishnan seem to have a plan (that eventually fails) at that point the best scenario for the shivans still remains to cleans our area of space,

For the Shivans it may have been the best option, but the Vishnans weren't taking a huge risk: if something went wrong with the whole Ubuntu thing, they'd just call for a cull. Which it did. And they have. Universe preserved.

Bosch doesn't seem like a convincing enough figure to persuade them otherwise, for the shivans what is another 10.000 years wait to find some other species that hasn't already failed once.

Maybe Bosch gave the Shivans a way to be rid of the GD? But it's not allowed according to their "protocol."

[a_b_c]

Its a pretty good interpretation but if we consider humanity (or any other sentient life capable of nagari) an entry point for the great darkness I find it hard to believe in context that the shivans would've stopped the attack after the first war and would've simply made sure nothing remained that could endanger the universe which seems to be their greatest concern.
 

Don't know if it's just humanity that the Shivans should be worried about.. the Vasudan Imperium's Nagari firewall is at least 40 klicks closer than Humanity's. 

I was really hoping to see those things converge as you progressed in the campaign.

[BritishShivans]

I'm not sure what the Nagari firewall stuff even means. I remember that there's this grey icon constantly flashing near inbetween the southern-west quadrant of the dreamscape. It's the same type as the icon used in retail to indicate Bosch's base and the Shivan juggernauts in the distance.

I really hope it's not our LOST-wannabe friend the Great Darkness. I was going to fly that way to check out if there was anything anyway.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

I think that's the rock-out beacon, which allows you to switch to an alternate soundtrack.

[Leeko]

That's somewhat contradicted by the Bei flashback to the alternate universe.

Really interesting post here.

What Bei saw is unimaginably dumbed down to our tiny human understanding. An immensely powerful computational network is not necessarily sentient in the traditional sense - and there is a lot of evidence to suggest that this is exactly the case - but it's perfectly capable of communication. I don't see much of a contradiction if you keep that in mind. Think about some of the new information we have now that we lacked in AoA. We can safely assume that the Vishnans and Shivans communicate via Nagari. Due to the nonlocal nature of the Nagari process this means that the entire computational power of both Shivans and Vishnans could very well have been interacting when we eavesdropped in AoA. The same goes for the flashback in Tenebra. What we saw was filtered for human understanding, and humans understand individuals that use pronouns like 'I' and 'we' much better than intangible subspace computer networks.

[Gray113]

RE:The vishnans plans

I have always been under the impression that the Vishnans knew exactly what they were doing in arranging the circumstances at the start of the war. They were in direct mental contact with the admiral of the taskforce leading the attack on Sol and that admiral would have known how his officers would react to his refusal to carry out these orders - the defection by Bei must have been planned by the Vishnans in advance of the GTVA relieving him of command. The Vishnans would have known from Bei's mind what was going to happen when the task force returned to Sol and the whole exercise was set up in order to prevent the UEF from being surprised and overwhelmed.

It seams more like the current conflict was designed as a test of humanity's abilities to use the guidance given by the Vishnans. A test to see whether humanity's potentail as builders (the secret project) can overcome the destroyers (GTA) without the Vishnan's direct assistance. It has always been stated that the UEF could not win militarily against the GTA but that victory for the Terrans would also destroy humanity thereby creating the only salvation for the UEF to be through Ubuntu. This I think would be the outcome of the failure of Ubuntu - the Vishnans would deem humanity to be a failure and order the cull. Victory would result in the Vishnans developing humanity further and protecting us from the Great Darkness.

What has changed however is that Boosh contacted the Shivans directly and was absorbed into their consciousness without the knowledge of the Vishnans. Now the Shivans know of humanity's potential and have their own test for humanity which revolves around Naomi. They want to develop our potential as both living destroyers and builders in order to to be used as a weapon to attack the great darkness. For this to work the UEF MUST defeat the GTVA with force resulting in both the failure of the Vishnan's plan as well as chaos in the GTVA due to uprisings against the already politically unstable Terran assembly. They have given Naomi the guidance and ability to from the UEF and it's allies in to a mighty armada that can crush the GTA attack on Earth whilst using the secret project to ensure that no further attacks are possible. This will give the military huge amounts of political power in Sol and discredit the pacifist policies of Ubuntu shattering the plans of the Vishnans but crucially leaving in place the personnel that were influenced by them meaning that humanity has both the skills to build and to destroy in preparation fro the upcoming conflict.

In the meantime the Great Darkness is drawn to the chaos in GTVA space....

[Luis Dias]

Great post, Gray. Very insightful. The only uncontrolled variable in your post is the secret project's own nature, where you assume that this project's purpose is to defeat "the great darkness". I think you guessed it correctly, though.

I'm still processing the infodump myself, being pleased that my obsession last year over the nature of these sides' own supercomputers and abilities to forecast the future was probably the most central feature of the coming events in the war was right. Having said all this, I am still trying to square the circle of all of this talk over computing, subspace and purpose / "builders" / etc., with the notion of a species being "outside of the spacetime bulk", able to observe it from the outside (let alone the jargonshenanigan of stating that quantum uncertainty may be a "problem" in this Vishnan knowledge, probably the greatest euphemism ever written in BP-canon).

[Phantom Hoover]

My own theories on this all are quite different; I think the Vishnans may be completely unaware of the Great Darkness, and Shambhala may well result in the Jester's 50-year apocalypse. Admittedly this is to some extent wishful thinking of the '**** Matth's opinions' school.

[Gray113]

It what is so fun about the way this is set up. We can all have about a thousand different ideas about how this is going to end an we will probably still get it wrong.

[gloowa]

It what is so fun about the way this is set up. We can all have about a thousand different ideas about how this is going to end an we will probably still get it wrong.

That's because after we tire with speculations BP team reads all those threads and changes story so that no one would be right, so that everyone has the same surprise and excitement from discovering the story

[Phantom Hoover]

This isn't homestuck. The overall plot for BP has been set down for years.

[The E]

This isn't homestuck. The overall plot for BP has been set down for years.

Dammit. Now we've been found out.

Time to change the plot again.

[Luis Dias]

RE:The vishnans plans

I have always been under the impression that the Vishnans knew exactly what they were doing in arranging the circumstances at the start of the war.

Mind you, this is a given if you are indeed to believe that the Vishnans exist outside "spacetime" and see the past, present and future as we are able to see a 2d picture in front of our eyes.

This is what has been bending my mind the past few hours. Look, if a species exists indeed outside "spacetime", but is still said to "exist", to "act", and confirmed by Batts in the last page, to "compute", then such species is indeed doing so within one timelike dimension. Such time dimension may be completely perpendicular to our own. It may be oblique. Or, it could even be 2 dimensional. Or, if you take those fractal pictures seriously, the time dimensions where the Vishnans "act", "compute" and so on, may not be 1,2,3,4 or whatever integer number you want. They may be fractal (2/3, 4/7, etc.).

Now consider. The dreamscape uses the so-called "Nagari protocol". It is used by humans and vasudans, which means that the "http-nagari" protocol is at least compatible with the real-world time dimension. (It could well not be. If the nagari process only used other time dimensions, then no one in the "realspace" could ever tune to it). Now there are lots of possibilities here. (By "realspace" I mean our common spacetime manifold, not that it is any more real than any other prima facie):

• It may be so that the Nagari process was a process designed by realspace species, for realspace species and to be used within realspace;
• It may be so that the species who created it "transcended" realspace into subspace or/and into the multiverse, or into other kinds of spacetime realities. However, it left behind the protocol intact for "realspace";
• It may be so that the Nagari protocol is a protocol deeply entrenched in the universe's own construction, leading (or not) credence to some form of Intelligent Design theories;
• It may be so that the Nagari protocol is a multidimensional protocol that includes our own time dimension within its scope;

This is an important analysis to be made, since our notion of time that informs other notions such as "narrative", "plot", "intent", "causality" and so on are completely erroneous paradigms for trying to understand a species that transcends it. So, of course the Vishnans "knew" what they were doing when they brought the 14th to the alternate universe, they knew what they were doing when they allowed the alternate-universe humans to come to Samuel's original universe. They knew it because they were seeing the consequences of their actions immediately within the whole timeline of the universes they wanted (or could cope, considering the limitations of computation) to see.

In this sense, I think it's a bad interpretation to see the Vishnans' lack of communication since the war started as anything remotely similar to "changing one's mind", and so on. The Vishnans do not operate within our time dimension, thus there is no different state of mind Vishnans between the past and the future. They haven't "changed their mind", because such change can only happen perpendicularly (or etc) to our arrow of time, thus invisible to us. If there is a vigorous change of behavior by the Vishnans before and after the war started, such change of behavior does not constitute a "change of mind", but the purposeful acting on the universe according to different contexts.

(There's a caveat to the paragraph above, but I'll leave it as it is until Batts brings it up).[/list]