2 posts tagged “emek”
Yay, drawings. Gasp, if I keep this up, this blog might actually INTEREST people. Quick, delete! :P
So, where was I? Oh, yes, poor Mr. Chalmers. He has an interesting article I've never ever managed to get anyone to read. Abandon all hope ye who follow this link "Consciousness and its Place in Nature". It's about... consciousness and its place in nature. Because no one will EVER read it (I've managed to destroy quite a few threads simply by bringing it up) I'll summarize in one sentence: Chalmers divides the possible relations of consciousness and physics into 6 very neat categories. We know from experience that neat categories do not really work most of the time, but this article is ideal for concultures stuff: pick one of the six, proclaim it to be real in your fantasy universe, and presto, the Very Advanced Civilizations you will be writing about will have solved the Hard Problem of Consciousness. :P
Anyway, my choice is "type F". Let's quote Da Man:
Type-F monism is the view that consciousness is constituted by the intrinsic properties of fundamental physical entities: that is, by the categorical bases of fundamental physical dispositions. On this view, phenomenal or protophenomenal properties are located at the fundamental level of physical reality, and in a certain sense, underlie physical reality itself.
(and from then on, let's elegantly slide into the realm of science fiction... one of my nightmares is that one of my colleagues finds this blog and decides I am posting about Real Aliens and I'm some kind of wacko. I am not! I'm just a science fiction writer in my spare time. It sometimes generates real money, even.)
These poor protophenomenal properties (ouch) are called māwal by the Ereni. The māwal relates most closely to statistical physics, but the exact details should be shrouded in mystery (as I am not a physicist - I can't be everything at the same time!). One more thing it does besides creating consciousness is governing the ways consciousness interacts with other elements of the physical world. Let's just assume for the purposes of Shiny Fantasy World that psi is real. (Which could, you know, actually be so.) I am going to abuse parapsychology literature in a similar manner I abused Mr. Chalmers above, and lift the claim of Spottiswoode et al. that solar activity is related to psi. Go here for the technical articles
In the universe of Eren, each sun has a māwal rating that tells approximately how inhibitory the effect of the sun is on māwal. Both ends of the scale are rather inconducive for civilized species to arise.
0 - disruptive to consciousness. People don't even go there.
1-2 - consciousness is possible, but what humans would call psi is not, or just barely
3-4 - average psi
5-6 - lots of psi
6+ - w00t fireballs!!
(Yes, I know that Spottiswoode et al. claim geomagnetic activity plays into this, too. That is also assumed to hold true here, so ratings will be provided in the next section for planets, not entire systems.)
Earth is a 2, Emek is a 4 and Eren is a 6+. And yes, this is why our poor miners fled - the ghosts and similar scary stuff they saw was produced by the direct action of their consciousness on the physical world. Your nightmares are suddenly real, and a small underground facility is claustrophobic already... meep! :P Note: 320 years ago, when the Emeki abandoned the moon, they had no clue about this.
(And yes, this is why the forefathers of the Emeki settled in this system, but it isn't why their settlement was abandoned.)
Imagine a normal distribution... er... bell curve. Smack me in the head when I speak too technical. Most planets are in the average range.
Māwal sensitivity varies from individual to individual, usually greatly. This often creates divisions in society: eg. in the Emek of 320 years ago, talented māwal-users were Servants of the Empire, effectively enslaved, and "employed" by the Imperial Court... and as such, not a single one of them set foot on a remote mining colony, or directed anything more than a stray thought there... the court was busy using them to spy on each other. (Talk about decadence. :P )
In the Emeki Civil War that soon ensued, māwal-users teamed up with another group and turned against the Court, but that's a story for tomorrow, IY"H. (And maybe I'll get more technical about the māwal.)
So, where was I? Oh, yes, poor Mr. Chalmers. He has an interesting article I've never ever managed to get anyone to read. Abandon all hope ye who follow this link "Consciousness and its Place in Nature". It's about... consciousness and its place in nature. Because no one will EVER read it (I've managed to destroy quite a few threads simply by bringing it up) I'll summarize in one sentence: Chalmers divides the possible relations of consciousness and physics into 6 very neat categories. We know from experience that neat categories do not really work most of the time, but this article is ideal for concultures stuff: pick one of the six, proclaim it to be real in your fantasy universe, and presto, the Very Advanced Civilizations you will be writing about will have solved the Hard Problem of Consciousness. :P
Anyway, my choice is "type F". Let's quote Da Man:
Type-F monism is the view that consciousness is constituted by the intrinsic properties of fundamental physical entities: that is, by the categorical bases of fundamental physical dispositions. On this view, phenomenal or protophenomenal properties are located at the fundamental level of physical reality, and in a certain sense, underlie physical reality itself.
(and from then on, let's elegantly slide into the realm of science fiction... one of my nightmares is that one of my colleagues finds this blog and decides I am posting about Real Aliens and I'm some kind of wacko. I am not! I'm just a science fiction writer in my spare time. It sometimes generates real money, even.)
These poor protophenomenal properties (ouch) are called māwal by the Ereni. The māwal relates most closely to statistical physics, but the exact details should be shrouded in mystery (as I am not a physicist - I can't be everything at the same time!). One more thing it does besides creating consciousness is governing the ways consciousness interacts with other elements of the physical world. Let's just assume for the purposes of Shiny Fantasy World that psi is real. (Which could, you know, actually be so.) I am going to abuse parapsychology literature in a similar manner I abused Mr. Chalmers above, and lift the claim of Spottiswoode et al. that solar activity is related to psi. Go here for the technical articles
In the universe of Eren, each sun has a māwal rating that tells approximately how inhibitory the effect of the sun is on māwal. Both ends of the scale are rather inconducive for civilized species to arise.
0 - disruptive to consciousness. People don't even go there.
1-2 - consciousness is possible, but what humans would call psi is not, or just barely
3-4 - average psi
5-6 - lots of psi
6+ - w00t fireballs!!
(Yes, I know that Spottiswoode et al. claim geomagnetic activity plays into this, too. That is also assumed to hold true here, so ratings will be provided in the next section for planets, not entire systems.)
Earth is a 2, Emek is a 4 and Eren is a 6+. And yes, this is why our poor miners fled - the ghosts and similar scary stuff they saw was produced by the direct action of their consciousness on the physical world. Your nightmares are suddenly real, and a small underground facility is claustrophobic already... meep! :P Note: 320 years ago, when the Emeki abandoned the moon, they had no clue about this.
(And yes, this is why the forefathers of the Emeki settled in this system, but it isn't why their settlement was abandoned.)
Imagine a normal distribution... er... bell curve. Smack me in the head when I speak too technical. Most planets are in the average range.
Māwal sensitivity varies from individual to individual, usually greatly. This often creates divisions in society: eg. in the Emek of 320 years ago, talented māwal-users were Servants of the Empire, effectively enslaved, and "employed" by the Imperial Court... and as such, not a single one of them set foot on a remote mining colony, or directed anything more than a stray thought there... the court was busy using them to spy on each other. (Talk about decadence. :P )
In the Emeki Civil War that soon ensued, māwal-users teamed up with another group and turned against the Court, but that's a story for tomorrow, IY"H. (And maybe I'll get more technical about the māwal.)
This is a little map of how jump
points connect in the area close to Earth... which is a quite
peripheral area indeed. Basically, Earth has only one exit, that to
Ōran. (This has its own in-story reasons, should I tell them right
now?) Eren has two exits, which is why the country could secede from
Emek to begin with - an Emeki embargo would have been useless. (Eren
has always had good relations with the Alaraf Commonwealth, who
otherwise try to be on friendly terms with all their neighbors - does
wonders for business, you know.)
Emek, or as its own flashy name goes, the "Empire of the Three Stars", used to be a much larger empire - the ruins on Hīawan are one of the remainders of a bygone era. This Empire was one of the earliest spacefaring civilizations, but fell into chaos for millennia - its current rulers trace their origins back before the "Dark Ages", but such links are tenuous at best, and indeed other civilizations might actually know more about the Empire's downfall than the rulers of Emek themselves. (Those other civilizations watch current Emeki developments with amusement and the occasional cryptic comments that are to be expected.)
The "Three Stars" used to stand for the Empire's three central planets, only one of which, Saīa, is currently inhabited by the Emeki. (The other is Ōran, and no one knows about the third... some say it was Alaraf, which would certainly make sense given the jump point locations.)
The post-Dark Ages government claimed the Three Stars were Ōran, Saīa and Alaum; a quite transparent lie, since Alaum was only settled after the Emeki ventured out into space for the second time. Then with the independence of Eren, which will be discussed in tomorrow's update IY"H, Ōran was lost again - nowadays, the Three Stars are claimed to stand for Saīa, Goion and Alaum, and the establishment tries to pretend it has always been so.... with an uneasy feeling, because the only inhabited planet in the Goion system is nothing but a holiday resort. (well, at least it's a popular resort! Not too majestic, but y'know, it could've been worse.)
Eren was a quite unsuccessful mining colony orbiting a planet in the Ōran system, its only reason for existence being that it made Emek available to still claim Ōran for themselves. Even then, it was abandoned approximately 320 Earth years ago, mostly because it was constantly plagued by accidents, equipment breakdowns and the like. (Some of the miners claimed they had seen malicious spirits, and they spread many stories when they returned.) 20 years later, the moon was turned over to one of the factions in a bloody Emeki civil war as part of the Alliance-enforced peace negotiations. It declared independence, which the Alliance promptly recognized, and thus the modern-day State of Eren was born.
We're going to talk about the civil war in quite some depth pretty soon, but tomorrow IY"H I will post stuff about Eren, why the miners saw ghosts, what the new inhabitants did about them, and what does David Chalmers have to do with all this.
A final note: this map uses the Ereni names for everything, but those might not be the more commonly used names on Earth - Ereni phonotactics is quite restrictive (see the previous post...) and does away with most word-final consonants. Alarafu is called "Alaraf" both by its inhabitants and Earthlings. Maybe next time I should just use Alliance Standard... :P
Emek, or as its own flashy name goes, the "Empire of the Three Stars", used to be a much larger empire - the ruins on Hīawan are one of the remainders of a bygone era. This Empire was one of the earliest spacefaring civilizations, but fell into chaos for millennia - its current rulers trace their origins back before the "Dark Ages", but such links are tenuous at best, and indeed other civilizations might actually know more about the Empire's downfall than the rulers of Emek themselves. (Those other civilizations watch current Emeki developments with amusement and the occasional cryptic comments that are to be expected.)
The "Three Stars" used to stand for the Empire's three central planets, only one of which, Saīa, is currently inhabited by the Emeki. (The other is Ōran, and no one knows about the third... some say it was Alaraf, which would certainly make sense given the jump point locations.)
The post-Dark Ages government claimed the Three Stars were Ōran, Saīa and Alaum; a quite transparent lie, since Alaum was only settled after the Emeki ventured out into space for the second time. Then with the independence of Eren, which will be discussed in tomorrow's update IY"H, Ōran was lost again - nowadays, the Three Stars are claimed to stand for Saīa, Goion and Alaum, and the establishment tries to pretend it has always been so.... with an uneasy feeling, because the only inhabited planet in the Goion system is nothing but a holiday resort. (well, at least it's a popular resort! Not too majestic, but y'know, it could've been worse.)
Eren was a quite unsuccessful mining colony orbiting a planet in the Ōran system, its only reason for existence being that it made Emek available to still claim Ōran for themselves. Even then, it was abandoned approximately 320 Earth years ago, mostly because it was constantly plagued by accidents, equipment breakdowns and the like. (Some of the miners claimed they had seen malicious spirits, and they spread many stories when they returned.) 20 years later, the moon was turned over to one of the factions in a bloody Emeki civil war as part of the Alliance-enforced peace negotiations. It declared independence, which the Alliance promptly recognized, and thus the modern-day State of Eren was born.
We're going to talk about the civil war in quite some depth pretty soon, but tomorrow IY"H I will post stuff about Eren, why the miners saw ghosts, what the new inhabitants did about them, and what does David Chalmers have to do with all this.
A final note: this map uses the Ereni names for everything, but those might not be the more commonly used names on Earth - Ereni phonotactics is quite restrictive (see the previous post...) and does away with most word-final consonants. Alarafu is called "Alaraf" both by its inhabitants and Earthlings. Maybe next time I should just use Alliance Standard... :P
