Ixthos

Ahhh, so it is an invasive species, or an unfortunate stowaway that somehow ended up in this environment?

Yes! The sound of the alarms, and the slow hum that had been filling the entire reactor complex began to fade. He breathed a sigh of relief. What button had he pressed? He rose, and inspected the writing. EMERGENCY OCEANIC REACTOR CORE DUMP WARNING - NEVER PRESS His face went pale. Reactor core dump ... into the ocean ... "What have I done," he whispered. He looked out the window from the control room to the reactor, seeing the the radioactive materials from the core slowly sinking through the newly opened hole in the floor, into the ocean waters. The lifeblood of the islands he and thousands of others called home ... into the path of the evacuating workers, their boats passing right next to the now harmless reactor ... the now deadly water .... He scrambled for his walky talky. "Hector! Hector! You have to call everyone back! You have to come back! Hector, can you hear me? Hector!" Did he get through?

@Serack One can but hope! The one thing we can be certain of is that Wit has lasted a long time playing the shards, or working without them knowing. There is a lot of possible clues that could allow him to discover he was manipulated, and I'm hoping he even tricked himself, hence the feeling of terror.

Yes, this topic has just been made, but ... I haven't explained the rules. Wait, aren't they obvious? No ... and now I have to explain them! The first person makes a statement about a situation, a story, and says what they characters do, and then the next post has to say if the task worked, but if it did then explain how something bad happened despite that or even because of it, and if the task didn't work then they have to describe the negative consequences. They then have to describe what the characters do next, if someone else joined them, and so on and so on ... So, lets start! "The reactor is starting to melt down!" James turned towards Hector, the burly engineer who was monitoring the feeds. "Is there anything we can do?" He asked calmly, far more calmly than he felt. Sweat was beginning to trickle down the back of his neck. Hector shook his head. "Goldey and Roberto already tried opening up the emergency coolant lines, but the damn valves won't budge. They can't force them open ... We're going to have to order an evacuation." James frowned. "Maybe if one of us joined them, we could force the wheel, let the coolant through? We could-" "There's no time! It took them ten minutes to get down there, and the reactor is going to go critical in twelve. If you go down there and it doesn't work ... James, you have to order an evacuation. It's too late for Goldey and Roberto, but we can still save everyone else." James set his jaw. He stood up straight, though he barely came up to Hector's chin. "You and the others go. I'm not leaving them behind, and I am not going to run while there is a chance." He turned to go. "James, James! There is not chance! James!" But James had already taken off at a run. He wasn't very fit, but he made good time. It was unfortunate, then, that it was only when he had already run for five minutes, coming to the T-junction between the control room, reactor, and the ancillary systems, that he realised he couldn't remember the path to the backup coolant system. He hesitated. Left, or right? Why hadn't they put up any signs, any markers? Why hadn't they .... No time for that. Gritting his teeth, he turned, and ran down the path to the left. Did he make the right choice?

What sort of ecosystem does this creature live in? Is it an alien or a monster, and how intelligent is it?

While I work on the next section does anyone have any questions or feedback on what I've shown so far?

This is the funniest line I have read all day.

Hopefully before the end of December - I've got a lot of things to do and I'm doing this as a slow process, I don't want to rush it. If you like, I can mention a few of the elements in that poll, but it won't go up for at least another week: aliens (at least two) number of self aware alien types to add in the story in addition to the two main (two main being the Benefactors and the Outsiders) 0 1 2 3 Which ones? (number chosen will equal highest number from previous question) sentient mounts hive mind plant aliens spacefaring aliens as transport Exiled minds in the nanoscale city Parasites that can bond to a host number of human subspecies in addition to hot and cold adapted Those are the questions I've decided on for now. God willing the poll will have more God willing. What sort of roleplay are you doing in the roleplay section?

@Kingsdaughter613 I like your take on the difference between the two, and the possible fates of them both :-)

Links to other topics in this series. Making a setting 01 - getting started - [POLL CLOSED] Making a setting 02 - Choice of Worlds - The Triarku system summary and plot Making a setting 03 - Choice of Worlds - Aliens and humans in the Triarku system - [POLL CLOSED] Making a setting 04 - Choice of Worlds - Magic in the Triarku system – [POLL CLOSED] Making a setting 05 - Choice of Worlds - Planets in the Triarku system - [POLL CLOSED] This is post two in the series of God willing around 10 posts detailing the world building and plotting of a science fantasy story Choice of Worlds, a series focused primarily on the interactions between a mostly contemporary / 1900's Earth-like world, and the communities of other humans and aliens within its solar system of which it is mostly ignorant. See here to follow a link to the original post for the seed ideas for this setting and plot. Also, to clarify with regards to my previous topic – Let's talk about dragons – this setting will not feature dragons, or at least if there are any dragons they will remain hidden as spirits. I thought I'd try something a little interesting for this post, and instead of jumping straight to the next poll (the aliens poll), I would give you a summary of the general structure of the setting so far, as well as comment on other possible stories the previous poll could have suggested. So this topic will cover the possible settings the poll could have seeded, a summary of the distant and more recent history of the setting, and some of the fixed elements of the setting. So, lets start with the other possibilities, and then give the details of this setting in broad strokes. Setting This one is a fairly even mix of science fiction and fantasy, and leans more towards low fantasy. To describe it in similar terms to the above, this is set in a single solar system in a universe shaped by conflicts in both the distant and recent past. Humans live on several planets in this solar system, with multiple civilisations on each world, each shaped by the environment in which they live – from frozen wastes to hot deserts, from jungles to islands, they are each very different. A unifying trait to the more “civilised” of these civilisations, besides their proximity to the poles of the planets they inhabit, is that they honour and respect the Benefactors, the nanoscale species that protects and guides them. The Benefactors live within a single nanoscale city, a city that is spread out across the universe, its various regions anchored at the poles of all the planets in the universe – ALL the planets, and many rocks that some would not classify as such – each within the centre of a massive machine, two on each planet, that they oversee. The machines were reconfigured to maintains the relatively Earth-like conditions on the various planets in the solar system, but their original function is to hold the Fields, the three dimensions that are known to overlay reality, apart. Originally, the Fields were a single dimension, but it was split into three in order to contain a threat that had already damaged the original Field, and to try to help the peoples who had been wounded by that assault. That threat still sometimes reaches out, despite its imprisonment, and is a horror to all life in that universe, be they human, Benefactor, or their allies. Humanity, however, typically doesn't have much to do with that, as that lies within the Benefactors' domain, and humans can only enter that world when they ride Soul Horses, machines that allow a human to exist within the Benefactors' city by inhabiting a nanoscale device – though the term Soul Horse is also used for the machines that are human scale and allow the Benefactors to enter into the macroscale reality. Instead, humanity concerns itself with the ebb and flow of trade between its own worlds, as all the other solar systems are unreachable to anyone who cannot exist as themselves within the Benefactors' city, a city even they do not fully understand. The human civilisations trade, bargain, research, and fight with one another across the various planets and ecosystems of the Triarku solar system, and so humanity has its choice of worlds. Well … its choice of all but one world. A single planet, located in the ideal place for human habitation, is forbidden to the space faring civilisations of man. Because there already are humans on it. This unique and singular world is like our own, though closer to the 1900's. Their origins tie into the same origins as humanity on the other worlds, as part of a seeding process that went wrong: a colony ship carrying embryos was accidentally damaged when entering the system from another universe, and the Benefactor's saved it. The ship split into several segments, each self sufficient but scattering the colony pods across the worlds of the solar system. Unable to gather these segments, and the segments themselves not programmed to detect the conditions of the worlds they landed on, relying on the main ship to handle that function, the Benefactors performed minor modifications to those worlds that were less than ideal for human survival, allowing the pods to safely activate and found colonies on the various worlds. The pods that landed on the fertile world in the middle of the goldilocks zone, however, they left in peace, allowing the colony to develop as its designers had intended. Those, left alone, developed into a world much like our own over the course of thousands of years, while the others, those whose worlds were only habitable due to the efforts of the Benefactors, developed quiet differently. The people of those worlds are of many nations and many different cultures and tech levels, and have many different attitudes, but the strongest of those nations are all bound by an agreement – the goldilocks world is to be left alone, only its poles visited if anyone is to travel there on some errand requested by the Benefactors. The inhabitants of that world are not to be exploited, abused, or kidnapped, nor are the worlds of the Triarku system to reveal themselves to the inhabitants of that world. Despite this, growing rumours that the inhabitants of that planet have begun looking towards the stars, and soon their world will be the ones to reach out and initiate contact. And they may do so sooner than any of the other people's think. Chrysmal, the contemporary world planet, has indeed developed as its designers intended, albeit missing many of the records that were destroyed with the ship, and one of those goals for the colony was for it to colonise the universe into which it was sent. That knowledge has been lost to many of its inhabitants, but some, a few organisations that have hidden their true nature and goals, know of this, and they have begun to suspect that there is more to their solar system than they had at first believed. Unlike the other worlds, they don't have access to magic, or the ability to travel between the planets of their binary stars, or the powerful weapons of their planetary kin. But what they do have is drive, resources, and their ingenuity. Plot The plot for the first story – a team of sellswords working in the space faring region of the solar system are hired to investigate an expedition sent by one of the companies on Chrysmal – the contemporary world – to its southern pole, to make sure they don't discover the machine present there. This is highly controversial, as the rules for interactions between the other planets and Chrysmal don't prohibit Chyrsmal from discovering the truth and initiating contact, which is why sellswords were hired to to this task, rather than a more formal militia. The sellswords come from several backgrounds, but most are decent people who fell on rough times. Some are from the polar nations of the various worlds who became outcasts for various reasons, while others are from the equatorial regions – the more extreme regions in temperature and weather – who are used to hard lives in the lawless and “less civilised” nations, who resent being lorded over by the polar nations. Some are from scholarly backgrounds, and some are thugs, but all are bound by their oaths to one another, though some value those oaths more than others. Meanwhile, the expedition to the southern pole is itself a mixed group, consisting of both scientists and workers, and a few suits who don't seem to have a clear motivation for why they were sent on the expedition. The expedition team is the first group to ever try to come this way, and are facing new and more dangerous challenges than they had ever faced before, all while the expedition leader and chief scientist begins to suspect there are ulterior motives for this mission. The sellswords eventually locate and start stalking the expedition, debating how to make sure it doesn't find the machine, while the scientist eventually confronts the suits to discover that, while the south pole has never been visited before, the north pole actually has, and the suits are trying to establish another base in the south to gain a monopoly on access to the knowledge of that machine. Along the way more is discovered about the nature of the organisation which funded the expedition, its relation to organisations in the Triarku system who seek to overthrow the established order, and the eventual meeting between the sellswords and the expedition leads to internal conflicts in both groups, and the beginnings of a relationship between the lead scientist and the captain of the sellswords. That's it for the moment. The next poll is intended to cover some aliens. Until then, have a great day!

I think it might be because of their nature - I think they are equal parts Honour and Cultivation, yet Tumi pulsed to the Rhythm of War - Honour and Odium - when corrupted. Mistspren also pair with the Bondsmith spren, so I think the clue will be found in their nature or their society. I think they, when corrupted PROPERLY, which I don't think has happened yet, they are an equal mixture of all three shards, and so they know this process could result in them becoming an equal mix, something they might think is necessary.

Wit was outwitted. Wit was outmanoeuvred. Wit was outplayed. The mastermind who hid from shards on their own worlds - though Endowment apparently says otherwise - was defeated. Possibly. Possibly ... He might have planned for this, might have made a backup, might have pulled on other Odium, but it looks like Odium actually won. Wit is used to being smarter than Odium, and was shocked, or seemed so, when Odium proved more subtle due to the vessel of the shard. But here is where we need to think. What does Hoid have to do? He has to do what Kelsier did. Kelsier was played for a fool by Ruin, but Kelsier and his crew won in the end. How? What do Kelsier and Hoid have in common? They are tricksters. I don't think they are gods, whatever they or those around them like the Church of the Survivor or the Horneaters think. They and the shards aren't gods. But they fit many myths versions of them. They aren't stronger than the shards. They aren't able to plan as far ahead, or see the possible ways of the future. But they fit a very specific mould, both of them. They are tricksters. Before his death Kelsier was a master thief, and after his death Kelsier tricked Preservation, tricked the Ire, deceived Ruin, and then went on further in hiding the Bands of Mourning. Hoid likewise has shown his trickster role and skills. They aren't stronger, smarter, or more wise than the shards. But they are more cunning. They don't have to be stronger, smarter, wiser - they just have to know how to outplay them. And Hoid still has the option to do that. How can Hoid reclaim his role? By being a trickster again. And maybe he already has. What did he really want to achieve with Odium, why go out into the open? And why did he say a meeting with Odium, when he seems to think of the shard more as Rayse? And, perhaps, with Fortune, Wit already knew enough about what was going to happen to make preparations, and to make sure he even tricked himself - what better trick could he have pulled off than to convince himself - perhaps by hiding his own memories of what he suspected would happen - to feeling and reacting the way he did? So ... who really won?

[Sixth of the Dusk 2][RoW] Future of the Cosmere spoilers! The Knight's Light This topic contains possible spoilers about the future of the Cosmere, as well as Rhythm of War. This is based off of the discovery of the different Lights, and this extract Brandon read from a future Sixth of the Dusk story: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/448/#e14408 I recommend you not only read the transcript, but listen to what Brandon said as well - to jump to a particular point in the audio please listen to the .mp3 found here, and then jump to the time stamp: https://wob.coppermind.net/media/snippets/501/11197_1411.mp3. I am placing everything from this point on in spoilers.

Either, as @Somebody from Sel said, humans, or, as bizarre as this might sound, fairies. Sometimes the two combined. I can't find the source for this at the moment, but I remember when in Pokemon the fairy type was introduced one of the reasons some said it was effective against dragon types was because in some legends Lancelot was trained by fairies and went on to slay dragons. I have no idea if this is true or not, but I actually like the idea. The Underworld franchise seems to use that as well. Also, see here: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FurAgainstFang

Indeed! Also, if both Dalinar and Jasnah take up the combined power the discussion could be very interesting. Dalinar "Wait, so we're now gods?" Jasnah "Let's not jump to conclusions."

I've been thinking a bit more about dragons, and I've decided to make an addition, sort of, in the meta-setting. To explain, I mentioned that there are races slowly evolving into dragons in the setting, though dragons are spirits. This is mainly based on an idea for a character encountering a species that were evolving into dragons but then stopped their directed mutations when they discovered they were also evolving into a race of demons, and they didn't want to become enslaved by this, though they were still cruel and evil. I've been thinking about how to expand on them in the setting, and I'm TENTATIVELY considering making this addition. In the setting I have a small number of human-like aliens - human-like meaning they are a lot like Species 8472 rather than like Klingons, as Klingons would be a type of human in the setting. I have a very small list of species that are human-like, and I'm keeping it small to make sure they are still alien, and alien to one another. I have a few slots left to fill, and I think that species which is evolving into dragons might be able to fill on of them, though I need to make sure they are sufficiently different from a few other species that are similar in some ways. If they do fit that role then that's great - they are a semi-hive minded species of beetle-like dragons, mutated from native life due to the core of a few species of dragon's present on the planet altering them, and some members of the species trying to push this further. I'm still working on the subtypes of those dragons, but if anyone is interested I'll elaborate on some of the parts for them that I'm determining.

Ahhh, thanks :-)

Captain Picard, how many Lights do we know about? How many do you see? No, Captain. There are five lights. ... excluding anti-Lights, of course :-P ... or ... we could ask you ... :-P

Thanks :-) That certainly is a lot of possibilities. I wonder if that will be a plot point, what no-one could catalogue them all, but they still try. True, it probably is more than just mathematical, but as far as I am aware it is possible to make multiple notes come into harmony with one another. That is certainly something to look into. The main point I think is that once two are in harmony, they likely are a third unique thing that is roughly as complex as the individual components, and so likely could then combine with another which would be equally complex. So adding them doesn't make it grow too complex, in theory

... Probably still is in effect. He might well be bound to a promise he made to himself, just as he is bound to the promise he made to Dalinar. Could his own deal be what leads to his defeat?

Fair enough, though I am mainly talking about the Rosharan shards, and it looks like Cultivation is looking towards the future, Honour is dead, and Odium is the enemy so we're king of ignoring his opinion. Besides, he died once already ... With an all new cast!

And the sword to keep them both in line, Twilightflesh! I've been convinced for a while now, the only complete answer is to combine the shards and share them between ten people, each representing a part of them, and working together to maintain balance.

Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination. I will seek the Truth.

Interesting :-) A few questions if I may: Did they come into being knowing who the others were, so not just knowing their own name and abilities, but also the name and abilities of the others? When they give an ability, is it given at any time, or from birth, and can it be used at any time? Kween grants magic - does that include or exclude the abilities of Kween's siblings - also, do they consider themselves siblings? Are they the gods of the setting and so did they make the land, or are they believed to have made the land - you seem to imply they appeared in the world, so was the world already there?