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HAL
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Senior RPA

Post Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 5:22 pm      Reply with quote

eltanimras wrote:
Is there paper in Rust? Pens, pencils, books? (I understand there are blueprints and sewing patterns, but I don't know how they're made.)

I also understand there are databooks, holodiscs, and laptops. Can you comment on how common (or rare) and/or valuable these are? Or on common and uncommon topics, fiction vs. non-fiction, etc.? (Although it's more than possible I'm missing things, all I'm finding in the wiki at the moment is this: "Few have any real use for a computer, however, so the supply is often higher than the demand as almost nobody can read or otherwise put a laptop to any meaningful use." [Edit: Also "They sometimes style themselves after the images of ancient soldiers and warriors found on scavenged holodiscs or artworks".])

A hundred and twenty years later, how much is remembered about the old penal colony? Did it have a name? Is there any consensus about the reasons for the rebellion? About its size, about what daily life was like for the prisoners, about how closely tied the outposts they eventually overran were to the penal colony itself?

The life expectancy of the average Ruster may be only 50 years, but even that means some of the original prisoners must have been alive 90 years ago (assuming a minimum age of 20 at the rebellion). If they had kids when they were 30 (110 years ago), a fair number of that second generation must have still been around 60 years ago. By similarly conservative logic, the third would have survived until at most 30 years ago ... so today's older Rusters would have known them personally. Throw in a few people living to 60 or 70, or having kids at 35-40, and we're even closer -- I wouldn't be terribly surprised if a handful of Rusters had even known members of the second generation.

Considering how important legends of the rebellion & its leaders seem to at least the New Guard and the NIners, I'm surprised we don't seem to have more stories of those times, however confused, exaggerated, or otherwise edited they might be.

Hmm, I seem to have gotten a bit carried away with that. Embarassed

p.s. M. wonders if there are (smoking) pipes in-game.


Smoking pipes, maybe.

As far as remembering the original rebellion, I would imagine that there are stories, mixed in with lies and fiction and such. Vague memories passed down from generation to generation. There might be a legend or two of a giant ship crashing, splitting clean in two.

Paper? Perhaps a little, but it'd be uncommon. Databooks were probably encountered by educated people here and there; I'd say you'd see one about as often as you see a titan.


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"Was a Niner once, then I took a gato bite t'th'knee," a bald, gaunt-faced lanky young fellow says a bit randomly as he looks his knee over.
HAL
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Senior RPA

Post Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 5:25 pm      Reply with quote

Hyriana wrote:
More questions~

1) Before the Families (or the current families, I guess) were things better or worse off in Rust? Was there a lot of gang violence between various little groups. Some families say they 'patrol' the slums, but how successful are these peacekeeping efforts? Or are they just really holding people up for chips?

2) How do the plants in the walled of church area actually grow? Was all they needed really a bit of formulated dirt? There's no real precipitation to my knowledge and no one has actually been watering or caring for them really. If it's the case that they're so robust, how is it that beetles managed to eat every single plant in the entire wasteland?


There really wasn't any "before the families" that folks can remember. There are legends and stories of other groups, small gangs. I'd say that most folk find small gangs more dangerous, more unpredictable, and more likely to have started fights and shot innocents in the crossfire.

As far as the church, nobody is really sure. Maybe it's something about the soil in that particular area? And do we know it's the beetles doing the eating?


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"Was a Niner once, then I took a gato bite t'th'knee," a bald, gaunt-faced lanky young fellow says a bit randomly as he looks his knee over.
HAL
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Senior RPA

Post Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 5:25 pm      Reply with quote

WorkerDrone wrote:
From what I understand, Martians and Titans are considered "uncommon". Given the "size" of Rust (relatively small community compared to where I live, really) but the scope, it's possible some bands of aligned races have sequestered themselves off from everyone else, though certainly not everyone--just from what I've understood from roleplay thusfar.

Callistans however, given their low population and confirmed secretiveness, at least as a stereotype, probably do keep pretty close together and away from everyone else. No one can tell, really, where they are in a crowd, and I imagine not seeing many of the small population of them come around as PCs, might just indicate that it takes one to break the mold to start going around making contacts with Terrans and Martians and Titans.

Take all that with a grain of salt, though, I guess.


Indeed, this.


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"Was a Niner once, then I took a gato bite t'th'knee," a bald, gaunt-faced lanky young fellow says a bit randomly as he looks his knee over.
Octavius
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Consultant

Post Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2013 1:06 pm      Reply with quote

Quote:
Quote:
Hyriana wrote:
beetles managed to eat every single plant in the entire wasteland?



I may have made that up entirely and it shouldn't be considered canon, that's just me running my dumb mouth.

...admittedly it's better than "WE PICKED THEM ALL," but not by much. My suggestion is that we retcon there -ever- having been plants growing outside(much less in the vasty quantities we found).

That done, we just have them able to grow anywhere, though they do need protection from beetles. But, uh, again: I made the beetles thing up and it's not something Staff ever said, agreed to, or commented on, so they needn't be held to it.


If the code is running with the legacy crafts from Atonement, then there was defined reasoning for the ecology.

The lack of plants was due to the lack of organic soil. Mineral-rich moon-rock lacks the organic components to germinate seeds. It is the top soil fashioned over millennium that makes plant life possible on earth.

Some terraforming engineers released flora and fauna at some point in the past to begin the process of generating top soil on the moon. As things lived and died, corpses were speed-converted into organic soil by the genetically-engineered activity of the crawling vines. Organic soil mounds receive wind-born seeds and pollination, which attract herbivores, who then die to make more mounds. Eventually the moon landscape would be naturally converted. This, of course, went unchecked and horribly wrong. The process is sporadic and irregular. Crawling vines are semi-sentient and become aggressive as they grow in size, trying to consume living, and not just dead, things. The items, crafts, and code were built together to make an environment that required players to consider balance and not just a scorched-earth approach. There needs to some corpses left behind and not hauled back for food-paste if you want dirt to grow. There needs to be vines on the moonscape to find the corpses and convert them (you can't kill them all). Too many corpses can mean too many vines. Too many vines left to grow to big becomes deadly. No vines means no terraforming. Players were expected to address this need intelligently.

The coded aspect worked this way:

  • Corpses left on the moonscape eventually dissappear (something ate them). They need to be found by vines before that.
  • Corpses found by a vine mob are converted from a corpse to a viney-corpse. The viney-corpse eventually morphs into a baby vine mob and a "mound of organic soil."
  • A mound of organic soil spawns wild herbs that can be gathered at a low rate, as it is wind-fertilized. It can be left and continue in this purpose.
  • A mound of organic soil can be collected into "handfuls of organic soil" which are transportable. Handfuls of organic soil can be used to pot and cultivate specific herbs/scents by biologists. Large amounts of soil-handfuls can be turned into cultivated plots near your settlement, which can be farmed for better grow-rates of herbs.
  • Herbs are the core element required for all biology and chemistry production, as they are broken down into "organic compounds" in the refrigerated cabinet. The cabinet required the electricity be kept on (an infrastructure task for Electricians in a clan zone) or they begin to spoil.
  • Baby vines hide and run away when you hit them. They can be hunted by tracking and exposing them. They grow to medium sized vines. Medium sized vines slide around the moonscape visibly, but don't attack. They grow into large vines. Large vines are aggressive and hard to fight, and try to consume living things.
  • Mechanics can build sprayer pumps which Biologists could fill with herbicide. These pumps could be carried out on the moonscape and drop a herbicidal-cloud object in any room via prog. That cloud-object causes horrible death to any crawling vine that encounters it, but also had the side-effect of killing organic soil.
  • Because this was built as a dynamic system that responded to player activities, it was prone to horrid consequences. Players leaving corpses all over and not hunting vines led to population explosions. Spawn points for NPCs infected with vines led to exponential growth if players or staff didn't intercede as well.


So, if all this logic is still intact, your "church full of plants" has two logical causes. One, lots of things died there. Two, someone took the effort to haul in soil from the moonscape to cultivate that spot.

One of the creepy factors woven into the ARPI design was that a "mound of organic soil" means someone or something died and rotted on that spot. It was good for theme, and used in building from time to time. (For example, overgrown rooms of plant life inside of abandoned buildings with visible signs of massacre there.)

I defer to HAL and the staff to amend this, if any or all of it is no longer true.


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Hyriana
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Post Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2013 2:31 pm      Reply with quote

To my knowledge, the vines no longer exist in any form. Or so I was told when I asked about the craft for the herbicide using them. The organic soil was carted out there after being run through reactors to add the appropriate nutrients, so I guess if there's some mechanism left over of the terraforming that could be the cause of airborne seeding.

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Starmonger
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Void Dreamer

Post Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2013 3:07 pm      Reply with quote

A dynamic system similar to vines would be a lovely addition to Parallel, though I believe that the general consensus with most players when vines are brought up is that it is something that people don't want to see a return of, maybe because of how they had a exponential baby boom due to neglect or just poor thinking on someone's side. Maybe a mob or creature similar to this? It'd certainly add flavor to the wildlife as is, and probably give players something to think twice about. Because as is, there are tons of corpses left out in the wild as is because they don't 'pay-out' as much paste as other creatures and thus are just left to rot, with no effort made to clean them up at all. I could be wrong about public opinion on vines, but something like this that required thought and careful or swift action like vines would be welcomed by me.

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Nedinu
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Post Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2013 3:36 pm      Reply with quote

A herbivore mob that grows in population as vines do by eatting them could stop them from overrunning everything?

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Starmonger
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Void Dreamer

Post Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2013 7:23 pm      Reply with quote

vines aren't inherently violent until they get to big like Octavius said. Really, they shouldn't be a problem unless neglect or carelessness comes into play. Besides, mobs against mobs would really mean a full blown ecosystem. Maybe something territorial that attacks -anything- that gets near it's nest or place of authority

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slyviolin
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Sometimes I struggle with my demons. Other times we just fuck and have cheesecake.

Post Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2013 8:07 pm      Reply with quote

This vine thing... sounds awesome

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Lowdy
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Post Posted: Fri Oct 04, 2013 8:53 pm      Reply with quote

I miss Barkers.....they don't exist anymore :'(

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Featured artwork used on Parallel RPI given permission for use by original artists macrebisz and merl1ncz.