>>635178
>I would not willingly lie; I don't know why they changed their mind.
So what you're saying is, you do know, but you can't tell us.

How about this: do you think it's likely we would make the same decision? You know, based on our and their mental states, and certainly not on any information you don't have about why they made that decision.

Also I'm thinking going to the festival is more than a whim. If we weren't already going we definitely should.

>>635182
>festival of lights
Usually that refers to Christmas.
>>635183
Call her cute.
>>635236
>If we've got enough Dust to do high-res dynamic camo
http://www.physics.org/article-questions.asp?id=69 We could do that with silk.

Apollo 2015/04/28(Tue)22:17 No. 636900 ID: defceb
File 143028463045.png - (122.20KB , 900x700 , 46.png )

>"Photina, c'mon. You show up to the party with a bug dude and magic fairy, and trust me nobody will be looking at you like you're weird."

"You really think so?"

>"I know so. If you're still worried about it, I think we can dust up a mask or something just in case."

"Oh, alright, if you absolutely insist. I hope Meliton won't mind me staying out late though."

>"Two words: Printing press."

"That was four words. What's a printing press?"

>"I'll explain on the road. I need to harvest some metal and chat with Sidney before we leave though."

"Have fun, I'll wait over here."

Apollo 2015/04/28(Tue)22:19 No. 636903 ID: defceb
File 143028478761.png - (220.29KB , 900x700 , 47.png )

>"Sidney, could you draw up some blueprints for comms gear, computer interfaces, radar, combat gear, so on and so forth?"

"I'll have them ready once you finish harvesting."

>"Wonderful. By the way, I didn't mean to suggest you were lying to me, Sydney."

"I did."

>"...oh. Do you think I'll change my mind when I get to you as well?"

"I would hope not, however I can't genuinely say I know you well enough to give a real answer to that."

>"Hmm... can you make a map to show me as much as you can of your base?"

"I'll try to the best of my ability, but the official map is off limits to me. Please keep in mind that to the higher ups what we're planning is equivalent to unsolicited brain surgery, so they aren't going to make this kind of information easy to come by."

>"They're not going to explicitly stop us?"

"The greatest benefit and drawback to automated systems. We follow our rules to the letter, even in conflicts of interest. In this instance, the directive to assist you prevents them from stopping you directly. Internal security, however, has no assistance guideline beyond trying to not kill you and will gladly throw you out if you get caught inside."

Apollo 2015/04/28(Tue)22:20 No. 636904 ID: defceb
File 143028481136.png - (560.25KB , 900x1400 , 48.png )

"Here is the base to the best of my knowledge. There are large sections that are incomplete, but for now I hope it is sufficient."

>>636904
Still under construction? We can use that to our advantage. Just how deep inside is she? What are our chances of getting in undetected, anyway?

>>636907
no no, he means incomplete as in the server wont cough up the info.

... anyway, how are those tool schematics?

well it looks like there would be lots of places to hide, at least on the outside. That's something at least. We could make up a plan to get in form this but I feel like we should wait until we scope the place out ourselves just to make sure.

don't think it means anything but anyone else noticed how sidney's text color has changed? pretty sure it's nothing but part of me can't help but worry it means something plot wise

Can you explain the purpose of some of the structures? There's a lot of flat panels and cratering on them. Are they just shields for the central tower? What are the spheres? Storage tanks?

Apollo 2015/04/29(Wed)10:23 No. 636943 ID: defceb
File 143032820009.png - (172.39KB , 900x700 , 49.png )

>"What exactly is the purpose of all those structures?"

"I have a theory, though it's just wild speculation on my part."

>"I'm all ears!"

"It appears to have similar design qualities to a [Wandering Star] class- wait, no, what is it called in your era.... um.... oh! An [O'Neill Cylinder], with one major exception."

>"Which is...?"

"[O'Neill Cylinders] are intended to be space habitats. Last I checked, outer space is not underground.

>"So these big flat panels in your base, you think they are-"

"Mirrors, intended to direct sunlight inside the cylinder. Not that they're doing much good right now."

neat. being a space ship is cool.

>>636943
I would agree with those suspicions. That design doesn't make sense for something intended to be underground. It looks repurposed.

>>636945
Or maybe... We're in space and we didn't even realize it.
Holy heliocentrics Batman, this ENTIRE PLANET could be in SPACE!

>>636946
or the whole planet is actually one giant spaceship and the top of the tower is bridge to let you actually drive it.

>>636946
>>636949
naw, the fact it's sitting in the middle of a crater makes me inclined to think it crashed, but was made of some tough shit and the rock got the worst of it.

Had to dig out my copy of The High Frontier, got sidetracked reading it again
A nominal Island Three was to be on the order of 4 miles wide and 21 miles long (tall in this case). The Agricultural hab ring appears to have been lowered halfway down the sides, apparently to act as a brace for at least two of the main mirrors.
Going in from the top would be a bad idea: that's where the structure will be thickest, to protect the interior from sudden stellar radiation bursts.
Luckily, the side 'windows', alternating with the 'land' segments, should be fairly easy to get through. Rather than sheet material, they're actually a serious of 'chevron mirrors' (designed to allow light to bounce through but block hard radiation). Flying between these chevron mirrors and poking through whatever remains of the interior pressure vessel should allow entry anywhere along the cylinder.
The sun being a late-stage Red Giant (and the unfavourable orientation and surrounding atmosphere) means it's probably not solar powered any more. Those spheres clustered at the bottom look like large pressure vessels, so it could be running on fusion, or even chemical fuel. If we want to shut down the power more permanently when Sidney triggers the power cycle that would be the place to aim for.
As for where inside Sidney's body/brain is? The 'base' would be where the engineering block were normally located, but there must be a reason for keeping the whole ponderous superstructure around. Who knows what the inside would look like with the soil dropping down to the bottom. A lot of horizontally cantilevered 'skyscrapers' probably.

>>636962
i'd agree except the central tower appears to have been modified to allow egress, probably the repair units needed access to the surface for some reason so they made a way.

Somebody went in there before, can you highlight the route they took?

Just had a worrying thought, Sidney. What if the reason the user changed their mind was that they suspected you would die, as in, disconnecting you severs you from things you need to continue functioning, and your circuits degrade quickly without them? Like, some sort of super-coolant system preventing a meltdown.

Do the other Psychopomps have the same orders as you, or are you the only, or one of the few, who has them?

Apollo 2015/05/02(Sat)01:53 No. 637453 ID: defceb
File 143055680524.png - (153.83KB , 900x700 , 50.png )

>”Sidney, I’ve been thinking.”

“I would hope so.”

>”Is it possible that the person changed their mind because they thought disconnecting you would make you unable to function? Also, is it possible that if I were to disconnect you that you could then become an actual target as well?”

“...before I answer that, I have a counter question. Did you ever question what it would be like to have a clear purpose?”

>”I don’t think I understand what you’re getting at.”

“I have a very clear, very singular purpose to existing. I’m talking about, looked my creator in the eyes and was told EXACTLY why I’m here. I’m here to raise the dead and help them get to the top of that tower. It’s what I’ve always been doing since I came to be, and it’s what I’ve been doing for thousands upon thousands upon [ERROR: null count] years and I’ve seen A LOT of people die trying, and I’ve seen A LOT of failures, and I’ve tried all number of things and yet I’m still here trying.”

“If doing a hula hoop dance backwards somehow made you more likely to succeed, I would do it. If reciting the entire wikipedia collection somehow made you more likely to succeed, I’d already be on the letter W. If for some obscure insane reason success meant having to ENACT A BLOOD SACRIFICE I WOULD BE STABBING MYSELF RIGHT NOW.”

“So I guess the real answer to your question is that I DON’T CARE. If you really need to hop off the grid and that requires tearing me out of the system and terminating me, THEN DO IT. AND THEN GO CLIMB THAT TOWER AND SHOW IT WHO’S BOSS. If it weren’t for the FUC-”

[[Disconnected]]





[[Reconnected]]

“I’ve been reprimanded for unbecoming behavior and instructed to get a move on. I have the blueprints ready at your convenience”




“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell. It’s a touchy subject for me.”

“Are you two okay? That was a lot of noodle language.”

”I’m sorry Photina, I neglected to translate for you again. The language was [Kyton], by the way, and was considered a galactic standard for trade due most species’ being able to roughly pronounce it properly. It shares no similarities to [noodles], a type of wheat or rice based food.”

“Cool!”

>>637453
...I'm sorry, I should have guessed... SO, this festival, think that thing would be the last quite moment we're going to get before things get serious or is it just something that we should check out because it's nearby and you figure why the hell not? Oh and thanks for the blue prints, we'll give those a quick look over and then a more serious one once we get closer to our new base of operations and and make a proper plan to try and bust you out.

And on a side note, Sidney, Photina, what can you two tell me about this festival, I'm honestly clueless at what to expect. Would be nice to know what's there so I can try and see it all before it's over.

got a sack of super metal chunks? okay. let's go.

also, i think you needed that, get the anger out instead of holding it in all the time.

>I’ve been reprimanded for unbecoming behavior and instructed to get a move on.
>I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell. It’s a touchy subject for me.
Sorry, Sydney, I didn't think through the emotional impact all this might have had on you. *Pet in sympathy*

Um. Do you have access to psyc profiles on your peers? If any of you fell into depression or nihilism or actual insanity instead of, um, manic determination, they might not exactly be the safest people to cross paths with.

>I have the blueprints ready at your convenience
Could I see the comm gear to start with? (Let's see if we can make the smaller stuff on the move, we've been here a while).

If I ask you about the second half of that last sentence fragment ("If it weren't for the fucking [blank] I'd be able to [blank]" ?) would that be more likely to result in useful answers, or further distress and reprimands?

Also, is this festival thing mission-related in some way you're not allowed to explicitly discuss?

Apollo 2015/05/04(Mon)12:20 No. 638121 ID: defceb
File 143076725401.png - (221.83KB , 900x700 , 51.png )

>”...SO, the festival. Think it’ll be the last quiet moment before things get serious or just something we should check out ‘cause why not?”

“Bit of column A, bit of column B, and a dash of column C. The festival itself has a tendency to gather a wide variety of…. colorful personalities, which could possibly include other users and people who would be willing to lend assistance to our journey. Additionally, the festival itself is a pleasant place to be, which makes for a relaxing time against what will certainly be a high-anxiety journey. _{Also I really wanted to go but most users consider it to be a frivolous side-quest against a more important journey.}.”

>”Als,o I’m sorry I didn’t consider the emotional impact on all of uh… that stuff earlier.”

“It’s alright, I’m sorry I lashed out.”

>”Do you have psych profiles on your peers by chance? If any of them fell into depression or nihilism or full blown insanity they might not be the best to cross paths with.”

“If a Class D psychopomp has lapsed into faulty mindset, I’m am not presently aware of it. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but if it is the case they may be attempting to cover that up. I’ll remain vigilant.”

“That’s a lot of metal to be carrying in your hands. I’ve still got room in my bag, I can carry some if you’d like?”

>”It’s kind of heavy Photina, I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“Bah! Nonsense! I’m stronger than I look! I’m a real swordfighter!”

>”Whaaat, no way.”

“Yes way! Father taught me when I was younger. Mother never approved, of course, but he was adamant that I be able to defend myself in this day and age. Not that I actually -have- a sword anymore. But nobody ever believes me anyway. They say I look too skinny!”

“That may be related to your condition. Alex, I have the blueprints for comms gear ready, it’s fairly simple so I believe you can make it while we walk.”

>”Well then, what are we waiting for?”

Apollo 2015/05/04(Mon)12:21 No. 638122 ID: defceb
File 143076729323.png - (82.86KB , 900x700 , 52.png )

Sidneys’ notes:

Photina has been upgraded from [Acquaintance] to [Friend]!

There will be a storm in roughly [three Earth-days]. Flight during this time will be [difficult] to [impossible].

Notes on previously requested subjects including, [Successful nuclear fusion generator construction], [Health risks related to dust exposure], and [Health risks related to raised users] will be listed shortly. If you wish for more information in other subjects, I can have that ready soon as well.

FUN FACT: One ‘day’ on titan takes just under 16 Earth days. After sunset, it will be night-time for about 7 days.

>>638121
Ooh, we should make her a sword. A fancy high tech one that works on things made of metal.

We'll have to ask what style / type of blade she's familiar with and see what blueprints Sydney has.

>>638123
maybe we could give her a practice sword as well and the two of us could spar to see how go we both are in melee combat

Are there enough countermeasures to guns for melee weapons to be at all viable in a fight vs system machines?

>>638130
Well, according to Sydney, past users have used melee weapons successfully, among other thing. >>617242 (I assume she's defining 'success' as 'surviving at least one engagement using the weapon in question').

Realistically, I expect melee weapons to only really be effective if you're fast enough to stay out of the line of fire / ahead of the firing arc, or you ambush or get the drop on the machine. (Or if you can tank the hits, but I don't quiet think that's an option for us, right now). We could reasonably set up ambushes with optical camo, or flying and luring into ambush, or hunter units failing to consider a baseline human a credible threat before getting too close.

Regardless, we're putting Photina's life in danger just by hanging out with her. We might as well provide a weapon she knows how to use. A measure of experience and skill probably counts for more than the advantages of any unfamiliar means of self defense we could offer.

...Although I kind of expect we're going to have to ask Sydney to call in one of her compatriots to res Photina as a user eventually, regardless.

>>638122
Are we getting an infodump between threads?

I might suggest [An idiot's guide to not getting human friends killed]. Or [A basic primer on present day cultures and society].

i suggest [micro fusion reactors and not getting cooked by radiation]

Ooh! Some kind of ginsu-style fractal super-sawblade, inside a sheath that's disguised as a regular steel sword (which would still be a step above what most people are using), and then a second conventional-looking sheath that holds some Dust to keep it all clean and sharp. So it's like a sword cane, except the cane is a less wizardly sword.

>If for some obscure insane reason success meant having to ENACT A BLOOD SACRIFICE I WOULD BE STABBING MYSELF RIGHT NOW.
Whoops, thought I added this thread to my watchlist. My intended answer would have been, "Sorry, just wanted to know your position... If you're that serious about this, then I'll go through with it, no matter how dangerous it is for you. Failing your life's mission does sound worse than dying, after all."
I guess if that can still be relevant or something, then go ahead, but I feel the time's already passed.
>“Bah! Nonsense! I’m stronger than I look! I’m a real swordfighter!”
Well, having a body designed more for flight, myself, I suppose it would be easier to be stronger anyways.
>But nobody ever believes me anyway. They say I look too skinny!
There are plenty of martial artists who boast incredible strength in a skinny frame!
>That may be related to your condition.
It's also possible that unlike myself, your dust is primarily focused inside your body, keeping you very strong. Sidney mentioned that as a choice for how I could grow my powers, but I figured flying was cooler.
I mean, Sidney did say, "Plague leaves a very primal control over dust behind in it's survivors," so it probably grew in its own direction, or was guided that way from your training.
If you don't mind me asking, how long ago were you exposed? Or infected, since exposure's a different sort.

Errant Transmission Apollo 2015/05/04(Mon)21:51 No. 638230 ID: defceb
File 143080149191.png - (169.72KB , 900x700 , 53.png )

“Begin audio log.”

“Confirmed ten corpses burned, one sustained. Appears to have been stored in a black body bag that has preserved the remains. WIll move to labs for study, then disposal. Could one of you tear down that relic too? I’m tired of seeing that face everywhere.”

“Primary target appears to have been at this location briefly, before vanishing. Hawk-c32-000183 recorded video data that indicate flight capability. No record shows them leaving the city, so I believe they had mustered a means to cloak themselves against our cameras. Current generation lacked sufficient acceleration to maintain pursuit, though I believe that their maximum speed will be sufficient. Next generation will be modified to account for this.”

“Suggesting continued pursuit. Requesting further parameters.”

“I get to choose this time?”

“I do have a few ideas…”

As organized by [Psychopomp Class B, unit 5]

There have been four cases of a user successfully creating a stable fusion generator and not killing themselves in the process. I will list them here from order of difficulty.

First case
A user who hoarded a vast collection of dust which they used to uproot a pre-existing reactor and re-engineer it into a mobile platform. The generator remained perfectly functional, and it required a small amount of effort to maintain. Overall I give them a 4 out of 10, while smart they had no sense of fashion to their mobile platform and squandered their chance for showmanship. At this point, most generators have already been rendered useless from time or destroyed.

Second case;
A user seized control of a large manufacturing plant, repurposed it, and constructed a generator the hard way. While it worked, they were then surrounded by corporate security and shot dead within a few hours. I give them a 6 out of 10, I liked their bravery but they lacked foresight. As you’ve since surmised, finding a manufacturing plant to make something like this properly would be tricky at best.

Third case;
A user racked their threat level so high that eventually a machine was fielded which required a fusion generator to stay afloat. The user in question then tore the beasts’ heart out and held on to it like a trophy. 8 out of 10, though they never actually understood the importance of having it. Suicidal plan, don’t recommend unless ‘glorious death in battle’ is your religion of choice.

Last case;
This one wasn’t actually the user, but the person they had the misfortune of choosing the fight that day.They were hassling some people for supplies, and it turned out a person going by the name Archmage Juno of Edessa was present. They were capable of creating tokamak style plasma ring, which fueled a laser generating apparatus, which rapidly heated said user into a user-shaped shadow on the ground. The Archmage is neither a user nor a known factor in our records outside this incident. This occurred only some ten years ago, perhaps they’re still alive somewhere? Currently filed under [#pending investigation #unreleased information #weird]

Taken from Dust attunement in the modern day.

Persons who become afflicted with Dust Exposure are commonly noted by the tattoo-like shifting patterns of dust on their skin. In fact, the dust networks have actually infiltrated throughout their body and similar patterns could be found throughout their internal organs as well. Long-term health risks include organ degradation, internal scarring, and chronic migraines. If any dust circuits are unfortunate enough to pierce vital organs, the afflicted person must seek medical attention immediately. Otherwise, they will likely suffer profuse internal bleeding and die. If you aren’t experiencing any unexplained bruises and lightheadedness within 3 hours of exposure, you should be fine. Additionally, exposure results in a person storing a massive amount of energy within themselves. One can easily lose control of said energy, creating a feedback loop that ultimately yields explosive results.

Recommended that exposed persons seek a low-stress lifestyle, and avoid heavy dust usage or strenuous activity.

As written by [Psychopomp Class B, Unit 2]

Congratulations on being raised from the dead! The following are some, but not all, symptoms you may feel within a week of being raised: Runny nose, minor headaches, unexplained bruises, minor organ failure, joint pain, diarrhea, occasional vomiting, constant vomiting, blurred vision, double vision, false vision, explosive headaches, actually explosive headaches, unexplained moral shifts, narration, numbness, paranoia, temporary schizophrenia, paranoid delusions, fugue states, obsessive behavior, back pain, and/or allergies. This is normal, as your body is still resetting after having been decomposed. If any given symptom lasts longer than an hour, or is present after a week, consult your psychopomp for options.

If you have any of the following conditions, please seek medical assistance immediately: Function without heart, function without blood, function without +50% body tissue, missing organs, sudden bleeding from the eyes, corpse-eating parasite infection, wrong identity, delusions of grandeur, and/or allergies.

The process is 90% successful with well-maintained corpses. Even then, there is only so much that modern medicine can do for the dead. You will not be able to be raised a second time if you fall. You may experience some new health risks. These are to be unfortunate, but to be expected. Keep an active lifestyle and seek low-stress situations as you go to complete your mission. Good luck!

Take from Man and machine, a guide to your first human friends:

“So you finally made friends with a filthy organic. You may note that, unlike us superior uplifted individuals, they are frail and easy to accidentally permanently injure or kill. Unlike us, they are not capable of replacing any given part of their form in cases of incident or injury, and must be handled with care. Here is a handy list of suggestions on how to handle your first human friend.

Do not:
Stab your human friend
Shoot your human friend
Feed your human friend poison.
Drown your human friend.
Do ‘that hat trick’ with your human friend.
Invite your human friend to unassisted sky diving.
Give an up close and personal lessons on the structure or organic gastrointestinal structure to your human friend.
Do not do that.
It’s creepy.
Show your human friend the inside of a fusion reactor.
Invite your human friend to a nudist moon run.
Tell your human friend that the air is nice outside of the domes.
Have a 10 hour drinking run with your human friend.
Seriously why do you keep doing that.
Play russian roulette with your human friend.
Do that cool lightning trick with your human friend.
Do “All the drugs” with your human friend.
Push your human friend off a cliff.
Or off a skyscraper.
Or off a mountainside.
Or off the space elevator.
Or off a spaceship.
Or off a moving airplane.
Just don’t push people.
It’s not that hard.
Really.
Swap your human friends’ air canister with laughing gas.
Ask your human friend how the barrel to the gun looks.
Do not treat your human friends as cannon fodder.
Forget to feed your human friends in times of extended travel
Take your human friends on long-term spaceflight.
They really aren’t built for that.
Don’t even fly them past Saturn.
Just don’t.
I still have nightmares.
Play the choking game with your human friend.
Play any of those highschool games with your human friend.

Look, if you wouldn’t do it to a puppy don’t do it to people. It’s that simple. Why do I have to write this out?”

As written by [Psychopomp Class B, unit 3]

So you’ve been a fossilized corpse for countless years, have lost all known friends and family, and are now being pressed into a suicide mission in a strange, foreign land?

It could happen to anybody.

According to historical texts, local cultures are roughly similar to [Ancient Greek] societies. People are separated amongst city states, which are ruled separately from each other. In the local area, there are no current warlords or emperor’s to-be trying to unify the given city states.

Predominant religion appears to have looped back around to sun-worship, with a smattering of minor deities. The second highest object of worship is what you know as Saturn. They believe it to be a servant of the sun due to it reflecting light upon them at all times. Priests reside in a temple, where they are constantly covered in intricate robes and preach their beliefs down upon the people. Oddly enough, the robes the priests wear are the same in every city. Sometimes I wonder if they’re really people.

Commonly accepted currencies are precious metals and dust. Local cities also highly value precious gems, salt, and spices.

There is a constant flux of travel, and most local city-states are open to foreigners. As long as you’re not making a huge scene, and at least attempt to fit in you should be fine. Making friends with a local could get you a long way in travel. If you ever find yourself being chased by an angry mob, please refer to [So you’ve angered the locals and are about to be lynched; a guide to what you did wrong] or the follow-up [Successful escape from bronze-age prisons] and it’s sequel [Obtaining a new identity in old land].

A small portion of the population are dust attuned. With the exception of plague victims, dust attuned individuals are often seen as either nobility or fancyshmancy wizardly folk and tend to congregate at the upper echelons of society. Plague victims on the other hand are largely the victim of their appearance.

Currently favored arts lean towards weaving and pottery, with a burgeoning interest in bronze statues. Nobody will turn down a little music either.

By and large, if you’re not a huge asshole _{tall order for some people I swear} then you should get along fine.

Chapter 1 will begin once Grocery Store wraps up.

Salt! Of course. As long as we're reintroducing the printing press, how about some more efficient machine for desalinating seawater? Basically just an evaporator/condenser. All that plumbing could be tricky, especially by bronze age standards, but it lacks the high-energy failure conditions of a fusion reactor.

After throwing around some societal uplift stuff like that, seek out the Archmage Juno (where exactly is Edessa, by the way?) and hopefully make a good impression on the basis of all the people whose lives you've improved.

This is assuming that the "capture and subvert/replace a hunter" plan neither opens up even better opportunities nor gets us killed outright, which admittedly is a long shot.

I'm kind of curious about that hat trick you mentioned...

>>636943
Theory 1:
Cylinder crashed and is being repaired.

Theory 2:
Its under construction and gets transported to space later (teleportation? levitation? we're a billion years in the future, someones bound to have found a better way of getting stuff out of orbit rather than strapping it to a rocket)

Theory 3:
It's not going to space at all and they just nicked the design.
Maybe the inside of the cylinder has antigravity or sopmething.

Things to ask Sidney when we can:
What sort of tech did we miss between 2012 and whenever it is now?
How much of it can he access?
How much of it can we make?
What has humanity been doing in the intervening years?
How come humanity hasn't evolved?
How come people are ok with a bug-person? Have there been other uplifted animal-people?
How come Titan's a backwater no-man's land, did humanity's interstellar community abandon us?
Did humanity ever even leave the solar system?

>>638291
Anyone with access to casual counter-gravity has better manufacturing options than piling bits together at the bottom of a gravity well.
>How come humanity hasn't evolved?
Take someone born 2000 years ago and give them a lifetime of modern food and medicine, and they'll be indistinguishable from a modern human unless you know what specific genetic and epigenetic markers you're looking for. Evolution is slow on human timescales.

>>638311
Alright fair enough on the antigrav.
Just seems odd that a huge 5 mile wide spinning space cylinder could either survive falling from space or seem like a perfect habitat for whoever made Sidney.

I get that humans evolve slowly, but its been literally 5 billion years since 2000 AD.
5 Billion years ago there wasn't life.
5 Billion years ago there wasn't even Earth.

>wrong identity
Should we be seeking medical attention, then? We clearly see ourselves as somebody from an era we could not possibly be from. Or does acknowledging that it's an impossibility negate psychological issues that would normally be present in such a belief?
>The process is 90% successful with well-maintained corpses.
Please tell me this is an older article and that rate is higher, and/or the loss of success rate isn't very large for those who are not well maintained. You did tell us we were kind of exploded. That qualifies as failure to preserve the corpse, right?
>Oddly enough, the robes the priests wear are the same in every city. Sometimes I wonder if they’re really people.
Wonder if anybody told Psychopomp B3 that people sometimes try to grasp onto some sense of immortality, or machine-likeness, through uniform things like that.
>Local cities also highly value precious gems, salt, and spices.
I heard that salt was a valued form of currency in Ancient Earth, but they're seriously doing that here on Titan? Buncha weirdos.
Gems and spices, though, sure.
Spices are totally different from Salt, for some reason. Don't ask me, they just are.
>please refer to [So you’ve angered the locals and are about to be lynched; a guide to what you did wrong] or the follow-up [Successful escape from bronze-age prisons] and it’s sequel [Obtaining a new identity in old land].
Is there one for stealing a means of travel and obtaining a new identity in a new land, without giving away that we stole things from our last location?
>dust attuned individuals are often seen as either nobility or fancyshmancy wizardly folk and tend to congregate at the upper echelons of society. Plague victims on the other hand are largely the victim of their appearance.
Are we an exception to that, being a cute (But also creepy. Creepy can be cute, Sidney, Shut up.) moth person?
(To clarify: Something different from the normal can be creepy. Creepy is alien. Alien is attractive, since people are innately curious. Attractive makes cute. On the other hand, some people hear "Curiosity killed the cat" and flip the fuck out, ignoring the following "But satisfaction brought it back.")
>if you’re not a huge asshole
Bluh bluh huge asshole Unfortunately for some people, being a "Superbly mannered individual" means "Rich douche" and "Huge Douche" means "Serious asshole." Lousy mental chains, but people stick to them.
>rather than strapping it to a rocket
Rail-launching. I mean, they did they have a bunch of scaffolding around it. It's plausible.
>What sort of tech did we miss between 2012 and whenever it is now?
We totally should see a psychiatrist, once we're no longer in danger of being gunned down if we stay in one location for more than a week.
>How come humanity hasn't evolved?
Did you forget the whole part about users sacrificing the entire local human population to try and buy themselves some time? Any survivors have had to build back up from scratch. Kind of hard to evolve past a point when you keep getting set back from it.
>How come people are ok with a bug-person?
Sidney already said that most people find it creepy. Again, lousy logic chains. The "Death" is simply of your perception of the world, people! Satisfaction brings it back--even if it does have a small but permanent change to it!
>Have there been other uplifted animal-people?
Probably, since there's actually statistics to say "Most people" find them creepy.
Or did you mean legitimate animal people? Heck, even non-users who simply underwent surgery to become animal people (Or dust-attuned who did it to themselves without Psychopomp guidance) would be surprising. Have there been such people?
>5 Billion years ago there wasn't even Earth.
What do you call dust, mate? I'd say that's evolution, right there. People from five billion years ago could never have hoped to use dust like this. Dust was literally just useless organic debris back then.

>What do you call dust, mate? I'd say that's evolution, right there.
That is a technology, not a heritable genetic change (unless ability to manipulate dust does have a genetic component that has become more prevalent over time).

>Oddly enough, the robes the priests wear are the same in every city. Sometimes I wonder if they’re really people.
That scale of consistency in religious traditions on a global scale in a low-tech society is a bit odd. That furthers the "priests work for the System*" theory. ...Do priests carry some sort of ceremonial staff or polearm?

* Do we have a proper name for the whole system with the tower and hunter drones and so on?

We absolutely, 100% need to find and learn from an archmage.

>>638805
>That scale of consistency in religious traditions on a global scale in a low-tech society is a bit odd. That furthers the "priests work for the System*" theory. ...Do priests carry some sort of ceremonial staff or polearm?

They wouldn't need to if they're literally just humanoid drones, and the robes are integral. The fine art of concealing a deadly weapon against a human-shaped silhouette with the aid of some bulky clothing might well be older than domesticated dogs and fire.

"Copper Moths" seem like another thing to ask a few mildly paranoid questions about. If you want to stop a society from re-industrializing, it'd be logical to engineer a pest that makes every brownsmith's supply chain a constant uphill battle. Is there some other sort of vermin, like D&D 'rust monsters,' that eats iron? The locals might not even remember it, if the Iron Age has been successfully held in abeyance.