[week 3] [day 326, after the nation eater battle] More matters of perspective

[razorblade_empress]

So... during the big fight this morning I tried to see if the Nation Eaters had any perspectives to read. Turns out they did.

First off, they use bioelectricity and psionic signatures to track their prey, more than any other sense, but those senses also include thermal and pressure. Turns out all that lightning we're using on them is actually blinding them. It also turns out that what they're detecting is food - which makes sense, but for them, 'food' means psychic energy. Flesh is just... kinda there.

Also, I compared the little ones to the big one, and it turns out that first of all, they're not babies and adults - they're actually all adults, many generations apart. They're different subspecies, different phenotypes, and it took them only a century of evolution to get there. Which implies that they have biological processes completely unlike any other beings. They can't be engineered - they're too different for scientists to have created them out of anything that exists. And if they can vary that much in size in a century, then there's no reason to believe the biggest ones we know of are as large as they can get. If they have an upper boundary, it's probably beyond what we've seen. Maybe far beyond.

I don't know how much any of that helps, but I figured I'd throw it out there for the more scientifically minded Travelers to mull over.

Comments

[desperate_times_right]

Okay. That at least rules out "superweapon that got out of hand", right?

... Didn't someone say that the Nation-Eaters adapted to be smaller because their food source is smaller? How big could a Nation-Eater have become when billions of people lived on the Earth?

[razorblade_empress]

Seems so, yeah.

Billions of people all using psychic energy? Probably pretty damned big.

[desperate_times_right]

Big as the Vale? Big as the world?

Good thinking, kid, but I can't say I like this.

[razorblade_empress]

What's to like?

[Her mental 'voice' is flip, but there's a noticeable thread of tension underlying it. There is, honestly, nothing she likes about this Jaunt or this world. Even as upbeat as the people of Fallen Wrath are, it's hard for her to feel any kind of hope at all.]

[desperate_times_right]

God, I don't think either of us is the right one to be asking that question.

How are you handling being back here?

[razorblade_empress]

Probably not.

[There's the mental equivalent of a sigh.]

So far it's mostly reminding me of why we ended up striking the first time. Which... yay for recovering memories, I guess, but it's not having the greatest effect on my ability to do anything. I'm tempted to just stick to building things in Liminal Space to pass on to everyone else.

[dino_zarf]

If they're looking for psychic energy, we might be able to use the tricks for cutting people off from the network.

[razorblade_empress]

That's relatively short-term, though, isn't it?

[dino_zarf]

A few hours. I can get Rosie through the night with it. We can probably do something with a few hours.

[razorblade_empress]

That might depend on how much coverage we have. How common is that as a skill?

[dino_zarf]

Probably not very. There are a lot of things you need to work out first and it's pretty specialized.

[reallymean]

I can't help wondering what they were feeding on before humanity had to move down here. Was every species on this world psychic at one point?

[razorblade_empress]

And if they weren't, then where the hell did these things even come from? They had to have come from somewhere...

[reallymean]

They remind me a little of some of the nightmares in Questing Country. What if they're a side effect of some of the horrors of the Umbrian age, the way those nightmares could reflect conflicts in the waking worlds? All the buried anger and desperation of people who had their minds twisted shunted off to mutate what originally were normal animals?

[razorblade_empress]

I remember the rebellion wanted to use them against the Protectorate last time, but they could never figure out how.

[reallymean]

If they'd just wanted to lure them to attack specific locations, broadcasting a signal they'd interpret as food might work. It's probably a good thing they never figured it out.

[forcechanic]

The animals might have some sort of low level psychic presence. Enough to feed the Nation Eaters even if they weren't actively manipulating anything themselves.

[razorblade_empress]

I think burncats are actually known to burn psi. Not sure about the other species.

[forcechanic]

The psi here is a lot like the Force in my world. And I can sense anything in that.

[razorblade_empress]

Are there things that eat the Force in your world?

[Genuine question.]

[reallymean]

That's possible. But if they're able to detect latent psychic ability, I would have expected them to go after population centres much earlier.

Unless they did, and that's part of what caused the downfall of the earlier civilizations.

[forcechanic]

It could be. Something must have sustained them all this time.

[reallymean]

I would have assumed they go through long periods of dormancy between periods of activity to feed and breed, but if they've adapted that completely in only a century, that seems unlikely.

Day 329

[youandyoualone]

Well and so, Anaf has Traveled Astrally to the High Tables and the closest Mystic Spire and back and he has this to tell:

The spire is intact but unpowered. The poison clouds are ever-present. You will need safety equipment to breathe, but they do not seem to be corrosive. The Mystic Spire does not register upon Pinning. Whatever psychic energy the Mystics had is either well-shielded or has dissipated.

[eldritchwheelies]

I'm proud of my Overlay for having sussed that one out, but thanks for confirming they do in fact sense and eat psychic energy.

And Liminal energy, apparently.

And yeah. Too rapid mutation? These ones couldn't have been engineered, but do these strike you as a science project gone horribly right, or is it just me?