|
|
Post by zebaroth on May 20, 2016 2:08:21 GMT
a plastics factory has made a new servant droid it is a from animated plastic the technology. is based on blue prints found for the autons
and the nestine chamber from the 3rd doctor's time. the core of the system is not from the nestine but a man made nistine mind are the servant droids safe
as they say they are
ideas
are the servant droids atuons safe or is the man made nestine mind trying to take over.
is the man made nestine trying to contact the real nistine.
how did the factory make the nestine core.
the factory has some motive other then money involved.
|
|
Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,751 
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
|
Post by Catsmate on May 20, 2016 10:47:15 GMT
a plastics factory has made a new servant droid it is a from animated plastic the technology. is based on blue prints found for the autons and the nestine chamber from the 3rd doctor's time. the core of the system is not from the nestine but a man made nistine mind are the servant droids safe as they say they are ideas are the servant droids atuons safe or is the man made nestine mind trying to take over. is the man made nestine trying to contact the real nistine. how did the factory make the nestine core. the factory has some motive other then money involved.
First a slight digression. In my opinion introducing the Nestene first requires a GM to define (to a degree, leave some wiggle room) it's powers. It depends on what exactly the Nestene Consciousness is. One vision of it could be something like the sci-fi concept of 'driftware' (basically a self-contained, programmable, electric charge) that inhabits suitable plastic. Hence suitable radio-frequency interference can disrupt it (the Third Doctor's jammer for example). This makes it material (in the same way that, say, lightning is) but a form of energy.
- The ability of the Nestene carrier spheres to influence minds can be explained as them overwhelming the weak electromagnetic signals in the human brain at close range. Similarly their ability to read and copy personality elements and memories in the case of their more advanced duplicates.
That leads to another major question, and decision for a GM working with the idea; can the Nestenes 'possess' and animate any plastic, or only materials with a specific composition?
Personally I'd go with requiring a specific composition, perhaps a level of crystallinity within the polymer caused by specific additives and/or treatments, that stabilises the structure for the consciousness. This is mainly to prevent the Nestenes becoming too powerful as we've discussed recent threads.
This is sorta justified in canon as the Nestenes needed to take over plastics factories to construct their Autons and other weaponised plastic (the doll, enveloping chair and phone cable for example)
- This is also an opportunity to dangle a clue for the players; if they know that certain materials are needed to fabricate 'polynestene' these can be tracked.
OK back to your idea.
1. The factory could have acquired former Nestene equipment from the 1970 (Spearhead), 1971 (Terror) or 2005 (Rose) invasion attempts. Maybe UNIT didn't do a great job of clearing up, or there was a backup factory site that they didn't find. Or Torchwood stole some stuff and then lost it. Maybe, during the Thatcher era, some equipment was sold off to the private sector.
Using this equipment someone develops a synthetic analogue of the Nestene consciousness and discovers it can animate certain specific plastics.
- And maybe loses his/her will in the process...
2. Are the Auton analogues safe?
Firstly I'd give them a new name, call them Myrmidons for example, just to avoid confusion.
Well it depends, there are several possibilities. They may work as intended but have other problems. Can their limited consciousness be 'hacked' for example? A Roomba isn't a major threat but a plastic humanoid could be very dangerous. Plotlines involving mysterious murders (in the vein of several episodes of The Avengers) come to mind.
Also there's the opportunity for spying if the Myrmidons can be accessed remotely. Remember the Furby fuss? And current problems with internet accessible home electronics and voice controlled televisions?
Then there's the classic sci-fi plot of They're Ganging Up On Us; if the Myrmidons can communicate, could they form a hive mind? A global AI that seeks to replace humanity? Lots of media to rip of there, from Colossus to Skynet.
3. Is the synthetic Nestene attempting to contact the Nestene Consciousness.
Hmm, I'd say GM's choice but personally I'd go with no. Mainly because it's too obvious. Maybe the Myrmidons want to contact the Nestene but can't as they don't have the technology. This could be a clue; strange corporate diversifications into cutting-edge physics, advanced electronics, space flight et cetera.
4. Motives
Basically any large corporation has motivations other than simply cash; controlling a market may be more important in the long term (loss leaders), gaining political influence to protect itself against governmental influence (e.g. Uber's expending US$8M in Austin recently), maintaining the people running the company in the style they think they should enjoy or just perpetuating the company structures.
Then there's actual social responsibility without self-interest; perhaps they want to build a better world. It's an interesting twist for the PCs to discover that the Sinister Plot isn't actually all that sinister...
Also this is, on a small scale, a good idea for a source of injection moulded minions for a villain. Minions who may have an agenda of their own and be using him/her for their own ends...
|
|
|
|
Post by garethl on May 20, 2016 10:48:36 GMT
a plastics factory has made a new servant droid it is a from animated plastic the technology. is based on blue prints found for the autons and the nestine chamber from the 3rd doctor's time. the core of the system is not from the nestine but a man made nistine mind are the servant droids safe as they say they are ideas are the servant droids atuons safe or is the man made nestine mind trying to take over. is the man made nestine trying to contact the real nistine. how did the factory make the nestine core. the factory has some motive other then money involved. To me, a servant droid sounds like something Google, Tesla or some tech start-up would like to make. Maybe someone in the plastic factory accidentally found a way to create plastic Nestene minds and partnered with a rich tech company to produce the droids. The company wanted to see if it was possible to make such complicated products, maybe help humanity, but even more importantly they wanted to make money. Lots of money. So, they started production without fully understanding what they were making, throwing around buzzwords like "Polymeric Intelligence ®", Service Oriented Neural Networks and Recursive Behavioural Patterns. There is scepticism from scientists and press, but the public demonstrations show that droids work and they become a huge success, despite being pretty expensive. For a change, I would make the droids 'safe' or at least not malevolent, they just want to help their masters. The only problem is that after a while their artificial nestene minds start to deteriorate. Accidents happen, maybe people die, but it is not really the droid's fault. The company denies there is something wrong and tries to keep the accidents secret. They don't truly understand their own product, so they have no way to repair or improve the man-made Nestene minds. |
|
|
|
Post by starkllr on May 20, 2016 14:21:43 GMT
You know, this same idea could be applied to other Whovian enemies.
Instead of the manmade Autons, what if it's manmade Daleks?
After one of the many Dalek incidents ("Ressurection" and "Rememberance" would be great choices) somebody gets the brilliant idea to try and reverse-engineer their very own homemade Daleks from the wreckage recovered at the battle scenes. It could be a corporation or wealthy and horribly irresponsible individual (Henry Van Statten? Or to tie it to the real world, if you like that sort of thing, maybe Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos?). It could be the British government. Or another government - maybe the Pentagon got wind of one of the incidents and got the Brits to give them some Dalek debris for study (or it could be wreckage dating back to the 1930's and "Daleks in Mahnattan").
Human science can't replicate the Kaled mutants, but maybe it doesn't have to. Remotely-piloted Dalek drones with all the armor and firepower of a Dalek would be formidable enough. Or they could be AI-controlled (what could go wrong?).
However they work, you've now got a small army of human-controlled (probably, anyway) Daleks ready for mischief. From there, you can play it lots of different ways:
Defeating a small army of Daleks, regardless of how they're controlled, is challenging enough for anybody, so that could be an adventure in itself. Then once they're defeated, the players have to figure out who built them, and why, and put a stop to whatever their builders are REALLY after.
Even though they're not real Daleks, the human built Daleks are using real Dalek bits, which probably have a distinctive electronic signature and can probably be detected from very far away by someone who's looking for them. Like, say, the Movellans. A couple of dozen remote-controlled pseudo Daleks may not be enough for some evil corporation to take over the world. But they might be enough to attract the notice of a Movellan Battle Fleet that's constantly on the lookout for Dalek activity. And the Movellans might decide that the safest way to deal with this outbreak of Dalek activity is to blow up the whole planet. It's the only way to be sure, after all. Stopping the Movellans would likely be a full adventure. And of course, the presence of a Movellan Battle Fleet in Earth orbit might well attract the attention of the real Daleks...
|
|
|
|
Post by zebaroth on May 20, 2016 21:57:20 GMT
a plastics factory has made a new servant droid it is a from animated plastic the technology. is based on blue prints found for the autons and the nestine chamber from the 3rd doctor's time. the core of the system is not from the nestine but a man made nistine mind are the servant droids safe as they say they are ideas are the servant droids atuons safe or is the man made nestine mind trying to take over. is the man made nestine trying to contact the real nistine. how did the factory make the nestine core. the factory has some motive other then money involved.
First a slight digression. In my opinion introducing the Nestene first requires a GM to define (to a degree, leave some wiggle room) it's powers. It depends on what exactly the Nestene Consciousness is. One vision of it could be something like the sci-fi concept of 'driftware' (basically a self-contained, programmable, electric charge) that inhabits suitable plastic. Hence suitable radio-frequency interference can disrupt it (the Third Doctor's jammer for example). This makes it material (in the same way that, say, lightning is) but a form of energy.
- The ability of the Nestene carrier spheres to influence minds can be explained as them overwhelming the weak electromagnetic signals in the human brain at close range. Similarly their ability to read and copy personality elements and memories in the case of their more advanced duplicates.
That leads to another major question, and decision for a GM working with the idea; can the Nestenes 'possess' and animate any plastic, or only materials with a specific composition?
Personally I'd go with requiring a specific composition, perhaps a level of crystallinity within the polymer caused by specific additives and/or treatments, that stabilises the structure for the consciousness. This is mainly to prevent the Nestenes becoming too powerful as we've discussed recent threads.
This is sorta justified in canon as the Nestenes needed to take over plastics factories to construct their Autons and other weaponised plastic (the doll, enveloping chair and phone cable for example)
- This is also an opportunity to dangle a clue for the players; if they know that certain materials are needed to fabricate 'polynestene' these can be tracked.
OK back to your idea.
1. The factory could have acquired former Nestene equipment from the 1970 (Spearhead), 1971 (Terror) or 2005 (Rose) invasion attempts. Maybe UNIT didn't do a great job of clearing up, or there was a backup factory site that they didn't find. Or Torchwood stole some stuff and then lost it. Maybe, during the Thatcher era, some equipment was sold off to the private sector.
Using this equipment someone develops a synthetic analogue of the Nestene consciousness and discovers it can animate certain specific plastics.
- And maybe loses his/her will in the process...
2. Are the Auton analogues safe?
Firstly I'd give them a new name, call them Myrmidons for example, just to avoid confusion.
Well it depends, there are several possibilities. They may work as intended but have other problems. Can their limited consciousness be 'hacked' for example? A Roomba isn't a major threat but a plastic humanoid could be very dangerous. Plotlines involving mysterious murders (in the vein of several episodes of The Avengers) come to mind.
Also there's the opportunity for spying if the Myrmidons can be accessed remotely. Remember the Furby fuss? And current problems with internet accessible home electronics and voice controlled televisions?
Then there's the classic sci-fi plot of They're Ganging Up On Us; if the Myrmidons can communicate, could they form a hive mind? A global AI that seeks to replace humanity? Lots of media to rip of there, from Colossus to Skynet.
3. Is the synthetic Nestene attempting to contact the Nestene Consciousness.
Hmm, I'd say GM's choice but personally I'd go with no. Mainly because it's too obvious. Maybe the Myrmidons want to contact the Nestene but can't as they don't have the technology. This could be a clue; strange corporate diversifications into cutting-edge physics, advanced electronics, space flight et cetera.
4. Motives
Basically any large corporation has motivations other than simply cash; controlling a market may be more important in the long term (loss leaders), gaining political influence to protect itself against governmental influence (e.g. Uber's expending US$8M in Austin recently), maintaining the people running the company in the style they think they should enjoy or just perpetuating the company structures.
Then there's actual social responsibility without self-interest; perhaps they want to build a better world. It's an interesting twist for the PCs to discover that the Sinister Plot isn't actually all that sinister...
Also this is, on a small scale, a good idea for a source of injection moulded minions for a villain. Minions who may have an agenda of their own and be using him/her for their own ends...
was thinking that they have chineys equipment and possibly some from the other times. was thinking of saying it is like the geth in mass effect with each new Myrmidons activated they become smarter there fore they are becoming more intelligent. also garethl i like that a tech start up that has become the biggest stock in the world. |
|
Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,751
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
|
Post by Catsmate on May 21, 2016 9:34:15 GMT
was thinking that they have chineys equipment and possibly some from the other times. was thinking of saying it is like the geth in mass effect with each new Myrmidons activated they become smarter there fore they are becoming more intelligent. also garethl i like that a tech start up that has become the biggest stock in the world.
Right. He might well have set up a second site for producing Autons, or been in the process of doing so, which could have survived the UNIT cleanup after the invasion. Maybe it was sold off, or left dormant in some area of urban decay until gentrification arrived and with it a new start-up tech company. Someone from the company found the equipment and started experimenting...
It might be that the strings of the overt company leadership are being pulled by someone behind the scenes, using the Nestene technology.
The idea of new Myrmidons increasing the collective intelligence is nice; basically an expanding distributed node computer with access to more and more data and experience.
|
|
Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,751
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
|
Post by Catsmate on May 21, 2016 9:36:53 GMT
a plastics factory has made a new servant droid it is a from animated plastic the technology. is based on blue prints found for the autons and the nestine chamber from the 3rd doctor's time. the core of the system is not from the nestine but a man made nistine mind are the servant droids safe as they say they are ideas are the servant droids atuons safe or is the man made nestine mind trying to take over. is the man made nestine trying to contact the real nistine. how did the factory make the nestine core. the factory has some motive other then money involved. To me, a servant droid sounds like something Google, Tesla or some tech start-up would like to make. Maybe someone in the plastic factory accidentally found a way to create plastic Nestene minds and partnered with a rich tech company to produce the droids. The company wanted to see if it was possible to make such complicated products, maybe help humanity, but even more importantly they wanted to make money. Lots of money. So, they started production without fully understanding what they were making, throwing around buzzwords like "Polymeric Intelligence ®", Service Oriented Neural Networks and Recursive Behavioural Patterns. There is scepticism from scientists and press, but the public demonstrations show that droids work and they become a huge success, despite being pretty expensive. For a change, I would make the droids 'safe' or at least not malevolent, they just want to help their masters. The only problem is that after a while their artificial nestene minds start to deteriorate. Accidents happen, maybe people die, but it is not really the droid's fault. The company denies there is something wrong and tries to keep the accidents secret. They don't truly understand their own product, so they have no way to repair or improve the man-made Nestene minds.
|
|
Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,751
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
|
Post by Catsmate on May 21, 2016 10:20:13 GMT
You know, this same idea could be applied to other Whovian enemies. Instead of the manmade Autons, what if it's manmade Daleks? After one of the many Dalek incidents ("Ressurection" and "Rememberance" would be great choices) somebody gets the brilliant idea to try and reverse-engineer their very own homemade Daleks from the wreckage recovered at the battle scenes. It could be a corporation or wealthy and horribly irresponsible individual (Henry Van Statten? Or to tie it to the real world, if you like that sort of thing, maybe Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos?). It could be the British government. Or another government - maybe the Pentagon got wind of one of the incidents and got the Brits to give them some Dalek debris for study (or it could be wreckage dating back to the 1930's and "Daleks in Mahnattan"). Human science can't replicate the Kaled mutants, but maybe it doesn't have to. Remotely-piloted Dalek drones with all the armor and firepower of a Dalek would be formidable enough. Or they could be AI-controlled (what could go wrong?). However they work, you've now got a small army of human-controlled (probably, anyway) Daleks ready for mischief. From there, you can play it lots of different ways: Defeating a small army of Daleks, regardless of how they're controlled, is challenging enough for anybody, so that could be an adventure in itself. Then once they're defeated, the players have to figure out who built them, and why, and put a stop to whatever their builders are REALLY after. Even though they're not real Daleks, the human built Daleks are using real Dalek bits, which probably have a distinctive electronic signature and can probably be detected from very far away by someone who's looking for them. Like, say, the Movellans. A couple of dozen remote-controlled pseudo Daleks may not be enough for some evil corporation to take over the world. But they might be enough to attract the notice of a Movellan Battle Fleet that's constantly on the lookout for Dalek activity. And the Movellans might decide that the safest way to deal with this outbreak of Dalek activity is to blow up the whole planet. It's the only way to be sure, after all. Stopping the Movellans would likely be a full adventure. And of course, the presence of a Movellan Battle Fleet in Earth orbit might well attract the attention of the real Daleks...
The Movellan might have seeded space with remote probes looking for Dalek energy signatures and when they detect odd emissions from Earth, well can humans negotiate with the logical robots?
Taking this idea further (and all that stuff left behind by aliens/time travellers in Who canon is an interest of mine) what about other alien visitors?
1. Silurians.
Did UNIT excavate the caverns at Wenley Moor and recover Earth Reptile tech? What kind of technology do they have? In Blood Heat (OK an EU work) they had psionic amplifiers and weapons and contra-gravity airships.
Then there's the stasis technology they used; what exactly was it? Some sort of time freeze perhaps? That'd be a very useful addition to human craft for deep space exploration.
2. Ice Warriors.
Are there any crashed Martian ships buried under the ice and snow of Greenland, Siberia, Antarctica or elsewhere? Perhaps carefully excavating such a wreck was the real reason for the establishment of Camp Century. The Americans could be exploring the potential of Martial biological armour suits (grafted onto human "volunteers") to create augmented super-soldiers, sonic weapons, the brain-rack or even trying to get a Martian ship flying again.
And of course there's always the Antarctic Space Nazis; did the Neu Schwabenland expedition stumble over such a craft and establish a base to exploit it?
- I thoroughly recommend the new Achtung! Cthulhu campaign Assault on the Mountains of Madness for ideas on this theme. And not just because it uses a Project Habakkuk carrier as a base.
Then there's all that Soviet/Russian ice; plenty of potential for a crashed ship and weirdness there. New meaing to the term Cold War. Perhaps the Dyatlov Pass incident was involved?
Or maybe it's the Martian biotech that interests people, for climate modification (remediation of current and projected climate change) or as a food source (a common theme in classic Who). Why does The Day of the Triffids come to mind?
3. Cybermen.
This has been explored in a few EU works; humans meddling with cybernetic technology doesn't end well in Doctor Who. But there were/are the pressures of threatened alien invasion, the Cold War and later increasing international tensions over resources.
Interestingly the novelisation of Power of the Daleks has a section referring to The Tenth Planet where UNIT scavenges surviving Cyber-technology, including spacecraft and reverse engineers the technology.
4. Rutan.
In canon the only appearance of the Rutan Host was in The Horror of Fang Rock but there may have been more (such as the EU novel Evolution but also The Gunpowder Plot and Castle of Fear). Their technology isn't described much but there are references of crystals and also the healing salve that appeared as a prominent plot point in Evolution. If humans acquired such technology what could they achieve? Perhaps the Rutan crystal-tech can be grown under the right conditions, leading to the development of new and advanced computer technology. Which might attract the Sontarans...
5. Yeti.
Whatever happened to the robotic yeti that the Great Intelligence used in London? In some museums possibly (like the one Travis brought back from Tibet). Or were they taken away and used to develop a new weapons system?
6. WOTAN.
Again, what happened to the War Machines and their advanced technology? (They could 'jam' firearms, a useful gadget). Locked away in a warehouse and forgotten? Taken away to provide the basis for miniature drone tanks for urban warfare? Might someone be planning to market a derived idea to militaries today with problems like Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan to deal with but a severe problem with human casualties.
7. Krynoid.
Not an obvious one but if another Kyynoid seed-pod arrived on Earth (or elsewhere) might not some suitably desperate nation tray and exploit it was a food source?
8. Zygon.
Well they're integrating with human society, what about their weird organic technology? |
|
misterharry
Dominus Tempus 
Dalek Caan's Lovechild
Posts: 3,246
Favourite Doctors: Second, Third, Fourth, Eleventh, Thirteenth
Traits: Empathic, Face in the Crowd, Insatiable Curiosity, Stubborn, Phobia (Heights), Unadventurous
|
Post by misterharry on May 21, 2016 10:35:27 GMT
And it needn't be just technology that's exploited. How about a military dictatorship using cloning to create their own army of Sontarans or Ice Warriors or whatever. Or an amoral scientist using gene splicing techniques to create "superior" human-alien hybrids. Using Ogron DNA might result in a tough super-soldier, for example, while Rutan DNA might provide a human with the ability to generate electrical charges.
|
|
|
|
Post by zebaroth on May 21, 2016 22:46:20 GMT
was thinking that they have chineys equipment and possibly some from the other times. was thinking of saying it is like the geth in mass effect with each new Myrmidons activated they become smarter there fore they are becoming more intelligent. also garethl i like that a tech start up that has become the biggest stock in the world.
Right. He might well have set up a second site for producing Autons, or been in the process of doing so, which could have survived the UNIT cleanup after the invasion. Maybe it was sold off, or left dormant in some area of urban decay until gentrification arrived and with it a new start-up tech company. Someone from the company found the equipment and started experimenting...
It might be that the strings of the overt company leadership are being pulled by someone behind the scenes, using the Nestene technology.
The idea of new Myrmidons increasing the collective intelligence is nice; basically an expanding distributed node computer with access to more and more data and experience.
yup Channing could not remember his name knew it was chan something and who knows unit might have sold off the equipment to some one are it got lost in shipping sent to the wrong person |
|
|
|
Post by zebaroth on May 21, 2016 22:47:57 GMT
And it needn't be just technology that's exploited. How about a military dictatorship using cloning to create their own army of Sontarans or Ice Warriors or whatever. Or an amoral scientist using gene splicing techniques to create "superior" human-alien hybrids. Using Ogron DNA might result in a tough super-soldier, for example, while Rutan DNA might provide a human with the ability to generate electrical charges. intresting idea could be the in thing shooting electricity charging there phones |
|
