>>5171485
After most of the subjects that you wanted to ask got exhausted, the discussion slowly drifted into a mostly meaningless small talk. You kind of wanted to ask Elspeth to teach you more about psi stuff, but you felt like it would be impolite to do so without even taking a decent look at the textbook that she gave you last time. You should really look into that later, as you get a feeling that you’d need a better grasp of this subject if you wish for your gear to be competitive in the future.

“…by this point all pods should be done with augmentation process and they’d open automatically once the sensors in the pod determine that the environment outside is survivable for a human and has been for at least a month. Keeping a pod closed can be relatively simple, just put it into an environment where a baseline human won’t be able to survive such as placing it in a tank of water. Alternatively putting thick enough bracers to block the door would also work as it won’t open if the door can’t swing out by at least a quarter of the way. We don’t really have the reason to keep one shut beyond transportation as more SGs means stronger pantheon and you can’t tell who is in what pod. In other words, even if we thought that someone in the list was undesirable, we wouldn’t know if they are in the pod until they “hatched”.”

“Interfacing with the pods themselves, unfortunately, is almost out of the picture. The pod control system contains complex encryption which prevents tampering during operation and each one contains only the instructions for the augments that it was designed to install. If we wanted to use one the second time at full capacity, we’d need to build a supercomputer by the standards of 2010s at least and painstakingly recover bits of augment data from hundreds to a thousand of pods. However, the pod can be run at partial augmentation with a simpler setup, but you’d get a single SG- tier aug into a single person in something like fifty to a hundred years and only if said person is compatible. This is one of the reasons why Yaw is working on a massive electron vacuum tube computer, psi-based brains, just like human brains, are amazing at pattern recognition but they are terrible at dealing with tons of hard math. It is kind of funny that it is easier for us at this point to make smart animal to human tier artificial minds than to make something that can run pong or pacman.”

>>5171487
“Our protocol for handling newly discovered pods is to recover it before it opens so that the occupant wakes up in relative comfort. Then they are allowed to stay here at least until they adjust while we verify who they are and how successful their augmentation was. Then we offer them a spot in our pantheon, however far from everyone decides to stay with us. If they decide to leave, we provide some gifts and supplies while hoping to maintain friendly relations afterwards. Most of those who eventually left us ended up becoming “Outsiders”, with some becoming “Independents” like you. Unfortunately, some seemed to be offended at us for the state of the world or for some of the things we had to do, in which case they most commonly migrate out of this region and eventually we lose the trail.”

“One of them, however, decided to stay in the region. She was basically a nobody with high aptitude for poorly explored field of psi which is why we scouted her out for the project. We recovered her pod before it opened, she woke up here, listened to our situation, refused everything that we offered and then walked out the front door, showing up as a torn in the collective sides of the four pantheons two decades later. She calls herself Apostate and she hates the whole “god” thing on some deep ideological level. Whether it is religious, anti- authority or something else we don’t know as she tends to kill Cup Bearers and even attack SGs that try to reason with her while also performing seemingly random crusades or inciting revolts against local rulers and independent SGs.”

>>5171489
“Don’t bring her up with Valentina, when she tried to talk with Apostate, she got stabbed in the face with a shiv in the middle of the introduction. Apostate's powers nullified psi defenses that Valentina had on her and the crude weapon left a massive gash across her cheek that took almost a week to heal due to lingering psi negating effects. As you can probably guess, since then Valentina absolutely hates Apostate’s guts, and I can’t really blame her for that. We can’t really deal with her since anything that we can hit her with either would have unacceptable casualties or would be ineffective due to her psi negation and physical augs. In turn, it seems that she can’t really strike at a large pantheon on her own either without risking her life, so she is mostly just very annoying to us. I highly recommend you to get the hell away from her if you encounter her, but I think Nika has already filled you in about that…”

You ended up spending a few hours chatting about random things until the three of you decided that it is probably a good idea to wrap up for today. Elspeth has her massive weapon to calibrate and Nika seems to be a little tired, not physically but emotionally. She doesn’t seem to show it though, so maybe it’s fine. You get a vague offer for you to join some sort of a roleplay game that Yaw runs using the afterlife, something with a sci- fi spin, but there doesn’t seem to be any concrete schedule and you always have a lot to do so you shelf it under “whenever you’re free and bored”. In the end, you tell your goodbyes to Elspeth for now and you leave her lab along with Nika, who in turn asks you if you want to do anything in particular next.

>You kind of wanted to play around in the virtual reality for a bit, see what’s around and what other pantheon members have built here
>You wouldn’t mind to get some food, preferably of the “real” variety
>You feel like it is enough excitement for today and Nika looks a bit tired, let’s start wrapping up. You can always visit after the exams
>Other ideas (write-in)

>>5171490

>You wouldn’t mind to get some food, preferably of the “real” variety

>>5171490
>You wouldn’t mind to get some food, preferably of the “real” variety

>>5171490

>You wouldn’t mind to get some food, preferably of the “real” variety

Talk about personal shit

Pods should have opened should we be worried the one we found is still closed? Is there a way to know if anyone else sent pods after the “last wave” that she knew off?

>>5177083
The pod that we recovered was damaged in a way that took down its primary power supply. The tank which contained "metastable metallic deuterium" used by pod's fusion reactor ruptured. It remains active only off its batteries. We determined that we'd need to power it externally with a decently sized powerplant for several weeks for it to open, and if we don't do it, eventually the occupant would perish. However we have something like a century to deal with that, so it is not a pressing issue.

Regarding the other pods, there is really no way to know. Agatha is the first example of her pod's generation known to Elspeth, which means that they haven't encountered other pods from Ag's wave. However, it is not like every SG showed Elspeth their pod and Ag woke up something like 80 years after the pod's 2000 year minimum timer, so it is more than likely that some pod people from her wave are already awake, but Elspeth doesn't know about them or doesn't realize that they are not from her wave. It is not inconceivable that there were other waves or even individual pods launched after Ag went on ice, but we just don't know, and Elspeth also doesn't know.

Hey guys, I have some bad news. I decided to make this statement while I can still send it. As many of you likely already know, I am a Russian citizen. While I am luckily undraftable, there is a high chance that we will soon get isolated from the internet as a result of recent events. In addition, since today any aid (including verbal advice) to you-know-what-country is considered treason and punished from up to 20 years in jail, and I expect contact with foreigners in general to become restricted soon. As a result, I’m placing Synthetic Gods Quest on a hiatus at least for the next few weeks, however it might continue until the internet and legal access to 4chan is restored from here. In the worst case, it can take up to a decade if not more. I hope you can understand that I can’t really risk jail time for a roleplay game.

I tried to write the last post before the hiatus, but I really couldn’t think of anything. My brain has no spare bandwidth for anything but anxiety and frantic preparations. I literally can’t imagine what Ag and Nika would talk about, and I can’t make it special in any way before the hiatus. Sorry.

The thread would likely stay around at least for another week, so feel free to chat and stuff, I’ll try to reply if I can. If I get cut off before it dies, I’d like to ask someone from you to archive it for me, thank you in advance.

>>5180943
Shit man, stay chill

Hopefully we'll have you back soon

>>5180943
If your still there, what are your plans for the future of this quest?

>>5181772
+1

>>5195330
Still here, surprisingly, but can't really justify posting the next update due to the previously mentioned reasons. Also I've lost access to twitter and most of my VPN systems but I still am on qst discord if anyone wants to poke me in PM.

Regarding your question, I'll separate the answer into several parts based on the ways I interpreted it:

1) If you are talking about the plot and stuff, there is a whole load still planned. I've sprinkled various mysteries and events all over the setting with some huge revelations needing either to be pieced together from evidence and filtered from red herrings or requiring daring expeditions into faraway places. You can probably guess a few of the possible places where I could hide bigger chunks of the story, such as the deepest parts of the Labyrinth or even the nearby orbital space around Earth or on the Moon or even Mars. There is also an overarching hidden plot going on that you've only barely glimpsed. All in all, there is still a lot to Ag's story in that world. At this rate I could end up running for a decade or more continuously if bad things didn't happen. If by the time I’m finally free the interest drops to none, then I’ll consider restarting, but if you guys are still around, I see no reason not to continue.

2) If you are talking about the whole voiceover video project thing that I once mentioned, it is currently on pause until better times. I was in progress of saving up cash for the equipment, but unsurprisingly everything rose up in price by more than 30% in the first week of the conflict, after which I lost any hope of buying anything electronic. I plan to revive the project when the storm finally stops and I manage to bounce back into at least lower middle class. I was thinking of maybe opening a patreon, but it feels wrong to do that on /qst/.

3) If you are talking about the possibility of the quest resuming, I'd say that unless this mess ends up North Korea shaped and if I survive through the turbulent times, I'll continue it without much issue. Synthetic Gods Quest is currently my creative magnum opus, I have no other project comparable in scope and scale. If I manage to emigrate earlier than that then the quest would resume much sooner, but current estimate is for the standards of living to rebounce within 6 to 8 years. Currently, emigration plan has a few huge dealbreaker problems such as the fact that Russians can no longer take more than 2 weeks’ worth of living expenses equivalent of money with them abroad, that my job won't be able to send paychecks abroad and that embassies stopped providing visas to Russians in general. There is a chance that Spain would resume providing the visas and my dad does technically have a house there, but still finding a business analyst job in 2 weeks would be tough.

>>5195367
Don't get drafted.

>>5195692
No worries, I have a "white ticket" which means I am not eligible for draft even in wartime due to health reasons (very bad case of asthma, specifically). Managed to get it around 2014

>>5196067
Ah, I had asthma as a child.

I don't know if you'll see this, but I wanted to pop in and say I that I've enjoyed reading this in the archives a lot. So, yeah, thanks for the good read.

I hope things works out for you, good luck.