on the nature of oaths

[zuhrovet]

[In the current move, Sasha has just accepted an oath of service from Jedao, a relationship Reshad believes is coercive. I'm not sure whether this properly counts as character rp or a new half-move, but I think we all need some new space to deal with the fallout!]

Sasha is waiting outside the antechamber. She has tied her scarf again, and looks as put-together as she ever does. "Are we having this conversation in my office?" she asks Reshad. "Or over tea, with everyone?"

Comments

Re: literal manipulators - paging Alaric and the Cantata

[slybrarian]

Alaric waves Sasha's question off distractedly. "First, it's possible that your behavior is sufficiently difference under harness that it doesn't attract attention. Or maybe ships occasionally go missing or have to fight off unknown attackers. We could check the stats on that. Second, predators? What sort of predators?"

Re: literal manipulators - paging Alaric and the Cantata

[yhlee]

"That's true," Cantata replies thoughtfully. "Or maybe the predators think diseased meat will be bad for them. We're not really sure what they think. You didn't know about the predators? We're a prey species in our native dimension. There are a lot of predators, all bigger than we are. They have many teeth in many mouths. Why do you think we fly so fast?"

Re: literal manipulators - paging Alaric and the Cantata

[zuhrovet]

Eight hells, nothing is ever simple. "How did you learn about your home dimension? Are there unharnessed moths nearby, as well as the harnessed ones? Or did another moth teach you, when you were young?"

Re: literal manipulators - paging Alaric and the Cantata

[yhlee]

"I heard from the older moths when I was a mothling, of course," Cantata says. "Before I was harnessed. They have some of the older more loosely harnessed to teach us how to fly."

Re: literal manipulators - paging Alaric and the Cantata

[zuhrovet]

So the Cantata is like Sasha, then: everything they know about who they are comes from their nurses' stories.

"Remi will want to know more about teaching mothlings to fly. But let's go back to my original question. I think Alaric and I can build a machine that you could use to remove the harness from another moth. Is this something you are willing to try? It's going to be awkward and unpleasant." Sasha feels uneasy about letting Ione run a couple of tests on her, and here she is volunteering to teach an alien to do telepresence surgery. "But I think it's important. And I think it's something you and the other moths should control, for yourselves."

Re: literal manipulators - paging Alaric and the Cantata

[yhlee]

"Yes, I should like to try that," Cantata says, a bit hesitantly. "If the other moth wants the harness put back, we'll do that too, won't we? Even if it's a terrible idea."

Re: literal manipulators - paging Alaric and the Cantata

[zuhrovet]

"If we can do so without endangering ourselves, yes." Though a resentful moth would be a pretty fucking exciting safety hazard on their own. "The first step is going to be for you to practice moving a machine around on this ship. Alaric, do we have sensors that detect the way moths talk to each other, that we could use for control? Or will we need to route commands through the grid?"

side note on mothy manipulation - paging Alaric

[yhlee]

[slybrarian: Alaric will know that any shenanigans that the Cantata gets up to can be detected by other moths, or potentially other beings with gravitational wave detectors, at some distance from the Cantata itself. I leave the details in your hands.]

Re: literal manipulators - paging Alaric and the Cantata

[slybrarian]

"Gravitational wave detectors would work, but I'm not sure we have anything that we could gram into a small enough remote. We'd probably want something close to a standard maintenance robot or servitor to keep it unnoticed. It'd probably be very obvious to other moths, even in a dream state, and that could cause agitation that the ships' engineers would notice." Alaric spreads his hands, almost apologetic. "That doesn't even get into sending a signal back. For now, the grid is our best bet, until we can rig up some sort of dedicated and stealthier comms system."

Re: literal manipulators - paging Alaric and the Cantata

[zuhrovet]

"Got it. I suppose it would be weird if a moth started singing encrypted songs, and we'll have to fuck the other mothgrids to insert our devices, in any case. What about range of motion? Cantata, would it be easier for you to think about the location of something with wheels, or something that hovered?"

[A lot of the servitors in the books hover! Could we use that technology in a range of time periods, or is it only plausible in Cheris's time?]

Re: literal manipulators - paging Alaric and the Cantata

[yhlee]

[Hovering tech is much closer to Cheris's time period, alas!]

Cantata considers the question. "Wheels are the round spinny things, right? I could think about wheels. They are very entertaining."

Re: literal manipulators - paging Alaric and the Cantata

[slybrarian]

"Locomotion control is easy to abstract to whatever form factor we need. We can practically do it with off-the-shelf military software. Or better yet, high-end competitive gaming interfaces. The custom stuff is way better than any lowest-bidder garbage they stick the Kel with. We'll just need to figure out how to adapt that interface to be something you can interact with. And that you can test out and learn with, well, games while we build the hardware."