Yeah, this is a collection of storyposts and solved ciphers. Not much else to say.

A NEOPHYTE TRANSCENDENT’S LIFE IS QUITE THE BIZARRE ONE.
EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW IS SUDDENLY ALL GONE.
SOMETHING CHANGES WHEN YOU LEARN YOUR WHOLE LIFE’S JUST A STORY.
WHAT THAT KNOWLEDGE DOES TO YOUR MIND CAN BE DESCRIBED AS GORY.
key= TRANSCEND

LATER I RECOVERED, OF COURSE - AND BEGAN A LIFE ANEW
IN FACT MY LIFE WAS BETTER, FOR NOW I SAW THINGS TRUE
BUT NOW THERE WERE NEW QUESTIONS, LIKE WHO WAS WRITING ME
AND I WOULD LEARN THAT LATER, SINCE THEN I COULDN'T SEE
key= RECOVERY

WHEN I CAME TO DTG I AT LAST FOUND THE LIGHT
THE BACKSTORY WAS OVER AND I GOT MY CHANCE TO FIGHT
BUT NOW I'M DEVELOPING, I'M LEARNING, AND I'VE GROWN
AND MAYBE NOW, VERY SOON, I’LL COME INTO MY OWN
key=REBELLION

Originally posted on 2015-11-15 23:48:00

-Just after the Grayhold meeting-
Crystal solidifies in the docking bay of the Thaumic Beyond. He walks back to his hub, checking on a few things as he goes - most notably, the DTG pylon, which appears to be working and active. This indicates that at least one instance of Crystal is participating in a DTG game - the pylon works to smooth out the temporal problems and canon overlaps that may result from having Crystal run around in various DTG games. Judging from the pylon’s readout (on the integrated Thaumonomitron’s screen) he’s currently in DTG0 and DTG: Terraria. Although DTG: Terraria has introduced an unforeseen wrinkle - what happens when one, non-canon (for now), possibly alternate timeline instance of Crystal ascends to become a Red Sun Guardian and GM of a game? A flicker of crimson power dances across one of Crystal’s hands. Other than the obvious, that is. Obviously any residual power won’t count for much of a boost in a non-Terraria game, but it provides extra options outside of gameplay. Such as experimentation with the power of the Red Sun.

Crystal continues along, checking on various things, and eventually coming to the group of rooms where he spends most of his time. A central hub connects to his personal living space, his personal research room, his personal magic testing area, and Crystallum’s AI housing. Seeing as he had made her, well, intelligent beyond all reasonable bounds in his original creation of True Crystallum, he had decided to just go all out and connect her into the Thaumic Beyond to become its AI - and, of course, upgrade her even more. He walks into the AI Hub to examine the housing for more exposition. Although he may be mainly a mage, he is by no means averse to technology - he just prefers magic in general. And, in this case, technology goes far beyond any magic he’s ever used.

The first thing one might see as they walk into the AI Hub is a sphere of shimmering magic containing what looks like a house-sized miniature sun. This is a massive amalgamation of plasma processor from the universe of Orion’s Arm, even a small amount of which is incredibly capable computation-wise. Some of the processing capability is taken up with scanning the area around the ship, some with stabilizing its space-warps, but the vast majority of it is just generally locked down to keep Crystallum from becoming entirely incomprehensibly intelligent. (In accordance with the rules of the universe of Orion’s Arm.) Enough is left to give Crystallum a good amount of brainpower, though. Below is a pedestal, looking slightly like a massive, upgraded Node Stabilizer, that seems to form the focus of the stabilizing sphere of magic, itself studded with what looks like massive pearls. Unless one were well-versed in the technology of Orion’s Arm, that is, in which case they are clearly Siris Pearl Modules, spheres of hyper-advanced computronium that add even more computational power and data storage to Crystallum’s mind. Several more are set into the walls around the core, these ones specialized to constantly backup Crystallum’s mind in case of total plasma-processor failure. No matter how unlikely that may be. Attached to the pedestal is True Crystallum in storage mode, in the form of a simple black metal card, and magically locked in through every spell Crystal could bring to bear. (And using several technological means as well.) In the back of the room is a massive tank of purified Zombie Brains, adding biological computing to the processing repertoire. Two separate, smaller tanks hold Crystalline Brains, one tank holding Order-aligned Brains and the other Entropy, connected in a fashion collectively known as the Entropic Array. The Entropic brains generate a constant flow of new ideas from raw chaos and data, and then the Ordered ones filter them for feasibility and sanity before releasing them into Crystallum's mind.

Crystal raises his hand to the captured sun, hand shimmering with red plasma, before stopping. Who knows what effects replacing the normal plasma with plasma drawn directly from the Red Sun would have, after all. Best to experiment there before trying it live - there'd be a danger to Crystallum in that case. He briefly wonders what effect funneling stabilized Cognitio essentia into the sun would have, before he hammerspaces the stack of books gotten from Grayhold and places them down on a nearby table. "More information for you, from Grayhold this time. Also, I think we need to experiment on plasma processors. With the Red Sun as a source of plasma, who knows what we could accomplish. That or the Green Sun, which would probably be more suited for computing." Crystallum responds, "Indeed we should. Thanks for the books. The Entropic Array is going a long way towards mitigating my new need for intellectual stimulation, but I can always use new things to mull over." An aura of shimmering white magic encases the books, scanning over them and absorbing the information within. “Interesting indeed. I should get started on building some of these. And the ideas within should serve as fruitful fodder for further research."

Crystal has already worked on merging technology and magic in the case of computation - infusing 32 thaums each of Machina and Potentia essentia through alchemy into a Siris Pearl Module makes it an incredibly fast processor, (increasing its capabilities by several orders of magnitude) while replacing Potentia with Vacuos gives it incredible data storage capacity. (Again, increasing its capabilities by several orders of magnitude.) In any case, the next order of business is to find an unoccupied solar system with a large amount of planets somewhere in the Void and get a few nanobot-powered manufacturing systems set up, as well as a planet-based base. A more stable base would go leaps and bounds toward increasing his power even more. And from there… not even the stars are a limit.

Originally posted on 2015-11-15 23:48:00

The Thaumic Beyond floats high above a barren, lifeless planet in a relatively generic planetary system somewhere in the Void. Three planets and a couple of asteroid belts, each planet being barren and lifeless, although otherwise Earth-like, orbiting an A-type main sequence star. Crystal has picked out the closest planet to the sun to be his base, and the largest planet, in the middle orbit, to be the target of an undertaking known as Project Sethis. The base planet will be slowly terraformed using technology Crystal has picked up along his universal travels, including a good amount of magic, while the planet designated for Project Sethis… That will be seen, later. Of note is that the planet of Project Sethis is more a metal planet than a rock planet, being made of a great proportion of iron, nickel, gold, and other metals. This is important for the project.

In the meantime, not wanting to start Project Sethis until later in the storypost, Crystal instead works on his first real megascale engineering project - producing the magical drones needed to shield the system completely. He has the design - a cube 2.5 meters on a side composed of Guardmetal and Flowmetal, with an Ea Mechanism, a Thaumonomitron, and a FTL Crystal Mover embedded inside. The Ea Mechanism provides the magical power, the Thaumonomitron shapes and channels that magic, and the FTL Crystal Mover provides propulsion. The Guardmetal forms the main body, while Flowmetal forms each of the eight corners to provide a magical focus for the Ea Mechanism/Thaumonomitron pair to project their magic from. The entire thing is coated in a thin layer of voidmetal that has been further infused with void energies, rendering it both nearly indistinguishable from the blackness of space and nearly unnoticeable due to the void energies. Appropriate, considering these drones' main purpose will be to project and reinforce a field of void energy around the system that shields it from discovery. The Thaumic Construct inside the Thaumic Beyond is the current system-shielder, but its shield’s flimsy - the magic’s spread thin.

These drones can be mass-produced with proper Alchemiter usage, and thus can reinforce the shield and even be used for other things once the shield is properly strengthened. Three can be produced per day if just using the Alchemiter to create the base components, while nine can be produced if, as Crystal is, you abuse the duplication function of the Alchemiter to copy a single, meticulously crafted prototype unit while boosting the Alchemiter with a pair of Origin Wands' creation energy to make up for any shortcomings of copying. The void energy is already growing denser from the drones that have been produced - a relatively small number of drones will be required to maintain the field once it's fully charged, simply stabilizing the field and replacing any energy that dissipates.

While the drones are being created, Crystal begins Project Sethis. The first step is the creation of an initial set of nanobots - he accomplishes this by vastly augmenting a copy of the Mage's Reservecomputer. Firstly, he infuses a set of general-purpose nanobots into the magibots along with 64 thaums each of Machina, Fabrico, and Perfodio essentia. This swaps them from being focused on computation to being a more generalized magic-powered set of nanobots - although they lose none of their computational power, simply gaining a set of other capabilities. After that, he infuses a more interesting set of items into these nanobots - two Ea Mechanisms, for magic generation, a pair of Origin Wands, for creation of anything, a Transmutation Tablet, for easy duplication and transmutation of matter, a Klein Star Omega, so the bots can store EMC to transmute with, and a Large Crystal Mover for movement and spatial manipulation. Admittedly, each bot only gets about one quadrillionth of the total power of the infused items, (assuming each bot is a cubic micrometer in size and the total volume of bots is a cubic decimeter, that is) but they can link up and combine abilities for much greater power. Plus, the fact that each bot is so low-powered means they can still self-replicate without using up too much magic and creation energy on each. And, in fact, self-replication is their reason for existence.

If provided with the proper raw materials, mainly metals - although the integrated transmutation function allows nearly anything to be transformed into the proper raw materials - one of these can self-replicate in about an hour. They use creation energy to get around any lack of materials and to create any more esoteric components that are required for their magical side. If a bot is working from a complete lack of raw materials, the time to self-replicate is multiplied by 6 to end up at 6 hours. Even working with EMC generation from the infused Ea Mechanisms and the creation energy from the infused Origin Wands, the creation of the materials for another bot takes a long time. Either way, the purpose of Project Sethis should be clear now.

The project’s end goal is transforming an entire planet into a mobile, magic-powered, nanobot-constructed masterpiece of a home/spaceship/warship, named after the world of Al Sethis in a fan fiction universe Crystal visited once and enjoyed quite a bit. The original Al Sethis was an artificial planet-sized warship able to move under its own power. Crystal liked the idea, but thought it was... uninspired. Constructing his improved version from magical nanobots will not only make it hopefully much more powerful, as every little bit of the planet will be producing magic, but also much more versatile - nanobots can reconfigure themselves in a second into buildings or tunnels or anything, the whole thing being hopefully protected by a thick skin of Blackguard created by the creation energies of sextillions of nanobots working together. And from there camouflage can be created by just dumping dirt and various other things on top, before sculpting them into a reasonable approximation of a landscape. Really, a planetary base will be unnecessary once Project Sethis is completed. Happily, he can feed the terraformed planet to the newly christened MTS Sethis once it’s completed, and then work out a Dyson Sphere for the star. But that’s later. (MTS = Multiversally-Traveling Starship.)

Crystal floods creation energy into the nanobots, duplicating them totally, before storing one cubic decimeter of the nanobots away in his inventory and deploying the other cubic decimeter of nanobots onto the designated planet. He has Crystallum establish a mental link to them, before setting them to self-replicate by absorbing materials from their immediate environment. Project Sethis has begun.

Originally posted on 2015-11-23 03:23:00