Fleshing out Vishmitals

Lockheed X-17 wrote:

On Vishmital Tech, would they employ a very efficient version of our technology, or would they be too alien for us to simply comprehend?

Not been paying attention to Vix have ya? Depends on when the tech was minted. Height of the Empire is beyond our level but the closer you get to now? Likely most of the standard issue gear is at least a step above or near ours. Not all mind but some would have to simplified to meet mass production standards now that the Vish have to rely on Felarya.

jedi-explorer wrote:

Firstly Vishmitali as their race is incorrect pronunciation. It's Vishmital. Vishmitali are a type of bladed spear that uses telescopic tech to unfold and be ready for action.

Also I have feeling Psi'ol are just as a curious about the Vishmital's tech as the Vishies are about Psi's ease of magic control but I believe wheras magic study is encouraged amoung Vishmitals but Psi's are likely only to study Vishie tech in secret if the majority of Psi's like to think they are superior to Vishies. Can't very well say, "Bah! The Vishmitals are cowardly and weak. They don't have sheer power and wisdom! That's why the depend on machines. Hmpf!", and then turn around and show everyone your Vishimital egineered cyber arm. Better draft somenbody to make a steampunk Tessium arm that works closely to a Vishi arm and show you are the superior faction as I believe Psi'ols often do.

I don't know if the Vishmital curiosity for the Ps'Isol magic is necessary, any more than the Ps'Isol should be curious about Vishmital technology. The Ps'Isol have an entire universe of tech if they wanna get techy, there's no need to take a slice of the Vishmital pie.

Likewise, the Vishmitals have infinite worlds to draw their magic from, and this is what the Ps'Isol have been stated to begin as: they started as a ragtag band of offworld mages.

jedi-explorer wrote:

This sounds good in theory but what else can you trade on in order to keep your place at the diplomatic table and ensure that you can get a piece of the pie so to say? I mean Vishmital are in Negav and haven't been chased out I think only because they have something to bring t table every now and then like the Anti-Pred Cannons and Rockets that augment the wall's defenses. I mean you could say they use that as a bargaining chip, loosely threatening that the system could go haywire if not maintained by a Vishmital Engineer however that only works so long before Psi-Negavians figure out how to use the tech. I mean they aren't all backwards powerhungry mages bent on totall control of the city, some are in fact just powerhungry! =P

Now while I say that tech should be shared I ain't talking about giving out Railguns and Plasma bombs for everyone. Only those who can pay and agree to support the empire. Ooh! In fact it would be beneficial to TURN some Psi's towards the cause of the Empire using political marriage and dangling tech in front of power grubbing mages whom in turn would introduce some of the naturally gifted Psi magic into the Vishmital bloodlines and if the genetic marker is passed on to the children this ensures Psi'ol spies or at the very least secret splinter Vish-Psi for the day when the Vishies may have not choice but to save the city from Lesona's tyrannical and insane grip. For the Glory of the Empire of Course. >=J

Gamma wrote:

On the topic of trading, I see both sides; if they want to trade, tech is probably the best thing Vismitals can trade, besides perhaps raw materials they don't need but can get decently easily (i.e. wood). I could see two ways about this:

What else can you trade to take advantage of your superior technology? L.A.E., or Literally Anything Else.

Having superior technology doesn't mean they can only make tech goods. Lots of countries have an economic model where they export prime materials, and import manufactures, not all of which are high technology.

The vishmitals can handle any kind of manufacture they desire, any kind of infrastructure required, if their tech is that high. They could handle the incineration of biowaste, communications, or even entertainment. They could be manufacturing anything for lower prices and higher profits, be it woodware, earthernware, plasticware, glassware, food additives, electric energy, heck, even market forecasts!

ravaging vixen wrote:

Have you taken the thought that their industry of what little or better to say, “not as prominent” and “efficient”, industry they once had is on their ships. Again i keep quoting people on this, but you can make a industry in a home, it’s possible...Ships and futuristic ones at that where the people have set up camp outside them. Even more so. I think your reservations are on how much of an export and output can they do with this industry. I’m with you on saying It won’t be terribly fast but fast enough where they can make huge turrets (Or maybe deploy) on the walls of negav.

I understand that you can do something in a workshop in your own home, BUT, there's limits to what you can work with. Homes nowadays have electricity, power tools, lighting, natural gas, internet, ventilation, libraries and supplies of all kinds within driving distances. For the vishmitals, that wouldn't be the case: they'd have only what they brought with themselves in the ships, and the stuff they got in Negav.

ravaging vixen wrote:

Get back? I really don’t know what you mean. It’s not like the vishmitals were on the high run like we all been saying, They had time to pack up and leave their galaxy while foreshadowing their world and empire’s inevitable destruction. So they wouldn’t have lost much unless like How i envisioned it, their best tech and to requisition their tech efficiently between each other is on other ships. Other ships that are not present in/near negav or on the continent. That’s the best way i could think of having a sort of “dark age” of their society and people in general for keeping a stable income of their best tech. Then again they had 200 years to start a profitable (enough) industry most likely from their ships or whatever parts of negav they have a hold on while still having the image of being a fledgling but politically intimidating faction.

That's what I meant. They had 200 years to set up shop, so even if they lost tech, they could make it again by then. But fleeing the inevitable destruction long before it was critical, that I wouldn't agree with.

Da Wiki wrote:

This belief was shattered however, when their homeworld was destroyed in a terrible war and their culture was very nearly wiped out.

It's one thing to get your family out of a war zone. It's another to get a whole production line that could be used in the war effort out of a war zone, considering the Vishmitals are supposed to consider nothing more important than their empire.

Da Wiki, Under Construction wrote:

Ruling an empire spanning over thousands of planets

Question: their homeworld was destroyed. What of the OTHER worlds of theirs? What's keeping them from just moving the capital to the next world? Were some of those worlds survivable in only if supplied constantly from homeworld? Did they also get destroyed?

Stabs wrote:

I understand that you can do something in a workshop in your own home, BUT, there's limits to what you can work with. Homes nowadays have electricity, power tools, lighting, natural gas, internet, ventilation, libraries and supplies of all kinds within driving distances. For the vishmitals, that wouldn't be the case: they'd have only what they brought with themselves in the ships, and the stuff they got in Negav.

Or...you get people that specialize in that and create workshops on the ships that gives you all said necessitates on the ship it self. If the's ships were made for colonization after or a little before their fall then yes, that's where preparation gets you is to be self sustaining. Relating to your other comment...

Stabs wrote:

That's what I meant. They had 200 years to set up shop, so even if they lost tech, they could make it again by then. But fleeing the inevitable destruction long before it was critical, that I wouldn't agree with.

We're going to have to make some amends here then, I really don't know what you mean by "lost tech" because yes tech can be lost and forgotten but it heavily depends on the entity they were facing atm. Did it all the sudden swarm and overtake their empire instantaneously? Or was it more like a war where you knew kind of what your enemy was but it's so powerful you could see the inevitable and potential of the entire destruction of your people if you didn't stop it. If it's the latter and it was years of warfare, they would have time to prep up their ships, and for that matter, massive armada to leave their realm and go into others on a mass scale. Given that though, that's why i want personally and incident where they got fractured and scattered so they don't have a means to regroup and rebuild AS fast. make them seem fledgling but give them an indication that they are somewhat self reliant and dependable. Or a better word, sufficient.

I

Stabs wrote:

t's one thing to get your family out of a war zone. It's another to get a whole production line that could be used in the war effort out of a war zone, considering the Vishmitals are supposed to consider nothing more important than their empire.

Again, heavily depends on the years of warfare and preparation. You can start building thing for that eventual decision that your gonna lose, so why not run or make a last stand (Obviously the prior happened for the preservation of the empire).

Stabs wrote:

Question: their homeworld was destroyed. What of the OTHER worlds of theirs? What's keeping them from just moving the capital to the next world? Were some of those worlds survivable in only if supplied constantly from homeworld? Did they also get destroyed?

What i'd like to think was that in their realm that they came from. I'd like to think the majority of their worlds were held within their realm. In which the conquest starts there. In their place. Then once they got all the planets they like, they start making incursions to other places with their fairly new tech in crossing dimensions then start rolling from there. Only for a short season though. Then once this mystery of a war starts, they start losing contact with all the dimensional planets they did cross until the war eventually brings it up to their front door where they had to leave. But this depends on what we want the enemy force or entity to be in their realm. One of my friends Cauldronborn suggested a long time ago that it was an infectious bio organism that would literally eat the life out of their planets and make them Desolate. Then i added from there that after they figured out the problem to stop this thing, then another force would come in and be the means to make them start thinking about leaving their realm and bring retribution to the empire elsewhere. This part of their history is extremely in concept so to what you guys think would be a cool tale to tell of why they left their realms is still up to suggestion and concept developement

ravaging vixen wrote:

Stabs wrote:

I understand that you can do something in a workshop in your own home, BUT, there's limits to what you can work with. Homes nowadays have electricity, power tools, lighting, natural gas, internet, ventilation, libraries and supplies of all kinds within driving distances. For the vishmitals, that wouldn't be the case: they'd have only what they brought with themselves in the ships, and the stuff they got in Negav.

Or...you get people that specialize in that and create workshops on the ships that gives you all said necessitates on the ship it self. If the's ships were made for colonization after or a little before their fall then yes, that's where preparation gets you is to be self sustaining. Relating to your other comment...

I'm with Vix here in that I see the Vishmitals as no strangers to colonization. They had thousands of worlds. Either they were really good at both terraforming and being patient, or they could get, at the very least, mining operations up and running in extremely inhospitable environments. I personally envision the Vishmital as having colony ships that are capable of landing and deploying into fully-functional infrastructure (or, in the case of warships, bunkers and FOBs); I'm thinking something akin to the Terran from StarCraft in terms of functionality, but they actually look like ships when air/spaceborne (and look less like factories and more like landed ships when deployed on the ground). A fully-functional large colony fleet would probably be capable, with some time and the resources, of building another of any ship from scratch. That said, the Vishmital fleets on Felarya are fragments, so they might be somewhat limited in their shipwright abilities, but they'd still be able to build plenty of smaller-scale tech (and really, LAE is smaller-scale than a colony ship).

I don't really see the Negavian portals really being a limit to Vishmital tech. The Psi'ol would like to think they can limit Vishmital weaponry; I'd expect that there's several more-or-less formal agreements as to what heavy hardware the Vishmitals can bring into Negav, and where they can put it, which the Vishmital might follow sometimes (not that the Psi'ol keep up their ends with any regularity, either). Outside Negav, however, the Vishmital's weapons is limited only by what their foundries can churn out from the various mineral riches of Felarya. With Vishmitals having been on Felarya for over two centuries, I'd expect at least one, and likely more, generations of designs that take advantage of some Felarya-specific minerals and alloys.

Speaking of tech, here's a few ideas for items made by the Vishmital for export; I could use help coming up with better names for them.
Gas-powered chemical deterrent device: Working on a similar principle to a gas-powered needle-less syringe, this device consists of a tank of compressed, relatively inert gas and a payload mixture of metallic particles and a chemical to be delivered. On activation, the payload is rapidly ejected by the compressed gas; while short-range, the chemically-coated particles can easily penetrate normal skins, both human and predator, delivering the chemical directly into the sub-dermis, where it quickly permeates into capillaries. A technology long used by Vishmitals for medicine, the system found new use on Felarya as a simple, cheap, and effective predator deterrent. The most common design comes in the form of a gauntlet, with the payload and device mounted to the back of a glove, between the glove and a metal plate with small holes for ejection, while a shaped gas canister with a reinforced shell is strapped to the forearm. The payload is contained in a disc-shaped cartridge that contains several individual loads and rotates to bring new loads in line with the mechanism for ejection; the device makers generally provide a small variety of non-lethal, fast-acting nausea-inducing agents. Usage is simple; press the plate to the predator's skin (generally the inside of their hand) and trigger it; for most predators, debilitating nausea will happen within a minute, followed shortly by vomiting. The number of shots each disc can provide varies depending on the arrangement of loads in the disk and the placement of holes, with more deluxe versions providing some allowance for end-user customization; a common modification in use by the adventurer's guild is to rig multiple loads to fire simultaneously, increasing the potency enough to ensure even larger predators are left helpless for a short time. Officially, the Vishmital do not sanction the use of lethal poisons in the device, but freelance alchemists have been able to convert any number of concoctions to be used, though some can damage the device.

Electroshock weapons: Sold as a civilian anti-theft deterrent, these are simply a metal-tipped blunt weapon of some variant with a capacitor, a chunk of actinite, and a trigger button. These are essentially taser sticks; many use similar technology to a vishmitali to rapidly extend. All designs available on the legal market have no sharp edges and little weight, making them ill-suited for use as lethal weapons, but for those living in Negav's lower district, one of these, while somewhat pricey for the less well-off, is an invaluable boost to personal security. Both the Negav police force and VISA sometimes use heavier versions with larger chunks of actinite (for the police) or technological batteries (VISA) and rapid-charge capacitors for crowd control.

Clockwork copy machine: A more recent application of simple artifice to precision mass-produced components that the Psi'ol magiocrats simply can't make in quantity, the clockwork copier is actually a type of clockwork non-humanoid golem. Consisting of a frame with number of mechanical arms, the copier can quickly read and duplicate documents–a quite useful ability for any entity that keeps paper records. Thanks to magiocrat propaganda and tradition, however, the more-expensive magiocrat animated duplication quills are seen as a mark of wealth. In Negav's middle district, however, the clockwork copier sees a lot of use among less well-off organizations, businesses, guilds, and shops. Those with a little more money to spend can buy self-winding, color, and folding add-ons.

Again i really don't get why we're focusing on their tech so much when we need to cover the other things first...

ravaging vixen wrote:

Again i really don't get why we're focusing on their tech so much when we need to cover the other things first...

Because tech's fun. What else would you like to cover?

Well, for one...You know what nevermind i guess that's ok. it's just going to get overshadowed by something else cool and exciting and then i'll be seeing loops, kind of tired that so if you talk about a different subject. Please finish it or make it extensive so we can try and talk about it as a project later.

Gamma wrote:

I'm with Vix here in that I see the Vishmitals as no strangers to colonization.  They had thousands of worlds.  Either they were really good at both terraforming and being patient, or they could get, at the very least, mining operations up and running in extremely inhospitable environments.  I personally envision the Vishmital as having colony ships that are capable of landing and deploying into fully-functional infrastructure (or, in the case of warships, bunkers and FOBs); I'm thinking something akin to the Terran from StarCraft in terms of functionality, but they actually look like ships when air/spaceborne (and look less like factories and more like landed ships when deployed on the ground).  A fully-functional large colony fleet would probably be capable, with some time and the resources, of building another of any ship from scratch.  That said, the Vishmital fleets on Felarya are fragments, so they might be somewhat limited in their shipwright abilities, but they'd still be able to build plenty of smaller-scale tech (and really, LAE is smaller-scale than a colony ship).

Well, if that's the case... you're right. If they colonized thousands of worlds, they should've known exactly what to pack to make anything in record time, and have practiced that more times than I've had warm meals (so it'd be a challenge, but it would still be nothing special to set up shop in Felarya. Heck, without diseases to worry about and a dimensional gate to shop at, it should have been a piece of cake).

ravaging vixen wrote:

What i'd like to think was that in their realm that they came from. I'd like to think the majority of their worlds were held within their realm. In which the conquest starts there. In their place. Then once they got all the planets they like, they start making incursions to other places with their fairly new tech in crossing dimensions then start rolling from there. Only for a short season though. Then once this mystery of a war starts, they start losing contact with all the dimensional planets they did cross until the war eventually brings it up to their front door where they had to leave. But this depends on what we want the enemy force or entity to be in their realm. One of my friends Cauldronborn suggested a long time ago that it was an infectious bio organism that would literally eat the life out of their planets and make them Desolate. Then i added from there that after they figured out the problem to stop this thing, then another force would come in and be the means to make them start thinking about leaving their realm and bring retribution to the empire elsewhere. This part of their history is extremely in concept so to what you guys think would be a cool tale to tell of why they left their realms is still up to suggestion and concept developement

We can start thinking history, then. But that sounds like it'll take its own thread, so we can discuss bioweapons, dimensional jumps, terraforming, and timeline.

ravaging vixen wrote:

Again i really don't get why we're focusing on their tech so much when we need to cover the other things first...

Actually this is a valid point. The problem is when we think of Vishies, Miritans and Delurans the first thing that comes to mind is their fantastic tech. I'm all for them having awesome tech but one of the problems is we need to focus less on that and more on lesser known aspects. We should take a break from tech and focus on this stuff. Like history, culture and the like.

Lockeed wrote:

So, since you last said terraformation, there are thing that Elon Musk said about terraforming...

The slow(and humane) way:
Create a device that releases oxygen and carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and the rest follows...

No. This may work to create a oxygen shell at first but you need plants and animals to maintain it and expand it.

We're focusing on tech because I'm an engineer; that's really it.  It is going to be one of the defining aspects of their presence in Felarya, simply because it's the primary defining factor in what sets their capabilities apart, but as far as creating interesting characters and stories, it doesn't help nearly as much.

So, my thoughts: between their choice of culture name (lit. "children of eternity") and their culture of often militant expansionism, I'd say we're looking at something akin to manifest destiny.  How would they see other cultures?  Primitives?  Or would it be pseudo-religious, with the other cultures being heathens?  Are they evangelical or more biased towards extermination of other cultures?  Speaking of religion: do they have one?  While I'd like to say with their science, they can't have a religion that makes much in the way of material claims, but they might still have something akin to Buddhism (at least in terms of spirituality and material claims; probably less so in terms of outlook).  Or they might have something like modern Japanese Shinto, where the religious rituals have lost most of their religious meaning to most, but plenty of nonreligious people still perform them anyway (Japan is an oddity because you have Buddhist atheists that perform Shinto rituals–and that's the largest religious group there).  Thoughts?

MAJOR EDIT: Here's a link to a Vishmital working document.  Feel free to suggest additions.  And pictures.  Please suggest pictures that feel Vishmital to you.

Sorry for you all to wait on me like this for...27 days (holy bananas!)

But yes i've been extremely busy with school and family. How ever it's late and i need to correct some stuff on this long ass google document i've been prepping up for you guys along with a few surprises. It should be up relatively soon.

On other concerns, considering that the negav article is going under way, I would like you guys to pay attention to that in detail, considering the vishmitals are kind key to Negav. What with VISA and the defence force for protecting the walls and some security. Can't have those Islon fist take all the credit. So let people know that aren't paying attention that the vishes still have a notable presence if you can.

I eagerly await your work. Also, I will admit I've been lax in keeping up with the Negav articles; I need to fix that and help make sure the Vishmital's positions are adequately represented.

ravaging vixen wrote:

Sorry for you all to wait on me like this for...27 days (holy bananas!)

But yes i've been extremely busy with school and family. How ever it's late and i need to correct some stuff on this long ass google document i've been prepping up for you guys along with a few surprises. It should be up relatively soon.

On other concerns, considering that the negav article is going under way, I would like you guys to pay attention to that in detail, considering the vishmitals are kind key to Negav. What with VISA and the defence force for protecting the walls and some security. Can't have those Islon fist take all the credit. So let people know that aren't paying attention that the vishes still have a notable presence if you can.

Heh heh. Yeah I had to make one of those google docs recently for my Chain Game to try and get the story organized. I'm sure you've got a nice article typed up Vix but don't worry about this if you need to take time for family or other concerns. Tis okay. I'm sure we can represent Vishies well enough for you in your abscence. ....If I can just get through that huge Negavian document. @-@ Oi. I keep meaning to but I keep getting side tracked by RPs and Games. But I shall endevour to interpret it tomorrow if I can and give my two Skevols. ^_-

there are a ton of great ideas in this thread
After we are done with the current Negav development I think Vishmitals should be the next big subject to be tackled

Gamma wrote:

I also hear we've got a few existing pictures of Vishmital stuff (mostly a single character); will Karbo allow a posting of those excerpts so we know what we're starting with?

For this one I'd rather not.. the design is very generic, almost inexistent and I'm really not very happy with it. I do plan to take a shot at making some concept art for Vishmitals but I'm clearly not going to base myself on this one ^^;

Karbo wrote:

Gamma wrote:

I also hear we've got a few existing pictures of Vishmital stuff (mostly a single character); will Karbo allow a posting of those excerpts so we know what we're starting with?

For this one I'd rather not.. the design is very generic, almost inexistent and I'm really not very happy with it. I do plan to take a shot at making some concept art for Vishmitals but I'm clearly not going to base myself on this one ^^;

Thanks for the support! And I fully understand not wanting to use ancient art; I've got plenty of concepts and designs myself that I'd have to redo before posting for any sort of project.

Also, one design element that I'd like to see as near-ubiquitous on Vishmital exosuits (2-3m range) is sub-arms. Looking at general human proportions, and the general slim build of Vishmitals, it doesn't make much sense for a Vishmital's actual arms to be in their exosuit's arms; they just don't have the broad shoulders. Instead, I'm pretty content with a design that features the pilot's torso, head, and thighs in the central torso section of the exosuit, with their lower legs in the upper legs of the exosuit and their arms in side sections of the torso (in terms of a human silhouette, the central torso section would be as wide as a waist and go all the way up, and the extra width of a ribcage analogue would come from side sections); the arms of the exosuit would attach to the side sections and be completely mechanical. The pilot's arms, however, would also be in a smaller set of arm armor, which for most exosuit models would fold into the bottoms of the torso's side sections when not in use, and unfold from those sections when needed (a usual way to do it is to have the armor plate that covers the arm when folded act as a heavy gauntlet plate). Besides gloves or extended manipulators, the sub-arms could mount light weapons or extra tools. The bigger arms are controlled either by controls in the sub-arms or via neural connection, depending on the model, with the latter significantly more common. This is the best example of the sub-arms I have in mind, though they don't fold cleanly, and that suit has extra legs instead of arms.

*Crack fingers*
Ok time for more Vish development ^^  

There is a ton that has already been said on this thread and really a lot of good ideas brought up.

So, on the matter of multiple races : I'm ok with it. I think it clearly makes sense as the Vishmital empire was very large at its peak and every empire have to integrate those they conquer or they will quickly crumble on themselves. There are a lot of examples in our own History, like with the Sassanid empire for instance. Although to reply to Gamma's question, yes the original Vishmitals are humans. I'm a little more cautious on having space elves of sort in the mix though as it might sound a bit too Warhammer-ish ?  If we go for it I feel we should come with another name than "elf" and make the race really an original one. But that's more on the form, on the core I'm fine with it ^^

On the genetical imprint question :  I like the idea of putting its origin as a control tool for the empire when it started to become really big.  A sort of engineered loyalty mass program is something I could imagine Vishmitals doing.

On cybernetic implants : I can imagine Vishmitals using them indeed. Like Ravaging Vixen pointed though, the Negav population would probably be wary and suspicious if the implant is too visible. Using technology is a thing but one that is directly embed in your flesh ? that could look really creepy to some Negavians I feel.

Quote :

One thing we haven't seen discussion on yet is how or if Vishmitals would be visually distinct from non-Vishmital people

Quote :

If i may make a suggestion however  an Idea I had would be that their main dark color or “common” color of hair would be a dark purple. Very light caucasian skin for the 1st descendant vishmitals

That works for me ^^  I was imagining them a bit like that as well. If we go for bioluminescent eyes I really prefer to keep it low though. I’m wary of the glowing eyes trope that we see so much everywhere in various medias as if something has glowy eyes it has « badass » written all over it XD

About the Vishmitals being scattered : It’s a neat idea ^^ It makes the exploration of Felarya a more important matter for Vishmitals than for any others group and yet an activity they have to keep discrete as well. After all, if Magiocrats became aware of others Vishmital colonies scattered across Felarya and the possibility of them joining into a single force, they would no doubt do everything to hinder that reunion. This trait makes Vishmitals de facto explorers and that's cool ! However I think those scattered colonies should exist but not be too numerous. As I see it , when the empire disintegrated, many ships of desperate refugees fled where they could. A couple of them could have ended in Felarya but I wouldn’t imagine the whole flotilla to be there. Plus.. well I'd rather not have Vishmitals to be turned into some kind of potential super-power ^^;  As I see it, the number of colonies is a question that would be very open for people in Felarya, since no one knows exactly how much of these colonies actually exist. Not even Vishmitals themselves. You could have wide assumptions here.
Like Gamma pointed, any Vishmital colony unit would be pretty efficient even in Felarya as they are used to various inhospitable worlds. Prolonged isolation could bring up a potential energy problem though ?  For instance if a ship deploy itself to becomes a base, I can imagine the most powerful weapons to become offline after a while as the energy source progressively vanish. That would make finding a new energy source in Felarya and adapting their equipments to use it a high priority for Vishmital research.

Gamma wrote:

As for pictures: I can't find much on the usual places, but here's some to consider (spoiler for size):

Mecha:

As for spaceships, I can't find any good images of deployable ships.  I was thinking ships that look sleek when in ship mode, and when deployed look more like crouched predators (the animal kind) ready to pounce; lines that flow well and show contained power.  That said, I'm partial to this one's style, though the exact ship doesn't quite fit:

Spoiled FOR THE REPUBLIC!:

This has a modern/futuristic style combining stealth-inspired non-square angles, large flat areas with blended edges for shallow angles and sharp edges for acute angles, with panels having complex polygonal shapes.  It actually works decently well with the spider mech.

Nice references here.  Indeed I imagine the Vishmital style to be more toward sharp edges than curves, like the ship ^^

CauldronBorn24 wrote:

These are some Vishmital combat vehicle designs I drew a while back at the request of ravaging vixen; uploaded here as requested by Gamma.

Those are neat designs ^^ I like the shape you gave to those tanks

Man Have i been waiting for you to say something about this for a long time. An info dump is going to be posted here in a day or less of the conversations we've been talking about since any of use have replied to this, this going to be huge and pretty big So please be attentive when it comes people. I've been collecting all the things we have said in and outside the chat and what vix dumped on me for notes. I'll try to conjur and assess this up but there's a lot of cover on specifics with all the theories and such we've been coming up with along with your agreements on certain things karbo.

Karbo wrote:

*Crack fingers*
Ok time for more Vish development ^^  

There is a ton that has already been said on this thread and really a lot of good ideas brought up.

Thanks!  Good to see some more serious interest in the Vishmital.  We've got a fair amount of stuff that didn't make it onto the forum; for example, most of my stuff, some forum posts, and some of Blue's thoughts on history are compiled by subject in this GoogleDoc.  Anyone should feel free to look at it and make suggestions and additions.

Karbo wrote:

If we go for bioluminescent eyes I really prefer to keep it low though. I’m wary of the glowing eyes trope that we see so much everywhere in various medias as if something has glowy eyes it has « badass » written all over it XD

Entirely fair.  I was thinking less "glowing" in terms of how it usually is and more simply self-illuminated, to use the graphics term.  Iridescent would probably be a better term than bioluminescent.  

Karbo wrote:

Prolonged isolation could bring up a potential energy problem though ?  For instance if a ship deploy itself to becomes a base, I can imagine the most powerful weapons to become offline after a while as the energy source progressively vanish. That would make finding a new energy source in Felarya and adapting their equipments to use it a high priority for Vishmital research.

Maybe?  My current thoughts, to keep the Vishmital just this side of visible science, was to have their primary source be fusion reactors.  They're efficient, powerful, pretty clean, and, most importantly for spacefarers, run off deuterium, which, given how common hydrogen is in the universe, is plentiful enough to run an empire off of.  The downside of that, at least from a story perspective, is that the Vishmital can literally put water in their gas tanks.  I wouldn't be adverse to changing their power supply to solar for low-power and civilian uses, and something more exotic and rare for military and power-intensive purposes, though, if you do want to make power a limiting factor.  They'd still be able to store power for their weapons and such, but solar power would take a long time to charge up their serious hardware, which would make prolonged conflict a major issue.

EDIT: Decided to go fishing for more ship design inspiration in the vein of the Bastion:

Warning: Death to 56k or 480p users!:

Thoughts? This a good direction to go with general shape language, or are these veering away?

My thoughts since then.

-For the evacuation: Gamma suggested having their ships be able to make planetfall and then leave. I disagreed with Vix that they should have not been preparing for evac if they could have been defending their empire. What if rather than preparing for an evacuation for years, preparation had never been necessary? Maybe they were capable of evac all along, because they always had colony ships at the ready: it was just a matter of gathering everyone inside those ships and sending them off.

-For the genetic imprint: I'm not sure that's the best of ideas. We have a rebel in the manga, and he doesn't look like a rebel against mind control. Of course, they could be simply given genes that make them predisposed to orderly behaviour, which allow for a lot of fuckery with their brains, opening some opportunities.

-For the scattering: I'm fine with some remote vishmitals. It'd explain their presence in the Great Rocky Fields: maybe they had a ship that had to land here, it just had to, so they made a base there for no other reason. But making huge flotillas of ships landing, carrying huge guns, only to later find out even those can't stop the fauna... not so okay with.

So a billion people in a thousand motherships, as you said, Gamma, doesn't sound like the right scope for their presence for Felarya. I'd rather there weren't dozens of 'em regrouping, that we avoided making well-armed flotillas. I'd even go so far as to suggest that we avoid making each "mothership" carry more than 10k people, so that random settlements did not get too huge: Negav's around the 250k-1M people range anyway (Unless you count tinies).

I'd agree with you folk, best we keep Vishmitali as an occassional surprise on other landmasses, and as people trying to reach each other once inside. And of course, as not extremely armed.

-For the decay: This theme I suggested may not be necessary, this isn't WK40K. Maybe they can maintain peak tech through whatever means they carried with themselves. Perhaps we can keep their decay to be social, rather than technological.

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-For the history: Maybe it's a good time to start. CB suggested a bioweapon. If we go with the genetically designed loyalty, then maybe something that fucks with the loyalty genes will work to begin an unsolvable civil war (after all, the other side's been infected with EEEEVIL!). Furthermore, if it's a pathogen, perhaps the ones in Felarya were healed on arrival, and their loyalty restored itself... but that cost them their alliances with the rest of the infected, and the uninfected factions won't trust them anyway.

Alternatively, if the bioweapon was a contagion, perhaps it can be something so virulent that even Felarya only renders it dormant. That way the faction currently inside has no choice but to stay in the jungle, because if they ever leave the realm, the pathogen will resume its course. The other warring factions will still see them as goddamn lepers.

Stabs wrote:

-For the decay: This theme I suggested may not be necessary, this isn't WK40K. Maybe they can maintain peak tech through whatever means they carried with themselves. Perhaps we can keep their decay to be social, rather than technological.

My thoughts for their decay was primarily industrial and logistical. Their main limit is that they cannot make any new proper ships above frigate size, and even the frigates are a major issue to build, because not only do they have to recreate the dock and scaffold from scratch, but they also have to redesign the ship and manufacturing processes from the ground up do build the ship in atmo and under gravity (lesser issues include limited amounts of non-Felaryan material and interference from others, though a battlecruiser will keep even the most determined predator far, far away); ultimately, they're limited in the size of the fleet they can bring to bear. It doesn't help that any expansion has been on grounded structures instead of making new ships, so they're nowhere near as mobile as they'd like to be.

I would accept that kind of decay, Gamma. Now, for the rest, I'd like to think about how do the Vishmitals deal with their extrafelaryan counterparts, or rather, if. Do the people from the nation think of them as kindred, or do they think that they are no longer vishmitals?

Do they trade? Through the gate, I assume, given we're thinking making Felarya-fall fries their warp drives, so it's either that, or dropping supply boxes one-way like they were powerups. If they use the gates, the Maggios get to monitor what the vishmitals trade with their offworld friends, perhaps even leverage with the offworlders. Using intermediaries might be a good idea there, though if the intermediaries aren't loyal to them fer w'ever reason, the Negavian guv'mint might still have an in to toy with their good friends.

Does beg the question, though- how do the vishmitali deal with magic? They seem to be a mostly technological faction, and those are simple when there's no magic in a setting. But how do we enforce them staying technological when the only real way in and out of Felarya depends on magic? It's pervasive in the setting.

I'm not sure how much detail we want to go into with their history. The basics of it, though, are that we have a small remnant of their empire in Felarya, and it's all gone downhill since their world got blown up.

We'll need some of Karbo's input for this.

Stabs wrote:

I would accept that kind of decay, Gamma. Now, for the rest, I'd like to think about how do the Vishmitals deal with their extrafelaryan counterparts, or rather, if. Do the people from the nation think of them as kindred, or do they think that they are no longer vishmitals?

Here's a better question with that stabs, How are you going to know where the other vishmital are if you don't know where they went after a mid transit faster than light travel. As far as people from their original universe, they think of them as dead. To the people that came from the felarya faction then went outside felarya, wouldn't they still be vishmital because they got scent from the hierachy to go out in the first place?

Stabs wrote:

Do they trade? Through the gate, I assume, given we're thinking making Felarya-fall fries their warp drives, so it's either that, or dropping supply boxes one-way like they were powerups. If they use the gates, the Maggios get to monitor what the vishmitals trade with their offworld friends, perhaps even leverage with the offworlders. Using intermediaries might be a good idea there, though if the intermediaries aren't loyal to them fer w'ever reason, the Negavian guv'mint might still have an in to toy with their good friends.

The initial fleet insertion failed their dimensional drives. Anyone from that large fleet they used to have (which was all of them) had their dimensional drives fail. Now to explain why fleets come in at different times to bulk up the population. You could say the dimensional flux to travel through is an anomaly itself. Like Even though a fleet popped out on the plane at one point, another fleet could pop in a few decades later but have it only feel like minutes to them, and only because that particular incident made it feasible not to mention it wasn't a controlled incident either.

Now this is where it gets complicated...Vishmital supposedly make up most the security, so to say magiocrats have a complete handle on the trade factor is...Kind of redundant and contradictory of the other faction controls all the security of what comes in and out of the city and gate. You got to remember also that with in the Negav government, there are some nobles and such that personally like to get favor from the vishmitals to get away with thing for trade and technology exploitation and acquisition.

Stabs wrote:

Does beg the question, though- how do the vishmitali deal with magic? They seem to be a mostly technological faction, and those are simple when there's no magic in a setting. But how do we enforce them staying technological when the only real way in and out of Felarya depends on magic? It's pervasive in the setting

You don't you can go a lot of ways with this. The Magiocrats don't like to use hard technology so they culturally embezzle the stuff to keep the citizens that are loyal or liked by them to keep using magic, same thing goes with technology. Vishmital tell their people to keep using tech but not to be strangers to magic. The in between of people that wan't to use technology or magic are the more experimental folk. Stories and comics could revolve around them trying to get use to that kind of lifestyle. After all, magic is supposedly in everyone or untapped once they enter felarya.

Also I wouldn't say the only way to enter in an out of felarya is magic. If you look at the Delurians, miritans, Hat's UHC, and any other technological race that has set ground, they use portals (Though not as large as the gate) to get by, If your a technological race seeing another technological race do that, you're going to try and reverse engineer that tech. The only issue with the vishmital is that they have know home to hail too, And if one of the large pockets from the fleet scattering managed to make a fleet itself offworld, how would you know where they are? Did the vishmital try to find their scattered fleet off world with broken dimensional drives (Not transdimensional or warp drives being broken) to find the others? That could still be a lingering and ongoing endeavor with the present or current timeline.

Stabs wrote:

I'm not sure how much detail we want to go into with their history. The basics of it, though, are that we have a small remnant of their empire in Felarya, and it's all gone downhill since their world got blown up.

I'm continuously writing it out in detail, should keep checking on it often when you can. (Very slow I admit, lol history isn't my strong suit to remember or make up on the whim to make it meaningful or eventful...

Stabs wrote:

So a billion people in a thousand motherships, as you said, Gamma, doesn't sound like the right scope for their presence for Felarya. I'd rather there weren't dozens of 'em regrouping, that we avoided making well-armed flotillas. I'd even go so far as to suggest that we avoid making each "mothership" carry more than 10k people, so that random settlements did not get too huge: Negav's around the 250k-1M people range anyway (Unless you count tinies).

So Stabs. I suggest with this part we be more specific. As to what ships made it in through each wave and how much of a presence there actually is. 10k people doesn't sound bad if you make it in the right context to fit in the setting in my opinion, we personally need to play around with that more. As far as I'm aware, i could have sword karbo said several times that negav is near the million range, even the wiki implies that. So it wouldn't be too big if the vishmital even made 1/10th or even 1/5th of the population. Long as they are an influential minority that effects the politics of the others to get away with some stuff while still being damned and contending with the magiocrat policies.

However camping outside of Negav gives them more freedom to do as they please and i'm pretty sure the magiocrats would see that as a asset to their cause anyways. The less of them inside negav the more they have control of over it. Infact I can imagine some B.S. the magiocrat can make up to either sway or encourage the Vishmital to make population pilgrimages and encourage them to expand outside of negav. Hence the outpost (agreeing with vix here that it should be called a base). And several or more towns that we don't know of that they affiliate or directly control. In the magiocrats eyes this would be them thinning themselves out, in the vishmitals eyes this would be the ideal of expanding their reach where ever they are at in the universe to make the empire vast and grand again. You can look at one or the other as bad or good.

That base though...That really needs work in how it was formed, A ship force landing there and then building around it doesn't sound like a bad idea.