Your support makes Blue Moon possible (Patreon)InfiniteSpace
InfiniteSpace is a science-fiction roleplay concerned with the themes and enthusiasms of transhumanism. This means an exploration of the issues of the separation between body and mind, between memory and identity, and between self and other; it also means gee-whiz technomagical escapism. Either pole of this spectrum is equally welcome.
This first post has been re-worked with a focus on character creation and the prevention of choice paralysis.
The Shadowed Garden: Character Regions
Ours is the end of childhood; outside the cradle of our far-flung race, we reach out to grasp the hand of our shadows.
-Heth-Gebar 347
The dominion of our worlds is as nothing to the space within our myriad minds; we are kings of infinite space, save that, when we look on the garden we have departed, our dreams are a harrowing.
-Tserchi of Triton
Earth Exile: Your character has their origin in the ruins of earth, now a twisted no-man's land populated by the mutated and insane products of memetic weaponry.As an Earth Exile, you must decide how you react to mankind's exile existence; identifying yourself as such marks you as someone not fully integrated into the society of the worlds settled after the diaspora.
Child of Ares: As a citizen of the red planet, you belong to a society that is the after-product of decades of brutal ideological conflict; ultimately, no one faction survived, all giving way to a rising tide of anarchy. Areans embrace augmentation and revel in artistry and decadence; they value excellence in all things. You may extoll the virtues of anarchy and choice of body, or you may rebel against them- but your heritage is freedom and conflict.
Jovian: As a citizen of Jupiter, you are a member of the Jovian military- an organization with one goal, and one only. To reclaim the mother planet. At their worst, obsessive and violent, at their best determined and inspirational, the Jovians are the greatest warriors of the new solar system. You may embrace this holy edict- or cast it aside as a sword for hire.
Titanian: Titan is a world of order and democracy; possessed of neither the militarism of Jupiter, or the anarchy of Mars. Titan's attitudes and mores change from year to year, and even from moment to moment- but it is these attitudes that influence its citizenry. Here, social pressure and social capital is king. As a Titanian, you may be a consummate manipulator or a shunned loner- but networks are the world in which you live.
Hermian: The only world within the orbit of earth to have survived the diaspora more or less unscathed, harsh and cunning mercury is the source of ships, metals, bodies, and innovation; a crucible for strong minds and hard hearts. Hermians are prideful and byzantine, prickly and uncompromising- terrible foes and wonderful friends. As a Hermian, how has the forge tempered you?
Lunarian: Mere miles from the mother world, you hang unsteadily by a thread of shielding against the hungry ideas that infest the Earth. Clinging to biological life, living in tunnels and cracking air and water from rock, the Lunarian existence is harsh, but for some, fulfilling; sifting carefully through the detritus of earth's last days to wring as much history as can be from it.
Spacer: A life in zero gravity makes you a true product of the times; cased in a utilitarian shell to work, donning another body to play, living far beyond the confines of any society, in the darkness between worlds. Yours is the long haul, the big score, the rock rats and ring dives. Few rewards, but few needs; a spacer often has a great deal of time to pursue their passions, whatever they may be.
Shell, Sea, and Shadow
The first was a weaver, drawing out threads,
Who neglected to notice he'd quite lost his head;
The second, a soldier, the servant of blood,
Who couldn't recall that he'd quite stemmed the flood;
The third was a poet, and as you can see,
He's better than others- in short, he is me.
-Traditional Titan Ballad
The one quality that cannot be duplicated is primacy; one, and only one, of our selves is first and original.
-Uakamlav Tk-pembar
Three technologies dominate the personal reality of the future, each with its own possibilities and price.
The first is the Shell, an artificial body constructed to meet the desires of its inhabitant. A Shell can duplicate the human form in its unchanged state; it can take on the shape of animals, or spiritual beings; it can be obviously artificial or partially biological. The only limits to the Shell are imagination, environment, and social pressure; few capabilities are entirely impossible.
The second is the Sea, a consensual unreality that pervades all places humans exist. Within the Sea, humanity has even fewer limitations; the impossible is simply a matter of will, time and space, a matter of perception. Many exist entirely within its confines, living a hundred lifetimes at compressed scales to emerge reborn. Ultimately, the mind and soul of a Shell, and the memories of its inhabitant, exist within a single mote of the greater Sea, as a digitized consciousness.
The third is the Shadow, the duplication and editing of the self by means of the sea. Many people cast numerous shadows; some cast none, existing as one being in one body. Nearly all retain at least one Shadow as proof against that final spectre of all previous ages, physical death- and so long as even one Shadow remains, death is, in a sense, trivial.
None of these technologies are without their price.
The shape of the soul conforms to the flesh, even flesh of steel. Those who inhabit warrior forms, or the great bodies that sail, shipless, between worlds, may as well be of a different species, unable to relate to the thoughts of the frail bipeds they once were. While resources are no concern, skill in the construction of Shells is not universal; the despised, the unknown, and the unlucky cannot reach the heights that artisans of flesh and metal craft for themselves and those with whom they choose to share their fruits.
The Sea is vast, and within it are great benevolence and great malice. Things are whispered of, monstrous, beyond the light at the edge of the fire; stolen Shadows, hijacked Shells, enemies or former lovers trapped on a a shore where time flows at a snail's pace, forever on the cusp of a scream.
For those who exist entirely as data, the spectre is greater; their entire reality subject to editing and even erasure. So long as even one copy of such an infolife exists, they cannot die, but if all are gone- not even so much as a corpse is left.
No duplicate is entirely perfect. A Shadow created as a hedge against death is the person you were, not the person you are. By accident or design, some Shadows diverge further from they that cast them- vicious Id-duplicates that possess only the darkest of one's passions, servile copies spirited away to serve indenture for the corrupt or the decadent. A single trauma can make a previously perfect Shadow into an entirely different person; a single joy can transform them just as completely.
Seeds
Where there is no want, there is no peace.
- 36 Negative
The only law has always been courtesy.
- The Titan Rover's First Maxim
The worlds of mankind are places of plenty, and even luxury; the transmutation of matter to matter, of matter to energy, is a perfected science. Resources of one kind are equivalent to all kinds- to carbon, and then upward again. Only the total mass of the worlds available to him limits mankind's ambition, and this limit is, as we write, far away.
Even as mankind can produce more than ever before, he requires less; many Shells need not eat, breathe, or sleep; modern power sources are self-contained and ubiquitous. The modern citizen requires virtually nothing from whatever power they may claim as protector.
Even in the most inhospitable conditions- the vessels that span the worlds being a good example- nanocreches are capable of providing luxurious meals, fuel from interplanetary dust, and of recycling their products with no loss; the captain of a ship may wear a different uniform each day without qualm.
From these seeds, then, mankind is far-flung as never before; when all resources can be produced from raw mass, and the vast majority of products are publicly available templates, only the speed of light and the dissemination of fact and fiction limit his expansion.
The degree to which this technology produces the expected decadence varies; the warrens of Luna and the fortresses of Jupiter have sufficiently strong cultures of, respectively, reverence and discipline, that only necessities are produced by their nanotechnologic forges.
On Mars, vast vanity projects spanning miles are not uncommon; the swapping of bodies each day, the production of vast spaces for living or for artistic purposes, flourish.
On Titan, every citizen lives in comfort and security, and variety is the order of the day; but no citizen is so ostentatious as even a restrained Arean- the pressures of community are too great.
The Elegances
In a previous age, my pleasures would have required murder. As it stands, they require only memory.
- 5th of Ares
I stand upon the rock of your sensation,
Your eyes roaming across my skin.
-Tserchi of Triton
In a future without privation, it should come as no surprise that pleasure has been elevated to the status of an art.
In addition to the mundane pleasures possible even to the fundamentally human, a number of sophisticated variations on human sexuality have emerged to take advantage of the new technologies.
Shells specifically adapted for sensual purposes are far from uncommon. In its simplest form, this may simply be the maintenance of the body's appearance at the peak of health; with regular care, Shells need not age. More sophisticated individuals may choose to increase their shell's sensorium, allowing them to experience life in a more intense fashion- perceiving every nuance of touch, sound, and scent. Customized genitalia are a regular feature of even commercially produced shells, ranging from simple increases in size or flexibility to additional members or cilliae. The majority of shells include an adjustable degree of conscious control for all functions, including the blood flow and recirculation of the genitals. Orgasm, as popularly understood, can be reached voluntarily at any time and extended to whatever degree the user wishes.
More outlandish forms, featuring tentacles, animalistic forms, transforming extremities, or multiple limbs, are widely available, if less common than standard humanoid frames. Removable or remotely operable components are standard features of many 'pleasure shells', and can be retrofitted for even the most off-the-shelf body.
As sensorial and command data within a shell is entirely digitized, a popular subset of sexual behaviors involve mutual, the sharing or transfer of data or control. Numerous variations exist. Sensorial Mutual involves the sharing of sense-impressions between partners; the process can be one-way, with one partner experiencing both their own and the subject's sensations, or two-way, with both partners aware of each other's sensorium simultaneously. Mutual parties, with all participants opening their sensoria, are a particularly extreme form of this pleasure. Control Mutual involves the transfer of control over some portion of the Shell's functionality to a partner, and has the same one-way and two-way variants as the sensorial type. Common, simple Control Mutual may involve control over the sensations of pleasure or pain, or over data from senses- for instance sight, or hearing. More extreme variations transfer control of motor functions, or even autonomic functions, allowing a partner to introduce brief interruptions in the ability to breathe or the beating of the heart. Switch Mutual, sometimes known as full transfer, is a variant of two-way mutual wherein sense impressions or Shell control are transferred fully to the opposite party, as opposed to simply shared.
Fetishistic behaviors involving the Sea are also common. As a function of the adjustable perception of time inherent to Sea immersion, Lacuna is a widespread practice, allowing lovers with busy schedules to experience days or months in minutes or hours of real time. Similarly, Lethe involves the manipulation of memory data, most of which is stored in the Sea rather than within the shell itself; in it, either or both partners agree to erase all memory of a specific encounter or encounters, allowing more shy individuals to engage in entirely consequence-free actions. Magical or fantastical situations, conducted either through one-to-one or heavily edited avatars, are also entirely possible and quite common. Utilizing a Sea overlay to edit sensorial data in real-time- for instance, to obscure identity or replace the face of a partner with another, is entirely possible, if less widely practiced than full immersion.
Most activities involving the Shadowing procedure are variants of simple polygamy; many a couple boasts a harem made up entirely of Shadows of their spouse. Edited or partial shadows offer more possibilities. Shadows can be engineered for servility or violent defiance, awestruck devotion or blind lust. Shadows that embody some particular repressed tendency are especially common- whether this be an alternative sexual orientation, a sadistic or masochistic compulsion, or even a more extreme paraphilia. The ethics are such practices are still a subject for debate, usually making 'shadow pleasures' a private matter.
Character Creation
InfiniteSpace is a roleplay concerned with the pleasures and horrors of a far, transhuman future in which the earth, and with it all we know, is abandoned, and mankind's bodies and souls are caged in metal and biomechanism. It contains strong elements of sexuality and sensual pleasure, but deepens and burdens those elements with the questions of ethics and identities raised by the technologies of that far future. Character sheets for InfiniteSpace should use the following template.
Vital Statistics: Your character's name and age.
Description: Your character's physical appearance and personality.
Shell modifications: Any specialized or exceptional features of your character's shell. If your character is a Sea-based infolife, you may use this section to describe their avatar's capabilities.
Abilities: Your character's learned skills and capabilities.
History and Goals: A brief sketch of your character's origins and history, as well as their goals and ambitions.
Other Information: Any other information you feel is necessary regarding your character that does not fit the above categories.
InfiniteSpace is a science-fiction roleplay concerned with the themes and enthusiasms of transhumanism. This means an exploration of the issues of the separation between body and mind, between memory and identity, and between self and other; it also means gee-whiz technomagical escapism. Either pole of this spectrum is equally welcome.
This first post has been re-worked with a focus on character creation and the prevention of choice paralysis.
The Shadowed Garden: Character Regions
Ours is the end of childhood; outside the cradle of our far-flung race, we reach out to grasp the hand of our shadows.
-Heth-Gebar 347
The dominion of our worlds is as nothing to the space within our myriad minds; we are kings of infinite space, save that, when we look on the garden we have departed, our dreams are a harrowing.
-Tserchi of Triton
Earth Exile: Your character has their origin in the ruins of earth, now a twisted no-man's land populated by the mutated and insane products of memetic weaponry.As an Earth Exile, you must decide how you react to mankind's exile existence; identifying yourself as such marks you as someone not fully integrated into the society of the worlds settled after the diaspora.
Child of Ares: As a citizen of the red planet, you belong to a society that is the after-product of decades of brutal ideological conflict; ultimately, no one faction survived, all giving way to a rising tide of anarchy. Areans embrace augmentation and revel in artistry and decadence; they value excellence in all things. You may extoll the virtues of anarchy and choice of body, or you may rebel against them- but your heritage is freedom and conflict.
Jovian: As a citizen of Jupiter, you are a member of the Jovian military- an organization with one goal, and one only. To reclaim the mother planet. At their worst, obsessive and violent, at their best determined and inspirational, the Jovians are the greatest warriors of the new solar system. You may embrace this holy edict- or cast it aside as a sword for hire.
Titanian: Titan is a world of order and democracy; possessed of neither the militarism of Jupiter, or the anarchy of Mars. Titan's attitudes and mores change from year to year, and even from moment to moment- but it is these attitudes that influence its citizenry. Here, social pressure and social capital is king. As a Titanian, you may be a consummate manipulator or a shunned loner- but networks are the world in which you live.
Hermian: The only world within the orbit of earth to have survived the diaspora more or less unscathed, harsh and cunning mercury is the source of ships, metals, bodies, and innovation; a crucible for strong minds and hard hearts. Hermians are prideful and byzantine, prickly and uncompromising- terrible foes and wonderful friends. As a Hermian, how has the forge tempered you?
Lunarian: Mere miles from the mother world, you hang unsteadily by a thread of shielding against the hungry ideas that infest the Earth. Clinging to biological life, living in tunnels and cracking air and water from rock, the Lunarian existence is harsh, but for some, fulfilling; sifting carefully through the detritus of earth's last days to wring as much history as can be from it.
Spacer: A life in zero gravity makes you a true product of the times; cased in a utilitarian shell to work, donning another body to play, living far beyond the confines of any society, in the darkness between worlds. Yours is the long haul, the big score, the rock rats and ring dives. Few rewards, but few needs; a spacer often has a great deal of time to pursue their passions, whatever they may be.
Shell, Sea, and Shadow
The first was a weaver, drawing out threads,
Who neglected to notice he'd quite lost his head;
The second, a soldier, the servant of blood,
Who couldn't recall that he'd quite stemmed the flood;
The third was a poet, and as you can see,
He's better than others- in short, he is me.
-Traditional Titan Ballad
The one quality that cannot be duplicated is primacy; one, and only one, of our selves is first and original.
-Uakamlav Tk-pembar
Three technologies dominate the personal reality of the future, each with its own possibilities and price.
The first is the Shell, an artificial body constructed to meet the desires of its inhabitant. A Shell can duplicate the human form in its unchanged state; it can take on the shape of animals, or spiritual beings; it can be obviously artificial or partially biological. The only limits to the Shell are imagination, environment, and social pressure; few capabilities are entirely impossible.
The second is the Sea, a consensual unreality that pervades all places humans exist. Within the Sea, humanity has even fewer limitations; the impossible is simply a matter of will, time and space, a matter of perception. Many exist entirely within its confines, living a hundred lifetimes at compressed scales to emerge reborn. Ultimately, the mind and soul of a Shell, and the memories of its inhabitant, exist within a single mote of the greater Sea, as a digitized consciousness.
The third is the Shadow, the duplication and editing of the self by means of the sea. Many people cast numerous shadows; some cast none, existing as one being in one body. Nearly all retain at least one Shadow as proof against that final spectre of all previous ages, physical death- and so long as even one Shadow remains, death is, in a sense, trivial.
None of these technologies are without their price.
The shape of the soul conforms to the flesh, even flesh of steel. Those who inhabit warrior forms, or the great bodies that sail, shipless, between worlds, may as well be of a different species, unable to relate to the thoughts of the frail bipeds they once were. While resources are no concern, skill in the construction of Shells is not universal; the despised, the unknown, and the unlucky cannot reach the heights that artisans of flesh and metal craft for themselves and those with whom they choose to share their fruits.
The Sea is vast, and within it are great benevolence and great malice. Things are whispered of, monstrous, beyond the light at the edge of the fire; stolen Shadows, hijacked Shells, enemies or former lovers trapped on a a shore where time flows at a snail's pace, forever on the cusp of a scream.
For those who exist entirely as data, the spectre is greater; their entire reality subject to editing and even erasure. So long as even one copy of such an infolife exists, they cannot die, but if all are gone- not even so much as a corpse is left.
No duplicate is entirely perfect. A Shadow created as a hedge against death is the person you were, not the person you are. By accident or design, some Shadows diverge further from they that cast them- vicious Id-duplicates that possess only the darkest of one's passions, servile copies spirited away to serve indenture for the corrupt or the decadent. A single trauma can make a previously perfect Shadow into an entirely different person; a single joy can transform them just as completely.
Seeds
Where there is no want, there is no peace.
- 36 Negative
The only law has always been courtesy.
- The Titan Rover's First Maxim
The worlds of mankind are places of plenty, and even luxury; the transmutation of matter to matter, of matter to energy, is a perfected science. Resources of one kind are equivalent to all kinds- to carbon, and then upward again. Only the total mass of the worlds available to him limits mankind's ambition, and this limit is, as we write, far away.
Even as mankind can produce more than ever before, he requires less; many Shells need not eat, breathe, or sleep; modern power sources are self-contained and ubiquitous. The modern citizen requires virtually nothing from whatever power they may claim as protector.
Even in the most inhospitable conditions- the vessels that span the worlds being a good example- nanocreches are capable of providing luxurious meals, fuel from interplanetary dust, and of recycling their products with no loss; the captain of a ship may wear a different uniform each day without qualm.
From these seeds, then, mankind is far-flung as never before; when all resources can be produced from raw mass, and the vast majority of products are publicly available templates, only the speed of light and the dissemination of fact and fiction limit his expansion.
The degree to which this technology produces the expected decadence varies; the warrens of Luna and the fortresses of Jupiter have sufficiently strong cultures of, respectively, reverence and discipline, that only necessities are produced by their nanotechnologic forges.
On Mars, vast vanity projects spanning miles are not uncommon; the swapping of bodies each day, the production of vast spaces for living or for artistic purposes, flourish.
On Titan, every citizen lives in comfort and security, and variety is the order of the day; but no citizen is so ostentatious as even a restrained Arean- the pressures of community are too great.
The Elegances
In a previous age, my pleasures would have required murder. As it stands, they require only memory.
- 5th of Ares
I stand upon the rock of your sensation,
Your eyes roaming across my skin.
-Tserchi of Triton
In a future without privation, it should come as no surprise that pleasure has been elevated to the status of an art.
In addition to the mundane pleasures possible even to the fundamentally human, a number of sophisticated variations on human sexuality have emerged to take advantage of the new technologies.
Shells specifically adapted for sensual purposes are far from uncommon. In its simplest form, this may simply be the maintenance of the body's appearance at the peak of health; with regular care, Shells need not age. More sophisticated individuals may choose to increase their shell's sensorium, allowing them to experience life in a more intense fashion- perceiving every nuance of touch, sound, and scent. Customized genitalia are a regular feature of even commercially produced shells, ranging from simple increases in size or flexibility to additional members or cilliae. The majority of shells include an adjustable degree of conscious control for all functions, including the blood flow and recirculation of the genitals. Orgasm, as popularly understood, can be reached voluntarily at any time and extended to whatever degree the user wishes.
More outlandish forms, featuring tentacles, animalistic forms, transforming extremities, or multiple limbs, are widely available, if less common than standard humanoid frames. Removable or remotely operable components are standard features of many 'pleasure shells', and can be retrofitted for even the most off-the-shelf body.
As sensorial and command data within a shell is entirely digitized, a popular subset of sexual behaviors involve mutual, the sharing or transfer of data or control. Numerous variations exist. Sensorial Mutual involves the sharing of sense-impressions between partners; the process can be one-way, with one partner experiencing both their own and the subject's sensations, or two-way, with both partners aware of each other's sensorium simultaneously. Mutual parties, with all participants opening their sensoria, are a particularly extreme form of this pleasure. Control Mutual involves the transfer of control over some portion of the Shell's functionality to a partner, and has the same one-way and two-way variants as the sensorial type. Common, simple Control Mutual may involve control over the sensations of pleasure or pain, or over data from senses- for instance sight, or hearing. More extreme variations transfer control of motor functions, or even autonomic functions, allowing a partner to introduce brief interruptions in the ability to breathe or the beating of the heart. Switch Mutual, sometimes known as full transfer, is a variant of two-way mutual wherein sense impressions or Shell control are transferred fully to the opposite party, as opposed to simply shared.
Fetishistic behaviors involving the Sea are also common. As a function of the adjustable perception of time inherent to Sea immersion, Lacuna is a widespread practice, allowing lovers with busy schedules to experience days or months in minutes or hours of real time. Similarly, Lethe involves the manipulation of memory data, most of which is stored in the Sea rather than within the shell itself; in it, either or both partners agree to erase all memory of a specific encounter or encounters, allowing more shy individuals to engage in entirely consequence-free actions. Magical or fantastical situations, conducted either through one-to-one or heavily edited avatars, are also entirely possible and quite common. Utilizing a Sea overlay to edit sensorial data in real-time- for instance, to obscure identity or replace the face of a partner with another, is entirely possible, if less widely practiced than full immersion.
Most activities involving the Shadowing procedure are variants of simple polygamy; many a couple boasts a harem made up entirely of Shadows of their spouse. Edited or partial shadows offer more possibilities. Shadows can be engineered for servility or violent defiance, awestruck devotion or blind lust. Shadows that embody some particular repressed tendency are especially common- whether this be an alternative sexual orientation, a sadistic or masochistic compulsion, or even a more extreme paraphilia. The ethics are such practices are still a subject for debate, usually making 'shadow pleasures' a private matter.
Character Creation
InfiniteSpace is a roleplay concerned with the pleasures and horrors of a far, transhuman future in which the earth, and with it all we know, is abandoned, and mankind's bodies and souls are caged in metal and biomechanism. It contains strong elements of sexuality and sensual pleasure, but deepens and burdens those elements with the questions of ethics and identities raised by the technologies of that far future. Character sheets for InfiniteSpace should use the following template.
Vital Statistics: Your character's name and age.
Description: Your character's physical appearance and personality.
Shell modifications: Any specialized or exceptional features of your character's shell. If your character is a Sea-based infolife, you may use this section to describe their avatar's capabilities.
Abilities: Your character's learned skills and capabilities.
History and Goals: A brief sketch of your character's origins and history, as well as their goals and ambitions.
Other Information: Any other information you feel is necessary regarding your character that does not fit the above categories.
