Building an Evolving Sentience

[Thia Halmades]

Howdy y'all. As I continue work on HALO HERO, and continue to do research, I came across a really cool interpretation of the Flood and how they operate in Halo Graphic Novel. Simply, not unlike 'Aliens,' if there is no controlling sentience present, the Flood will create one. In HALO 2, this sentience is called Gravemind. Gravemind is a rapidly learning and expanding sentience - like AMAZO, which is what I'm trying to model. There are a few things I want to do here.

 

1) Gravemind is massive, and like all Flood, combat capable. It also has the genetic imprint of what it knows it must do (consume). Size & combat prowess are easy. There's also a chance that it's psionic, but I don't have enough information to determine that yet.

 

2) Like insects, Gravemind is connected to all Flood in its 'zone' - which gives in Mindlink, All Flood (+2). Much like a Queen Ant, or an Alien Queen. The Flood Infection Forms create 'worker drones' from the corpses of the people they kill (humans or elites).

 

3) The Gravemind is the repository for ALL that knowledge. As the Flood learns, the Gravemind learns. It learned how to speak English in HALO 2 by absorbing who knows which soldiers - but it spoke it. I believe it spoke it in Iambic Pentameter, but that's a separate problem.

 

The VPP model allows me to say "This Flood Form learns everything this dead dude knew. Cool." How do I model the 'rapidly expanding knowledge base' similar to a character like AMAZO? What's the best way? Yes, I know I can handwave it, but as I've said before, I learn faster by doing, and one thing this project has been great for is forcing me to learn groovy things.

 

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: Building an Evolving Sentience

 

1) Leave a block of unspent points during creature creation, then spend them on an as-needed basis for the new skills it learns. You may want to consider also purachsing all the Skill Enhancers for the creature to make the block of unspent points go further.

 

2) A VPP for Skills (usually NOT reccomended)

 

3) Cramming bought multiple times.

 

4) A Transform on self into self with the new Skill. (Normally Transform is not supposed to be able to give a skill the entity doing the transform doesn't have, but in this case you'd only be doing skills that are possessed by a Flood to which Gravemind is Mindlinked, so I suspect you could get away with it.)

 

 

...off the top of my head.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Building an Evolving Sentience

 

Hey Scott, thanks for chiming in - I was hoping you would be among the people responding. Going in order of your suggestions:

 

1) This was the opening obvious one, which I consider (in my way) a variation on the VPP model. I remember asking about the VPP Skill Concept (2) earlier on when I first got here, and was told outright that it isn't recommended because it IS so efficient. But leaving points unspent raises the question of "How many?" and "up to what level?" For example, can Gravemind expand on the knowledges it picks up? That's the big question. A VPP would better model that as it would allow Gravemind to expand everything as necessary.

 

3) This I hadn't considered. I don't know if it'll work, i.e., if it really fits the concept, but I see how it could (I see where you're coming from).

 

4) One of the nasty things about Transform is that it always requires a RETURN CONDITION - which is possibly the only thing that I don't like about the power, although at the same time (other than the cost) it's the only thing keeping it in check.

 

When I went to mimic the d20 Barghest I built it as a Transform, although it perhaps should have been a Multiform, because the Barghest doesn't "go back" to its original state after consuming corpses - it just gets bigger & stronger.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: Building an Evolving Sentience

 

4) One of the nasty things about Transform is that it always requires a RETURN CONDITION - which is possibly the only thing that I don't like about the power, although at the same time (other than the cost) it's the only thing keeping it in check.

 

When I went to mimic the d20 Barghest I built it as a Transform, although it perhaps should have been a Multiform, because the Barghest doesn't "go back" to its original state after consuming corpses - it just gets bigger & stronger.

True, but you can define the return condition as an all-or-nothing of your choosing. Normally you'd have to get it past the GM, but in this case...

 

So you could define the return condition as "exposed to a tailored retrovirus that removes all information acquired via the ingestion of a sentient" and just apply that to include information it picked up from the Flood that actually did the ingesting.

 

Now, one thing to consider with Multiform... you can be forced back into your base form there, too, so that's not necessarily a protection. However, in the example of the Hydra, they use Duplication with a "Cannot Recombine" Limitation to represent the multiple heads (and there being no way to make it spontaneously revert to a single head). If you want to go that route, do something similar with Multiform with "Cannot Revert To Base State (-0)". Then make the form it becomes more powerful than the base form, leaving some of the points defined only as skills, just not WHICH skills, and define them as appropriate when it changes into its Multiform. Just make sure THAT form ALSO has a Multiform into a bigger, more powerful (more skilled) state, ALSO with "Cannot Revert" as a Limitation, and so on. Normally "nesting" things like that is a no-no, or only with GM permission... but again, why would that be a problem in this case?

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Building an Evolving Sentience

 

Hrm. Transform, Gravemind into Gravemind + Additional Skill, Return Condition: Destruction of Gravemind (a construct of Flood) into normal Flood.

 

It's cheatery, but it works. Considering that the Flood basically 'create' a Gravemind, it would be reasonable that Gravemind's return condition is being blasted back to its component atoms, forcing the Flood to create (and train) a new Gravemind.

 

Thoughts?