The Three-Fold
Path
Around
5800 a.t. a
small fleet of 5 colony ships entered an unremarkable system in what
was then
the periphery of Terragen
expansion. The system, which they named
‘Utochishte’,
contained only one planet – a bloated gas giant close to the
star. Using the
asteroids trapped in the gas giant’s gravity well they
started building
habitats.
The
colonists were a
diverse mix of nearbaseline
clades united under a common
religion/philosophy
they called ‘The Three-Fold Path’. The Walkers, as
they called themselves,
believed that each individual has three souls - Individual, Clan, and
Cultural
– and that Terragen civilization at large was corrosive to
all of them.
Specifically, each soul was associated with a virtue that a person had
to
follow to keep it healthy: Simplicity (Individual), Harmony (Clan), and
Tradition (Cultural). As is often the case, these names hid enormous
complexity
within themselves, and the Walkers have written extensive theological
works on
the topic.
In line
with the
virtue of Simplicity, the Walkers eschewed cybernetics, all-pervasive
ufog, augmented reality,
“smart”
clothes, heavy automation, and other “complicating”
technologies. Everything
was to be as passive and “dumb” as they could make
it, though the extent of
this simplification varied from Culture to Culture – one
Culture might use
reconfigurable ufog furniture and a helper robot or two as something
that makes
life simpler, while another might consider this bordering on heresy.
Too much
complexity was thought to corrode away the individual soul of a being.
The Walkers believed that
direct mind-machine
interfaces were particularly damaging – each time an
individual interfaces
directly with a machine, their soul "diffuses" into it, leaving the
individual in question "spiritually empty" by the ordeal.
In line
with the
virtue of Harmony, the Walkers formed
small groups of five to twelve people,
called clans. The
clan was the main social unit, and it was considered essential for
every
individual to closely share beliefs with eir clan-mates. Non-conformity
to the
clan’s rules was not tolerated, but individuals were free to
leave and find a
clan more to their liking. Individuals without a clan were social
outcasts in
every sense of the word, so they tended to form new clans with other
outcasts.
Family units were temporary and very narrow – parents and
children lived
together until the children became adults, after which the whole
structure
tended to dissolve.
Finally, in line with the virtue of Tradition, the Walkers were divided into Cultures. Frequently
a habitat contained a single Culture, but some habitats held more than
one.
Each culture was a loose alliance of like-minded clans with similar
aesthetic
and philosophical sensibilities. Acting in accordance with the
ideological framework
of your Culture was considered essentially to the health of an
individual’s
Cultural soul. Despite this, a particular Culture represented a shared
tradition, not dogma, giving individual clans a fair bit of leeway in
their
interpretation of prevalent tradition, depending on how closely they
were
entangled with other clans (and which particular clans).
Each clan
built
connections with other clans by exchanging members, trading expertise
and
entertainment, and having similar views of their Culture’s
tradition. As a
consequence Cultures were more of a network of clans than a
hierarchical
organization: there was a core consisting of tightly interconnected
clans that
would be more uniform in their following of tradition, and a
‘cloud’ of clans
that gravitated towards them. Clans that could not conform to the
strict tenets
of their Culture would gravitate towards the edges of the cloud. The
core clans
were the ones running things, and the less influential clans didn't
have much
say in the matters of importance but were usually not forced to change
their behavior.
Pre-Contact
Culture:
Determined
to start
anew, the colonists deleted nearly all records of Terragen
culture once
they
entered the system and confirmed it was viable for development. They
practiced
no organized record-keeping, and most of their history was noted in the
form of
artwork and entertainment, done by poets and artists who put their own
personal
slant, as well as the slant of their own Culture and Clan, in it. In
addition,
the Walkers would unfailingly ‘translate’ outside
sources, when they came, into
something more ideologically palatable to their own Culture and Clan,
and
similarly ‘update’ any historical records they
still possessed, which meant
that the further one goes into Walker past, the less reliable the
records
become.
As a
consequence, little is known about events
before NoCoZo
prospecting probes established
contact with the Walkers and researchers from the bulk of the Terragen
civilization started to take interest. Archeological research has
yielded some
results, and a certain amount of reliability can be achieved by
cross-referencing different accounts for similarities, but many details
are speculation.
Almost without exception all detailed reconstructions are disputed by
one or
more authorities as having been slanted in favor of some special
interest, but
there are some general details about the pre-contact history of
Utochishte that
are generally agreed upon.
After a
relatively brief
consolidation period, the Walkers began rapidly developing Utochishte
system,
building new habitats and experiencing fast population growth.
Unfortunately,
Three-Fold Path was a philosophy ill-suited to
manage the
complexities of the large populations that came with this growth, which
created
friction between the needs to
adopt more effective practices and the desire to remain true to the
orthodox Path.
Combined with the Walker
social structure, which motivated the most radical clans to migrate to
new
habitats, this led to noticeable memetic drift between each successive
generation. Over the next 500 years, their memetic started to slowly
but surely
splinter and drift apart. The younger generations did not abandon the
Three-Fold Path; indeed, they considered their memetic to be merely an
updated,
better interpretation of the original philosophy.
The core
clans did
their best to ignore the clans that acted against orthodox teachings,
treating
them as permanent social outcasts. As liberalization pressures
increased, the core
clans responded by interfering more directly, causing the outcast clans
in the
cloud to gravitate into their own cores for protection. This, in turn,
created
massive amounts of competition between proto-cores in the cloud, each
one
trying to subsume the others to become a full-fledged core. The result
was a fracturing
of traditional core-cloud social dynamics into a new social structure
consisting
of a dozen or so cores in each Culture, each trying to gain dominance.
This
social upheaval disturbed older, more orthodox habitats, and they
essentially
cut ties with their heretical offspring.
As the
competition for
converts and influence between the cores increased, they started
searching for an
advantage that would not alienate their more moderate members. Two
particular
things aided them in this regard. One was
an
interpretation of the Three-Fold Path that gained prominence in this
era: Subjective
Simplicity Postulation. The postulation posited that an
individual’s soul is
not harmed by complexity as long as it doesn't experience it.
Biological
beings, for instance, are very complex but most of the processes happen
in the
background without the sophonts in question noticing them. This
gradually
developed into a quasi-bioist idea that complexity is not bad as long
as it is
biological. The
second catalyst was
connected to the Walker
conception of art. The Walkers often undertook relatively complicated
efforts
in order to produce art: visual entertainment, song, sculpting,
architecture, fashion,
dancing and martial arts, written works… For various
reasons, this was not
considered damaging to an individual’s soul, but actually
enriching. As a
consequence, many radical clans found it effective to
‘rebrand’ previously
frowned-upon practices as art.
Combining
those two
together, more radical clans began practising genetic engineering. The
nearbaseline
form was kept intact, at first, but as time went on more radical
transformations
begun to happen. These augmentations were always decided upon
collectively by
the whole clan, rather than individuals deciding freely which gene-mods
to
utilize.
Society
of
Inspiration:
In 7324
a.t., when the
first explorers established contact with the inhabitants of Utochishte,
the
original ‘orthodox’ religion of the Three-Fold Path
was extinct, and only 30%
of the system population were nearbaselines; the rest was composed of
various
tweak and neogen clades. No claim of unified identity could be
plausibly made
at this point – the inhabitants did not even refer to
themselves as ‘Walkers’
anymore, and there were hundreds of competing schools of thought
descendant
from the Three-Fold Path.
Utochishte
began to
receive a steady stream of tourists, researchers, and traders, mostly
from the
NoCoZo and the Sophic League. Although some concerned factions from the
Sophic
League and elsewhere complained about exploitation and dissolution of
Utochishte culture, most of the Utochishte natives themselves had no
desire to
be sheltered or protected. Their habit of routinely converting all
outside
sources into something more aligned with their memetic, as well as
their
emphasis on clans over individuals, produced a culture relatively
resistant to
memetic manipulation.
Despite
this, contact
with the bulk of Terragen civilization produced considerable changes
and further
shockwaves in the social landscape, causing more traditional elements
to
further isolate themselves – something that became more and
more difficult as
time went by.
Around
7600 a.t., a
polity called ‘Society of Inspiration’ was founded
in the system. Marketed as
“NeoOrthodoxy updated with modern insights”, the
Society claimed that “the real
world is an ill-fitting medium to practice the Three-Fold Path, because
it
inherently rewards those who pursue greater complexity. If a sophont is
significantly more simple than eir neighbours, they can understand em
more
readily and thus manipulate em. Using complex technologies to improve
themselves, sophonts willing to sacrifice their souls for power could
become
far more capable and persuasive than a devoted follower of the
Three-Fold Path.
Thus the true environment to walk the Three-Fold Path in is a virtual
one.” While
traditional Walkers considered uploading to be equivalent to DNI, the
Society
of Inspiration invoked the Subjective Simplicity Postulation, claiming
that
since uploading doesn't extend an individual’s
identity into something else
(like DNI), there is no harm in it. Instead, uploading merely changes
one’s
local reality, shielding one from complexity.
The
Society
constructed large computronium
nodes and uploaded its members into
virches
specifically tailored for a particular Culture that inhabited it.
Sophonts
inhabiting these virches perceived themselves as nearbaselines in a
setting not
unlike the one found in ril, but with the laws of nature constructed so
as to
inhibit any technology deemed “disruptive” by the
Society.
The Dreaming
Void:
In 7920
a.t., after a
series of controversies surrounding the Society, around 50 million
uploaded
NeoOrthodoxists representing some 2000 different Cultures decided to
leave the
system.
With much
fanfare,
they built themselves a ship, which they named ‘Dreaming
Void’. Keeping in line
with the requirements of Simplicity, it was not a sophisticated
creation: it
was an oval block of ice with the computronium running the virtual
environment
buried within it. The ice served both as a dust shield during the
interstellar
voyage, and fuel for the ship’s conversion reactor. A network
of cooling
channels extended through the volume of the ice block and out to the
surface,
where the engines protruded out of one end.
The
Society publicly
identified a system at the frontier as its destination, stating their
intention
to colonize the system. In reality their target was a relatively empty
region
of space roughly intersecting their path. After boosting up to a
relatively
modest speed of 0.4c, the Dreaming
Void spent the next century coasting
until it
was determined that it was time to slow down. At this point the
Dreaming Void
deployed a magsail to decelerate the ship and also bend their course
away from
their original heading. Once the magsail stopped being effective at
slowing
down the ship, the Dreaming Void
pointed its engines away
from the home system
and slowed down to negligible speeds with its conversion
drive. With the ship
aimed away from the center of Terragen expansion and slowly drifting
through
empty space, it was supposed to be essentially undetectable, lost in
the void. Had
everything gone as
planned, this would have been the last anyone heard of them.
Back at
Utochishte,
NeoOrthodoxy ran its course and faded from relevance, but various
entertainment
works, art, and philosophical dissertations that streamed out of the
system
occasionally sparked the revival of the Three-Fold Path in other
systems.
Sometimes these new converts would come to Utochishte, often trying to
find the
old, “authentic” followers. Combing through old
records, once such group found
references to the Dreaming Void
and deduced what their real intention
was by
finding clues unintentionally left by the crew before they departed.
The group
used the Dreaming Void in
their memetic campaigns, after which other
groups
picked up the concept and used it for their own ends. As time
progressed, the
ship and its crew were heavily romanticized by various sects, turning
them into
nigh-mythical figures that established a paradise somewhere in the
emptiness
between the stars.
Eventually
a group of
out-system pilgrims, backed by media traders hoping to get their hands
on novel
cultural material, organized a search for the Dreaming Void. After
extrapolating their path and finding the region of space they were
likely in, the
pilgrims found the Dreaming Void
silently drifting in the dark, still
operational
and performing its intended purpose.
Since that time, a
steady stream of pilgrims visited the Dreaming Temple
– a computronium
scaffolding built around the ship. Temple
monks, all uploads, maintain that no embodied being is to approach the
Holy
Ark, lest they defile it with their profane touch. There is
infrastructure allowing
visitors to beam themselves into the computronium of the temple, and
the monks
generally welcome any upload that petitions a visit, unless they want
to commit
(or the monks believe they wish to commit) some kind of transgression:
harm or
“liberate” the Dreamers, upload themselves into the
Dreaming Void, edit the core
operations of the virch, etc.
Due to
the way the
virch was made, it is virtually impossible to tell exactly what
happened during
the flight of the Dreaming Void
and its subsequent time spent in
solitary
operations – the virches of the Dreaming
Void leave little
trace of past events
and the monks of the Dreaming
Temple
forbid any
tampering with the underlying automatic processes.
The
virtual environment
of the Dreaming Void is
divided into millions of mini-universes that
share some
common rules and characteristics. All virches posses low granularity:
if
something is imperceptible to unaided nearbaselines senses in ril, it
doesn't
exist in the Dreaming Void. Many technologies simply don’t
work within the
virches of the Dreaming Void, and the landscape, if heavily altered,
will often
revert to the default state the moment it detects no observers.
Most
virches posses a
certain theme, and are uniform in style. Examples of these themes are:
1. A world of
steep but relatively short mountains, canyons, valleys and plateaus
– all of it
covered in thick, mostly evergreen forests. The virch has a change of
seasons
corresponding to that found in moderate climates of old Earth.
Inhabitants live
in large buildings (castles, manors, households…) made in a
variety of
architectural styles, scattered throughout the forests.
2. A world of
dry, dusty ruins, giving the impression of an advanced civilization
that was
destroyed in some apocalyptic event. Dreamers live either as nomadic
tribes
trying to find useful trash among the ruins, or as farming communities
gathering soil to grow food.
3. A tropical
sea of scattered islands, with Dreamers living almost exclusively on
ships.
4. A world of
huge trees with trunks 40 or so meters wide rising into the sky.
Inhabitants
live mostly among the branches, rarely coming down on the soft,
moss-covered
surface.
5. An underground
network of caverns illuminated by luminous veins that cover the cavern
walls. Fungal
forests grow along the floor of the caverns, providing food for the
Dreamers.
Controversy:
Inhabitants
of the
Dreaming Void, called Dreamers
by the monks, seem to be descendants of
the
original NeoOrthodoxists, who apparently chose to expire for some
reason, and
don’t really understand their situation. They know
they’re in a ‘dream’, but
not what exactly that means. Monks consider any attempt to explain the
Dreamer’s
position to them to be a spiritual transgression.
Virch
meta-rules were
designed to prevent outside sophonts from becoming Dreamers themselves,
but it
is possible to project an avatar/spirit from the scaffolding. Some
individuals
have found loopholes that allow them to become Dreamers, but monks of
the Dreaming
Temple
will stop and expel anyone they
catch trying to do that.
Virch
meta-rules also
actively reinforce the philosophy of the Three-Fold Path by giving each
Dreamer
three corresponding souls of the Walker
philosophy. The souls are intangible and serve to inhibit the sort of
cultural
drift that happened to the Walkers in the past. As long as they keep
their
souls in healthy condition, uploads will be happier and full of energy.
Damaging them results in lethargy and depression.
For these
reasons,
many groups and individuals consider the virch environment of the
Dreaming Void
cruel and unethical, and have requested that the Dreamers have the
situation
explained to them so they can make an informed choice. Temple
monks have responded to these
criticisms by simply stating that the Dreaming
Void is a sanctuary from
the
corruption of the outside world, and that the true cruelty would be to
take
their serenity from them. Likewise, they claim that in their sheltered
state
the Dreamers would not be able to resist the memetic expertise of the
outside
world, so they plan to “gradually inform the Dreamers of
their situation while
simultaneously affirming their beliefs and culture." So far
no
transapient
or meta-empire has involved itself in the issue.
