This post's authors have general content warnings that might apply to the current post.
Accept our Terms of Service
Our Terms of Service have recently changed! Please read and agree to the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy
A dragon explores space, finds Amenta.
Permalink

The secrets of Delver technology could not resist decryption forever. While the tools they wielded are deeply weird, jealously guarded, and immensely complicated, living beings built the tools that brought aliens to the dragons' first world. The great calamity left ruins aplenty behind, and once grown the Seeker gathered these old tools as their very favorite sort of treasure. Dragons are not intelligent in quite the same way as a No-Tail, but they are far from stupid. They live forever and can be very determined if they set their mind to it.

The Seeker brought all its tools and treasure along with it when the world was evacuated ahead of the Tailless's relentless growth and hunger for resources. It studied under the great elder Darktooth on the new world, studied together with Darktooth (an arrangement not very common with dragons, as they are not particularly social), for a very long time. And eventually, by application of the hard claws of experiment and calculation and theorizing, the universe revealed its workings, cold and precise and mathematical. Creating more and more tools of the highest sophistication, and teaching others of its kind in exchange for wealth, and even spawning offspring and guiding them to adulthood, was all satisfying for a long while, but eventually... He got bored.

And so, the Seeker wondered if the long sleep for the journey between stars was really necessary, and got to work seeing about making it not. He managed it eventually, and built a starship, and went exploring. Stars come in a beautiful variety of kinds, and the worlds around them do too, but very, very few bear any sign of life. They are mostly barren and empty.

...Oh, this one is emitting curious amounts of low-frequency light. Worth investigating. Pushing a starship faster than light requires a touch of magic (at least for now), which he provides.

In the outer solar system of a certain star, well above the plane of the ecliptic, a black sphere the size of a city block appears and has a look around with powerful telescopes.

Total: 4040
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

"Thanks for giving it a try anyway!" says the sorbet cart purple.

Permalink

Thanks for giving me something new to try! Tasting many things is even in my name!

Permalink

"You're welcome!"

A yellow wants to know what Draak computers are like.

Permalink

I don't have anything like that. Mostly people who really like math make them? I've never seen anything like a pocket everything before today!

Permalink

- but you have spaceships!

Permalink

Seeker of New Truths is a genius and he has a spaceship.

Permalink

This puzzles the Amentans.

A grey wants to know how fast she can fly!

Permalink

She sends a memory. That fast in short bursts! Slower for endurance. She's never measured it in numbers.

Permalink

Purple wants to know if her scales and claws and whatnot take a lot of maintenance!

Permalink

I only care if I can use them, so not really. Just occasional cleaning in water and honing on a stone. You should see Bloom, though! I think there's pictures, plenty of people were taking them. Emeralds get feathers all over, between their scales, and she spends ages making them beautiful.

Permalink

Orange wants to know how, with Draak so spread out, they manage medical care.

Permalink

We mostly don't? Adults mostly don't need it and hatchlings live near one parent who can help if they want to. There's a few experts who can adjust your hibernation period or how your colors come in or regrow teeth and bones right if you can get to them and pay them.

Permalink

Ooh! The next person called on, a grey, wants to know if the color thing could be exported for people who have the wrong hair color.

Permalink

That sounds probably easier than nudging springs down, which is what Bloom came to try! 

Permalink

That's very exciting! Next person is green and wants to know how Draak school works.

Permalink

Draak teach each other if there's something one wants to learn from another. Usually for token payments in Shiny Things. There's nothing organized, unless you count Darktooth the Wise's Test of Wisdom. To pass the Test of Wisdom you have to learn to read and write and do math and make simple circuits and a lot of ancient history and learn about different schools of thought and what the flaw in each of them is! I think only like two hundred Draak have actually passed the Test. Most don't bother trying.

Permalink

Another green hops up and down, hand in the air, and when called asks why they only have schools of thought with known flaws in them.

Permalink

I'm not sure what you mean! Everything has a flaw in it from at least one perspective. Even the school of Number, which can always generate an indisputably correct answer, but indisputably correct answers to multiplication problems aren't always very useful. That's the flaw: Math can't do everything for you.

Permalink

That seems like a flaw in application, not in math itself! says the green.

Permalink

It was more like ways of thinking about the world. Math isn't a way of thinking about the world. Trying to use math to solve everything is, and that's flawed!

Permalink

Isn't a blend of ways of thinking about the world itself a way of thinking about the world?

Permalink

Yes! And it's still flawed, but you do your best anyway.

You seem like the kind of person Darktooth might enjoy talking to. What's your name?

Permalink

Shiknema Shafio!

Permalink

I'll try to remember it and mention you to the great Elder if the chance comes.

Next question?

Permalink

Purple wants to know if lots of Draak are going to be visiting soon.

Total: 4040
Posts Per Page: