/tg/Station 13

This is a thought that just crossed over to me.

Business rivals

Space is controlled by companies, most governments can't control more than a planet. Nanotrasen discovered plasma so they became the biggest space corporation, and the Syndicate is a group of smaller corporations set on destroying Nanotrasen using terrorism like sending sleeper agents and nuclear teams.

because space station 13 is a simulation ya dip

To expand on Arm's explanation, Syndicate can't really face NT 1v1 - compare Deathsquid to your standard, non-war ops. SS13, despite the imbecilic tendencies of it's occupants, represents one of the more cutting-edge Nanotrasen outposts. Moreover, it's location practically ensures that Lavaland, with all it's particularities (whether or not it's magic, or some alien super-tech gone wrong, is up to interpretation), is kept in NT hands. The most Syndicate can do there is, after all, a listening post.

Blowing up SS13 forces NT to at least temporarily loosen up control there, allowing Syndies to land their own research operations.

like what else are they gonna do, hug everyone to death?

What if Nanotrasen are the bad guys?

EvilJackCarver wrote:What if Nanotrasen are the bad guys?

that's sedition
sedition is practically equivalent to mutiny
mutiny is punishable by death

one of my favourite lore explanations is based on the fact that souls exist

One reason for assassination objectives in my headcanon is to temporarily detach a targets soul from their body. Combined with some off-screen sabotage or botched paperwork at a Nanotrasen cloning facility, a Syndicate facility with the right cloning data and tech could potentially steal a soul. Some up-scaling extrapolation from here leads to nuke ops being a method of temporarily detaching many souls at once, perhaps for a quantity over quality approach at stealing souls.

What they need bodies inhabited with souls for could be anything. Interrogation, mindbreaking into operatives/traitors/revheads, hostage-taking, who knows.

Since cloning tech upgrades now create sentient (though damaged) clones of people that still have their original souls this becomes a little bit more fuzzy. Where do these extra souls come from? Do the damaged clones really have souls? Did technology finally harness the reproductive magic of the natural womb?

Nah the actual reason is someone a few weeks ago look at them funny and they worked on the station back then. The syndicates dont know that person was transferred.

Syndicate's a group of smaller corporations competing with Nanotrasen. Since there's no real government in space (one government can't even control our planet right now, let alone an entire area of space. doubt that will change much in a few hundred years,) corporations own everything out there, meaning there's not much of a law. Syndicate and Nanotrasen are engaged in corporate warfare and Syndicate is trying to sabotage their operations.

imblyings wrote:one of my favourite lore explanations is based on the fact that souls exist

One reason for assassination objectives in my headcanon is to temporarily detach a targets soul from their body. Combined with some off-screen sabotage or botched paperwork at a Nanotrasen cloning facility, a Syndicate facility with the right cloning data and tech could potentially steal a soul. Some up-scaling extrapolation from here leads to nuke ops being a method of temporarily detaching many souls at once, perhaps for a quantity over quality approach at stealing souls.

What they need bodies inhabited with souls for could be anything. Interrogation, mindbreaking into operatives/traitors/revheads, hostage-taking, who knows.

Since cloning tech upgrades now create sentient (though damaged) clones of people that still have their original souls this becomes a little bit more fuzzy. Where do these extra souls come from? Do the damaged clones really have souls? Did technology finally harness the reproductive magic of the natural womb?

It's simple. Prototype cloning console can do three things: It can either produce a clone with no higher brain activity, a clone with brain activity with a soul, and a clone with brain activity with an original soul. Unlike newer cloning equipment, which grabs the specific soul from local soul-field (uploading UI+UE disk changes outer appearance, but maintains most of the nervous system), prototype cloning machine tries to jam in any soul it can find. This has the side-effect of wiping most of it's memories - non-supernatural skills and abilities the soul has are transferred, but anything personal and/or recent is gone, except for information that is common enough to imprint itself upon a soul (like "this is a space station", "Nanotrasen is this and that" etc).
A faulty clone can then begin to develop it's own personality. If it dies again, as it is common, it's pre-cloning and post-cloning selves merge, until a clone is cloned using either cloning machine, in which case the process either repeats itself, or pre-cloning memories are detached again.


In fact, one can begin to theorize that spacemen souls are made up of several components. A higher soul, carrying most memories, personality and brainwashing, that is responsible for actions, and a lower soul, carrying skills and common knowledge, that serves as the "powerhouse" of sentience. Most of the time, spessmen souls are united. When they die, the "OOC" (Operating Outside Context) soul is added, providing additional information to the now disembodied spessmen. When they are in any way given ability to interact with the material plane (save some very specific actions by divine), the "OOC" soul is detached. All information gained on the soul plane is transferred to the "OOC" soul as it leaves, leaving higher and lower soul in the state they were when they left the material plane.

Normal cloning drags down both higher and lower soul, while ancient cloning, as well as some soul-receptacles (Ash-walker eggs, golem shells and others), separate a willing soul into it's higher and lower components. The lower component is dragged down into the material world, while the higher component, bereft of the powerhouse of sentience, is absorbed into the "OOC" soul, that falls into hibernation.

When the soul is dragged down this way, the receptacle can do several things. In all cases, a new higher soul is created. Ash-walker eggs, alien larvae and golem shells, among others, imprint certain memories and behaviors upon it, mostly leaving it to develop around those concepts. Ancient sleepers force those lower souls to accommodate a damaged higher soul, whose lower soul was destroyed by a faulty stasis device, which means that they may develop a personality that is quite different, though memories are largely the same (similar process can be caused by the divine, ripping out the old lower soul and placing in another, though not as many memories remain in a higher soul treated this way). Other processes, such as those caused by slime extracts, cause a higher soul to develop anew around the lower soul (though a directive of "gratitude" or "obedience" are almost universally present).

Faulty cloning device would in this context attempt to jam a lower soul inside the clone, causing it to develop a new higher soul.
When a being that went through the above process dies, it's old lower and new higher souls are re-connected to the "OOC" soul, causing it's old and new higher souls to temporarily merge, until it is cloned again. Then, the process can either repeat, with the new-old higher soul combination being re-absorbed into the "OOC" soul, or, in case of precise cloning techniques that have been recently discovered, the old higher soul returns to the Out Of Context soul, while the new higher soul is jammed into a new body with the old lower soul.


Assuming above holds true, the Syndicate would nuke the station in order to capture as many lower-higher soul combinations as possible. While most will inevitably be cloned back at Centcom, or descend into a lavaland denizen, some will be captured by the syndicate, with all their memories intact. Should this happen, the syndicate could then interrogate, torture and brainwash them at their convenience, and then kill them again, causing NT cloners to start working. The time gap wouldn't be that suspicious, because sometimes higher soul becomes inactive for short periods of time (while lower soul can connect to a new higher soul, it cannot do so on it's own, requiring a special mechanism) - an event known as "braindeadness", "Space Sleep Disorder" or, in some circles, "Disconnection" (from temporary disconnection between higher and lower souls).

TL;DR: Syndies nuke SS13 to abduct people with memories intact, to do advanced version of surgery disk at them, that "traitors" part of their soul instead of their brain.

Jazaen wrote:

Spoiler:

It's simple. Prototype cloning console can do three things: It can either produce a clone with no higher brain activity, a clone with brain activity with a soul, and a clone with brain activity with an original soul. Unlike newer cloning equipment, which grabs the specific soul from local soul-field (uploading UI+UE disk changes outer appearance, but maintains most of the nervous system), prototype cloning machine tries to jam in any soul it can find. This has the side-effect of wiping most of it's memories - non-supernatural skills and abilities the soul has are transferred, but anything personal and/or recent is gone, except for information that is common enough to imprint itself upon a soul (like "this is a space station", "Nanotrasen is this and that" etc).
A faulty clone can then begin to develop it's own personality. If it dies again, as it is common, it's pre-cloning and post-cloning selves merge, until a clone is cloned using either cloning machine, in which case the process either repeats itself, or pre-cloning memories are detached again.


In fact, one can begin to theorize that spacemen souls are made up of several components. A higher soul, carrying most memories, personality and brainwashing, that is responsible for actions, and a lower soul, carrying skills and common knowledge, that serves as the "powerhouse" of sentience. Most of the time, spessmen souls are united. When they die, the "OOC" (Operating Outside Context) soul is added, providing additional information to the now disembodied spessmen. When they are in any way given ability to interact with the material plane (save some very specific actions by divine), the "OOC" soul is detached. All information gained on the soul plane is transferred to the "OOC" soul as it leaves, leaving higher and lower soul in the state they were when they left the material plane.

Normal cloning drags down both higher and lower soul, while ancient cloning, as well as some soul-receptacles (Ash-walker eggs, golem shells and others), separate a willing soul into it's higher and lower components. The lower component is dragged down into the material world, while the higher component, bereft of the powerhouse of sentience, is absorbed into the "OOC" soul, that falls into hibernation.

When the soul is dragged down this way, the receptacle can do several things. In all cases, a new higher soul is created. Ash-walker eggs, alien larvae and golem shells, among others, imprint certain memories and behaviors upon it, mostly leaving it to develop around those concepts. Ancient sleepers force those lower souls to accommodate a damaged higher soul, whose lower soul was destroyed by a faulty stasis device, which means that they may develop a personality that is quite different, though memories are largely the same (similar process can be caused by the divine, ripping out the old lower soul and placing in another, though not as many memories remain in a higher soul treated this way). Other processes, such as those caused by slime extracts, cause a higher soul to develop anew around the lower soul (though a directive of "gratitude" or "obedience" are almost universally present).

Faulty cloning device would in this context attempt to jam a lower soul inside the clone, causing it to develop a new higher soul.
When a being that went through the above process dies, it's old lower and new higher souls are re-connected to the "OOC" soul, causing it's old and new higher souls to temporarily merge, until it is cloned again. Then, the process can either repeat, with the new-old higher soul combination being re-absorbed into the "OOC" soul, or, in case of precise cloning techniques that have been recently discovered, the old higher soul returns to the Out Of Context soul, while the new higher soul is jammed into a new body with the old lower soul.


Assuming above holds true, the Syndicate would nuke the station in order to capture as many lower-higher soul combinations as possible. While most will inevitably be cloned back at Centcom, or descend into a lavaland denizen, some will be captured by the syndicate, with all their memories intact. Should this happen, the syndicate could then interrogate, torture and brainwash them at their convenience, and then kill them again, causing NT cloners to start working. The time gap wouldn't be that suspicious, because sometimes higher soul becomes inactive for short periods of time (while lower soul can connect to a new higher soul, it cannot do so on it's own, requiring a special mechanism) - an event known as "braindeadness", "Space Sleep Disorder" or, in some circles, "Disconnection" (from temporary disconnection between higher and lower souls).

TL;DR: Syndies nuke SS13 to abduct people with memories intact, to do advanced version of surgery disk at them, that "traitors" part of their soul instead of their brain.

This soul stuff doesn't gel with the kind of head canon I like.

I'd prefer these to be consciousnesses in a database of back-ups, OOC is not actually part of the world in any way. When someone uses a scrying orb and the ghosts are talking about ooc shit, they are just discussing a level of abstraction that can't be understood by mortal living spessmen.

Their ability to float around is an OOC abstraction of them being everywhere at once, in the cloud. Maybe NT lets them do this, or deliberately enables it, because trapping sentient consciousnesses in a an artificial box makes them go crazy.

When you are cloned, this OOC knowledge isn't exactly lost, it's like a language you've forgotten. You can't interpret the bizarro abstracted cloud-state with your meatbrain. You are merely a mortal human again, outside of the ultra-powerful supercomputers.

jesus christ I just wanted to know why destroying the station, wether or not anyones on it is the big goal of nuke ops

I did not need to see the metaphysics of SS13 including the "OOC" soul. And people get mad when I tell them to add poo...

If you go deep enough into the rabbit hole, you can cook yourself a rabbit for a dinner.

Jazaen wrote:If you go deep enough into the rabbit hole, you can cook yourself a rabbit for a dinner.

I eat nothing but pure garbage and unadultered trash I find in the dumpster behind Kor's house. Eating me is only mildly more healthy than sunbathing in Chernoybl's #4 reactor

I have a question about your grand theory. What happens when a soul "IC"s their "OOC"?

imblyings wrote:one of my favourite lore explanations is based on the fact that souls exist

One reason for assassination objectives in my headcanon is to temporarily detach a targets soul from their body. Combined with some off-screen sabotage or botched paperwork at a Nanotrasen cloning facility, a Syndicate facility with the right cloning data and tech could potentially steal a soul. Some up-scaling extrapolation from here leads to nuke ops being a method of temporarily detaching many souls at once, perhaps for a quantity over quality approach at stealing souls.

What they need bodies inhabited with souls for could be anything. Interrogation, mindbreaking into operatives/traitors/revheads, hostage-taking, who knows.

Since cloning tech upgrades now create sentient (though damaged) clones of people that still have their original souls this becomes a little bit more fuzzy. Where do these extra souls come from? Do the damaged clones really have souls? Did technology finally harness the reproductive magic of the natural womb?

Thats not an upgrade, thats a blown up expermental ss13 station that got lost in space. Thats the only station who has in fact done this, so my headcanon is that the syndicate and nanotransen are still fighting over souls to hire. That leaves that one experimental station sitting in the dust and never finding the light of day. Also that one experimental cloner actually harvests the souls of others, so even if it is found. It'd be super confusing to have multiple people with the same identity.

The Clowns Pocket wrote:I have a question about your grand theory. What happens when a soul "IC"s their "OOC"?

I was tempted to include that question!
It means that some process along the way has gone wrong. The divine then investigate and either threaten POLITELY REINFORCE THE DIVISION BETWEEN the "OOC" soul fragment and the higher and lower souls, or even remove them from both the material plane and the soul plane for, um, repairs, I guess.

Jazaen wrote:

The Clowns Pocket wrote:I have a question about your grand theory. What happens when a soul "IC"s their "OOC"?

I was tempted to include that question!
It means that some process along the way has gone wrong. The divine then investigate and either threaten POLITELY REINFORCE THE DIVISION BETWEEN the "OOC" soul fragment and the higher and lower souls, or even remove them from both the material plane and the soul plane for, um, repairs, I guess.

I see! How come THE DIVINE hate it when the OOC soul makes their IC soul act out sexual actions to help relieve their OOC souls sexual frustration?

The Clowns Pocket wrote:but what do admins think about the erp

imagine the puritans and spanish inquisition combined together.

Wait wait. What if we split Syndicate into separate corporations, each with its own themes and gimmicks?

Lumbermancer wrote:Wait wait. What if we split Syndicate into separate corporations, each with its own themes and gimmicks?

It already is in the lore.

Gorlex Marauders, Tiger Cooperative, Cybersun, SELF and so on.

AI liberation front and Space PETA are unexplored parts of our lore with high potential IMO

Lumbermancer wrote:Wait wait. What if we split Syndicate into separate corporations, each with its own themes and gimmicks?

>implying coders care about lore or big fun changes

come on we removed coin flipping for this reason

They want to because their objectives say they should

Anonmare wrote:

Lumbermancer wrote:Wait wait. What if we split Syndicate into separate corporations, each with its own themes and gimmicks?

It already is in the lore.

Gorlex Marauders, Tiger Cooperative, Cybersun, SELF and so on.

You dumb rabbit I know that. I'm saying make it relevant gameplay-wise.

Assign each traitor to a unique corporation which gives discounts on certain items, or exclusive items, along with a higher chance of getting objectives consistent with their agenda

i dunno

lore wise, its a plasma research station, syndicates want plasma and nanotrasen is a big competitor, so they attack the principle research station for it.

put it like this, consider the syndicate to be america, nanotrasen to be the middle east, and plasma to be oil.

Lore wise the nuke ops are of the mind that leaving nukes around the place is irresponsible and are trying to prove a point, albeit a little extreme

lore wise

isn't it lore-wise or lorewise?

the station orbits yo momma

I don't remember where I read the ~deeplore~ but essentially the disk the crew has they acquired through happenstance. This was also back when the nuke on the station looked like the nuke the ops bring on board. The crew acquired the disk and presumed that it was used for the station device. When they realized (with sadness) that it wasn't, they promptly forgot about it with the rest of their highly dangerous garbage. The OPs represent whatever rival corporation the disk actually belongs to. They're sent to get the disk back and, as an added poke in the eye, use it to detonate the NT station that stole the disk in the first place. And then the round happens.

Nuke ops are a false flag, they're actually nanotrasen employees.

nanotrasen and the syndicate are two sides of the same coin
that coin is valuable

because it gives them greentext

I like Jazaen's concept of the syndicate capturing souls to brainwash them into sleeper agents, would make a lot of sense for some of the stuff that happens.

that's too fantasy and not sci-fi enough for me tbh

For green text

/thread.

fireworks