Post-Apocalyptic Remnant Technology

[AlexanderHowl]

TL11 and TL12 devices have the ability to survive for millions of years due to nanotechnology (or reproduction if they are biological devices), meaning that the survivors of an apocalypse could potentially have access to technology that would seem magical to their primitive conceptions. For example, brain nanotechnology could allow for the reception and transmissions of signals, allowing for Telecommunications (Radio), and allow clever individuals to control, influence, and/or sense actions, behaviors, emotions, perceptions, and thoughts, allowing for Illusion (Mental), Mind Control, Possession (Telesend), etc. Similar nanotechnology throughout the body could be guided by external communications, allowing individuals to use them to do Afflictions and/or Healing.

Have you ever dabbled with such concepts in your games? If so, how pervasive were they and how did your players react to them? Would you be interesting in using a setting with such ancient technology?

[Black Leviathan]

Fading Suns has a ton of "magic" technology floating around. The most common parts of it are understood by Engineers who can maintain it to some degree. However the obscure stuff is degraded to a creepy level. That cute holographic personal assistant becomes very dark when they keep incorporating the morbid poems their previous owner loved into their messages and reminders for you. That Automed bed could magically heal your wounds, or if it's nanites have gone bad it could turn you inside-out in seconds. Won't know until you put someone into it. Drinking the water from the Seeing Well lets you view the still-functioning augmented reality projections in the ancient ruins of the abandoned spaceport.. but returning to the well too often will make you blind and give you lesions.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

Fading Suns has a ton of "magic" technology floating around. The most common parts of it are understood by Engineers who can maintain it to some degree. However the obscure stuff is degraded to a creepy level. That cute holographic personal assistant becomes very dark when they keep incorporating the morbid poems their previous owner loved into their messages and reminders for you. That Automed bed could magically heal your wounds, or if it's nanites have gone bad it could turn you inside-out in seconds. Won't know until you put someone into it. Drinking the water from the Seeing Well lets you view the still-functioning augmented reality projections in the ancient ruins of the abandoned spaceport.. but returning to the well too often will make you blind and give you lesions.

"Perilous to us all are the devices of an art deeper than we possess ourselves." -- Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings

Truer words were rarely written. The sort of thing listed in BL's post above are exactly the kind of thing that would likely make working remnant supertech an object of mixed wonder and dread. Even if the device itself is working perfectly according to design, a primitive is unlikely to know the implications of that, and what not to do with it or near it.

Even relatively mundane technical devices are like that. A portable radio transceiver with an integral power unit might be working perfectly, but still kill someone if it falls into a bathtub. A working high-tension power line looks like a pair of inert metal wires to a TL4> individual, he has no way to know that simply touching both those bare, innocuous metal wires at the same time, or one wire and a ground, will likely kill him instantly. He has no way to know that just standing in cursed ground (i.e. near a radioactive object) could sicken or kill him.

I could easily imagine a society reviving the old idea that all magic is evil, based entirely on the existence of working supertech artifacts scattered around, and the tendency toward nasty results when they are meddled with.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

I could easily imagine a society reviving the old idea that all magic is evil, based entirely on the existence of working supertech artifacts scattered around, and the tendency toward nasty results when they are meddled with.

The Ancestors are fickle, granting some who visit their sites great powers, and inflicting horrible vengeance upon others. We do not know what guides their judgment of us, but it is best you avoid their gaze entirely.

[AlexanderHowl]

Imagine an area that possesses dormant nanotechnology that produces the effects of an accelerated metamorphic virus with the plague and targeted options. Anything that fits the criteria of the ancient designers (perhaps as specific as an individual who belongs to a certain family line) would benefit from a somatic transformation that would transform beneficiaries into superhumans (ST+10, DX+4, IQ+4, HT+4, etc.), if they survived the transformation. Since the designers would have avoided germline alterations in order to not make a new species, the resulting superhumans could have children with normal humans.

When the superhumans died, other superhumans would retrieve the body in order to bury it in the area, unintentionally renewing the dormant nanotechnology. If the body is unretrieved, then a small area where the corpse is buried would be capable of spreading the nanovirus. If targeted individuals contact the area, then they would risk transformation.

One possible criteria would be young women who are capable or reproducing but have not yet reproduced (maidens). If infected by the metamorphic virus, they would gain the superhuman template within four days, though they risk madness and death if they are too weak for the process. Since the risks are so great, becoming a superhuman may be a form of punishment for the society, as the maiden must seek the judgment if the gods to see if she is worthy to continue living.

[Flyndaran]

Eternal equipment sounds like a horrible way to infinite pollution.
I imagine an ultra tech society would come up with something that goes around breaking down cast off items into constituent parts.

Of course who knows what happens when the "recyclers" glitch?
They will likely completely ignore unmodified people. Likely.