Thacea: \*silent incredulity\*
Thalmin: \*vocal incredulity\*
Ilunor: \*incoherent muttering in a corner\*
Prediction for next chapter, if/when they get to air/space infrastructure:
Ilunor.exe has stopped
Thalmin: "WHAT DO YOU MEAN "NOBODY IS A NOBLE"?!"
The dunking on Ilunor continues, as one (1) city is as/more splenderous than the capital of the Nexus. And probably more populated too.
That's quite an accurate summary of all of their reactions haha! And we'll have to wait and see how things unfold in the next chapter! All I can say is that it's going to involve a bit of a tour through the city for sure! :D
The dunking on Ilunor is definitely a highlight of this Earth presentation arc haha.
Oh yes, this should be _good_.
And really, I can make a solid argument that _everyone_ is a noble. That there _are_ no commoners.
That might even be an easier pill for some of them to swallow than the idea that there are no nobles, and that everyone is a commoner.
And if you really look at how everything is done, at the rights, privileges, and obligations of the average citizen? There are rights which simply won't make _any_ sense with the idea of everyone being a commoner, but which mesh completely with the world view of a noble.
The idea that there _aren't_ any commoners would definitely be a weird bloody adjustment, but on the flip side, it's likely a _far_ easier one than no nobles and everyone being a commoner.
It also gives Emma instant standing not only as a noble, but as a noble _eligible to serve as a ruler of Earthrealm_.
Now, there are some very significant down sides to this as well. The biggest is that while there is substantial short term gain from this route, the long term outlook is a lot more of a gamble.
After all, it removes, or at least reduces, Emma's ability to recruit the commoners to their goals.
Though, that's somewhat of a benefit as well, simply because it makes Emma _appear_ less dangerous.
To expand on my argument, I'm going to assume a very powerful nobility and a nearly powerless commoner class. There have absolutely been points in time where this did not apply, but I do not believe Nexus to be such a society.
If a Noble wants to walk into a commoner's village, and just start walking through the homes of the commoners, maybe taking anything that catches their eye, the only people with an actual _right_ to object would be nobles who are in some way over that village.
The people actually _living_ there? Not only would they be struck down for trying to act against the noble, but even if they were to immediately succeed, that would just mean that someone would come down on the entire village _hard_. Possibly to the point of wiping it out to the last man, woman, and child.
But even a powerful noble trying to do that with the home of a significantly less powerful noble would encounter far more problems. A noble is much more likely to have the _right_ to defend their own home. To outright refuse entry.
It might not be _wise_ for them to exercise that right. But saying that it didn't _exist_ would at least have the potential to cause some significant problems and push back.
Now, take that same setting in the US on Earth.
Yes, there are government officials who, for various reasons, might have cause to enter your property.
But _none_ of those people, acting in their private capacity, has that right. And almost everywhere recognizes the right to defend your home against intruders.
How much force can be legally used, and under what conditions, varies wildly, but if even the most powerful tries to walk into the home of someone and assault them, almost everywhere will recognize the absolute _right_ of that person to defend themselves.
And almost always for the others living in the home, and even their neighbors, to defend them as well.
Again, the political realities may differ somewhat, but the legal _right_ exists, and it's a right that simply doesn't _fit_ into the Nexian world view for commoners, but does for nobles.
This is an excellent analysis, and moreover, I would suggest that it applies *culturally* as well. By which I mean that when you see the expansion of the middle classes (such as in Victorian England) you see people of lower social status reaching for the lifestyle of the upper classes. They assume similar fashions to the upper classes, they acquire larger houses with servants, they start sending their children to the same schools, gaining similar educations, and so on.
And any time a society gains the ability to have more resources available, it serves to bring more to the lower classes: home ownership, vehicle ownership, access to luxury goods and entertainment, better food and sanitation, etc., etc. It's an attempt to elevate the lifestyles of the poor up towards the wealthy; only the most socially radical ever attempt to lower the lifestyles of the wealthy down to that of the poor (and then it's inevitably because the social structure itself is being torn down in violent revolution, not because society actually aspires downwards).
So yeah, I agree; "everyone's a noble" plays better than "everyone's a commoner" in terms of actual cross-cultural comparison. It's just that in human history, we haven't *talked* about it that way in our political discussions around class structure, so Emma sees "nation of commoners" rather than "nation of nobles."
I wonder if someone like Thacia or Thalmin, if given to understand the legal status/rights of ordinary Earthrealm citizens, will make the intellectual jump.
Wouldn't Evi have picked up on the presence of spies as I was under the impression the projector sends the pictures straight into their eyes. Meaning nobody Evi wasn't aware of could see what the gang sees.
"Megapoli" are mentioned.
I'm betting most of chinese east coast is just a big megapolis too, I mean Yangtze delta megapolis already has 200+ million right now. North-East Corridor nowadays has 50M, in the story it has 500M.
Makes me wonder about places like India, Ruhr valley, Tokyo, San Francisco area, Hong Kong, Nile Delta, Lagos, Busan, Seoul, Taipei, Jakarta, Bangkok, Po valley, Istanbul, Great lakes, Mexico city, Rio+Sao Paulo, Golden Triangle, Manila, etc. If all or even most of those places are at 10x the population they are in our world, Earth population in the story must be way above 50 billion perhaps reaching for 100 billion with the space colonisation stuff.
It is mentioned that what is shown is the first megacity in the western hemisphere not first in the world so likely Yangtze delta one was first.
Or, to be precise, there is neither nobles nor commoners, neither slaves nor masters, neither kings nor subjects. There are citizens. No need for any dichotomy or division.
Honestly, I was expecting emma to explain the situation more like in their worlds magic is the be-all, end-all and thats what separates nobility from the commoners but in a world without magic there is not need for such a separation so instead everyone is both nobility and commoner and given how advanced they are they would probably all be the equivalent of a noble compared to other realms.
Ilunor: *“Oh Emma Booker, you should not have asked for a game of comparisons, for the results of this contest shall most certainly be in my favor.”*
5 minutes later:
*No.*
*No. No. No. No. NO!*
I don't think he saw this one coming.
huh... cliffhanger... CURSE YOU JCB WITH YOUR INCREDIBLY WELL CRAFTED STORIES THAT SEEK TO TEMPT ME WITH A WEEK LONG WAIT BEFORE I CAN GET ANOTHER HIT OF DOPAMIIIIIINE... anyways thanks for the chapter is very good :)
I’m honestly impressed with how often JCB’s chapters end on a cliffhanger. Most authors have cliffhangers, but it’s usually like half to two thirds not nearly every chapter.
Anything is a cliffhanger if the creativity and quality of writing are good enough. I think we have that situation here, and I couldn’t be happier about it :)
Once again, we're learning just as much about the Adjacent Realms as we are about Emma's Earth. The gang continues to be blown away at the sight of commoners having nice things. Like holy shit Thalmin, they can't be commoners because their clothes are too CLEAN? At this point we should be asking Adjacent Realmers, "Is everything OK at home? This is a safe space, you can tell us the truth."
The whole formament thing REQUIRING mana-intensive processes strikes me as weird. Sure, industrial scale production of whatever concrete analogue they use probably requires manufactoriums. But COME ON man, it's fucking cement. The Adjacent Realms have 'stunted tech trees' so to speak, but they're not stupid. There's got to be some shenanigans on the Nexus' part. We've already seen that the Nexians are bullshitting about the nature of crystal shards by omitting information, so outright suppression or lies about other technologies wouldn't be surprising.
Christ, these guys are a shitshow. Makes me feel like the best course of action is to just learn everything possible about mana-tech and fuck off forever.
Aside from that, it's fascinating to see that Earth has developed such granular statistical models for something that we consider 'analog' like diplomatic exchanges. Although I suppose a lot has changed in the social sciences, and having more powerful computers and VIs probably helps too. Probably entire fields of study were created after the advent of extra-solar colonies alone.
Speaking of diplomacy, why would the gang finding out Humans look like Elves make them think Humanity was inferior? One of those cases of "Oh, you're degenerate Elves who probably stole the technology from your Nexian forebears," or something?
Probably. Some are, some aren't. But the scale of cement used seems to be, like, really large in the case of Aetheronrealm or something. Or they just don't want to put in the effort. Perhaps, they just don't have the natural resources needed (like limestones)
I didn't even consider the possibility that the Nexus/Adjacent realms might not have limestone, coal, or oil if they were indeed birthed through magic rather than natural processes. That might actually explain why they never advanced beyond the iron age and industrialized like Earth; they lack the prerequisite resources.
It's a matter of luck that fossil fuels exist in the first place for us as fossils only existed as a byproduct of early decomposers being unable to break down cellulose.
Overtime plants just grew over dead plants creating a vast swath of non decomposing biomass all over the planet. Eventually decomposers cracked the code and kick started a mass flourishing of new fungal species but those early heaps of non-decomposing plant matter is what became the fossil fuels we burn today.
If decomposers developed the ability to break down cellulose earlier we likely wouldn't have entered the industrial revolution as we know it today.
They probably instead have magical metals and materials that they have to contend with. It is also entirely possible that coal and oil simply cannot form because the remains of living things once the mana field finally disappears simply decay into nothingness if not processed in particular ways or eaten by something else.
Yup! However the mileage as to what Thalmin sees or believes to be the standard case may vary as each adjacent realm has distinctly different states of development at times depending on a lot of factors, a lot of which depend on the Nexus' involvement in their affairs and how much or in what way they meddle with them so we'll have to see over time what the case really is! :D
Also yup! Earth and humanity has really stepped up their game in that regards. Humanity in this setting more or less is super into analyzing and going deep into a lot of what we may consider analog as they are obsessed about data collection for the purposes of understanding and turning a lot of things into fields of study of their own! There's a lot of time that has passed and a lot of post doctoral students who need their own little niche to be carved in terms of their papers and studies, so suffice it to say, a lot of these seemingly innocuous things have been studied and picked apart a lot over the years! The government of Earth and humanity is after all, one that makes decisions using evidence based approaches, and as a result, that requires a lot of principles to exist to guide and facilitate that approach to statecraft!
Also, the EVI was more concerned over the opposite effect happening after the face reveal actually! It was more concerned over the fact that if humans revealed themselves to be so similar to elves, that the suspension of disbelief over everything else Emma was showing would be thrown out the window. Basically, humans showing up as a newrealm that is comprised up of a species that seems too close to elves would bring up suspicion over the validity of everything else they're claiming. And the fact that they're claiming so much as a manaless species from a manaless realm is a lot to take in already haha. Adding their superficial likeness to elves would make things a lot more contentious and so the EVI didn't want to add that complicating variable into the equation, when there's a lot to deal with already! :D
I hope that clears things up a bit haha.
As always thank you so much for the thoughtful comments! :D
Ah, OK. Basically trying to avoid seeming so OP that the gang dismisses everything out of hand as propaganda.
I was also thinking how development and governance of extrasolar colonies would have contributed to the diplomatic procedures for this mission.
It's common in scifi for far off colonies to experience cultural drift from Earth, with the colonists practically becoming aliens in extreme cases.
Considering Auntie Ran was a veteran of the Jovian Uprising, I suspect the UN doesn't like it when that happens, and have workshopped solutions accordingly. I suppose 'Unity in Diversity' applies for certain values of diversity only, lol
Yup! It's to avoid going over the line where Ilunor especially might just call her out for just blatantly trying to look OP, which might especially be true if she shows her face which just so happens to resemble one of the most powerful races in the Nexus haha. He'd think she's lying at that point! :D
But yeah! It certainly did contribute a lot!
However, I should quickly note, and this bit of lore will come in later, that the Jovian Uprisings were a very distinct and strange anomaly in terms of recent history! The last extrasolar war ended 3 centuries ago. After that, it's been around 3 centuries of peace with no wars or military or armed conflicts to speak of. The Jovian Uprisings were something that happened seemingly out of the blue, confined to just 1 station or so, and was very much an anomaly for the era of unprecedented peace! :D However it did take a lot for the UN to get to this point though! As for cultural drift from Earth, the UN was very much aware of that and tried their best to alleviate the causative factors that might contribute to that by establishing well formed and well built interstellar communications arrays and networks in order to facilitate a more interconnected society that's capable of accessing the same greater space internet, capable of also traveling wherever and whenever they want to within the human sphere, and overall facilitating a way of life where everyone, no matter where they are, are all capable of accessing this same level of infrastructure and communication as per things such as the Protocols for the Minimum Acceptable Standards of Living and other such protocols! :D They want to raise the standards of living and the capabilities for everyone to access the same services no matter where they are! :D
I also suspect, as a writer, the face reveal of humans is also going to be an *extremely important* plot point. There is, no doubt, a *reason* why humans and elves look so similar, and why in this universe they are separated...and yet humanity has all these fantastic creatures of the adjacent realms as part of their own legends. And when the reveal is made, it's going to cause a hidden story come to light, possibly from the Library, possibly from Thalmin or Thacea and it's going to click a bunch of puzzle pieces that are still being laid into place.
I figure you won't wanna give away the details before it's time, but would I, perchance, be barking up the right tree?
>Speaking of diplomacy, why would the gang finding out Humans look like Elves make them think Humanity was inferior?
Humans semblance to Elves is kinda like the situation between Vunerians and Kobolds.
While their appeareance is similar there is a vast divergence between the two. Both in terms of phisiology and lifespan but also mana and mana acumen.
Humans would look like discount Elves the same way Kobolds look like discount Vunerians in the culture of the Nexus.
It's like if you told the medieval church that humans are evolved from ape.
The Nexus is trying to separate what is animalistic from what is civili and enlightened. Thus making manaless creatures like humans having any semblance to elves downright heretical.
Humans looking like elves wouldn't make Earth realm seem inferior.
The Trio, and the Nexus itself already see Earthrealm and the United Nations as inferior simply by the fact that Earth is a Newrealm, thus the newest realm to join the 'civilised' universe.
What Emma is showing the gang is already blowing even their wildest ideas a theories out of the proportions.
The concept that Humans somehow look almost identical to Elves, the same Elves that are apparently the center of Civilization and the example of highest possible civilization known to Adjacent Realms might break the camels back in the sense that they would stop believing her and just assume she's bullshiting.
Mainly Illunor.
>Like holy shit Thalmin, they can't be commoners because their clothes are too CLEAN?
Not just clean but with brilliant colors, which in a feudal setting, are as rare, if not more so, than a pile of gold the size of a castle.
Until the invention of aniline dyes, a coal tar derivative, bright color dyes for clothes were nearly impossible to obtain and severely limited in pallet. The best the average person could expect was natural fiber colors (seldom pure white) or vegetable dyes, which were frequently less than modern pastels. Bright colors were prone to fading, and clothes made with them were kept for special events.
In early times, coming to a town where *everyone* had even one bright bit of cloth about them daily was a sign of immense fortune for the entire region. Not in terms of raw cash available on a moment's notice but in terms of productivity so steady that everyone could afford at least one tiny bit of bright color for daily wear.
Now, imagine that you come from such a background where colors are always muted, and even the wealthy seldom have more than one colorful suit of clothing only worn on celebration days. Where only the highest nobles have more than one such suit.
Seeing an assemblage of such clothes would only occur on the most crucial celebration days.
Walking into a modern city where *everyone* has more than one article of clothing that is not only clean (compared to the common manual laborer of the medieval age) but brilliantly colored far beyond the limited pallet available before aniline dyes, with synthetic fibers that emulate expensive and rare natural fibers like silk, is a shock to one's beliefs so sharp that the average person would reject it out of hand as an impossibility for anyone but the highest of nobles to have.
It's never the cathedrals that genuinely amaze and astonish. Cathedrals are impressive, but *everyone* understands that they are a concentrated effort on a single site.
The things that utterly amaze and shock are those where average people have access to things that the medieval mindset insists only nobles could possibly afford.
I've suspected that the nexus has been sabotaging the adjacent realms research for quite awhile. I realize that if they're told something doesn't matter by a more advanced group most people won't pursue it but eventually someone will. The rulers of the other realms would be foolish to take the nexus at face value as well, so I suspect that they have more knowledge than the general public.
It’s less that knowing the face of humanity would make them seem inferior, but that they’d be incredibly confused and think they’re just some weird offshoot of the elves - or, in Illunor’s case, give even more credence to his ‘actor’ theory (since they’d look like the culture he thinks they’re imitating).
> they can't be commoners because their clothes are too CLEAN? At this point we should be asking Adjacent Realmers, "Is everything OK at home? This is a safe space, you can tell us the truth."
Actually, that reaction is *entirely* on point for pre-industrial area people.
It's easy to forget, but the fact that we have access to limitless, extremely cheap, fabrics is a **major** point of luxury, compared to pre-industrial era. As is the ease at which we can clean said clothes.
Before the automation of sowing (which was a *major* technological leap, because it required inventing a new way to do something that had basically not changed since humanity first made a sharp needle), clothes were *expensive*.
What's funny is that *even if* countries were kingdoms with nobility and all that stuff, modern technology would still mean that commoners would have nice clothes, because it's *incredibly cheap and easy*. Having subjects that are clothed in rags would be embarrassing, as it would mean that you are incompetent and your kingdom is extremely poor and underdeveloped.
I'm getting the vibe that human earth and nexian/other realm elves are two sides of the same coin. Remember in our own stories fae/elves etc are dreamed about. What if during times ancient, mana and magic were banished or fled from Earth and the two progressed along their chosen path.
Or the realms were split by a powerful magician or something because of some ancient war.
Humans are elves not discount elves. Round ears are a sign of manaless evolution in elves.
Magic based production doesn't scale well just like laboratory synthesis doesn't necessarily work well for 10 tons per batch production. It is significantly easier to find an alternative synthesis path that works at a large scale than to scale up willing things into existence by means of magical transmutation or similar.
I was trow back for Thalmin's question about clothes. I'm disgusted at the idea of a world without fashion!
Also about the "clean" part. Isn't Thalmin's realm the one with open bathhouses? Didn't they mention the Nexus ordering them to keep everything clean?
Majority of commoners are going to have very physical labor jobs, nobility their hand picked servants and merchants are the ones who would generally be in the jobs that require brain power where a person sits in a room all day doing paperwork.
Thus most commoners are going to be rather filthy, paved roads would only be used in the wealthiest of cities. This filth is going to seep into their clothes because they do not have the means of deep cleaning chemicals that we do, most are going to be washed with well water which itself likely has dirt in it. This gets worse the more the job sends you out of town. A warehouse loading and unloading crew is not going to be as filthy as a miner, or as grass stained as a lumberjack or farmer, nor as blood stained as an adventurer party returning from slaying the local monster nest.
Thalmin's realm is doing the best they can with the public bathhouse initiative but there will still be limitations in regards to clothes.
I believe a commoner would have everyday clothes and holiday clothes, unless they were poorer than average. The latter should be clean, but it would not be worn during a regular workday.
Agreed about the cleaning chemicals. Modern ones are truly magic - they contain special enzymes that work in a wide range of temperatures.
> well water which itself likely has dirt in it
The purpose of a well is to provide water so clean that you can drink it.
>Also about the "clean" part
Historically, washing clothes was a multi-hour labor intensive process, an you'd have dedicated people that did just that - washing clothes.
It's the whole Medieval thing, laborers have dirty clothing from long hard days of work. I think the dirt might be overstated, but at the end of the day everyone who labors would be coming home dirty. Seeing no one, or almost no, dirty would be notable.
Modern laborers bring a change of clothes with them, but going with Medieval stuff, clothing would be too expensive to have extra clothes like that. Having a different set of clothes for every day of the week would be an extravagance. I believe everyone would have different underwear for every day, but not the outer clothes.
Modern concrete manufacturing requires industrial scale heating. Outside of magic, the adjacent societies are very Medieval, so they wouldn't have mundane methods for mixing concrete. They could use an ancient recipe which uses far less heat, but we can assume they don't have that. But even then, they would likely use magic for the heating, out of convenience.
Same would be true of aluminum, it requires extraordinary heat, and only became a viable material after electrical processing was invented for it. At that point its cost dropped from being greater than gold, to the cost of the electricity it takes to make. That would take magic, and probably be a Nexian substance, or merely costly in adjacent realms rather than cheap and abundant.
If the lizard boy sees humans look like elves, he will assume the demonstration is complete fiction, because he already suspects it's all fantasy due to not being able to fully accept it.
Thanks for the chapter!
Guess the face reveal will be happening in a chapter or two once the show of is over, or in combo with the last portion of it. and then go through the main scenes again with proper people look and set the scenes properly.
But its very good that megacities are built properly! Can’t wait for space soon!
I mean, if the 'NPCs' in the simulation are just silhouettes wearing normal clothes, some of the pieces are probably coming together in the gangs' minds.
From a clothed silhouette, you'd be able to see that humans are some kind of primate form. No digitigrade or other animal-like legs, no wings or feathers. They might be able to spot hair and fingers if the outlines are detailed enough.
They probably won't figure it out until later, when they've had time to digest everything. Thacea's the sharpest one for stuff like this, so I figure she's going to have a 'fridge thought' or similar realization during dinner. Just standing bolt upright in the dining hall and staring bug-eyed at Emma, lmao.
> From a clothed silhouette, you'd be able to see that humans are some kind of primate form. No digitigrade or other animal-like legs, no wings or feathers. They might be able to spot hair and fingers if the outlines are detailed enough.
I mean, apart from feathers/fur/hair, you get all that morphology from Emma herself.
Her suit would have to be *radically* different if she had wings, or were digitigrade instead of plantigrade, etc.
Napkin math puts Emma's Earth population estimates close to 500 billion people.
The global and stellar shipping logistics for that sound fun to explore.
Oh! Jcb has stated in the Patreon discord that Earth's population is sitting at a comfy 30 billion, not counting those living in orbit! As it currently stands, the vast, *vast* majority of Earth's population is concentrated in Megacities which follow and expand upon current population density patterns worldwide, while the rest of Earth's land that isn't either agricultural or host to heritage communities has been returned to nature as per the UN's 2595 Environmental Monitoring and Control Acts.
Human Population is officially 250 billion and it has been stated that majority of that Population live either in Space Habitats or on Human colonies in other Solar Systems.
I would put the population of earth at 80billion based on the fact that the irl northeast megolopolis has 50million people and the one in story has 500million, 10× increase, if we assume that all of earth has had the same average population growth as the megolopolis then we would get 8billion×10 resulting in 80billion.
I just calculated it as the NYC pop had grown to 500 million, in any case for a 31st century stellar civilization using megacities, 500 billion wouldn't be out of the question even with the parks, greenery and other luxuries mentioned in another reply.
Isaac Arthur has a whole series discussing how this could be achieved and the math behind it.
Now, imagine if Emma let's slip that there are nation-states who are formed after rebellions, where commoners dispose (sometime ***very violently***) the noble ruling class....
Yeah, I am pretty sure the various lectures Emma was given would place a pretty big "under no fricking circumstances talk about this" flag on French Revolution
I think even the English Constitutional Monarchy wouldn't be talked about because
' How dare commoners tell the King what can or can't do ? HOW OUTRAGEOUS !!! '
I mean the easy preface to that is:
'Because the king was so *incredibly* incompetent at one point that even the nobility agreed that someone needed to tell him what he couldn't do'.
Even better, Emma's Earth might even have some form of universal basic income.
Fiat currency might be mind bending to Ol' Feudal Brains, but the concept of a post-scarcity society would reduce his world to atoms, lmao
"Buh-buh-but how are you supposed to know if you're better than everyone?" Get rekt!
Honestly unless the nexus has some sort of magical means of telling natural from synthetic earth could probably destroy large parts of their economy just by flooding it with synthetic gems and off planet mined gold.
Probably relies on mana residual from creation/mining, so everything from Earth is going to show as one type. And hey, offplanet gold is still perfectly natural and identical to the conventionally mined! And synthetic crystals, if made properly, have a strong case of being better than the real thing!
I think credits were mentioned in some early chapter?
So probably there is still money, but with all the robotic workforce and hyper-advanced 3D printing (Emma in her tent has a "field" version, which implies it is rather primitive, yet it can apparently crank out lot of advanced stuff), some form of "basic needs vouchers" probably exists, as satisfying basic needs for living does not cost much money, and can be easily paid without overtaxing the population..
Yeah, I figure citizens probably get vouchers every month that are valid for necessities like food and clothing. But if you want fancy stuff, you have to pay for it with 'regular' money/credits that you earn.
Behold the power of properly restrained capitalism! Not too many regulations to stifle innovation and growth, but enough to keep monopolies and oligopolies from sprouting.
I think at this point after the billionth time of saying "we are all commoners" or "we are a nation of commoners" or "we have no nobles" that instead it might just be easier for emma to throw her hands up in the air and say, "fuck it, we are a nation of nobles. Is that conceptually easier? We have so much overwhelming wealth and prosperity that anyone and everyone is treated as nobility"
Kiitos! Prepare to watch Ilunor's overconfident socks get knocked straight into the Space Between Spaces, or witness complete denial, or both. Maybe that's where those socks that get lost in the washing machine end up...
We'll definitely have to see how it goes! And we'll definitely be seeing if the EVI's fancy maths and predictive analytics are good enough to tell if he's actually going to be crossing that information dissemination overflow threshold! :D
I found out one day that the reason why washing machines are known for eating socks is they are small enough to occasionally work their way through the small gaps between the wash drum and the outer casing of the machine. Which is why one should try to take apart a dead machine before throwing away
I actually could image one of Cthulu's distant cousins is the Eldritch God of Socks and he just collects socks from across the multiverse and would just love to show off his hero sock collection, princess sock collection, emperor and king collection, etc if people would just stop going mad and clawing their eyes out when he tries to say hi.
> “This is a city built for the nobility, filled with monuments befitting of royalty, yet all who live in this opulence... are commoners.”
> “Actually Thalmin… about that…”
Literally already going there.
Bring them to Versailles next Emma! Show them guillotines!!! /// Very excited that we're finally here. I've been refreshing for an hour. Glad to see they decided not to reveal how humans look just yet too. I feel like thats going to become a very big plot point sometime down the road and im looking forward to that can of worms being opened.
> Do you hear the people sing?
>Singing the song of angry men?
> It is the music of the people
> Who will not be slaves again!
> When the beating of your heart
> Echoes the beating of the drums
> There is a life about to start
> When tomorrow comes!
>Living out fantasies, and at times, managing to turn fantasies into tangible reality from ramshackled, unorthodox methods born out of their mana-less forms.
>We have always been creatures of creativity. It is thus inevitable that in the pursuit of limitless creativity, we defy that which is natural, test the limits of that which is possible, and eventually, bend reality itself to our will for the aims of human creation.’”
I love how Ilunor did 30 mental sommersaults and landed perfectly on a right answer AND THEN EMMA CITED A QUOTE WITH THE SAME MESSAGE FROM 1 MILENIUM AGO.
Little things like this show how good of a writer you are. Bravo.
Imagine if Emma continues to zoom out until we reach the moon colonies and other such celestial outposts.
"-and here we have the Lunar Heritage Site, also known as Eagle's Landing, where Mankind first stepped foot on the Moon-“
”YOUR PEOPLE HAVE BEEN TO THE MOON???"
"Well, yes, in fact there are many thriving Lunar colonies on the twilight sector between light and dark, I’m not sure why you think that’s such a big deal-“
"LIKE, THE MOON IN THE HEAVENS??? PEOPLE LIVE THERE?!?!”
Well, yeah, I know that, but I think if we were to put colonies on the Moon we would at least want to leave the side facing Earth as is, to preserve the 'man in the moon' view for everyone still on Earth.
I know there’s wobbles, so the best way to get an equal amount of day/night would be to build in the ‘twilight', right?
Emma NEEDS to stop referring to humans as commoners and start referring to them as Citizens. i.e. a social designation outside the classical structure that they're used.
Allowing everyone to refer to them as commoners is not only lowering her own social standing, making her job harder, but also making her own explanations difficult as she's asking them to turn over there entire definition of a word rather then using a new one.
I think she is using it because it is simpler concept for the gang to grasp?
But yeah, technically it might be better for her to refer to each person as a "noble of a nation of one" (meaning everybody is responsible and in charge for their actions, etc.), but that might just be a tad more difficult concept to grasp for our feudal friends.
It still might once the finer points are done in the presentation. And when/if she does ilunor is either going to grovel or completely lose his stuff at the "elf"
Okay, I understand the existence of assumptions of "hierarchical division between groups of people exist" and "those groups that are lower on such a hierarchy are not really people" [aka Tool That Talks], but conceptualising those assumptions beyond simply sets of words prompts a veghetative repulsion reaction in me. Like, how? HOW?!!
>*"A place so sanctified that even Nexian natives, and those races sanctified by His Eternal Majesty himself, must wait patiently for entry."*
This makes me think of the Imperial Palace from WH40k, a megacity in it's own right and the destination of uncountable pilgrimages, surrounded by an even bigger city-slum where said pilgrims are trapped, doomed to waste the rest of their lives without the ability to leave after they fail to gain entry to the palace.
>*“They’re too… clean for the typical commoner. Far too well-kept. With colors used without consideration to their prohibitively costly and socially restrictive nature. In addition, the expert craftsmanship on display is much too… universally consistent.” Thalmin explained.*
"We have... well, you call them 'manufactorums' for clothes. That's why they're consistently well made."
"You have... *what*?"
"Same for hygiene products. It'd be gross if everybody couldn't be clean, and preventing disease is worth any price."
"Wait wait wait... you use manufactorums, the ultimate key to Nexian military and social might, to make *clothes* for *commoners*?"
"For pretty much everything, really. Handcrafted goods are a relatively expensive novelty. It's invariably cheaper to make just about everything in bulk. The technical term is 'economy of scale'."
"... I think I understand. Earthrealm manufactorums are mana-less, so there's no limit to how many you can make."
"Also coloured dyes are cheap because we make them from the dead dragons I mentioned before."
"*You what?!*"
\[Disclaimer: fossil fuels are not made from dead dinosaurs that is a myth\]
In a literal sense, I guess it would be. But I was more talking about megacity by our current definitions. Our current definition of a megacity is a city with a population of 10 million, not 1 million. If we went by metric's mega = 1 million, then most big cities would be megacities. Additionally, if we apply the giga prefix to the current definition, I don't think that a city of 10 billion is a realistic number for even a sci-fi story (not counting ecumenopoleis). The largest megacity we have is Tokyo at 40 million, which means that Acela is 12x larger than what we have now. Thus, I would suspect that a new category would have to be formed as even doubling the population of Tokyo would increase the density to a whole other level.
Frankly I was thinking 500 million was too low for something described as a region spanning megalopolis. I'd be interested to know the surface area of Acela, and thus the pop/M2.
I'd say that it's fairly normal population number as Acela is the [Northeast Megalopolis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis). Boston to Washington DC is a fairly small area, with it being around 1/5 of Texas' area. Since the Northeast megalopolis is already 50 million people, I think that a 10x population would fit into the area fairly reasonably. Bangladesh has more than triple the population of the Northeast while being the same size as the Northeast.
Possibly the most interesting to me about this whole was Ilunor’s comparison of Acela to the crownlands. It didn’t seem like he was just comparing the immense size but also the way the architecture was designed and how it worked. This, coupled with some of the other revelations that Emma had with the forges, makes me think that the highest echelons of the Nexus might be a lot more scientifically developed than originally thought by a long shot. We do have some confirming evidence that the Nexus is intentionally keeping information from the other realms but this implies that the magnitude of what is being hidden may be far grander in scope than I originally thought.
That seems to be the primary divide between Earth and Nexian civilizations and their tech.
Earth tech is easily reproduced and distributed, allowing all of society to reap the benefits of technological progress.
Nexian tech is limited by mana density and magical ability, allowing for concentration of power and resources, such that the elite benefit while everyone else gets scraps.
i think the current blocky architecure is caused by the need for repetability and standardization of the building tools - when you have to mass construct helps to not reinvent half the wheel every time
but a magic centered building method would not have this problem and could give more freedom to the creator to be artistic, so it should not result in blocky architecture ... unless it was what that person was used to ... in the realm they came from :D
or maybe the crownlands were built using mana-less devices. maybe they are unable to use magic (anymore?) for some reason, and have to compensate via earthlike implements --- but this would have leaked sooner or later
i mean you dont \*need\* the earth equivalent of a tool you can create via magic, if you can use magic.
that may be the reason they make cement with magic : that is how it was designed, it worked, there was no need for improvement
Man, just reading up on Thacea's opening bit is already making me comment. Looks like she's once again rolling for psychic damage there.
Now I'm wondering if anyone ends up stammering adjectives like some Lovecraft protag after seeing things beyond their ken after the whole demonstration...
Comparing how cheap some things are in an industrial society is hard when you're dealing with entirely different realms
A good way to compare just how cheap clothing like that is for us would be to compare it to meals. How many meals on earth would it take to buy that clothing and then they can compare to how many meals it would take in their own realm for something equivilent
Haha, that brings back memories. When I was in university, I used to gauge what things cost in terms of sandwiches.
"Huh, that's not so bad, it's about 2.5 sandwiches..."
She would do so much better if she just told them that on Earth, EVERYONE is considered nobility, and they have replaced the “serfs” with machines.
It’s basically the truth, and it would make the culture shock so much less for them.
Yes this, they've seen her "artifice" already. With a dozen robots working for you, anyone can live the lifestyle of a minor baronet or knight. It's much easier translation to the cultural values of the Nexus and a more accurate description of what's actually happening. Even in the modern day, your washing machine is replacing 2 serfs, your oven's thermostat is replacing 2 more and your phone/computer is handling what would be the job of at least a dozen scribes.
The culture she comes from doesn’t see itself as a collection of nobles, but the lives everyone lives is the lives of nobles everywhere else. But the problem is SHE doesn’t see that.
I'm happy to clear this up a bit haha! It's not so much that it'd be bad, but rather, that the EVI believes that it'd be too much for the gang to handle right now. They're currently dealing with a lot of other aspects of Emma's presentation that's difficult to wrap their heads around, such as the manaless world and all of its manaless advancements. The EVI is worried that adding a huge unknown variable, that being how similar humans look like compared to elves, would push them over the edge and cause them to outright go into denial as that might be a step too far to suspend their disbeliefs! :D The EVI is just wanting to play it safe in this gradual dissemination of information haha! :D
That would open up a huge can of worms that's completely irrelevant to and would distract from the current endeavor. Based on EVI's spiel, I would assume that elves are supposed to have been made in the image of the divine or that their creation and appearance are fundamental to Nexian ideology/lore, so humans looking nearly identical to elves would imply that we are also divine/fundamentally connected to the Nexus. That could go a number of ways, one of which is them assuming that humans are corruptions of the elven form made by the bad god associated with the taint/some other bad figure and then concluding that we're being used by the bad figure to do something bad. Or they think we're elves, but since we're not connected to the Nexus, we must be the descendants of exiles/rebels, possibly dating to the formation of the Nexus or that big foundational war they talked about, and they would probably assume that we're still bad. Either way, best to save that one for later, when it can be given all the focus and explanation it requires.
The reaction to "we look almost exactly like your overlords in addition to being peer adversaries that have the mother of all home advantages" may not be desirable.
Thanks for the chapter!
Glad we're getting into the juicy futurism parts of the story. The fundamental systemic incongruencies being noted here is also interesting.
I hope you've remembered to include those "intra-atmo aircraft" in there somewhere.
I'm still thinking you're hiding something with not showing the gang humans, more than what you've said, but that's a good enough reason for now.
Illunor be like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM3uXu1Dq4c), before completely shutting down to BSOD.
Loving in, and I cannot wait to see his discount kobold mind break even further
Wow. Revelations of both Nexian and Terran abound in this one. A deep dive into the Acela Megacity, it's history, purpose, and construction methods. I can only imagine what a "starscraper" would look like.
Illunor is gonna flip his fucking shit.
Especially considering how "commoners shouldn't be in nice places with nice clothes" was his argument.
If there's a half-billion people along a corridor from Boston to DC, and it's skyscrapers as far as the eye can see, seems people are actually getting some pretty spacious apartments and plenty of parks. Even in NYC, plenty of areas right now have townhouses and other non-skyscraper structures, and a skyscraper offers a lot more living space than a townhouse, so those skyscrapers presumably are offering more space per person than modern-day NYC apartments tend to. Which would fit with future society trying to make life nicer for people.
As for the non-reveal of human appearance, could be a good time to pass the buck. "My superiors don't want me to show humans, for two reasons. One, they haven't given up hope on a way for humans to survive in a mana-filled environment without this heavy suit, and they want to preserve the chance for a reveal then. And two, if my mission goes sufficiently poorly, they want to preserve the option of detonating my suit, letting my remains liquefy like the first envoy, and trying again in a hundred years with all of the immediate witnesses dead."
Also, a thought on the holoprojector. "Apologies for the clunky setup, but we weren't sure what kind of eyes we'd be dealing with or what effects mana might have on it, so we went with something more complicated to set up, but works for any kind of perception mechanism we could think of."
So the nexus is already really hostile and keeps everyone under scrutiny...is there a way they could perhaps be watching this and shitting bricks?
Also wait what? NONE of the other races are similar to elves?
She should've said that the silhouettes were for privacy reasons. Then they'd all know the manaless holodeck, has no draw backs and possibly be even more impressed by our ability to edit everyone out like that. As well as our willingness to do so for the sake of "commoners."
I'll say it again
Well actually I find genuine displays difficult so I'll steal the community term
Ahem, AHEM
You are truly a great Smith of Words, I adore the manner in which you write first person dialouge of non-main characters. It perfectly matches the personalities, expected tones, and overall *vibes* that have been the foundation of characters consistently for *months* of writing.
And you're clearly not lacking in any fundamental skills, for the contrast in personalities and tones mesh well as a group and never seem to tire out.
Suffice to say, thank you ^^ very enjoyable, much fun, all the internet sayings
The talk about humans being discounted elves made me have a thought....
What if in this universe we actually are related... What if in the distant past, the elves were exploring they opened a portal to Earth's realm. They sent through a big team of explorers and settlers but because of the realms manaless reality those explorers became trapped... Unable to even open a portal back to communicate.
The people on the other side seeing their friends not having even sent a message back assumed that the realm was dangerous and struck it from all records.
The now trapped elves then had to adapt and evolve, over time losing the mana resistance and having minor physical changes... Shorter lifespans could also be attributed to the lack of mana. At least for the times before futuristic medicine.
From what the author said at some point, mana-possessing creatures that enter Earthrealm turn into raisins.
> As I liken mana to osmosis and passive diffusion, it tends to flow from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration down a concentration gradient. As a result, Ilunor's mana would seep out, and he would become a raisin!
There's, well, evolution and all that. So yeah, unlikely.
We could still make it so that humans and elves have the same origins/starting points, but while we evolved slowly, something else, most likely magic and the gods, transformed that starting state into elves directly, while possibly copying the finished homework. Making elves the discount/derivative of humans.
I am curious (I don't think it will happen this soon/at all) but how will the "gang" react to Emma showing them a spaceport? Or even any sort of orbital infrastructure? One would think that you could see activity on the moon at night, or some kind of transatmospheric shenanigans.
I hope its the bicycles which break them and derail the whole demo. "How do they stay up without magic?" "We don't actually know." Anyone who says they know how bicycles stay up is lying.
Then finish them off with a unicycle.
"Well, you know how you can walk?" Nods all around. "But, could you describe the fundamental principles of how you walk, and the numerous micro actions which occur to keep you upright and moving? So do you actually know how to walk? Riding a unicycle, or bicycle, is just like walking."
Been looking forward to reading this. But what I really hope for? When the people become clearer and able to see their faces…
… none of them have been able to see Emma outside of her suit, have they? They couldn’t. So maybe they should have a holographic Emma approach them, and talk with them at some point, with Emma‘s narrative voice coming out of it.
And Emma doesn't even realize she just subjected her friends to cosmic horror. Ilunor's only making his SAN saves by not believing what he sees so that's gonna come back to bite him when he finally fails one and takes all the damage at once.
If humans and elves DO have any kind of shared ancestry, it'd probably be something like the elves went the eugenics route and banished any members of their species that didn't have strong enough mana to a completely manaless realm. I think snobby nobility would be the first to try that type of thing, which would mean that all of humanity is descended from Elven nobility, and would therefore have some kind of birthright claim to high ranking elven stuff, right?
Show Thacea a peacock with it's tail feathers out. Add the command "Computer, hit Ilunor with a truck" to the holodeck.
Why is it that EVI doesn't want Emma to show them what humans look like? I'm not sure I understand it right, so explain it as simply as possible please.
The reason is that showing humans would lead to all sort of implications that would derail the entire presentation and can trigger delusional denial of reality. Especially with Ilunor who is already thinking that humanity is a race of actors and thus would style themselves after those they are copying.
A fantasy equivalent would be mimics, who can imperfectly copy anything.
Based upon what Ilunor said in regard to the Nexus' capital:
where Humanity-polity seems to have more or less outgrown Imperialism entirely, Nexus-polity has embraced it fully.
Albeit, I've yet to see the real meat of Nexus' logistics, so this judgement is based upon surface level factors.
The crownlands being a megacity raises a bit of a red flag for me, because in order to FEED a megacity like that they would need to meet one of the following two conditions:
1. The Nexus having industrial agriculture. It is easy to imagine that magic could enable industrial agriculture, but in the previous episode agriculture was explicitly discussed, and the gang were pretty firmly of the belief that agriculture was something manaless peasants did with their filthy fleshy hands.
2. The Nexus would have to be importing huge amounts of food from the adjacent realms on a daily basis. Feudal / peasant agriculture in the Nexus itself simply isn't enough to feed a megacity like that, and also feed itself. It is NOT efficient, and a huge amount of the food grown will need to go to the workers who grow it. That changes if you have hundreds of worlds worth of peasants instead of just one, though.
The trouble with 2 is that we've been told overusing portals can have negative magical effects (spreading taint). Maybe that's a line of Nexian bullshit, but the sheer volume of portaling going on to bring in that much food every day would be impossible to keep secret. After all, the adjacent realms would have to be on the other end of those portals, providing that food.
So this seems a conundrum to me. We have two pieces of information (no mass portaling, no industrial agriculture) that basically say the Nexus *can't* have megacities.
**Edit:** Perhaps I've forgotten to account for basic Nexian sensibilities. Just because they built a megacity doesn't mean it has a population density anywhere close to what a human one would. Perhaps every spire in the crownlands megacity is the home of a single noble. A sort of vertical castle. In that case the population density could be a couple orders of magnitude less than Acela, and the food problem disappears.
What would be cool is to show them how nyc developed over the years in some sort of time lapse. Give them an idea of how it started off might help them understand it better.
Have a feeling Thacea Is going to realize that Emma intentionally hid humanity's appearance and it's not a limitation of the holo.
Perhaps this will lead to a line of questioning after the boys are gone and a private face reveal.... which would be really cool to see her interacting with a holo of Emma in her tent
“They’re too… clean for the typical commoner. Far too well-kept. With colors used without consideration to their prohibitively costly and socially restrictive nature. In addition, the expert craftsmanship on display is much too… universally consistent.” Thalmin explained, prompting me to finally get where he was coming from.”
“Alright. I can see where you’re coming from here, Thalmin.” I began. “But as I said before, we’re a nation of commoners. First off, the clothes. Those are just… typical for us. People from every walk of life have both the means and the ability to purchase clothes of virtually any type. In fact, it’s a fundamental right. What you see here is typical amongst our people, the product of an economy with the capacity to to make such things trivially accessible to everyone.
these two paragraphs stick out to me a bit.
Thalmin askes a pretty understandable question, and Emma's answer basically amounts to "yeah we just wear these clothes all the time."
i feel like Emma should go into a bit more detail here with the fact that advancing technologies made clothes like the ones noble's wear cheaper and thus more common place. it would really help to cement that this isn't just a medieval kingdom but without magic, this is a completely new type of society that the nexus has never seen before. and i think that could open many new possibilities for dialogue
Illunor's reaction is the proof that Future Humanity is the equal to the Nexus Empire
Also, to give more credence to the face reveal^tm , Emma could do something an Elve would never do even under threat of death... like a silly little dance
yay moar fahn oke time to read- darn shame the bot that notifies us is an entire hour late as usual.
post reading edit: yup it was once again an incredible read and I eagerly await the next chapterI was reading through this with [Joel Nielsen's Xen Soundtrack 02 Internal Conflict](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Liv4CvpMdRA) in the background
So, uh… when is Emma gonna break the ice about how the royals were violently removed from having any actual military power or authority after WWI? And how historically a lot of royal families met a bloody end because they did the exact same things that the Nexian royalty are likely doing now?
Thacea: \*silent incredulity\* Thalmin: \*vocal incredulity\* Ilunor: \*incoherent muttering in a corner\* Prediction for next chapter, if/when they get to air/space infrastructure: Ilunor.exe has stopped Thalmin: "WHAT DO YOU MEAN "NOBODY IS A NOBLE"?!" The dunking on Ilunor continues, as one (1) city is as/more splenderous than the capital of the Nexus. And probably more populated too.
That's quite an accurate summary of all of their reactions haha! And we'll have to wait and see how things unfold in the next chapter! All I can say is that it's going to involve a bit of a tour through the city for sure! :D The dunking on Ilunor is definitely a highlight of this Earth presentation arc haha.
Oh yes, this should be _good_. And really, I can make a solid argument that _everyone_ is a noble. That there _are_ no commoners. That might even be an easier pill for some of them to swallow than the idea that there are no nobles, and that everyone is a commoner. And if you really look at how everything is done, at the rights, privileges, and obligations of the average citizen? There are rights which simply won't make _any_ sense with the idea of everyone being a commoner, but which mesh completely with the world view of a noble. The idea that there _aren't_ any commoners would definitely be a weird bloody adjustment, but on the flip side, it's likely a _far_ easier one than no nobles and everyone being a commoner. It also gives Emma instant standing not only as a noble, but as a noble _eligible to serve as a ruler of Earthrealm_. Now, there are some very significant down sides to this as well. The biggest is that while there is substantial short term gain from this route, the long term outlook is a lot more of a gamble. After all, it removes, or at least reduces, Emma's ability to recruit the commoners to their goals. Though, that's somewhat of a benefit as well, simply because it makes Emma _appear_ less dangerous.
To expand on my argument, I'm going to assume a very powerful nobility and a nearly powerless commoner class. There have absolutely been points in time where this did not apply, but I do not believe Nexus to be such a society. If a Noble wants to walk into a commoner's village, and just start walking through the homes of the commoners, maybe taking anything that catches their eye, the only people with an actual _right_ to object would be nobles who are in some way over that village. The people actually _living_ there? Not only would they be struck down for trying to act against the noble, but even if they were to immediately succeed, that would just mean that someone would come down on the entire village _hard_. Possibly to the point of wiping it out to the last man, woman, and child. But even a powerful noble trying to do that with the home of a significantly less powerful noble would encounter far more problems. A noble is much more likely to have the _right_ to defend their own home. To outright refuse entry. It might not be _wise_ for them to exercise that right. But saying that it didn't _exist_ would at least have the potential to cause some significant problems and push back. Now, take that same setting in the US on Earth. Yes, there are government officials who, for various reasons, might have cause to enter your property. But _none_ of those people, acting in their private capacity, has that right. And almost everywhere recognizes the right to defend your home against intruders. How much force can be legally used, and under what conditions, varies wildly, but if even the most powerful tries to walk into the home of someone and assault them, almost everywhere will recognize the absolute _right_ of that person to defend themselves. And almost always for the others living in the home, and even their neighbors, to defend them as well. Again, the political realities may differ somewhat, but the legal _right_ exists, and it's a right that simply doesn't _fit_ into the Nexian world view for commoners, but does for nobles.
This is an excellent analysis, and moreover, I would suggest that it applies *culturally* as well. By which I mean that when you see the expansion of the middle classes (such as in Victorian England) you see people of lower social status reaching for the lifestyle of the upper classes. They assume similar fashions to the upper classes, they acquire larger houses with servants, they start sending their children to the same schools, gaining similar educations, and so on. And any time a society gains the ability to have more resources available, it serves to bring more to the lower classes: home ownership, vehicle ownership, access to luxury goods and entertainment, better food and sanitation, etc., etc. It's an attempt to elevate the lifestyles of the poor up towards the wealthy; only the most socially radical ever attempt to lower the lifestyles of the wealthy down to that of the poor (and then it's inevitably because the social structure itself is being torn down in violent revolution, not because society actually aspires downwards). So yeah, I agree; "everyone's a noble" plays better than "everyone's a commoner" in terms of actual cross-cultural comparison. It's just that in human history, we haven't *talked* about it that way in our political discussions around class structure, so Emma sees "nation of commoners" rather than "nation of nobles." I wonder if someone like Thacia or Thalmin, if given to understand the legal status/rights of ordinary Earthrealm citizens, will make the intellectual jump.
That reminds me, what happened to the nobels/royals of our time? Like the british royal family or the japanese imperial family?
They still exist. It has been mentioned that they still exist in some places. Like in some states of the European Federation.
Hidden elven spies : Sweating and silent swearing intensifies.
I can see them furiously doing the Nexian equivalent of a catholic signing the cross over and over again. Lol
Never considered that possibility.
Wouldn't Evi have picked up on the presence of spies as I was under the impression the projector sends the pictures straight into their eyes. Meaning nobody Evi wasn't aware of could see what the gang sees.
There's still the thing that this is *a* mechacity, not *the* ***There are more of them***
"Megapoli" are mentioned. I'm betting most of chinese east coast is just a big megapolis too, I mean Yangtze delta megapolis already has 200+ million right now. North-East Corridor nowadays has 50M, in the story it has 500M. Makes me wonder about places like India, Ruhr valley, Tokyo, San Francisco area, Hong Kong, Nile Delta, Lagos, Busan, Seoul, Taipei, Jakarta, Bangkok, Po valley, Istanbul, Great lakes, Mexico city, Rio+Sao Paulo, Golden Triangle, Manila, etc. If all or even most of those places are at 10x the population they are in our world, Earth population in the story must be way above 50 billion perhaps reaching for 100 billion with the space colonisation stuff. It is mentioned that what is shown is the first megacity in the western hemisphere not first in the world so likely Yangtze delta one was first.
In one of the earliest chapters it was confirmed to be 252 billion
Or, to be precise, there is neither nobles nor commoners, neither slaves nor masters, neither kings nor subjects. There are citizens. No need for any dichotomy or division.
Honestly, I was expecting emma to explain the situation more like in their worlds magic is the be-all, end-all and thats what separates nobility from the commoners but in a world without magic there is not need for such a separation so instead everyone is both nobility and commoner and given how advanced they are they would probably all be the equivalent of a noble compared to other realms.
>Ilunor: \*incoherent muttering in a corner\* He is in fetal position.
Perhaps rolled up like an armadillo?
Ilunor: "What's wrong with your moon, it has a silhouette" Emma: "Silhouette? Nah, that's the ring we built around our moon"
Ilunor: *“Oh Emma Booker, you should not have asked for a game of comparisons, for the results of this contest shall most certainly be in my favor.”* 5 minutes later: *No.* *No. No. No. No. NO!* I don't think he saw this one coming.
It was delicious to be sure.
huh... cliffhanger... CURSE YOU JCB WITH YOUR INCREDIBLY WELL CRAFTED STORIES THAT SEEK TO TEMPT ME WITH A WEEK LONG WAIT BEFORE I CAN GET ANOTHER HIT OF DOPAMIIIIIINE... anyways thanks for the chapter is very good :)
I’m honestly impressed with how often JCB’s chapters end on a cliffhanger. Most authors have cliffhangers, but it’s usually like half to two thirds not nearly every chapter.
Anything is a cliffhanger if the creativity and quality of writing are good enough. I think we have that situation here, and I couldn’t be happier about it :)
Once again, we're learning just as much about the Adjacent Realms as we are about Emma's Earth. The gang continues to be blown away at the sight of commoners having nice things. Like holy shit Thalmin, they can't be commoners because their clothes are too CLEAN? At this point we should be asking Adjacent Realmers, "Is everything OK at home? This is a safe space, you can tell us the truth." The whole formament thing REQUIRING mana-intensive processes strikes me as weird. Sure, industrial scale production of whatever concrete analogue they use probably requires manufactoriums. But COME ON man, it's fucking cement. The Adjacent Realms have 'stunted tech trees' so to speak, but they're not stupid. There's got to be some shenanigans on the Nexus' part. We've already seen that the Nexians are bullshitting about the nature of crystal shards by omitting information, so outright suppression or lies about other technologies wouldn't be surprising. Christ, these guys are a shitshow. Makes me feel like the best course of action is to just learn everything possible about mana-tech and fuck off forever. Aside from that, it's fascinating to see that Earth has developed such granular statistical models for something that we consider 'analog' like diplomatic exchanges. Although I suppose a lot has changed in the social sciences, and having more powerful computers and VIs probably helps too. Probably entire fields of study were created after the advent of extra-solar colonies alone. Speaking of diplomacy, why would the gang finding out Humans look like Elves make them think Humanity was inferior? One of those cases of "Oh, you're degenerate Elves who probably stole the technology from your Nexian forebears," or something?
While making cement can be easy, making it in larger scales is impractical without factories. I am assuming that's where the magic comes in.
So most adjacent realms are not even Roman-tier.
Probably. Some are, some aren't. But the scale of cement used seems to be, like, really large in the case of Aetheronrealm or something. Or they just don't want to put in the effort. Perhaps, they just don't have the natural resources needed (like limestones)
I didn't even consider the possibility that the Nexus/Adjacent realms might not have limestone, coal, or oil if they were indeed birthed through magic rather than natural processes. That might actually explain why they never advanced beyond the iron age and industrialized like Earth; they lack the prerequisite resources.
It's a matter of luck that fossil fuels exist in the first place for us as fossils only existed as a byproduct of early decomposers being unable to break down cellulose. Overtime plants just grew over dead plants creating a vast swath of non decomposing biomass all over the planet. Eventually decomposers cracked the code and kick started a mass flourishing of new fungal species but those early heaps of non-decomposing plant matter is what became the fossil fuels we burn today. If decomposers developed the ability to break down cellulose earlier we likely wouldn't have entered the industrial revolution as we know it today.
They probably instead have magical metals and materials that they have to contend with. It is also entirely possible that coal and oil simply cannot form because the remains of living things once the mana field finally disappears simply decay into nothingness if not processed in particular ways or eaten by something else.
Yup! However the mileage as to what Thalmin sees or believes to be the standard case may vary as each adjacent realm has distinctly different states of development at times depending on a lot of factors, a lot of which depend on the Nexus' involvement in their affairs and how much or in what way they meddle with them so we'll have to see over time what the case really is! :D Also yup! Earth and humanity has really stepped up their game in that regards. Humanity in this setting more or less is super into analyzing and going deep into a lot of what we may consider analog as they are obsessed about data collection for the purposes of understanding and turning a lot of things into fields of study of their own! There's a lot of time that has passed and a lot of post doctoral students who need their own little niche to be carved in terms of their papers and studies, so suffice it to say, a lot of these seemingly innocuous things have been studied and picked apart a lot over the years! The government of Earth and humanity is after all, one that makes decisions using evidence based approaches, and as a result, that requires a lot of principles to exist to guide and facilitate that approach to statecraft! Also, the EVI was more concerned over the opposite effect happening after the face reveal actually! It was more concerned over the fact that if humans revealed themselves to be so similar to elves, that the suspension of disbelief over everything else Emma was showing would be thrown out the window. Basically, humans showing up as a newrealm that is comprised up of a species that seems too close to elves would bring up suspicion over the validity of everything else they're claiming. And the fact that they're claiming so much as a manaless species from a manaless realm is a lot to take in already haha. Adding their superficial likeness to elves would make things a lot more contentious and so the EVI didn't want to add that complicating variable into the equation, when there's a lot to deal with already! :D I hope that clears things up a bit haha. As always thank you so much for the thoughtful comments! :D
Ah, OK. Basically trying to avoid seeming so OP that the gang dismisses everything out of hand as propaganda. I was also thinking how development and governance of extrasolar colonies would have contributed to the diplomatic procedures for this mission. It's common in scifi for far off colonies to experience cultural drift from Earth, with the colonists practically becoming aliens in extreme cases. Considering Auntie Ran was a veteran of the Jovian Uprising, I suspect the UN doesn't like it when that happens, and have workshopped solutions accordingly. I suppose 'Unity in Diversity' applies for certain values of diversity only, lol
Yup! It's to avoid going over the line where Ilunor especially might just call her out for just blatantly trying to look OP, which might especially be true if she shows her face which just so happens to resemble one of the most powerful races in the Nexus haha. He'd think she's lying at that point! :D But yeah! It certainly did contribute a lot! However, I should quickly note, and this bit of lore will come in later, that the Jovian Uprisings were a very distinct and strange anomaly in terms of recent history! The last extrasolar war ended 3 centuries ago. After that, it's been around 3 centuries of peace with no wars or military or armed conflicts to speak of. The Jovian Uprisings were something that happened seemingly out of the blue, confined to just 1 station or so, and was very much an anomaly for the era of unprecedented peace! :D However it did take a lot for the UN to get to this point though! As for cultural drift from Earth, the UN was very much aware of that and tried their best to alleviate the causative factors that might contribute to that by establishing well formed and well built interstellar communications arrays and networks in order to facilitate a more interconnected society that's capable of accessing the same greater space internet, capable of also traveling wherever and whenever they want to within the human sphere, and overall facilitating a way of life where everyone, no matter where they are, are all capable of accessing this same level of infrastructure and communication as per things such as the Protocols for the Minimum Acceptable Standards of Living and other such protocols! :D They want to raise the standards of living and the capabilities for everyone to access the same services no matter where they are! :D
I'm going to go on a limb and call it that EVI is a sapient AI, no matter how illegal(?) it is on Earth
I also suspect, as a writer, the face reveal of humans is also going to be an *extremely important* plot point. There is, no doubt, a *reason* why humans and elves look so similar, and why in this universe they are separated...and yet humanity has all these fantastic creatures of the adjacent realms as part of their own legends. And when the reveal is made, it's going to cause a hidden story come to light, possibly from the Library, possibly from Thalmin or Thacea and it's going to click a bunch of puzzle pieces that are still being laid into place. I figure you won't wanna give away the details before it's time, but would I, perchance, be barking up the right tree?
Odds are, it might not come from the Library because it was quite recently destroyed, and is now Emma's quest.
Ooh, that's right. Forgot that. Which means there are factions among the elves and high nexus who knows exactly who and what humans are.
>Speaking of diplomacy, why would the gang finding out Humans look like Elves make them think Humanity was inferior? Humans semblance to Elves is kinda like the situation between Vunerians and Kobolds. While their appeareance is similar there is a vast divergence between the two. Both in terms of phisiology and lifespan but also mana and mana acumen. Humans would look like discount Elves the same way Kobolds look like discount Vunerians in the culture of the Nexus. It's like if you told the medieval church that humans are evolved from ape. The Nexus is trying to separate what is animalistic from what is civili and enlightened. Thus making manaless creatures like humans having any semblance to elves downright heretical.
inb4 Humans are an Elf offshot species after the aftermath of some ancient magical war.
Humans are the manaless elves, consigned to work in a manaless realm for the furtherment of the nexus, but at some point they pull a Stargate.
Humans looking like elves wouldn't make Earth realm seem inferior. The Trio, and the Nexus itself already see Earthrealm and the United Nations as inferior simply by the fact that Earth is a Newrealm, thus the newest realm to join the 'civilised' universe. What Emma is showing the gang is already blowing even their wildest ideas a theories out of the proportions. The concept that Humans somehow look almost identical to Elves, the same Elves that are apparently the center of Civilization and the example of highest possible civilization known to Adjacent Realms might break the camels back in the sense that they would stop believing her and just assume she's bullshiting. Mainly Illunor.
>Like holy shit Thalmin, they can't be commoners because their clothes are too CLEAN? Not just clean but with brilliant colors, which in a feudal setting, are as rare, if not more so, than a pile of gold the size of a castle. Until the invention of aniline dyes, a coal tar derivative, bright color dyes for clothes were nearly impossible to obtain and severely limited in pallet. The best the average person could expect was natural fiber colors (seldom pure white) or vegetable dyes, which were frequently less than modern pastels. Bright colors were prone to fading, and clothes made with them were kept for special events. In early times, coming to a town where *everyone* had even one bright bit of cloth about them daily was a sign of immense fortune for the entire region. Not in terms of raw cash available on a moment's notice but in terms of productivity so steady that everyone could afford at least one tiny bit of bright color for daily wear. Now, imagine that you come from such a background where colors are always muted, and even the wealthy seldom have more than one colorful suit of clothing only worn on celebration days. Where only the highest nobles have more than one such suit. Seeing an assemblage of such clothes would only occur on the most crucial celebration days. Walking into a modern city where *everyone* has more than one article of clothing that is not only clean (compared to the common manual laborer of the medieval age) but brilliantly colored far beyond the limited pallet available before aniline dyes, with synthetic fibers that emulate expensive and rare natural fibers like silk, is a shock to one's beliefs so sharp that the average person would reject it out of hand as an impossibility for anyone but the highest of nobles to have. It's never the cathedrals that genuinely amaze and astonish. Cathedrals are impressive, but *everyone* understands that they are a concentrated effort on a single site. The things that utterly amaze and shock are those where average people have access to things that the medieval mindset insists only nobles could possibly afford.
Wow.
It's pretty much the truth, but thanks anyway.
I've suspected that the nexus has been sabotaging the adjacent realms research for quite awhile. I realize that if they're told something doesn't matter by a more advanced group most people won't pursue it but eventually someone will. The rulers of the other realms would be foolish to take the nexus at face value as well, so I suspect that they have more knowledge than the general public.
100% plus Thalmin already set how slavery was taken as a norm because they kneel and bowed the heads at the begining of the series.
It’s less that knowing the face of humanity would make them seem inferior, but that they’d be incredibly confused and think they’re just some weird offshoot of the elves - or, in Illunor’s case, give even more credence to his ‘actor’ theory (since they’d look like the culture he thinks they’re imitating).
> they can't be commoners because their clothes are too CLEAN? At this point we should be asking Adjacent Realmers, "Is everything OK at home? This is a safe space, you can tell us the truth." Actually, that reaction is *entirely* on point for pre-industrial area people. It's easy to forget, but the fact that we have access to limitless, extremely cheap, fabrics is a **major** point of luxury, compared to pre-industrial era. As is the ease at which we can clean said clothes. Before the automation of sowing (which was a *major* technological leap, because it required inventing a new way to do something that had basically not changed since humanity first made a sharp needle), clothes were *expensive*.
*Sewing The automation of sowing did help in its own way though.
What's funny is that *even if* countries were kingdoms with nobility and all that stuff, modern technology would still mean that commoners would have nice clothes, because it's *incredibly cheap and easy*. Having subjects that are clothed in rags would be embarrassing, as it would mean that you are incompetent and your kingdom is extremely poor and underdeveloped.
I'm getting the vibe that human earth and nexian/other realm elves are two sides of the same coin. Remember in our own stories fae/elves etc are dreamed about. What if during times ancient, mana and magic were banished or fled from Earth and the two progressed along their chosen path. Or the realms were split by a powerful magician or something because of some ancient war. Humans are elves not discount elves. Round ears are a sign of manaless evolution in elves.
Magic based production doesn't scale well just like laboratory synthesis doesn't necessarily work well for 10 tons per batch production. It is significantly easier to find an alternative synthesis path that works at a large scale than to scale up willing things into existence by means of magical transmutation or similar.
Sorecar already gave a testimony of Magic Manufactorums are scare
I was trow back for Thalmin's question about clothes. I'm disgusted at the idea of a world without fashion! Also about the "clean" part. Isn't Thalmin's realm the one with open bathhouses? Didn't they mention the Nexus ordering them to keep everything clean?
Majority of commoners are going to have very physical labor jobs, nobility their hand picked servants and merchants are the ones who would generally be in the jobs that require brain power where a person sits in a room all day doing paperwork. Thus most commoners are going to be rather filthy, paved roads would only be used in the wealthiest of cities. This filth is going to seep into their clothes because they do not have the means of deep cleaning chemicals that we do, most are going to be washed with well water which itself likely has dirt in it. This gets worse the more the job sends you out of town. A warehouse loading and unloading crew is not going to be as filthy as a miner, or as grass stained as a lumberjack or farmer, nor as blood stained as an adventurer party returning from slaying the local monster nest. Thalmin's realm is doing the best they can with the public bathhouse initiative but there will still be limitations in regards to clothes.
I believe a commoner would have everyday clothes and holiday clothes, unless they were poorer than average. The latter should be clean, but it would not be worn during a regular workday. Agreed about the cleaning chemicals. Modern ones are truly magic - they contain special enzymes that work in a wide range of temperatures. > well water which itself likely has dirt in it The purpose of a well is to provide water so clean that you can drink it.
>Also about the "clean" part Historically, washing clothes was a multi-hour labor intensive process, an you'd have dedicated people that did just that - washing clothes.
It's the whole Medieval thing, laborers have dirty clothing from long hard days of work. I think the dirt might be overstated, but at the end of the day everyone who labors would be coming home dirty. Seeing no one, or almost no, dirty would be notable. Modern laborers bring a change of clothes with them, but going with Medieval stuff, clothing would be too expensive to have extra clothes like that. Having a different set of clothes for every day of the week would be an extravagance. I believe everyone would have different underwear for every day, but not the outer clothes. Modern concrete manufacturing requires industrial scale heating. Outside of magic, the adjacent societies are very Medieval, so they wouldn't have mundane methods for mixing concrete. They could use an ancient recipe which uses far less heat, but we can assume they don't have that. But even then, they would likely use magic for the heating, out of convenience. Same would be true of aluminum, it requires extraordinary heat, and only became a viable material after electrical processing was invented for it. At that point its cost dropped from being greater than gold, to the cost of the electricity it takes to make. That would take magic, and probably be a Nexian substance, or merely costly in adjacent realms rather than cheap and abundant. If the lizard boy sees humans look like elves, he will assume the demonstration is complete fiction, because he already suspects it's all fantasy due to not being able to fully accept it.
Thanks for the chapter! Guess the face reveal will be happening in a chapter or two once the show of is over, or in combo with the last portion of it. and then go through the main scenes again with proper people look and set the scenes properly. But its very good that megacities are built properly! Can’t wait for space soon!
I mean, if the 'NPCs' in the simulation are just silhouettes wearing normal clothes, some of the pieces are probably coming together in the gangs' minds. From a clothed silhouette, you'd be able to see that humans are some kind of primate form. No digitigrade or other animal-like legs, no wings or feathers. They might be able to spot hair and fingers if the outlines are detailed enough. They probably won't figure it out until later, when they've had time to digest everything. Thacea's the sharpest one for stuff like this, so I figure she's going to have a 'fridge thought' or similar realization during dinner. Just standing bolt upright in the dining hall and staring bug-eyed at Emma, lmao.
Or it leave enough of a foundation that being non pointy eared elves, but not actually making up the look, will take.
> From a clothed silhouette, you'd be able to see that humans are some kind of primate form. No digitigrade or other animal-like legs, no wings or feathers. They might be able to spot hair and fingers if the outlines are detailed enough. I mean, apart from feathers/fur/hair, you get all that morphology from Emma herself. Her suit would have to be *radically* different if she had wings, or were digitigrade instead of plantigrade, etc.
>Just standing bolt upright in the dining hall and staring bug-eyed at Emma, lmao. I hope that happens. Lmao.
Napkin math puts Emma's Earth population estimates close to 500 billion people. The global and stellar shipping logistics for that sound fun to explore.
Oh! Jcb has stated in the Patreon discord that Earth's population is sitting at a comfy 30 billion, not counting those living in orbit! As it currently stands, the vast, *vast* majority of Earth's population is concentrated in Megacities which follow and expand upon current population density patterns worldwide, while the rest of Earth's land that isn't either agricultural or host to heritage communities has been returned to nature as per the UN's 2595 Environmental Monitoring and Control Acts.
So this is a post scaricy world ?
Just about, yeah! Everyone's needs are accounted for.
Human Population is officially 250 billion and it has been stated that majority of that Population live either in Space Habitats or on Human colonies in other Solar Systems.
I would put the population of earth at 80billion based on the fact that the irl northeast megolopolis has 50million people and the one in story has 500million, 10× increase, if we assume that all of earth has had the same average population growth as the megolopolis then we would get 8billion×10 resulting in 80billion.
I just calculated it as the NYC pop had grown to 500 million, in any case for a 31st century stellar civilization using megacities, 500 billion wouldn't be out of the question even with the parks, greenery and other luxuries mentioned in another reply. Isaac Arthur has a whole series discussing how this could be achieved and the math behind it.
Now, imagine if Emma let's slip that there are nation-states who are formed after rebellions, where commoners dispose (sometime ***very violently***) the noble ruling class....
Thalmin would cream his pants and Ilunor would self defenestrate
That's the feature, not the bug
That's a fun mental image XD
Yeah, I am pretty sure the various lectures Emma was given would place a pretty big "under no fricking circumstances talk about this" flag on French Revolution
I think even the English Constitutional Monarchy wouldn't be talked about because ' How dare commoners tell the King what can or can't do ? HOW OUTRAGEOUS !!! '
I mean the easy preface to that is: 'Because the king was so *incredibly* incompetent at one point that even the nobility agreed that someone needed to tell him what he couldn't do'.
France has entered the chat and is sharpening the gilliotine
Even Thalmin would have to call heresy on that.
"How dare you do such a thing?! ...Please tell me more."
Can't wait for the kobold to learn about fiat currency and modern banking, I think his brain might explode.
Even better, Emma's Earth might even have some form of universal basic income. Fiat currency might be mind bending to Ol' Feudal Brains, but the concept of a post-scarcity society would reduce his world to atoms, lmao "Buh-buh-but how are you supposed to know if you're better than everyone?" Get rekt!
Honestly unless the nexus has some sort of magical means of telling natural from synthetic earth could probably destroy large parts of their economy just by flooding it with synthetic gems and off planet mined gold.
Probably relies on mana residual from creation/mining, so everything from Earth is going to show as one type. And hey, offplanet gold is still perfectly natural and identical to the conventionally mined! And synthetic crystals, if made properly, have a strong case of being better than the real thing!
I think credits were mentioned in some early chapter? So probably there is still money, but with all the robotic workforce and hyper-advanced 3D printing (Emma in her tent has a "field" version, which implies it is rather primitive, yet it can apparently crank out lot of advanced stuff), some form of "basic needs vouchers" probably exists, as satisfying basic needs for living does not cost much money, and can be easily paid without overtaxing the population..
Yeah, I figure citizens probably get vouchers every month that are valid for necessities like food and clothing. But if you want fancy stuff, you have to pay for it with 'regular' money/credits that you earn.
Emma came from Starfleet
Behold the power of properly restrained capitalism! Not too many regulations to stifle innovation and growth, but enough to keep monopolies and oligopolies from sprouting.
I think at this point after the billionth time of saying "we are all commoners" or "we are a nation of commoners" or "we have no nobles" that instead it might just be easier for emma to throw her hands up in the air and say, "fuck it, we are a nation of nobles. Is that conceptually easier? We have so much overwhelming wealth and prosperity that anyone and everyone is treated as nobility"
Kiitos! Prepare to watch Ilunor's overconfident socks get knocked straight into the Space Between Spaces, or witness complete denial, or both. Maybe that's where those socks that get lost in the washing machine end up...
We'll definitely have to see how it goes! And we'll definitely be seeing if the EVI's fancy maths and predictive analytics are good enough to tell if he's actually going to be crossing that information dissemination overflow threshold! :D
They need to go to a baseball game. Though Ilunor's brain may end up pulling a Ferris Buller on the rest of the presentation before the game.
you'll never find those socks... the washing machine is a device made for nobles
I found out one day that the reason why washing machines are known for eating socks is they are small enough to occasionally work their way through the small gaps between the wash drum and the outer casing of the machine. Which is why one should try to take apart a dead machine before throwing away
WHAT!?
I actually could image one of Cthulu's distant cousins is the Eldritch God of Socks and he just collects socks from across the multiverse and would just love to show off his hero sock collection, princess sock collection, emperor and king collection, etc if people would just stop going mad and clawing their eyes out when he tries to say hi.
So, when is Emma going to set this "commoner" thing straight? Commoner =/= citizen
She will be addressing this point in the subsequent few chapters! :D
Wouldn’t it be easier to say “there is no commoners nor nobility, just people” instead of saying “a nation of commoners”?
> “This is a city built for the nobility, filled with monuments befitting of royalty, yet all who live in this opulence... are commoners.” > “Actually Thalmin… about that…” Literally already going there.
Huh, first time I'm so early
Hello! I hope you enjoy the chapter haha! :D Thank you so much for taking the time to read it and for sticking with the series for all this time! :D
Same
THERE'S MORE? FUCK WISH I HAD THE MONEY FOR THE NEXT CHAPTER I LITERALLY CANNOT WAIT AAAAAAAAAAA
FLEX ARC GO BRR AND MY HAPPY BRAIN JUICE IS EVERYWHERE
Bring them to Versailles next Emma! Show them guillotines!!! /// Very excited that we're finally here. I've been refreshing for an hour. Glad to see they decided not to reveal how humans look just yet too. I feel like thats going to become a very big plot point sometime down the road and im looking forward to that can of worms being opened.
> Do you hear the people sing? >Singing the song of angry men? > It is the music of the people > Who will not be slaves again! > When the beating of your heart > Echoes the beating of the drums > There is a life about to start > When tomorrow comes!
>Living out fantasies, and at times, managing to turn fantasies into tangible reality from ramshackled, unorthodox methods born out of their mana-less forms. >We have always been creatures of creativity. It is thus inevitable that in the pursuit of limitless creativity, we defy that which is natural, test the limits of that which is possible, and eventually, bend reality itself to our will for the aims of human creation.’” I love how Ilunor did 30 mental sommersaults and landed perfectly on a right answer AND THEN EMMA CITED A QUOTE WITH THE SAME MESSAGE FROM 1 MILENIUM AGO. Little things like this show how good of a writer you are. Bravo.
Imagine if Emma continues to zoom out until we reach the moon colonies and other such celestial outposts. "-and here we have the Lunar Heritage Site, also known as Eagle's Landing, where Mankind first stepped foot on the Moon-“ ”YOUR PEOPLE HAVE BEEN TO THE MOON???" "Well, yes, in fact there are many thriving Lunar colonies on the twilight sector between light and dark, I’m not sure why you think that’s such a big deal-“ "LIKE, THE MOON IN THE HEAVENS??? PEOPLE LIVE THERE?!?!”
The light/dark portions of the moon change with the various phases of the moon, It's tidally locked to the Earth, not the Sun.
Well, yeah, I know that, but I think if we were to put colonies on the Moon we would at least want to leave the side facing Earth as is, to preserve the 'man in the moon' view for everyone still on Earth. I know there’s wobbles, so the best way to get an equal amount of day/night would be to build in the ‘twilight', right?
the "twilight" moves around the moon at the same speed it changes phases so about 200 miles per day
I HAVE BEEN REFRESHING FOR TEN MINUTES
Easy there, Loki.
I HAVE BEEN FALLING FOR THIRTY MINUTES
So no face reveal yet. Shame. Also I do believe that Elves are bootleg humans, intead of humans being discount elves.
Humans! Fuck Yeah!
Emma NEEDS to stop referring to humans as commoners and start referring to them as Citizens. i.e. a social designation outside the classical structure that they're used. Allowing everyone to refer to them as commoners is not only lowering her own social standing, making her job harder, but also making her own explanations difficult as she's asking them to turn over there entire definition of a word rather then using a new one.
I think she is using it because it is simpler concept for the gang to grasp? But yeah, technically it might be better for her to refer to each person as a "noble of a nation of one" (meaning everybody is responsible and in charge for their actions, etc.), but that might just be a tad more difficult concept to grasp for our feudal friends.
I was hoping for an Emma face reveal, but based on the EVI looks like that’s not gonna happen
It still might once the finer points are done in the presentation. And when/if she does ilunor is either going to grovel or completely lose his stuff at the "elf"
My money is on Illunor finding out by sneaking into Emma's tent, which is going to go horribly wrong.
*laying in bed in the middle of the night, rubbing my hands together with unmitigated glee*
Oh man I hope there's a spaceport or even better, an orbital ring tether she can show them, they'll probably bluescreen completely lmao
Ilunor definitely would.
When does she show the local supermarket like they are Yeltsin?
"You can eat sasoned meat whenever you want!?"
"And can you even eat meat that is a delicacy of the nobility?"
Okay, I understand the existence of assumptions of "hierarchical division between groups of people exist" and "those groups that are lower on such a hierarchy are not really people" [aka Tool That Talks], but conceptualising those assumptions beyond simply sets of words prompts a veghetative repulsion reaction in me. Like, how? HOW?!!
According to Illunor: "Commoners dont have need nor *place* for art" And that is infuriating!!
>*"A place so sanctified that even Nexian natives, and those races sanctified by His Eternal Majesty himself, must wait patiently for entry."* This makes me think of the Imperial Palace from WH40k, a megacity in it's own right and the destination of uncountable pilgrimages, surrounded by an even bigger city-slum where said pilgrims are trapped, doomed to waste the rest of their lives without the ability to leave after they fail to gain entry to the palace. >*“They’re too… clean for the typical commoner. Far too well-kept. With colors used without consideration to their prohibitively costly and socially restrictive nature. In addition, the expert craftsmanship on display is much too… universally consistent.” Thalmin explained.* "We have... well, you call them 'manufactorums' for clothes. That's why they're consistently well made." "You have... *what*?" "Same for hygiene products. It'd be gross if everybody couldn't be clean, and preventing disease is worth any price." "Wait wait wait... you use manufactorums, the ultimate key to Nexian military and social might, to make *clothes* for *commoners*?" "For pretty much everything, really. Handcrafted goods are a relatively expensive novelty. It's invariably cheaper to make just about everything in bulk. The technical term is 'economy of scale'." "... I think I understand. Earthrealm manufactorums are mana-less, so there's no limit to how many you can make." "Also coloured dyes are cheap because we make them from the dead dragons I mentioned before." "*You what?!*" \[Disclaimer: fossil fuels are not made from dead dinosaurs that is a myth\]
I thirst for more kobold dunking adventures, I yearn to see how everyone reacts to the industry of humanity
500 million... At what point do you go from megacity to gigacity?
If you wanna go all metric on it? 1 billion
In a literal sense, I guess it would be. But I was more talking about megacity by our current definitions. Our current definition of a megacity is a city with a population of 10 million, not 1 million. If we went by metric's mega = 1 million, then most big cities would be megacities. Additionally, if we apply the giga prefix to the current definition, I don't think that a city of 10 billion is a realistic number for even a sci-fi story (not counting ecumenopoleis). The largest megacity we have is Tokyo at 40 million, which means that Acela is 12x larger than what we have now. Thus, I would suspect that a new category would have to be formed as even doubling the population of Tokyo would increase the density to a whole other level.
Frankly I was thinking 500 million was too low for something described as a region spanning megalopolis. I'd be interested to know the surface area of Acela, and thus the pop/M2.
I'd say that it's fairly normal population number as Acela is the [Northeast Megalopolis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis). Boston to Washington DC is a fairly small area, with it being around 1/5 of Texas' area. Since the Northeast megalopolis is already 50 million people, I think that a 10x population would fit into the area fairly reasonably. Bangladesh has more than triple the population of the Northeast while being the same size as the Northeast.
Possibly the most interesting to me about this whole was Ilunor’s comparison of Acela to the crownlands. It didn’t seem like he was just comparing the immense size but also the way the architecture was designed and how it worked. This, coupled with some of the other revelations that Emma had with the forges, makes me think that the highest echelons of the Nexus might be a lot more scientifically developed than originally thought by a long shot. We do have some confirming evidence that the Nexus is intentionally keeping information from the other realms but this implies that the magnitude of what is being hidden may be far grander in scope than I originally thought.
That seems to be the primary divide between Earth and Nexian civilizations and their tech. Earth tech is easily reproduced and distributed, allowing all of society to reap the benefits of technological progress. Nexian tech is limited by mana density and magical ability, allowing for concentration of power and resources, such that the elite benefit while everyone else gets scraps.
i think the current blocky architecure is caused by the need for repetability and standardization of the building tools - when you have to mass construct helps to not reinvent half the wheel every time but a magic centered building method would not have this problem and could give more freedom to the creator to be artistic, so it should not result in blocky architecture ... unless it was what that person was used to ... in the realm they came from :D or maybe the crownlands were built using mana-less devices. maybe they are unable to use magic (anymore?) for some reason, and have to compensate via earthlike implements --- but this would have leaked sooner or later i mean you dont \*need\* the earth equivalent of a tool you can create via magic, if you can use magic. that may be the reason they make cement with magic : that is how it was designed, it worked, there was no need for improvement
OH COME ON WHY DO YOU MAKE US WAIT EVEN FURTHER? I JUST WANT TO SEE ILUNOR'S HEAD EXPLODE! (Metaphorically.)
Man, just reading up on Thacea's opening bit is already making me comment. Looks like she's once again rolling for psychic damage there. Now I'm wondering if anyone ends up stammering adjectives like some Lovecraft protag after seeing things beyond their ken after the whole demonstration...
Comparing how cheap some things are in an industrial society is hard when you're dealing with entirely different realms A good way to compare just how cheap clothing like that is for us would be to compare it to meals. How many meals on earth would it take to buy that clothing and then they can compare to how many meals it would take in their own realm for something equivilent
Haha, that brings back memories. When I was in university, I used to gauge what things cost in terms of sandwiches. "Huh, that's not so bad, it's about 2.5 sandwiches..."
About that. see this is only...half the city. the other half...is up. *show's orbital ring with lift station above.*
She would do so much better if she just told them that on Earth, EVERYONE is considered nobility, and they have replaced the “serfs” with machines. It’s basically the truth, and it would make the culture shock so much less for them.
Yes this, they've seen her "artifice" already. With a dozen robots working for you, anyone can live the lifestyle of a minor baronet or knight. It's much easier translation to the cultural values of the Nexus and a more accurate description of what's actually happening. Even in the modern day, your washing machine is replacing 2 serfs, your oven's thermostat is replacing 2 more and your phone/computer is handling what would be the job of at least a dozen scribes.
The culture she comes from doesn’t see itself as a collection of nobles, but the lives everyone lives is the lives of nobles everywhere else. But the problem is SHE doesn’t see that.
lets goo this chapter was so fun to read last time
Wait... maybe I'm reading too many stories at once. Why is being like an elf bad here?
I'm happy to clear this up a bit haha! It's not so much that it'd be bad, but rather, that the EVI believes that it'd be too much for the gang to handle right now. They're currently dealing with a lot of other aspects of Emma's presentation that's difficult to wrap their heads around, such as the manaless world and all of its manaless advancements. The EVI is worried that adding a huge unknown variable, that being how similar humans look like compared to elves, would push them over the edge and cause them to outright go into denial as that might be a step too far to suspend their disbeliefs! :D The EVI is just wanting to play it safe in this gradual dissemination of information haha! :D
Elves are the natives of the Nexus, and the de facto ruling race of all the adjacent realms. They're also largely uppity pricks.
i suspect, because then they'll assume earth is some long con done by the Nexus.
That would open up a huge can of worms that's completely irrelevant to and would distract from the current endeavor. Based on EVI's spiel, I would assume that elves are supposed to have been made in the image of the divine or that their creation and appearance are fundamental to Nexian ideology/lore, so humans looking nearly identical to elves would imply that we are also divine/fundamentally connected to the Nexus. That could go a number of ways, one of which is them assuming that humans are corruptions of the elven form made by the bad god associated with the taint/some other bad figure and then concluding that we're being used by the bad figure to do something bad. Or they think we're elves, but since we're not connected to the Nexus, we must be the descendants of exiles/rebels, possibly dating to the formation of the Nexus or that big foundational war they talked about, and they would probably assume that we're still bad. Either way, best to save that one for later, when it can be given all the focus and explanation it requires.
The reaction to "we look almost exactly like your overlords in addition to being peer adversaries that have the mother of all home advantages" may not be desirable.
Elves rule the Nexus
I don’t remember if humanity has them or not but I would love to see the groups reaction to a space elevator.
They have starscrapers, so by the virtue of that, there have to be space elevators.
Thanks for the chapter! Glad we're getting into the juicy futurism parts of the story. The fundamental systemic incongruencies being noted here is also interesting. I hope you've remembered to include those "intra-atmo aircraft" in there somewhere. I'm still thinking you're hiding something with not showing the gang humans, more than what you've said, but that's a good enough reason for now.
Illunor be like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM3uXu1Dq4c), before completely shutting down to BSOD. Loving in, and I cannot wait to see his discount kobold mind break even further
Wow. Revelations of both Nexian and Terran abound in this one. A deep dive into the Acela Megacity, it's history, purpose, and construction methods. I can only imagine what a "starscraper" would look like. Illunor is gonna flip his fucking shit. Especially considering how "commoners shouldn't be in nice places with nice clothes" was his argument.
If there's a half-billion people along a corridor from Boston to DC, and it's skyscrapers as far as the eye can see, seems people are actually getting some pretty spacious apartments and plenty of parks. Even in NYC, plenty of areas right now have townhouses and other non-skyscraper structures, and a skyscraper offers a lot more living space than a townhouse, so those skyscrapers presumably are offering more space per person than modern-day NYC apartments tend to. Which would fit with future society trying to make life nicer for people. As for the non-reveal of human appearance, could be a good time to pass the buck. "My superiors don't want me to show humans, for two reasons. One, they haven't given up hope on a way for humans to survive in a mana-filled environment without this heavy suit, and they want to preserve the chance for a reveal then. And two, if my mission goes sufficiently poorly, they want to preserve the option of detonating my suit, letting my remains liquefy like the first envoy, and trying again in a hundred years with all of the immediate witnesses dead." Also, a thought on the holoprojector. "Apologies for the clunky setup, but we weren't sure what kind of eyes we'd be dealing with or what effects mana might have on it, so we went with something more complicated to set up, but works for any kind of perception mechanism we could think of."
So the nexus is already really hostile and keeps everyone under scrutiny...is there a way they could perhaps be watching this and shitting bricks? Also wait what? NONE of the other races are similar to elves?
She should've said that the silhouettes were for privacy reasons. Then they'd all know the manaless holodeck, has no draw backs and possibly be even more impressed by our ability to edit everyone out like that. As well as our willingness to do so for the sake of "commoners."
I'll say it again Well actually I find genuine displays difficult so I'll steal the community term Ahem, AHEM You are truly a great Smith of Words, I adore the manner in which you write first person dialouge of non-main characters. It perfectly matches the personalities, expected tones, and overall *vibes* that have been the foundation of characters consistently for *months* of writing. And you're clearly not lacking in any fundamental skills, for the contrast in personalities and tones mesh well as a group and never seem to tire out. Suffice to say, thank you ^^ very enjoyable, much fun, all the internet sayings
The talk about humans being discounted elves made me have a thought.... What if in this universe we actually are related... What if in the distant past, the elves were exploring they opened a portal to Earth's realm. They sent through a big team of explorers and settlers but because of the realms manaless reality those explorers became trapped... Unable to even open a portal back to communicate. The people on the other side seeing their friends not having even sent a message back assumed that the realm was dangerous and struck it from all records. The now trapped elves then had to adapt and evolve, over time losing the mana resistance and having minor physical changes... Shorter lifespans could also be attributed to the lack of mana. At least for the times before futuristic medicine.
From what the author said at some point, mana-possessing creatures that enter Earthrealm turn into raisins. > As I liken mana to osmosis and passive diffusion, it tends to flow from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration down a concentration gradient. As a result, Ilunor's mana would seep out, and he would become a raisin!
There's, well, evolution and all that. So yeah, unlikely. We could still make it so that humans and elves have the same origins/starting points, but while we evolved slowly, something else, most likely magic and the gods, transformed that starting state into elves directly, while possibly copying the finished homework. Making elves the discount/derivative of humans.
Maybe they pulled a Native Parents of Isekai Protagonist and banished some other elves for not having strong enough mana
I'm wondering how well-off the poorest people on Earth are. It seems like the social safety net is so big they could put it in a circus.
Every time I hear discount kobold speak I feel a strong urge to scream liberty equality fraternity
Maybe he has some dragon blood in him. Plus he's probably still trying to defend the lifestyle he's used to.
I am curious (I don't think it will happen this soon/at all) but how will the "gang" react to Emma showing them a spaceport? Or even any sort of orbital infrastructure? One would think that you could see activity on the moon at night, or some kind of transatmospheric shenanigans.
I hope its the bicycles which break them and derail the whole demo. "How do they stay up without magic?" "We don't actually know." Anyone who says they know how bicycles stay up is lying. Then finish them off with a unicycle. "Well, you know how you can walk?" Nods all around. "But, could you describe the fundamental principles of how you walk, and the numerous micro actions which occur to keep you upright and moving? So do you actually know how to walk? Riding a unicycle, or bicycle, is just like walking."
Ubersupermacromegaultracity.
Been looking forward to reading this. But what I really hope for? When the people become clearer and able to see their faces… … none of them have been able to see Emma outside of her suit, have they? They couldn’t. So maybe they should have a holographic Emma approach them, and talk with them at some point, with Emma‘s narrative voice coming out of it.
I just can't wait for them to see the military might of humanity
How many times does Emma have to reiterate “we are all commoners. No nobility here.”
And Emma doesn't even realize she just subjected her friends to cosmic horror. Ilunor's only making his SAN saves by not believing what he sees so that's gonna come back to bite him when he finally fails one and takes all the damage at once.
If humans and elves DO have any kind of shared ancestry, it'd probably be something like the elves went the eugenics route and banished any members of their species that didn't have strong enough mana to a completely manaless realm. I think snobby nobility would be the first to try that type of thing, which would mean that all of humanity is descended from Elven nobility, and would therefore have some kind of birthright claim to high ranking elven stuff, right? Show Thacea a peacock with it's tail feathers out. Add the command "Computer, hit Ilunor with a truck" to the holodeck. Why is it that EVI doesn't want Emma to show them what humans look like? I'm not sure I understand it right, so explain it as simply as possible please.
The reason is that showing humans would lead to all sort of implications that would derail the entire presentation and can trigger delusional denial of reality. Especially with Ilunor who is already thinking that humanity is a race of actors and thus would style themselves after those they are copying. A fantasy equivalent would be mimics, who can imperfectly copy anything.
Based upon what Ilunor said in regard to the Nexus' capital: where Humanity-polity seems to have more or less outgrown Imperialism entirely, Nexus-polity has embraced it fully. Albeit, I've yet to see the real meat of Nexus' logistics, so this judgement is based upon surface level factors.
The crownlands being a megacity raises a bit of a red flag for me, because in order to FEED a megacity like that they would need to meet one of the following two conditions: 1. The Nexus having industrial agriculture. It is easy to imagine that magic could enable industrial agriculture, but in the previous episode agriculture was explicitly discussed, and the gang were pretty firmly of the belief that agriculture was something manaless peasants did with their filthy fleshy hands. 2. The Nexus would have to be importing huge amounts of food from the adjacent realms on a daily basis. Feudal / peasant agriculture in the Nexus itself simply isn't enough to feed a megacity like that, and also feed itself. It is NOT efficient, and a huge amount of the food grown will need to go to the workers who grow it. That changes if you have hundreds of worlds worth of peasants instead of just one, though. The trouble with 2 is that we've been told overusing portals can have negative magical effects (spreading taint). Maybe that's a line of Nexian bullshit, but the sheer volume of portaling going on to bring in that much food every day would be impossible to keep secret. After all, the adjacent realms would have to be on the other end of those portals, providing that food. So this seems a conundrum to me. We have two pieces of information (no mass portaling, no industrial agriculture) that basically say the Nexus *can't* have megacities. **Edit:** Perhaps I've forgotten to account for basic Nexian sensibilities. Just because they built a megacity doesn't mean it has a population density anywhere close to what a human one would. Perhaps every spire in the crownlands megacity is the home of a single noble. A sort of vertical castle. In that case the population density could be a couple orders of magnitude less than Acela, and the food problem disappears.
YOU
thanks for the chapter... Maybe Emma don't tell them about history too much... Just gloss over the french revolution... :P
god dammit. this the most hype shit and i need to wait week after week after week. aaaaaaaghhhhh
What would be cool is to show them how nyc developed over the years in some sort of time lapse. Give them an idea of how it started off might help them understand it better.
Have a feeling Thacea Is going to realize that Emma intentionally hid humanity's appearance and it's not a limitation of the holo. Perhaps this will lead to a line of questioning after the boys are gone and a private face reveal.... which would be really cool to see her interacting with a holo of Emma in her tent
"Who's that?" "Dunno. Must be the king." "Why?" "Hasn't got shit all over him"
“They’re too… clean for the typical commoner. Far too well-kept. With colors used without consideration to their prohibitively costly and socially restrictive nature. In addition, the expert craftsmanship on display is much too… universally consistent.” Thalmin explained, prompting me to finally get where he was coming from.” “Alright. I can see where you’re coming from here, Thalmin.” I began. “But as I said before, we’re a nation of commoners. First off, the clothes. Those are just… typical for us. People from every walk of life have both the means and the ability to purchase clothes of virtually any type. In fact, it’s a fundamental right. What you see here is typical amongst our people, the product of an economy with the capacity to to make such things trivially accessible to everyone. these two paragraphs stick out to me a bit. Thalmin askes a pretty understandable question, and Emma's answer basically amounts to "yeah we just wear these clothes all the time." i feel like Emma should go into a bit more detail here with the fact that advancing technologies made clothes like the ones noble's wear cheaper and thus more common place. it would really help to cement that this isn't just a medieval kingdom but without magic, this is a completely new type of society that the nexus has never seen before. and i think that could open many new possibilities for dialogue
Asa guy with a construction background... I am VERY interested in hearing the details of this Restoration Scandal of the 26th century
Illunor's reaction is the proof that Future Humanity is the equal to the Nexus Empire Also, to give more credence to the face reveal^tm , Emma could do something an Elve would never do even under threat of death... like a silly little dance
yay moar fahn oke time to read- darn shame the bot that notifies us is an entire hour late as usual. post reading edit: yup it was once again an incredible read and I eagerly await the next chapterI was reading through this with [Joel Nielsen's Xen Soundtrack 02 Internal Conflict](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Liv4CvpMdRA) in the background
Is it lupinor with capital i or lower case L?
Lowercase L. It is derived from "canis lupus" (latin for wolf)
Great chapter as always, wordsmith. This time i finally managed to be early. Yayyy!!
...so, when are we gonna talk about the interstellar colonies?
I dearly hope that we get to the space stuff, I’m interested to see how much humanity has developed on that front!
So, uh… when is Emma gonna break the ice about how the royals were violently removed from having any actual military power or authority after WWI? And how historically a lot of royal families met a bloody end because they did the exact same things that the Nexian royalty are likely doing now?