A: There are indeed differences in commonality between the different Inheritances.
We will get a far more in-depth look at all of this with the Psychic Lessons that Thea will get during the early stages of Volume 2, as well as the Psychic 101 Classes that all the Recruits will get, but to give a rough rundown here already to answer the question properly:
There are a total of 12 Inheritances that exist, that each have a different chance for being the one selected at your Souls’ inception.
Veritas, specifically, is among the rarer ones, but far from the rarest. It is ranked as #8 on the list when going from Most Common -> Least Common.
So the 5th most rare Inheritance.
The most rare one is called “Creatio”; and represents the Void’s aspect of creation itself.
But more about Inheritances in Volume 2.
Q: What lifespan can an Integrated person expect on average? (Assuming they don't get killed)
A: Above a certain threshold of Vitality and Recovery, Integrated people become biologically immortal. Aging is stopped (or even reverted to certain degrees) and your body becomes practically immune to sickness or disease (read: NOT Bio or Chemical weapons, merely “standard” diseases).
As such, the expected lifespan at average (as long as you reach the thresholds) is infinite.
Q: How does the Alpha Squad position work exactly? When do they get replaced and what has to happen before that comes to pass?
A: Members of Alpha Squad are always the best members of a given Recruitment Drive.
The spots for the squad can change via something called a “Challenge”, which can either be issued as a result of an MVM-Award received after one of the four quarterly Assessments, or by overtaking a member of Alpha Squad on the overall Recruit Leaderboards.
The Recruit Leaderboards are something we haven’t seen in the Novel yet, but will be covered shortly after Volume 2 begins.
They represent the overall value a Marine has to the UHF and is updated continuously throughout the year.
Every single DDS-Mission you go on, every Credit you earn, every Merit Point you acquire and every CP you get is all factored into this score.
So over the course of the year, a lot of movement can happen on the Leaderboards, that can cause members of Alpha Squad to be able to be challenged.
The challenge system as a whole will be covered in-depth in the novel, so I don’t think we need to go over it here; but the general gist is that you need to beat someone’s score or win an MVM-Award, before you can issue them.
If the Alpha Squad member loses the challenge, they get moved out of the squad and replaced with the challenger.
Q: Do people mostly live on planets, or do a lot of people live in space? (aka voidborn)
A: The vast majority of humanity lives on planets.
With no competitors to speak of in the Milky Way Galaxy, humanity hasn’t had the necessity to resort to space-only living, to save on travel distances.
Thanks to the Void Drives and Engines, long-distance FTL travel is also something that is fairly common (for Factions, not individuals), which allows humanity to be spread out quite far around the galaxy and colonize and terraform planets to their liking.
There are, however, a decent amount of space-living people out there; from the earlier space-colonization period of humanity.
Before the advent of the Void Drives/Engines, most of the extra-terrestrial living spaces were orbit-bound around planets, while the terraforming efforts were happening on the planet below.
So while those stations still exist, the vast majority of people live on actual firm ground, as terraforming technology has seen massive leaps and bounds since the early days. You no longer need hundreds or thousands of years to create livable spaces on a new planet; instead making it possible to live on the actual surface in mere years, with larger swathes of the planet being able to be terraformed in a decade-or-so.
Q: How many Recruits are in a Recruitment Drive normally?
A: It varies greatly from Sector to Sector, but most Recruitment Ships are designed to transport up to 10,000 Marines at once.
The Sovereign currently has a little over 1,000 Recruits aboard from the Kuigon Sector’s Recruitment Drive of 943 PFC.
The average Recruitment Drive, by the end of the first year, generally has around 4,500-5,000~ Recruits ready to advance to become Privates.
Q: What is the rough estimate of the population count in a sector? Or Quinn’s, if you want to be specific.
A: Once again, it varies greatly from Sector to Sector.
Sectors closer to Terra hold a lot more population than Sectors further away from it (Core Worlds > Inner Worlds > Mid Worlds in terms of population count).
Quinn’s Sector, the Kuigon Star-Sector, encompasses (roughly) a “measly” 26~ Billion people.
It’s a comparatively tiny Sector, all things considered.
There are Sectors in the UHF that hold upwards of 400~ Billion people; so quite a different ballpark!
Q: How are the Sectors divided? Are they more like a slice of pie or a piece of sliced Apple? (Relative to the Galactic plane)
A: Sectors are generally divided by Star-Clusters.
So when looking at the Galactic Map, the UHF Leadership goes “these all look fairly close together, let’s draw a line around ‘em and call it Sector 1” and that’s Sector 1 going forward.
There is a pretty big level of arbitrage in the whole setup, but it’s primarily meant as Top-Level Administration, so the exact sizes don’t really matter that much.
People like Major Quinn, aka. the Proprietors of the Sectors, only really have to deal with things themselves if shit gets REALLY out of hand.
There are a vast network of people working underneath the Proprietors to make sure that doesn’t happen and the day-to-day operations in the Star Sectors is guaranteed.
Q: Does the TAS-Verse have Energy Shields?
A: Bit of a loaded question, as “Energy Shields” can mean a lot of things.
I’m going to assume that the question here refers to something akin to the typical Star Trek style ship-bubble that makes the space-ship impervious to any real damage until the plot says otherwise.
These types of shields do not exist for humanity, outside the System-provided SADDs themselves.
The things most akin to an Energy Shield, that humanity has produced, are built into the smaller Defensive Heavy shields; which are more about deflection than absorbing or nullifying.
They produce a strong repulsor field shortly before the moment of impact, to try and diffuse some of the energy of the incoming projectiles to the side; so even a smaller shield like that can withstand more of a beating than one might imagine otherwise.
They are not particularly effective, however, for taking sustained beatings.
The Allbright System itself does provide some rare Abilities that function akin to impervious Energy Shields, however, so the theoretical knowledge of the technology exists somewhere in the greater Universe—at the very least, the creators of the System knew about it.
Q: What is the favorite food of every Alpha Squad member?
A: Lmao, fantastic question, that I actually have an answer prepared for already!
Thea’s favourite food has been rapidly changing since coming aboard the Sovereign, as she’s getting to taste new foods she’s never even CONCEIVED of before on the daily. Her current favourite food is a savoury-style pancake with a creamy white-meat sauce topping.
Karania’s favourite food is something specific to her homeplanet of Vicero, called a “Vicero Colour Flash”. It’s a dish that is made up of more than a dozen different vegetables and meats, each with a different colour, covering the entire spectrum of the rainbow. Her favourite part of that meal, in specific, is the bright-green coloured meat of the Vicero Jerina, a type of fat, flightless bird local to the planet.
Isabella’s favourite food is, somewhat surprisingly, an assortment of different salads. During her days as a Mercenary, travelling around the Kuigon Sector with the band, she only got to eat a few expensive meals here and there, but being a pragmatic woman, she found that the cheaper alternatives, mainly specific salads, were right up her alley. Her favourite one features a strange, almost maple-leaf like salad that comes with a whole host of crunch when bitten down on.
Desmond’s favourite food is ice cream. No, really. He loves that shit. Specifically white-cream based ice cream with flavour splinters in them. The more different flavours the splinters have, the better.
Lucas’ favourite food is a good ol’ Orinur steak. Orinurs are a kind of cattle from his homeworld that are specifically known for their amazingly tender steaks. Extremely expensive and one of the main exports of the planet; kind of like Wagyu in our world, in a way.
Corvus’ favourite food is maybe a bit surprising, as he usually tries to be more worldly and show less of his high-society upbringing. But when it comes to food, he can’t deny that it does have it’s benefits to be born into a Legacy. His favourite food is a “sea”food called a King Volcinarus. It’s essentially a meal composed almost exclusively out of a single type of meat, that from a Volcina Crab. Much like the name might imply, it’s a crab that is perfectly fine with living inside literal seas of lava inside active volcanoes.
Which makes harvesting the meat extremely difficult, as they require a massive amount of heat to not immediately shrivel up and lose their flavour. Very expensive, very delicious.
Q: How many humans chose to leave the Galactic Bubble before TAS erected it?
A: It is unclear how many humans “escaped” the Bubble, but it wasn’t a ton.
Most people simply decided to accept the reality of the situation, especially as Void Drives/Engines weren’t available yet; they only became a thing with the System’s advent, so long-distance FTL travel was a lot more precarious, deadly and harder to come by than it was after the System appeared.
Only the people closer towards the Bubble’s edge already were able to get out before the Bubble fully closed.
Q: Who is the better gamer? Major Daxton or Major Quinn?
A: Major Quinn is by far the better gamer, although Major Daxton would never admit that.
Daxton is a bit of an excuse-master, blaming this and that for his losses and finding important things that SUDDENLY need doing whenever Major Quinn challenges him to a bout.
Q: Will we get to see POVs from other factions? I would love to see how they view the world and our marines. Would make for some excellent World Building exposition.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
A: Yes!
The further we get into TAS, the more broad in scope the world will become, including PoVs.
With Volume 3 being the first time we will see some real-world action against other Factions, we will start getting more and more PoVs that also show other sides of the conflict.
Q: Is there a specific fictional character that acted as inspiration for Thea?
A: Not that I can consciously point to, no.
The only real inspiration for her was Starcraft's Sarah Kerrigan (Ghost, not Zerg) for her visual design in the early days of TAS.
Aside from that, her name is, unsurprisingly, an allusion to Theia, goddess of vision and sight. Shouldn’t come as a big surprise, considering that Thea is the Psyker with the Veritas Inheritance, Precognition and a heavy focus on Perception.
Q: I wanted to ask about the names of the Squads. There are some with names like Alpha and Beta, but others have other names, and I wanted to ask why that is?
A: The naming scheme for Squads is relatively simple, though it can be a bit confusing at the start.
For Recruits, there are 2 pre-named Squads, those being Alpha and Beta.
Alpha represents the absolute top of the Recruit Leaderboards, while Beta is the runner-ups.
They make up the top 12 Marines in the Drive, so both Alpha and Beta Squads have benefits that other squads do not get access to.
Every other Squad gets to choose their own names; that’s why a lot of them have random names like “Mid Squad” or “Glass Squad”, or in the case of Morin and crew, “Arrow Squad”.
The only real stipulation for Squad Names is that they are short and snappy; one word at most and do not have silent letters at the start so they can be easily recognized on the comms.
Q: With the Factions presumably all having Faction Traits that their neighbors are very aware of, how is espionage done? Are they able to emulate each other's Faction Traits?
A: Great question! We will get into espionage way, way later into the novel, but it’s naturally a topic right from the get-go as well.
As for how it is done, much like IRL, it is very complicated.
First and foremost, you cannot emulate a Faction Trait.
You can try to pass off a System Ability as a Faction Trait, if it’s somewhat close to what the Faction Trait you’re looking to pretend to have, but there is not a single Faction Trait that can be replicated 1:1 with a System Ability.
Faction Traits, however, also cost System Merit to use.
Regardless of which Trait it is, you will ALWAYS have to pay System Merit to use it.
As a result, it is not as easy to reveal a spy by simply lining up everyone and asking them to use their Faction Trait. You do NOT want to waste precious System Merit like that.
Especially for people like the UHF, who require a massive amount of System Merit to use their Faction Trait compared to every other Faction, as well as having a permanent increase to the price of each use, makes that a non-starter.
In extremely rare circumstances it is used as a last-resort to weed out spies in super important areas, but outside of that, it is pretty much never used.
As such, espionage functions a lot like it does IRL, where a lot of the subterfuge and cloak/dagger stuff happens in very mundane ways.
Passing off of information, bribery, blackmail, etc.
Q: When will be the next time we hear about McKay and the Golden Age Arcade? Will we learn more about James?
A: Volume 2!
Thea will have the opportunity to call James during the month of Ship-Duty, where they leave the DDS for the first time since Integration.
So we’ll get an update from the man himself and also learn more about him.
Q: What happens when two Factions merge? Do future Recruits get to choose between the two initial options? Is there a new one? Is it a blend of the former two or something new entirely?
A: One of the Factions will be considered the “primary” during a merge and the “secondary” Faction’s Trait will be overridden entirely.
For every 1,000,000,000,000 people in your area of influence, a Faction gets to re-negotiate their Faction Trait with the System to implement changes.
So during a merger, you will likely cross at least one of those thresholds, potentially multiple, allowing you to make SOME changes to the Faction Trait for the “primary” Faction.
Note that these are not UPGRADES, but CHANGES.
A Faction Trait’s power is the same as everyone else’s, regardless of size of Faction.
There are no Faction Traits with a bigger power budget than others.
Q: Have you planned out anything for once the Galactic Bubble pops?
A: Yes.
Obviously I won’t go into detail here, cause that’s around 6 Volumes away, so about 12 years at current release speed. But there are already plans and story beats prepared for that time.
Q: How do each of the different Factions plan to come together once the Galactic Bubble pops?
A: They don’t.
The Emperor will make sure that the Factions play nice; as he will be the one leading everyone. There will only be a single Faction by the time the Bubble pops, as the Emperor will already have unified all of humanity.
There is likely going to be some disgruntled people, of course, but Terra is not known to act weak-handed with dissidents…
Q: How does the UHF prevent PTSD from the Assessments? I remember one character getting captured and tortured. How are they able to prevent mental scars from this?
A: The DDS has an automatic scrubbing feature, that removes emotional connection to specific, traumatic memories made inside of it.
This was covered a bit more in-depth during Arc 0 by Selene herself.
Additionally, after every Assessment, every Marine has mandatory counselling with a Psychiatrist, like Thea had with Selene after this last one, to make sure that they can properly process and deal with the memories that do stay fully in-tact.
Q: Do you have a completed list somewhere of all Old Man James’s sayings and will they keep appearing in the future?
A: Yes and Yes. ;)
Q: When will we have our Colonel Thalia chapter?
A: We might have a PoV of hers in the future, but it is not currently planned.
If the opportunity presents itself, I will include one, as she is a very interesting character.
And we haven’t really seen Diplomancers at work, so she could be an interesting PoV to have for World Building purposes as well.
Q: What was your favourite part of Volume 1? (To write, or story-wise in general)
A: That’s a lovely question!
To write, my absolutely favourite part was Chapter 65 - Fragmentum Excitat.
The sheer cosmic horror and mindfuckery that was Thea’s Awakening was an absolute blast to try and put into words.
My mind was going absolutely crazy with all the images of what I wanted to portray and since the Void’s influence allowed pretty much anything to be possible (within reason), I really got to stretch my creative wings for that entire chapter in ways that would never be possible in a normal chapter.
It was a TON of fun to write.
Story wise, my absolutely favourite part has to be Chapter 128 - Perfectus Exitus.
Much like the Sovereign’s plan was perfectly executed, so was mine when I set out to write the entire first Volume.
From introducing Selene in Arc 0, to bringing her back for the post-Assessment, over the emotional impact that her PoV provided… It just all worked out perfectly and really managed to get the reactions and emotions from people that I was trying to achieve.
And seeing all of the hard work of the last 20+ months come together in such a beautiful way and just hit the readers in the exact way I wanted… There is simply no better feeling.
So it has to be the end of Volume 1, for sure.
Q: Will the next Arc be shorter and have a bit more acute strength development?
A: No, it will not be shorter. It might actually be longer.
And yes, the next Volume will cover 11 months, rather than 1 month, so there will be a lot more actual development of the litRPG elements, as well as the overall progression elements of the Novel.
Example: Thea gets to learn Skills, spend her Credits on new Equipment and Tinkering materials, she will get access to her piece of Ace Equipment, Psyker Training, etc. etc.
Q: Will the story be going to KU at some time?
A: Yes. I am in talks with a few publishers about bringing the Novel to KU and potentially physical releases as well.
Q: Is the Emperor actually Slim Shady?
A: It is unknown who, exactly, the Emperor is. The chance that he is Slim Shady, specifically, however, is very slim.
Q: What are the distinctions between DDS realism levels? Sometimes the Sovereign can just reset people, otherwise she can’t? I don’t understand how this works.
A: First and foremost, the realism is a System-imposed requirement. This is not something the UHF simply decided on adding for shits and giggles.
To be connected to the System at all, the DDS needs to be accurate-to-real-life above a certain threshold.
The Assessment, then, has an even stricter accuracy requirement, in order to get the full experience/credit/merit amount for that Assessment.
So there's essentially 3 main levels of DDS realism, with a few sublevels that will be covered in Volume 2:
- 1) Basic
99.9% real, with food requirements, etc. but can be reset by the Sovereign at any point. This is the general level that all Marines live at inside the DDS and where the classes/lectures and such happened.
- 2) Advanced
99.99% real, this is for digital missions you want to farm Credits/Merit, etc. with. This would be the Cube Trial, for example. The Sovereign cannot interfere with these and your deaths/respawns are limited.
- 3) Full
99.999% real, this is for the Assessments, specifically. The additional stringent requirements here are that there's absolutely no way to stop the simulation unless you void the entire thing. You can't pull out individuals, talk to them or interfere with the simulation whatsoever. Additionally, Deaths/Respawns are heavily limited based on PV; moreso than for “Advanced”.
Caveat to all of them, is that the System will ALWAYS allow you to circumvent a rule, if you're willing to spend enough Merit/Credits to do so.
This would, for example, be the case of the UHF Brass sending Karania an emergency mission + the information about Focus Overdraws after Thea nearly got herself killed on day 1 inside the Assessment. That was the UHF Brass putting down a massive payment to circumvent the general rules for that one instant.
Hope that clears up some of the confusion!
Q: How does the System handle the creation of a Faction? (How is the Trait chosen, etc)
A: The creation of a new Faction has a few requirements that go as follows:
- The Faction needs to have a distinct racial, ideological, cultural or political differentiation between itself and others near it; otherwise the members of that Faction are more likely to be considered part of a separate Faction that already exists.
- The Faction needs to have at least 1,000,000,000,000 people following it. Following in this case refers to the conscious or subconscious knowledge that they belong to a greater whole in regards to that specific racial, ideological, cultural or political difference mentioned earlier.
- The Faction needs to have a distinct body of leadership, whether it be a single person or a government-type function. The distinct body needs to be known, either consciously or subconsciously, as a function of the Faction itself. This means that there cannot be a “hidden master” type situation, where the leader of a Faction is completely unknown. If you want to make decisions about the Faction, then the people within the Faction need to at least have heard about you.
These are the major requirements for the creation of a Major Faction, though there are a few minor ones I am not going to go too in-depth on here, that exist to keep some guardrails on specific issues.
Once a Major Faction has reached the threshold of going from Minor to Major Faction (aka. crosses the 1,000,000,000,000 Souls under their command) the distinct leadership body mentioned earlier will be contacted by the System itself and invited to a negotiation for their Faction Trait.
Faction Traits are then negotiated, by the leadership giving the System a rough idea of what they want, or the System giving the leadership a recommendation based on their type of Faction; ideology plays a fairly big part in the System’s recommendations here.
For example, with the UHF, the System recommended a Trait that would further push an individual’s value. Something that was directly in line with the UHF’s meritocratic approach to governance.
Each Faction Trait shares the same power budget that is handled by the System, which limits what can be done with the Trait and keeps things relatively balanced across the different Major Factions.
A Faction can decide to include downsides or additional costs to their Trait, to increase that budget, or remove restrictions to lower that budget during negotiations.
An example of this would be the UHF’s reliance on System Fluid, Blueprints and the harsh distance and repeat-death penalties, which were all added to negotiate [Soul Transfer] with the System.
The initial pitch of the Trait would have been far outside the power budget of what is allowed as a Faction Trait, but with all those restrictions and limitations applied, the UHF managed to get the System to agree to it.
Finally, as mentioned in a question/answer earlier, this Faction Trait can then be changed after every 1,000,000,000,000 additional Souls added to a Faction’s influence.
This alteration cannot change the core functionality of a Trait, but it can alter almost anything else about it.
I hope that answers the question in-depth enough, without going over board!
Alright that’s it for the questions for today!
I actually didn’t get through too many, but we’re already at a decent word count because of all my yapping earlier.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this yapping/Q+A session and I’ll see you in the next one!
Thank you for your continued support!
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