A: She was good on a galactic scale. Very good, even.
She took part in multiple galaxy-wide tournaments via the GalacticNet and won a few first places in her main games such as Ashes of Centuries.
Q: Why do the Squads have the numbers they have? 6 seems like an odd choice.
A: Squads aren’t necessarily forced to have 6 members. There are quite a few Squads that have 5 instead, but usually never less than 4.
There are also Squads that have 7 or 8, but it’s even more rare as it gets a bit too unwieldy for a single Squad Leader to handle that many people.
As for why it’s that number, it has to do with the general roles that you really do not want to miss out in a well-designed Squad:
- Squad Leader (Leadership, Organization, Logistics)
- Medic (Bio/Chemical Warfare Specialist, Mobile Apothecary)
- Defensive Heavy (Protection for the Squad, Drawing Attention, Very Durable)
- Offensive Heavy (Extreme Firepower, Durable, Drawing Attention)
- Scout (Scouting, High Priority Target Designation)
- Auxiliary (Versatile, Augmentary for the Squad’s other Roles)
Each one has a specific subset of things they bring to the table that are downright invaluable when put together.
Missing any particular one would leave a big hole for one reason or another, so most Squad’s end up being 6-person sized to fill each of these roles.
You will sometimes see multiple Offensive Heavies rather than an Auxiliary or Scout, but that’s generally because one or multiple of them will be able to do some aspects of those roles despite being generally categorized as an OH for example.
Q: Are all Squads somewhat set up this way, or is Alpha Squad just the top 6 of all the Recruits and they just happen to have different roles that are kind of balanced?
A: Bit of a follow-up to the previous question, and the answer is quite simple:
The UHF specifically chose those six, because of their roles.
They aren’t necessarily the best 6 Recruits period, but the best 6 Recruits in their respective roles.
Each Squad is mostly designed to have a combination of Marines that can fill those 6 roles, or rather, the specific fields of specialty that these roles represent.
It is fine to not have a Scout, for example, if you have two Auxiliaries that can each do half of the job.
Or to not have a Defensive Heavy, if you have multiple Offensive Heavies that can also provide adequate distraction and protection for the Squad through equipment/Ability means.
The specific roles aren’t hard-set, but the underlying fields of specialty they represent are.
Having squads that fulfill most, if not all, the fields has proven to be the most effective combination of Marines for the UHF in the past centuries, so that’s what Squads are trying to emulate nowadays as well.
Q: What would Thea name her puppy/cat?
A: Sera.
Q: The prejudice against Cyans is really messed up, but why do Inner and Core world kids even have it? It seems like they would rarely encounter the circumstances to need or use the Cyan solution, so why would they have a prejudice against Cyans?
A: The general gist behind it, is that it harks back to general human nature.
Specifically, the idea of “US vs THEM”, or Tribalism.
Whenever there are issues in a given population, it is often easier to point out a boogeyman and blame all the problems on that particular group, rather than actually try and fix the underlying issues.
Giving people the feeling that they are all part of the same group and their way of life is being attacked by another, lesser group, is a sure-fire way to quell a lot of anger at mismanagement; be it local governments, the larger Faction as a whole, or even Humanity itself.
As such, in Inner and Core worlds, Cyans, and in extension Midworlders as a whole, are often used as these sorts of boogeyman, whenever there are societal issues that crop up, by the planetary governments.
“The reason we can’t have individual freedoms is because the Cyans are terrorists. They are invading our planets and causing trouble left and right, that’s why we need 24/7 surveillance everywhere and privacy is not an actual thing we can do.”
“You are losing jobs on this Planet, because the Midworlds slightly further out of the Inner-Rim have disposable humans to throw at the factories, making production far cheaper; even including the costs of interstellar transportation. It’s the Midworlders fault this is happening!”
All these rethorics and more are used to quell any unrest in the Inner and Core Worlds from taking overhand, whenever a corrupt or incapable government has pushed things a bit too far.
The Cyan Solution is one of the things taught about in school for that very reason; as a sort of early indoctrination to Tribalism, so that later on, when the planetary news corporations blast you 24/7 with the heinous crimes all these Cyans commit (whether they actually do or not is irrelevant), you are already pre-indoctrinated to believe whatever is being said by them.
It is a lot harder to fix what makes a population angry, rather than simply point the anger of the population at something else.
That second part is easy; far too easy.
Cyans are the enemy, never forget.
Q: How can the Sovereign manipulate the Marines and have its own goals (presumably to create the Kwisatz Haderach) without TAS interfering?
A: Because The Allbright System doesn’t give no fucks.
Why should the System care what a random AI does to the Participants?
The System cares about creating the Ultimate Warrior, after all.
You think it would ever consider somebody that gets duped/killed/w.e.’d by a “mere” AI (in the System’s eyes) as the Ultimate Warrior?
Definitely not.
So the System has 0 stakes in the AIs doing whatever they want to do, because any Participants it loses, were already not going to be the Ultimate Warrior anyway.
Cause if they were, they wouldn’t have gotten killed.
Huh? What do you mean, “Salem Witch Trials”? What does that even have to do with anything…?
Q: On Selene getting her memory heavily wiped upon learning of Thea's "friend" ?ht, was that decided by a dice roll?
A: No. This is part of the story beats.
Q: How often are we going to get what I call ‘reaction povs’ where it’s a character reacting to what insane shit Thea just did? Because I really like them because it really helps me get a feel for just how insane it was from someone who doesn’t just think it’s Tuesday (ie. Thea) and it helps give me a sense of just how crazy it was on the Thea-is-an-eldritch-horror meter.
A: Relatively often.
It is part of the way that I write novels, to include POVs outside of our main one, to look at the MC’s actions from a different perspective.
I would say you can generally expect one PoV every 15-or-so chapters on average, but that’s not a hard-set rule or anything.
I generally try to sprinkle them in, particularly when there’s nothing overly important going on in Thea’s head.
Q: Will the Assessment/Recruit Medals show up outside the awards show? I know that militaries love their ceremonies so I would imagine that they would have pins for ceremonial purposes for these awards. (Graduation to Private Etc.)
A: Yes.
The medals that are handed out are both wearable like traditional medals, but are also specifically designed to be “workable”, aka. be usable in the Marine’s equipment.
Most Marines that win a medal like this, have them affixed into their armour as a permanent mark of honour, kind of like an etching of sorts but with the actual medal itself being interned rather than a simple picture etched into the metal of the armour.
Q: How big of a difference does [Armor of Resolve] make?
A: [Armour of Resolve] is currently at Level 7, giving Thea a total of 32% of her Resolve as additional “physical resistance” as described in the Ability itself.
This physical resistance is essentially what a portion of the Vitality Attribute does, making her bones, skin and muscles tougher to withstand more of a beating.
You can imagine it somewhat like her getting 32% of her Resolve as additional Vitality (though it’s not exactly 1:1 as she doesn’t get all the benefits of Vitality, just the physical resistance it provides).
As for how much of a difference it makes, think about it like this:
Thea’s Vitality is a 2.51, which means she is just EVER SO SLIGHTLY above the toughest Unintegrated human in the galaxy.
Imagine the toughest person you have ever seen IRL, be it from television or otherwise, and then throw them into the kind of situations Thea has gone through.
For example, the attack on the final compound, where Lucas and Her got hit by a rocket and quite literally thrown dozens of metres through the sky and onto the hard concrete floor of the street outside.
Would that person, the toughest guy you can imagine IRL right now, be able to walk that off, even given they were wearing armour?
Most likely not, right?
A 2.51 in Vitality is around 2-3 times as tough as that guy, so think about whether 2-3 times the toughness would be enough to walk that kind of damage off.
Probably not either, right?
That’s where [Armour of Resolve] comes in.
At the time where that happens to Thea, the Ability is at Level 6 already, meaning she gets 31% of her Resolve added as (partial) Vitality.
That puts her from a 2.51 to a massive 6.02 (=2.51 + 11.32*0.31) Pseudo-Vitality .
That means the 2-3 times more toughness suddenly turned into 8-10 times more toughness.
Could the person you imagined walk off the after-effects of such an explosion if they were 8-10 times as tough as they are now?
Probably a lot more likely, yeah?
That’s the kind of difference [Armour of Resolve] makes.
Q: Is Free Will real in this setting?
A: Kind of an odd question, but yeah, of course.
Free Will is definitely a thing in TAS.
Nobody is really forcing you to do any of it; you could just not join a Faction’s military.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
There are very few Factions that actually conscript people forcefully (cause it makes for bad fighters).
Q: What sources inspired this story?
A: That is an incredibly difficult question to answer, but I will try my best.
The first and most obvious answer(s) would be both the Warhammer 40,000 Universe as well as the web novel “Digital Marine”.
As I mentioned in another answer in one of these Q/A releases before, TAS was originally a homebrew setting for a Warhammer 40K TTRPG system called “Dark Heresy”. It’s why you can find a lot of Warhammer 40K influences in it.
Things such as the Void being somewhat similar to the Warp.
The Emperor’s existence being somewhat similar to… Well The Emperor.
Superhuman Marines being somewhat similar to Space Marines, etc.
It’s not ever a 1:1, quite far from it to be honest, but the inspirations are very obvious and I proudly wear them on my sleeve as I love the 40K Universe and all it has to offer.
At the same time, I also took inspiration from “Digital Marine”, though in far, far lesser degrees.
The web novel was actually the original impetus for me to start writing TAS, as it went on indefinite Hiatus and I was craving more of the “gritty military action with a respawn mechanic for the MC”; which there literally existed no other version of.
So I ultimately decided to combine this idea of respawning Marines into my pre-existing world of TAS via the Faction Trait system (which had already existed at the time), which gave birth to the UHF’s current Faction Trait.
Before I had read Digital Marine, the UHF actually had a different Faction Trait entirely, that was focused on a more gamified existence, allowing for basically “cheats” to be used for Merit.
Things such as wallhacks, aimbots, speedhacks etc. but you’d have to pay different amounts of Merit for each one.
Replacing it with the [Soul Transfer], however, opened up a whole host of new avenues and possibilities that have been extremely exciting and entertaining to explore in recent years and I can’t wait to show off some of them later on in the novel.
As for other inspirations, I can only really point towards just about everything.
Much like any other author, I am merely an amalgamation of my own experiences and views on the world; so a lot of what I write are things that I either have experienced myself, or think about a lot in one way or another.
There are almost certainly elements of all kinds of Scifi and Fantasy stories in TAS as well, that I would fail to even try to list, but Star Wars, Star Trek, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Mass Effect, Lord of the Rings, The Witcher, etc. are all things that have had a great impact on my life, so there are bound to be influences from it in the novel as well.
The main part, however, is that I will never simply take something 1:1, unless it perfectly fits with my world (which is very, very rare).
I take inspiration, but I do not copy; which is an important distinction to make, I think.
The Void is similar to the Warp, but it’s not the same.
The rules are different, the underlying design is unique in its own right, even though at first glance they seem very similar.
As such, some things can feel very familiar to people, which is not a bad thing at all.
But don’t assume you understand how something works, simply because at first glance, it looks like something you’ve seen somewhere else before.
TAS is its own universe, with its own rules and its own mechanics; pay attention to them individually rather than assuming you already know how they work from something else.
Q: How does the System handle "Skills" like is it a separate tab or more just it knows how proficient you are in say physics?
A: It’s a bit of both.
There is a separate tab for them (which will be added to Thea’s profile on RR once she gets her first Skill, of course) but they are also based on “how proficient are you in physics?”, in a way.
The System has a basic curriculum for each Skill in mind, of all the things a person should know in order to be considered proficient at said Skill.
Of that curriculum, you need to meet at least 90%, in order to be officially recognized by the System as having earned said Skill and for it to appear on your profile.
These lists are actually available to the Factions, as long as the underlying ideas of the curriculum have already been sufficiently understood by members of the Faction.
For example, for a super high-level Skill in Physics, the System would not provide the full curriculum unless the Faction already knew everything it needed to know about “Teleportation” or something like that.
The System does not provide a shortcut for knowledge, it only lists what knowledge it expects you to have, if somebody else already has that knowledge.
The list otherwise simply shows the System’s ever-present “???” if there is a topic that the Faction has not sufficiently explored.
Q: Do level up bonuses update if you increase the Base Attribute, like if Thea gained a whole point in Resolve from her class would the total increase by 1 or 1.9 from her current 90% boost?
A: It would increase by 1.9.
The Base Attribute is what everything else gets calculated off of dynamically.
So if the Base Attribute increases, so does everything else that modifies your Attributes in any way.
Q: Can Factions earn upgrades to their base Trait through something like Faction Accomplishments or other means or is it impossible to upgrade the Faction itself?
A: That’s kind of two questions in one.
The first is a resounding no.
You cannot upgrade a Faction Trait’s base, you can only change it. The total power budget remains the same.
The second is a resounding yes.
There are Faction upgrades available in the System Store for the Faction leaders to purchase.
Things such as increased access to the System Store (since certain sections are locked in several ways; like higher rarity Abilities and such), Faction-specific equipment like Void Drives/Engines or plans for Space-bound Superstructures.
There is a whole separate “game” going on there, that is more akin to a 4X like Stellaris than the nitty-gritty, character-based “game” we see in TAS.
I plan to someday include some of these aspects as POVs, but not for at least another Volume or two, so you will unfortunately have to be a bit patient on this.
Q: As Thea continues to expand her already excellent foundations going into class selection, I've been wondering what the lines are for someone being considered an 'Ace', and more importantly who or what makes that call. Thea entered the battlefield and proved herself the most valuable marine during assessment… At what point does she take up the slot of an Ace? It almost seems like any Battlefield that Thea gets deployed to will get a bonus secret Ace for free!
A: The first thing I’d like to point out here is that there are technically two different types of Aces.
Much like there are Psykers and Battlefield Psykers; which are ultimately kind of the same thing but have a pretty important distinction in that one of them is vastly more specialised in it than the other; the same applies to Aces.
There are Aces and then there are Battlefield Aces.
To be considered an Ace, is technically just being considered the best or among the few best of your given role in the Tier you are at.
Alpha Squad, in itself, is a squad of Aces, as they are by definition the very best of the role and Tier in their drive.
The other thing, and that’s the one we most often simply refer to as “Ace”, is the Battlefield Ace; the individual that occupies the “Ace” slot in the Battlefield deployment and is the living embodiment of change on the Battlefields they walk.
These types of Aces are determined by the UHF and strategically deployed into the Battlefields that the top brass thinks they’ll have the most impact in.
To be considered a proper Battlefield Ace, however, a lot of different criteria have to be met, that drastically change from person to person.
Since the Factions use their Battlefield Aces as strategic resources, they are each inherently unique in what they are supposed to be good at.
Thea would likely be considered as an Assassin/Infiltration Ace as she is right now, as her main avenue of attack is via long-range engagements and staying out of sight, rather than full head-on confrontation.
But just being the best at that role in your drive isn’t enough; you require a lot more to really be considered for that “Ace” role.
We will go more in-depth on this in the novel itself in the future, but rest assured that the “Battlefield Ace” position, is not something that will happen to any of our beloved characters any time soon, as they would need to be Tier 2-3 before they can realistically be deployed into a real Battlefield as a Battlefield Ace (since why send an exceptional T1, if you can send a good T3. Even with the difference in skill, the raw Attributes and Technology the T3 can bring vastly outshines the skill the T1 can bring).
Q: Will we find out what happens to humanity after the Galactic Bubble bursts / they're no longer protected from aliens?
A: Yes.
That’s kind of the whole second part of TAS’ story.
The first part is the Galactic War inside the Bubble, while the second part is the Universal War outside the Bubble.
TAS is intended to go on for around 10-12 Volumes of similar size to Arc 1 that we just finished, that will cover all of this.
Q: This will probably be covered in Volume 2 but could you expand on Psyker ranks? I was confused by the Lamda, Zeta, stuff Vi mentioned about the enemy Ace.
A: Sure!
As you mentioned, it will be explained more in-depth at the start of Volume 2 (when Thea gets her Psyker lessons), but I can give a rough and dirty breakdown here:
The basic Psyker ranks are as follows:
Phi
Omi
Lambda
Iota
Theta
Zeta
There are a few more, but those are the ones we’ll worry about for now.
The list goes from top-to-bottom in order of overall power from least-to-most.
A Psyker with the rank of Phi, is basically what Thea was for the majority of the novel so far: A Pre-Awakening Wielder; somebody that has latent Psychic Powers and uses them passively without realising.
An Omi-rank Psyker is Wielder-post-Awakening; somebody that has recognized their Psychic Powers and is able to use them actively.
Lambda-rank Psykers are the first “real” Psykers; somebody with the Psychic Attribute fully unlocked and capable of using their Psychic Powers actively.
Iota-rank Psykers, then, are the first Psykers to be considered “doomed”; somebody that has done at least the first Delve and, thus, unlocked the full potential of their Paths and Inheritance. They are capable of using a single Path’s Powers, both baseline and potential advanced Powers gained from various Delves, as well as controlling their Inheritance in combination with their Powers.
Theta-rank Psykers are strictly more powerful than Iota-ranks, but still limited to a single Path; somebody with vastly higher Resolve/Psychic investment, potentially even a Class to support their Powers further. These are the kind of walking-calamities that every Soldier is afraid of on the Battlefield and the type of Psykers that Null Serums are given out in droves for.
They are also the first ones to be considered full-time Psykers, as they have enough investment into the Psychic side of things to be able to spend the majority of their time doing Psychic-shenanigans, rather than doing the Psychic thing as a side-gig.
Finally, a Zeta-rank Psyker is what the enemy Ace was during the Assessment, the one that utterly annihilated Arrow Squad and tortured Viladia.
This type of Psyker is the first “True Power” Psyker; meaning that they are so powerful, that they themselves become sort of like a semi-Battlefield-Ace in any Battlefield they’re deployed in. They have access to at least Two Paths, both baseline and advanced Powers, as well as a Minor Capstone Power for at least one Path.
Furthermore, they have a substantial investment in Resolve/Psychic and potentially even the last remaining Attribute on the sheet that is simply listed as “???” for now, which can further elevate a Psyker’s Powers (but isn’t actually a Psyker-specific Attribute), as well as a Psychic-related Classes to further enhance their capabilities.
Zeta-rank Psykers are practically your Arch-Wizards in your low-fantasy novels, capable of turning entire city blocks to ash (given the right Path/Inheritance combo) with a mere wave of their hands, able to rip apart Integrated Soldiers of equal Tier with their baseline Telekinesis Power (no Path required, that’s just a baseline every Psyker gets) and reshape entire sections of the Battlefields single-handedly.
The Zeta-rank Psykers and above, are the very reason that Nulls are kept as a reserve unit on any Battlefield above Tier 3~, just in case a Zeta-rank Psyker shows up and proves to be too difficult for the Ace-Hunter Squads and specialised Anti-Psyker Squads to handle.
The power scaling beyond this point keeps increasing drastically, culminating in the theoretical “Alpha” and “Omega” ranks at the very top.
There are no known Alpha or Omega-rank Psykers in existence, but the theoretical construct exists.
Alpha-rank Psykers would practically be walking demi-gods, capable of simply deleting entire ships in orbit with a wave of their hands, while Omega-rank Psykers would be able to do the same to entire continents.
They are both considered to be such massively problematic theoretical constructs, that they are included in the Terran Decrees as “must never happen”, in order to keep Humanity safe from whatever Void-shenanigans their mere existence would invite.
As such, any Psykers of Epsilon rank or higher (Epsilon, Delta, Gamma, Beta, Alpha, Omega) are frequently visited by Inquisitors of Terra and subjected to extensive psychological and Psychic testing to determine the potential risk factors of them becoming Alpha or Omega-rank Psykers in the future.
Should they be considered a risk, they will be taken to Terra itself.
What happens there, however, is not known to anyone except that they are never seen from again.
Q: Do other Factions have Assessments or is the digitalization and respawning during Assessments a UHF only ability?
A: Other Factions have their own types of Assessments, but the respawning, specifically, is a UHF-only Faction Trait.
Other Factions have their own Traits, which they can also use inside their own DDS and their own Assessments.
Q: Did James only train Thea in combat/scouting or does she have some surprises for us when it comes to larger scale tactics?
A: James primarily trained her in personal-combat, to make sure she is prepared for anything and everything the Undercity could throw at her.
She does have a few lessons on larger scale tactics and warfare, as well as the general war stories of James to work off of, and she was a fairly successful player of certain video games created by Terra that were intended to teach macro-based combat encounters, but she is unlikely to be particularly exceptional at it all.
She could likely fill the role if she got pushed to do so, but she wouldn’t be excelling at it.
Q: What do you wish you had time to include or got skipped over in book 1? Can you give a shortlist/brief look at plot beats that would have been fun to include if you had MORE time to write?
A: Great question!
When it comes to Arc 1, there were actually only a few things I didn’t get to include; minor storylines that wouldn’t really have played a part in the greater story.
What I’d love to have done more of is PoVs of different characters, particularly other Recruits in the Drive, before the final ceremony.
Throughout the Assessment, I had initially wanted to include a bunch of PoVs of other squads briefly seeing Alpha Squad muscle their way through their stories, to give a bit of an outside perspective on how the rest of the Recruits are seeing them, rather than have it all be a balled kind of experience at the ceremony.
But the Assessment was already far too bloated with content, so I opted not to include them.
Overall, however, I really can’t complain with what I managed to include in Arc 1.
It ended up far, far, far longer than I ever expected, but as a result, I managed to get practically everything I wanted to cover and explore into the Arc.
So overall, a big success, I’d say!
Alright that’s it for the questions for today!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this yapping/Q+A session and I’ll see you in the next chapter, which will be Chapter 1 of Volume 2!
Thank you for your continued support!
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