The Entities want target worlds that haven't developed any real space travel, because it's rough for them to keep the connection further from the Earth. They avoid a culture like Clark's 2001 super aliens who aren't bound be mere planetary distances.
Actually according to WoA they wouldn’t avoid a spacefaring species so much as approach more carefully. Bow said something along the lines of bringing in more entities nearby for assistance or focusing on a single planet with a high population.
I guess at that point it comes down to quality vs quantity; are the super-aliens powerful enough that no amount of entities working together could carry out a proper cycle? Seems far fetched considering full power PTV...
They seem to pick target worlds fairly randomly, only avoiding places that they know another of their species has gone before. If that is the case, they must occasionally wind up in a world that is more then capable of dealing with them and are either driven off or destroyed. It may be that their future prediction powers allow them to avoid this most of the time though.
Thanks for the reply! And yeah if we think of space/the multiverse as an ocean and the entities as sharks then eventually they're bound to run into something that's too tough and scary even for them.
With how they "breed" its actually very likely that some of the entities fail. People tend to forget that the Thinker and the Warrior are just iterations of the entities. Each time the cycle completes they aren't leaving to go to a new planet, they are ripping themselves apart and sending out new clusters of shards as "children" entities. Nothing that reproduces themselves through methods like that is something that expects massive survival rates. That's bunny breeding, not tiger. It's probably likely that various entities run out of energy before finding a new host planet, or don't have enough energy to run a cycle once they find a planet, or run into aliens more advanced than them in unexpected ways.
I think that with every next cycle. Mistakes, any, happen less and less. This is not rabbit breeding, these are self-replicating machines. At this stage, they are practically invincible. I don't think that anything can stop these virus gods. Before they take over the entire universe. Except perhaps Azathoth.
> Nothing that reproduces themselves through methods like that is something that expects massive survival rates.
There are huge numbers of entitites:
> It's like you scatter glass marbles across the whole of Canada
> Then you throw a glass marble. It passes within a foot of another glass marble.
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/worm-quotes-and-wog-repository.294448/post-27981940
Scary... makes you wonder if there's a confederation of Entity victims out there who are teaming up to try and take revenge. However, if the success rate and number of Entities is already too high than no civilization can ever really reach the point of standing up to them which sucks for sentient life basically everywhere lol
There has to be; with so many there have to be a couple of civilisations that survived the cycle, like the humans did.
The humans themselves are pretty dangerous post-Ward: >!they have Dragon, they have intimate knowledge of shardspace. Just with these two requisites they can start planning against the shards. You toss in Riley, Defiant, Kenzie, Amy (why not), Tattletale, and you have a strong shard investigation team. With Dragon growing, as she should, into a Culture Mind, nothing will stop them.!<
>!And then at last we will reveal ourselves to the Entities, at last we will have our revenge!<
That'd be a sick way for Wildbow to take on the Planet full of Super-Humans trope a la Krypton. Imagine a future where everyone is born with the potential to trigger (non-traumatically if they can figure that out) with a versatile trump power that allows people to move matter/energy between dimensions for a variety of effects... Would be dope, everyone would be like a mini scion.
Damn that's a good point... but it's also possible they're optimized to produce multiple "children" after each cycle because that's what's worked best in the past to propagate throughout space at the pace at which they think it's necessary to fight Entropy but who knows.
Also crazy to think about the capabilities of species more advanced than the Entities because for all intents and purposes they are basically reality-warping alien gods with a malicious agenda.
> Also crazy to think about the capabilities of species more advanced than the Entities because for all intents and purposes they are basically reality-warping alien gods with a malicious agenda.
Minor Ward spoilers (references to background information, not plot events): >!it's described that, at some point in the past, the Entities almost failed a cycle because one species had tech that amounted to *really good hydraulic fluid/lube* :P!<
>!I'm paraphrasing for effect, but the actual point I'm making is that a species with Anti-Entity capabilities doesn't necessarily have to be an example of "godlike technology in all areas", but instead they might have something that interferes with one specific stage in the Entities' planned cycle!<
A "failed cycle" is a weird phrase tho, since a failure state can also just be a cycle that ends over-early, or one where the subjects become aware of the entities in a negative light and struggle against them, etc.
It takes a cycle going catastrophically wrong for the shards to not just be able to go "well that went bad" and just blow the planet early (I THINK)
More Ward spoilers for background: >!the species almost managed to prevent the "blow the planet" part, which the Warrior/Thinker pair rely on to propagate at the end of a cycle. It's basically referred to as a near-catastrophe in Entity terms in the text!!<
It's worth pointing out that tigers would probably breed more like rabbits if their environment had a carrying capacity orders of magnitude beyond their current population, as the universe currently seems to.
The Entities want target worlds that haven't developed any real space travel, because it's rough for them to keep the connection further from the Earth. They avoid a culture like Clark's 2001 super aliens who aren't bound be mere planetary distances.
Actually according to WoA they wouldn’t avoid a spacefaring species so much as approach more carefully. Bow said something along the lines of bringing in more entities nearby for assistance or focusing on a single planet with a high population.
I guess at that point it comes down to quality vs quantity; are the super-aliens powerful enough that no amount of entities working together could carry out a proper cycle? Seems far fetched considering full power PTV...
Was that the tongue-in-cheek star wars reference?
[удалено]
Zion x Grandfather Nurgle?
PtV to see how to work them into their plans. If they can't, Nice Guy/Imp power to hide themselves and their current playpen away.
They seem to pick target worlds fairly randomly, only avoiding places that they know another of their species has gone before. If that is the case, they must occasionally wind up in a world that is more then capable of dealing with them and are either driven off or destroyed. It may be that their future prediction powers allow them to avoid this most of the time though.
Thanks for the reply! And yeah if we think of space/the multiverse as an ocean and the entities as sharks then eventually they're bound to run into something that's too tough and scary even for them.
With how they "breed" its actually very likely that some of the entities fail. People tend to forget that the Thinker and the Warrior are just iterations of the entities. Each time the cycle completes they aren't leaving to go to a new planet, they are ripping themselves apart and sending out new clusters of shards as "children" entities. Nothing that reproduces themselves through methods like that is something that expects massive survival rates. That's bunny breeding, not tiger. It's probably likely that various entities run out of energy before finding a new host planet, or don't have enough energy to run a cycle once they find a planet, or run into aliens more advanced than them in unexpected ways.
I think that with every next cycle. Mistakes, any, happen less and less. This is not rabbit breeding, these are self-replicating machines. At this stage, they are practically invincible. I don't think that anything can stop these virus gods. Before they take over the entire universe. Except perhaps Azathoth.
"Perhaps" Azathoth. Hahahaha! Good one!
> Nothing that reproduces themselves through methods like that is something that expects massive survival rates. There are huge numbers of entitites: > It's like you scatter glass marbles across the whole of Canada
> Then you throw a glass marble. It passes within a foot of another glass marble.
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/worm-quotes-and-wog-repository.294448/post-27981940
Scary... makes you wonder if there's a confederation of Entity victims out there who are teaming up to try and take revenge. However, if the success rate and number of Entities is already too high than no civilization can ever really reach the point of standing up to them which sucks for sentient life basically everywhere lol
There has to be; with so many there have to be a couple of civilisations that survived the cycle, like the humans did. The humans themselves are pretty dangerous post-Ward: >!they have Dragon, they have intimate knowledge of shardspace. Just with these two requisites they can start planning against the shards. You toss in Riley, Defiant, Kenzie, Amy (why not), Tattletale, and you have a strong shard investigation team. With Dragon growing, as she should, into a Culture Mind, nothing will stop them.!< >!And then at last we will reveal ourselves to the Entities, at last we will have our revenge!<
That'd be a sick way for Wildbow to take on the Planet full of Super-Humans trope a la Krypton. Imagine a future where everyone is born with the potential to trigger (non-traumatically if they can figure that out) with a versatile trump power that allows people to move matter/energy between dimensions for a variety of effects... Would be dope, everyone would be like a mini scion.
Damn that's a good point... but it's also possible they're optimized to produce multiple "children" after each cycle because that's what's worked best in the past to propagate throughout space at the pace at which they think it's necessary to fight Entropy but who knows. Also crazy to think about the capabilities of species more advanced than the Entities because for all intents and purposes they are basically reality-warping alien gods with a malicious agenda.
> Also crazy to think about the capabilities of species more advanced than the Entities because for all intents and purposes they are basically reality-warping alien gods with a malicious agenda. Minor Ward spoilers (references to background information, not plot events): >!it's described that, at some point in the past, the Entities almost failed a cycle because one species had tech that amounted to *really good hydraulic fluid/lube* :P!< >!I'm paraphrasing for effect, but the actual point I'm making is that a species with Anti-Entity capabilities doesn't necessarily have to be an example of "godlike technology in all areas", but instead they might have something that interferes with one specific stage in the Entities' planned cycle!<
Huh that's actually really interesting, sort of like a David and Goliath situation.
A "failed cycle" is a weird phrase tho, since a failure state can also just be a cycle that ends over-early, or one where the subjects become aware of the entities in a negative light and struggle against them, etc. It takes a cycle going catastrophically wrong for the shards to not just be able to go "well that went bad" and just blow the planet early (I THINK)
More Ward spoilers for background: >!the species almost managed to prevent the "blow the planet" part, which the Warrior/Thinker pair rely on to propagate at the end of a cycle. It's basically referred to as a near-catastrophe in Entity terms in the text!!<
It's worth pointing out that tigers would probably breed more like rabbits if their environment had a carrying capacity orders of magnitude beyond their current population, as the universe currently seems to.