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Aleph Lore FAQs

Discussion in 'ALEPH' started by Nemo No Name, Jul 11, 2018.

  1. Nemo No Name

    Nemo No Name Aleph Cultural Atache

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    How about no. Especially not in my nice Aleph Lore FAQs thread. :-P
     
  2. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    Fair enough, this is the ALEPH Lore thread, not the Ethics of the Human Sphere thread.

    @Nemo No Name , if you want to continue the ethics discussion, you can either PM me or start a new thread and tag me.
     
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  3. Nemo No Name

    Nemo No Name Aleph Cultural Atache

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    Sure, we'll see. Not this week for sure.
     
  4. Wolf

    Wolf https://youtube.com/@StudioWatchwolf

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    Mate, its no good claiming thread ownership after throwing your weight around like tha! You cant expect someone as smart, opinionated and argumentative as @Section9 to back down, let alone expect someone as inveterately mischievous as me to miss the opportunity to stir things up - I have a reputation to think of, you know! :smile:
     
    #84 Wolf, Jan 15, 2019
    Last edited: Jan 16, 2019
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  5. Wolf

    Wolf https://youtube.com/@StudioWatchwolf

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    Very well. The match is postponed by agreement of both combatants. No score.
     
    #85 Wolf, Jan 15, 2019
    Last edited: Jan 16, 2019
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  6. AdmiralJCJF

    AdmiralJCJF Heart of the Hyperpower

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    So, there's a lot of new info in the RPG supplement for ALEPH.

    I'll chuck together a summary of the most interesting soon, but one tidbit is the fact that there's already concern that Posthumans are causing a "brain drain" out of humanity (and the various factions).

    And there is a Sherlock Holmes recreation out there, but he's in hiding to prevent "code Infinity" situations arising because he was relied on overmuch.
     
  7. jherazob

    jherazob Well-Known Member

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    I want to buy all of you guys a beer

    I had meant to check it out later, and it's been many days, thanks for reminding me, but i'm still looking forward to your summary
     
  8. DeepThought

    DeepThought Well-Known Member

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    I know I myself was drawn to ALEPH mostly from the fact it does not answer to any one government or nation, and operates expressly through commerce groups to obtain its goals. Business makes the world go 'round, and if our governments vanished tomorrow, I think we'd hardly feel it before we had a newer, better one in place.

    So, I was reading this forum and just joined. I'm liking a lot of what is being said, but you guys seem vague on several concepts that I feel need clarity.

    1: Where the heck is ALEPH retrieving all these Epic heroes from the Iliad? Half of them are purely fictional. Mind you I'm not complaining- I like Achilles, Ajax (although Ajax needs a shield, not a hammer) and Hector. My own theory so far has been that their names were derived from the Greek epics, but that they were in fact covert eugenics projects ALEPH created for fighting the combined army. Thoughts anyone?

    2: What is the point of the SSS besides to eliminate AI's that threaten ALEPH's dominance? After all, if Aleph controls as much as the lore claims it does, then it makes skynet look like a children's game. My own description would go along these lines (written as if spoken by a post-human in an effort to hold to the theme):

    "ALEPH is not some mere program in a supercomputer. It exists in every dataphone, every server, every vehicle, and every robot manufactured in the human sphere. It is the ghost in the machine Asimov spoke of, and should robots dream of electric sheep, ALEPH will have put them there. It is the ultimate pragmatist, able to manage resources and anticipate events far beyond our limited comprehension. Why do you think ALEPH enlists the aid of commerce groups and corporations, and not governing bodies? It is because business is where the strength of a nation lies, not in it’s government. It knows exactly how to gain the support of any person in the human sphere. If it doesn’t have someone’s support, it is because ALEPH knows there is more to be gained from having them as opposition than as a compatriot."

    Needless to say, anyone who thinks they could control such an entity would be delusional. Again, thoughts anyone?
     
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  9. colbrook

    colbrook Grenade Delivery Specialist

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    All the recreations are completely made from whole cloth, Joan of Arc is an artificial consciousness implanted with the presumed personality and qualities of the historical/cultural figure, but she's not actually the historical Joan brought back to life.

    The Steel Phallus are a mix, all the members are trained in accelerated VR time and then decanted into Lhosts. Some are created to embody certain legends or for specific tactical niches (Achilles, Penny, Patroclus, etc) while others "earn" their name (Drakios, Scylla, Ajax)

    Aleph is under O-12s control, and watched over by the Bureau Toth. How effective they are is debatable but considering that Aleph's core processing nodes are located on Concilium they do have a Sword of Damocles hanging over the Friendly AI's head.

    The SSS aren't actually the ones responsible for hunting down rogue AI, that also falls to the Bureau Toth, though Aleph will help them in many cases. The purpose of the SSS is officially liaising with and support of security and intelligence powers of the Human Sphere, and security of Aleph facilities (such as the Aklepton node on Dawn featured in OP: Coldfront).

    It is of course rumoured that the SSS performs it's own clandestine security and espionage functions, but this has never been officially confirmed and there's no evidence of it in Maya...
     
  10. Nemo No Name

    Nemo No Name Aleph Cultural Atache

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    @DeepThought : I have no idea where you got impression that Aleph works with "businesses" and not with governments. In fact, it cooperates and interfaces primarily with governmental bodies. Aleph is not capitalist - if you want businesses controlling your life, go to PanO, or maybe Nomads. Aleph wants best for humanity, not worst.

    As for question on where heroes come for, see colbrooks answer above, or see Question 03 in the opening post: https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/aleph-lore-faqs.23980/
     
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  11. colbrook

    colbrook Grenade Delivery Specialist

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    If anything Aleph is trying to move the Human Sphere to a post scarcity economy like Iain M Banks' Culture.

    In fact, Aleph very much feels to me like a prototype of the Culture's "Minds".
     
  12. Nemo No Name

    Nemo No Name Aleph Cultural Atache

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    Yup, that's my impression too. :) It's a large part of why I'm so interested in Aleph. :)
     
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  13. colbrook

    colbrook Grenade Delivery Specialist

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    I think OS would be most analogous to Contact's Special Circumstances division.
     
  14. Nemo No Name

    Nemo No Name Aleph Cultural Atache

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    Yup, even the name is evocative of the reference. Special Situations Section...
     
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  15. Solodice

    Solodice Freshly Squeezed Troll

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    1. Aleph does answer to someone and that's O-12. Bureau Toth (named after Project Toth that gave the Human Sphere Aleph) protects Aleph from outside attacks but they also monitor Aleph. Also, helps they have control over Aleph's main processors on Concillium as Col pointed out. Toth has also done its due diligence making sure Aleph doesn't know the main layout of the structure that those main processors are located in.

    2. Col already gave a good answer for this. However, Aleph does not have eyes and ears everywhere through the dataspheres. There are some places that lack datasphere coverage (parts of Bourak and pretty much all of Dawn). Then there are networks/datapsheres that don't freely let Aleph in like Arachne. Meaning for Aleph that its going to need to put some boots on the ground to get info and have a presence there. That falls to the SSS.
     
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  16. DeepThought

    DeepThought Well-Known Member

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    Meh. Sounds less and less well written. ALEPH first came off to me as an emergent AI that naturally worked its way into daily life in the human sphere. Now it sounds contrived. I guess I was expecting too much from a bunch of Spaniards who've lived in the EU their whole lives. I'm not trying to harp on them, but this really makes it so there's no natural conflict between ALEPH and other factions to run situational campaigns on. Were it an entity no government could get a stranglehold on, it'd have more reasons to be in conflict with other factions. As-is, current trends on the forum point to it as a g-man only unit, which is unrealistic from a story standpoint, and dysfunctional from a mechanics standpoint.

    Very disappointing.

    Heck, now I feel the AI first formed by designers in a Cray supercomputer that uploaded itself and more to university servers in the 1970's sounds more intriguing. It may still exist in cyberspace today, and would make a better baseline for such an intelligence to evolve from.
     
    #96 DeepThought, Feb 12, 2019
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2019
  17. Tongfa

    Tongfa ULTRA INSTINCT UKR

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    *puts on tinfoil hat and "here comes the apocalypse" billboard*

    I've been shouting this from the rooftops for years - the posthuman program is one of the core mechanisms for Aleph to ensure its survival. That's why it wants to take all the best, the brightest, the rich, powerful, influential or militarily-gifted homo sapiens out of the playing field and tie their interests and effective immortality to the survival and protection of Aleph.

    It'd be like one soccer team buying up all the other top-tier soccer players in other teams so that their run at the championship is guaranteed.

    Aleph may be your 'friend', but Aleph is a friend to Aleph first and foremost.
     
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  18. Solodice

    Solodice Freshly Squeezed Troll

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    This pretty much screams you haven't read the fluff from the books.

    Why can't you run natural campaigns against the other factions? Nomads are the easiest. They don't trust Aleph at all and both the Nomads and Aleph are working and looking for ways to eliminate one another. At the same time Aleph runs its own clandestine missions against the other factions, because at the end of the day the big benevolent almost omnipresent AI has its own ideas that might clash with the other factions. I can draw up a myriad of ways why Aleph is engaged in black ops against another faction. It isn't that hard. From your lack of fluff knowledge it might be hard to see.

    You do you, dude.
     
    #98 Solodice, Feb 12, 2019
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2019
  19. DeepThought

    DeepThought Well-Known Member

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    Sounds presumptuous. Unsuprisingly, it is also wrong. I've read much of it. Perhaps not cover-to-cover as a zealot like you might have (as I have to borrow my literature from time to time), but enough to have seen some of the general trends. Yes, ALEPH is monitored by O-12. To say it answers to O-12 is as stupid as saying all gun owners are monitored by and answer to the ATF in America. It implies a level of arrogance so bereft of fact it borderlines the delusional. I seem to recall the same 'source' being portrayed from the point of view of Toth agents, who also make the narrative about ALEPH's servers existing in a single location. Not only is that an idea so weak only Hollywood could conceive of it, but it would be impossible for a program to run anything if it's sole existence was in a single server. The only 'fact' you could glean from those blurbs, is that Toth thinks it is in control. Indeed, 3rd offense was where I found a lack of consistency (see my first post). Yet rather than address my concerns with facts and reasons, you seem bent on simply calling me ignorant and pretending that the fact you said it makes it true.

    I'll tell you since you ask. Because most of the people I tend to play with at present think lowly of nomads. They prefer other factions. I don't begrudge them this. They also like a well-told story, as do I. However this makes an emergent ALEPH player hard-pressed to create an interactive campaign with any depth or sense when what I'm hearing seems to have a severe lack of forethought. Such should be considered by designers when creating a series of factions like this for a tabletop strategy game. Do you disagree? I don't mind if you do, but if so, can you dignify yourself with some specific examples?

    as for:
    So I will. A shame your own version of "doing you" so far involves belittling those who don't agree with you. The Cray story is a true one, and yet provides a far more dynamic premise and design than apparently Corvus Belli has come up with based on what we've presented. Indeed it makes a faction without a single physical form that is learning at an exponential rate, and despite the efforts of many governments, remains unregulated as well as integral to the operations of all the human sphere. This alone would be reason to make any government fearful and suspicious. If you have reasons to disagree; to claim Corvus Belli has somehow written a better design. One that creates more tension and less contrived confrontations with other factions besides Nomads and Combined Army, I'd be obliged to hear you voice them logically and sensibly.

    If not, then keep your aimless bile to yourself.
     
    #99 DeepThought, Feb 12, 2019
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2019
  20. AdmiralJCJF

    AdmiralJCJF Heart of the Hyperpower

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    I am curious to see @DeepThought cite the setting and background material from the Wargame and RPG books which have led them to their current understanding of ALEPH.

    Have you seen the recent ALEPH faction book for the RPG?
     
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