Aleph Lore FAQs

Infinity also isn't set as far in the future so society hasn't had the same amount of time to stratiate as in Altered Carbon.

 

You're basically correct on that point.

Resurrection is described in the rulebook as taking something like 100 years of well-managed investing for the typical middle-class worker. Considering that a middle-class worker can, for about two hundred bucks every two weeks (plus interest), save multiple millions over the course of their ~40yr work life for retirement, this puts the cost of a resurrection at "[ expletives deleted ] expensive!!!" On the order of tens of millions.

But that cost really only matters to someone paying it themselves. Most places almost certainly offer resurrection insurance, and the Human Sphere militaries explicitly did, with truly massive payouts for Real Death.

That too! Altered Carbon itself is set a pretty significant time into the future (considering that the initial colony ships have to go there the slow way, there is no FTL travel, just FTL communications), Broken Angels is 30-50 years later, and Woken Furies is probably 100 years after Broken Angels (the way Kovacs talks about Quellism during AC makes it sound like that the Quellist rebellion was at least as long ago as the American Revolution, and it's been over 300 years since [ spoilers ] )

At least in my case, I am describing "that which makes a person sophont, actually self-aware," as the 'soul', for lack of a better word. The other setting I have been mentioning calls it a logos.

 

I thought Nomads didn't have cubes proper but something like a USB port that used a much more manual back up process.

 

No, that's a Haqq thing for operatives without cubes.

I hear you, but all of the different systems for earning resurrection (barring the "go buy it off the Nomads" option) require more than just showing up with cash in hand.

 

Most people that have the cash on hand anyways for a resurrection probably already have political clout to get one if you couldn't outright pay for one. The rich and powerful have other means of getting what they want beyond just pure buying power.

 

I'm also not sure whether the millions! pricetag is the non-governmental price or if it's the price for everyone (example: in the US, a fully-automatic M16 is about $20,000 for a civilian, but it's maybe $1600 for the government, just due to laws restricting supply)

 

Yeah, the RPG system for costs is a bit strange for working stuff like this out (but works VERY well as a "character ability").

I think you are about right with your estimation of cost 'though, from a "pure cash" perspective.

 

Offline backups used to be part of the lore for Prowlers in 2nd edition, but they changed that line and gave them highly secured cubes instead in HSN3 (and added a cube to their troop profile). Fidays (especially Al Djabel) are still cubeless in N3, though, with offline backups before missions.

 

In general, having a cube is no grantee for resurrection regardless of money involved, resurrection takes Aleph's processing power hence the expense on top of silk and Lhost, more importantly though the limited slots of personnel resurrected per year.

Governments keep a small number of reserved slots (and can definitely push for more) for certain emergency cases that bypass the line and here is were money and power can play an important role, if for example the CEO of a really big corporation is deemed a strategic asset then they can be expressly resurrected ectr, ectr.

Law with Cubes and the resurrection are complex and complicated, cubes can be copied and more than one can exist, most sensible (or important) people will have a hard backup that they update on top of their cube because things can happen to the cube accidentally or purposefully, having a cube copied and resurrected while the legal person is alive is highly illegal, the one example we do know of also illustrates that the copy is not guaranteed to make the same logical or moral decisions the prototype will.

The main issue with resurrection beyond identity theft, rogue copies and possible cube manipulation, is the status of possessions, Monique Gaillard for example was still the CEO of Magna Orba and nobody inherited her fortune but she was swiftly resurrected, there are pensions in PanO to make sure randomly resurrected citizens start with some money since their belongings have been (usually long ago) inherited.

@toadchild
Beyond Aleph who all have online backups every other cube if an offline backup, I think you mean, hard, non cube, backups.

Speaking of these backups, cube can be accessed and even interrogated, cube security is highly important especially for high value targets.

 

So in such case the rather "possible" and "often" resurrections the genealogy banks are very important thing and everyone is screened towards possible ancestors/offspring ?

 

It is strange that Perseus only has a Cube 1.0. This may mean that he managed to destroy his cube when he got captured by the CA (as all ALEPH aspects or creations are meant to do, they have a special function build in to do so), and that he got a new (regular) one when he came back.
But that is not true for the recreations (e.g. Saladin, Joan, ...)

But for Aristos to be resurrected during a match I would expect all of them to have a Cube 2.0. But while Dart does have a Cube 2.0, Myamoto only has a Cube 1.0?

 

The person is in the Arena, dead, but still there, the possibility of a, cube breaking hit, is minimal they can just take the cube from the corpse and put it in a new Lhost, Cube 2.0 are mainly on Aleph troops because they are connected to their bodies from the "cloud" Dart is a posthuman, recreations on the other hand are individualised localised versions, Probably even PanO would object having Joan constantly linked Aleph (at least the secret service would).

 

To circle this back to Aleph, I am curious about Aleph's allocations of resurrections. We know that resurrections are tightly governed, with each faction having there own rules. Are there human sphere wide rules limiting resurrections (beyond simple economics), and is Aleph subject to them? Does Aleph have unlimited access to resurrections for its operatives? Is it even called a resurrection for something like a Deva, being as they are aspects of Aleph?

 

This a terrific thread folks thank you, and im liking both the questions and the answers. Could the people providing the answers also try to give us a clue (or ideally a more or less scholarly reference) to where the information is coming from, please?

Eg. “Cube v1.0 is limited by such and such practical issues” (Paradiso, Aleph section)

 

I've a feeling (though I'm not sure if this has been covered by the books) that loading aspects into an Lhost is much faster than loading an actual person.

One big limiting factor with resurrection, cube interrogation, etc, is that brains aren't uniform, each human runs a little bit differently. Think of it as humans being like computers where everyone has written their own OD and file system. Transferring, running, or loading these requires an immense amount of processing power to translate and emulate someone's very particular and unique memories and thought patterns.

In comparison Aspects are manufactured from a standard base, they share a common architecture to their minds that lets them be downloaded into any Lhost with an Aleph pattern brain, whilst Dave can only be decanted into a Dave-brain Lhost, and Carlos can only be in Carlos-brain Lhosts.

 

Another thing is to note the distinction between the Aspects of OperationS, etc., and the members of the Assault SubSection. Different processes for both, with the Steel Phalanx members actually being certified as individuals, not mere splinters of ALEPH, and (albeit in a virtual environment) being raised before being placed in an Lhost.

 

I do wonder how interchangable members of the Phallus are though, can Daveides use the same Lhost as Carlosides? Or are their minds too divergent.

 

Also depends on how the mental hardware is configured... are they all the same, like a blank computer drive, or are they pre-configured for certain OSes? Also, how *truly* divergent are they, and how much effort is ALEPH willing to expend? I would imagine the Homeridae have specific models of Lhost set for them, configured according to current specifications, i.e. Diomedes downloading before the latest suicide mission and his "new" Lhost ready to go in case of True Death, while a "normal" member of the Phalanx likely doesn't have that, but rather would simply be dropped into "standard" Myrmidon Lhost or Ekdromoi or Thorakitai, etc, rather than a customized one.