I copied the quote from one of the blog posts on the main Infinity site. I can't find it right now due to children climbing on me.
RIP Tohaa 2019. I doubt they will be updated with new profiles or miniatures any time soon. That is a real blow to the communities moral. I do think they will still have them in the game as is when N4 hits. CB said as much. Maybe the C.A. will make it all the way to Earth at some point in the lore in the following years. It will be Earths final hours. Then the Tohaa will find a new way into the shpere and help save it.
At this rate I wouldn't be surprised if any fo these two things happened. Anything is possible at this point seeing how CB has handled this.
During the Gen Con Q&A Bostria was pretty clear that they view Tohaa, FRRM, SAA, and QK as being in "temporary hiatus of production" and will remain part of both the game and background.
Considering Earth is mostly a tourist destination and a bit of a cultural place, it's not an especially tempting target for invaders at this point. Even the overarching government of the Sphere, O-12, isn't there. It produces barely anything. Attacking Earth would do only one thing: Unite humanity because their cradle is under attack.
Yeah. What is it that the CA is after? In the first place it's the the Digester, then maybe ALEPH might be an interesting thing to add to its army. But it does not seem to be interested in humanity that much, maybe rather helots and antipodes...
It's a complicate answer. First, know that the EI doesn,t normally attack other races like it did to Humanity. Normally, it will check if the race is a candidate for Ascendency. If they are, it will somewhat peacefully integrate them and provide resources to advance that project, so it can learn from it to reach its own ascendence. If the race isn't a good candidate, it will instead include them in its army, sometimes by force (like how it beat the Morat into joining). Second, a secretive group of Tohaa actually organised the CA's discovery of humanity. What is odd is how the EI acted toward humanity. Instead of the two options, it outright attacked, without attempted contact first. The RPG books provide more information. In the RPG books, it's revealed that Humanity is unusual among the species encountered so far by either the EI and the Tohaa. They developped an AI on their own. In this, the EI see exactly what happened with the Ur Hegemony that created it, with a major difference. The Ur Hegemony's first AI did reach ascendency, but judged the UR unworthy and left them behind. The EI also created another AI that rebelled and had to be destroyed. By contrast, ALEPH is very benevolent toward humanity and it's extremely likely that should it reach ascendency, would bring humanity along. As such, the EI sees ALEPH as a major rival, as its another AI that rivals it in power but also seem to be its opposite. I feel we can see some form of emotion in the EI's reaction. It's not logical, it's anger. Despite humanity being potentially the best candidate ever for Project Ascendency, having reached far further than most in so little time, the EI actively seeks to eliminate them.
That's what I meant with the IE not being interested in humanity. Well, I don't think it see's ALEPH as a rival, but maybe another (lesser) AI from which it can learn the way to transcendency. And maybe it attacked humanity to force an evolution, to speed up the development towards transcendency?
It might be more interested in humanity than you think. After all, while ALEPH is the big AI, humanity created it. Eliminate the AI, watch the humans recreate it, collect data. As such, the EI should be quite interested. It's specifically stated in the books that it sees ALEPH as a rival. Perhaps it considers it inferior, but its actions aren't that of a superior, it's that of someone who feels extremely threatened. It,s still speculation as to why the EI really attacked. It's confirmed that at first it was to get the precursor thingy, but it's too aggressive to be an attempt to force evolution. Even with the Tohaa, the EI attempted to convert them to its cause (and succeeded in a part of the population, but the question remains as to how free those individuals really are). It made no such actions toward humanity, which is very odd as even races that the EI considers unimportant for its project, it will try to add to its army. And humanity has proven that they are a strong force, a good addition to any army. All this makes the action of the EI strange. We still are waiting for lore on the full reasoning. Might happen in the CA lore book.
Nope, Aleph would be a thing to "assimilate". I doubt the EI would accept a second AI with power, only one centered on Ascending. Maybe it has changed, but the impression I got before the RPG got out was that the first AI the UR made ascended without bringing them with it (the UR projecting the "it things we are unworthy"), while the second ended fusing itself with the UR completely, and is unable to Ascend because it was created from UR, as UR... Bottom line being you can't cheat your way to ascendancy, and the EI won't ever be able to as long as it keeps the UR as they were when it was created. As for Aleph, at this time the only lines of communication open between them are military ones. This is extreme paranoia, because any channel open between two AIs can be used by one to hack the other, and without being able to even guess about the other's psychology, the risk is too high... so they "talk" through war, and the winner will take it all. The EI intends to get the Digester at all costs: discovery of a Digester means "grab it first, we'll see everything else later". That has defined the contact between Humanity and the CA, in a way that became beneficial to the Tohaa empire as their hidden masters desired (make the CA to stop pressuring them so much by making it divert resources to get the Digester).
This is all true, though if the EI is unable to actually ascend remains to be seen. It's actually rather likely. A note though, the Ur don't actually exist as the were when they created teh EI. They are basically integrated into it now. It still remain odd that the EI attacked first. Could be manipulation fro mthe Secret Tohaa Society, but i'm pretty in the RPG, there are example given of Digesters acquired through negotciation and integration of the species possessing it.
Yeah, the problem has moved into "philosphical heights" now: the UR, as they are (kept as something the EI recognises as UR, and very likely static), so the UR cannot ascend... what could Ascend is something that came from the UR, but different enough it would only have the name in common (if at all). The "contact" was described in Campaign: Paradiso (I haven't read the new version in Daedalus' Fall, however) as more or less this: Humanity's 1st ship lands in "Paradiso" Tohaa Cerberus' schemers detect them and decide to experiment, using technology to rerroute the Jump "gate" Humanity's 2nd ship ship crashes in Dawn, the portal closes, and Ariadna starts its funding, isolated Paradiso's colonists manage to detonate the ship, erradicating themselves (nearly sepsitorized with a virus that requires no Cube nor Sepsitor) and a chunk of BAD!tohaa troops. The BAD!Tohaa remove all traces of themselves and the human presence from the planet. Humanity rediscovers Paradiso, the BAD!Tohaa notice this. BAD!Tohaa drop a CA exploring drone, nearly disabled but that will reactivate itself and discover the Digester's presence Humanity reactivates the CA probe, which detects the Digester and alerts the CA the CA goes hot to get the Digester. I think the CA went directly to war because of Aleph's existence: we are talking about a hostile AI (there can't be other starting position), a fractured civilization, and strange alien constructions (the Cosmolites the BAD!Tohaa built following the Digester's poisoned gifts), so negotiation would not progress neither fast, neither safely...
You reverse two events. The first ship Landed on Dawn and started the colony there. Then the Tohaa redirected the second ship to Paradiso, which had the unforceen consequence of destroying the wormhole. Also I'm pretty sure the Tohaa organized the would CA drone thing before humanity discovered Paradiso officially. They expected humans to come back there eventually. Negotiations might be slow, hard or outright not work, but the thing is the EI never even tried. That's why I think the EI's response is very "organic", emotional. It saw in ALEPH what it should have been. Basically, its jealous.
Tohaa or Spiral Corps? Thought Tohaa are the good guys and spiral are the bad ones? I don't have the fluff books so only know what I read here in the forum
