Star Citizen Live: Alien Week Roundtable

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

At some point?

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

Eventually. I know it's hard sometimes because we have all this lore that's building and you want to know everything right away. We mentioned this before, but it's really trying to strike that balance between having fun stuff and establishing the universe now and really saving stuff to be experienced for the game in general when it comes down. So we're always trying to balance it, whereas this is a really fun story we could share right now, but wouldn't it be cooler if players got the surprise of it, got to experience it for the first time in game playing it. So we have our secret treasure trove where we keep things hidden and safe.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Yeah, and again, we're still kind of working our way through the Xi'an and the Banu and the Tevarin and the Vanduul and stuff like that. So, to give some context for anyone who's unfamiliar with the Kr'Thak, they were actually originally a stretch goal, which was kind of funny. So they were definitely conceived of to be a little bit further down the line, but there was also an expectation at the time of whether we would hit it or not. It needed to have enough of a flavor when introducing it that you got a sense of how they would...

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

The original thing was that basically they were not mortal enemies of the Xi'an, but they were basically located on the opposite side of the Xi'an Empire from the UEE. But they had been locked in a very, very long war with the Xi'an called the Spirit Wars, and the Xi'an were very, very cagey about telling us anything about them and really wanting to make sure that we didn't make contact with them. That was the original pitch set up for them.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

It's the day where we had first contact.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

With?

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

The Banu. The Banu were the first alien species that we came into contact with. It was a fun misunderstanding. You can read about it on the website, but it was a Banu out wandering around and it was very tense, but it went pretty well considering, and the Banu have been one of our longest and closest allies through the Empire's ups and downs.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Well, to be more clear, he was running. And he got shot at.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

I think if it had been any other species, it might have gone quite a bit different. But the Banu rolled with the punches pretty well.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

The Banu are interstellar friends to all.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

We have a few of those. For those who don't know what a developing world or developing civilization is, it's one that is inhabited by a species that is self-aware, you might call it sentient in some works of science fiction. They use tools, they're developing technology, they're moving forward onto a path that seems to indicate that one day they will join us in space. And the UEE has this law in place called the Fair Chance Act that prohibits interference from any of the developed civilizations. Basically, this was put in place to prevent another massacre of Garron II, which was a genocide of the developing species on the planet Garron II conducted by a terraforming company that had ties to the Imperator Linton Messer XI. And it was the last inciting incident that led to the fall of the Messers and the end of the Messer era. We have a couple of developing civilizations. You might have just read about the Osoians because I published a Galactapedia article on them. We can't get too much into their final design, but we do know that they communicate through light and color displays like cuttlefish. Fascinating and very hard for us to parse because we use our mouth parts to speak.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

I will throw out a fun behind-the-scenes trivia thing. When the Osoians first appeared in the Lost Generation story, I had done a rough sketch that I showed to somebody on the team of what I was sort of thinking they looked like, and I was told to, quote, never ever show that to the animators, end quote.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

They would cry.

Adam Wieser · Writer

Watch out for them, probably.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Do not interact. I guess it's sort of a two-pronged question of whether that's NPCs as far as hostile forces that you could potentially come across, or NPCs as like, hey, there's a Vanduul shopkeeper named Jerry.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

That's exactly where I was going. Is there a Vanduul Jerry along with a Banu Jerry?

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

As it stands now, the hope is that as you start getting closer to the systems that are near the Vanduul border, you're going to have to start dealing with them as a possible raiding force. We've alluded in the past that there are certain Banu that have managed to establish trade relations with Vanduul. And sort of hinted that there's a possibility that maybe a human could try and pull it off, but as it stands now, no one's ever done it. So good luck. Make sure you wear your armor.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

Yeah, and with the Vanduul having clans and stuff, when we start getting to those border systems, I think you'll start seeing the differences start emerging between the different groups of Vanduul you encounter, and that might take the form of actually having recognizable... We don't want them to be a unified, just faceless force that attacks you and all that kind of stuff. So there will be plans to develop it. But as far as dealing with them while the act of war is going on, I think that's going to be a tricky proposition for anyone in the UEE to accomplish.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Well, and also coming back to what Will was saying earlier, there is that thing, too, of, if, say, for example, we publish a thing next week that's like, oh, hey, so-and-so found Jerry the Vanduul and he's super friendly and stuff like that. That's not that satisfying from a player standpoint. Wanting to save the development of where the future goes from here in the universe until players can actually start to theoretically be able to affect that change is much more dynamic and interesting.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

Well, I think that's a speciesist term, first of all. I don't think we should be calling them humanoid.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

Yeah, bipedal or die.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Yeah, I don't know. It's always that thing of the... For me, it's that sort of weird balance of trying to... We are making a game, so there's that sort of, the humans of Star Citizen, of the UEE and stuff like that, how do the Xi'an react with them and stuff like that. So you want to build those sorts of conflicts and, oh, humans believe this, so the Xi'an might believe that, if we want to make a little bit of head-butting there. But yeah, I don't know. For me, there's also that aspect of trying to come up with unique ways that they could have developed. Writing out, actually, we did a time capsule thing for the Xi'an, so writing out their history, big events that happened throughout their history, and that actually really helped establish that mindset of how they would approach something as a completely distinct culture.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

Yeah, I think a lot of it, too, for me is when we start talking about them, even though their physiology may be, right now, two arms and two legs and a torso and a general shape like that, I think a lot of the stuff that we can play with is in their senses and how they experience the world. And that gives them a really different perspective on stuff from us. We really like the idea that the Banu are quite a hardy species and they can survive temperatures well in excess of what we can on both sides of the range, and different atmospheres and stuff like that. And so them being a little more, maybe less cautious and blundering and going forward comes as a side effect of that, being hardier. And the Xi'an have a very long life and they have duller senses, and so this more cautious approach all feeds into that. And so we try to think about how are they seeing the world and how is that different than humans as we go. So I think that helps me a lot as a writer when I'm trying to think about, all right, what is the Xi'an way of looking at this? What is the Banu way of looking at this?

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

I mean, they use anything that they think is useful, so I'm going to tentatively say probably.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

Just to talk about this, I know there's a lot of questions about wanting to expand out the alien ship thing, and by no means do the alien ships that are available for sale right now represent the full range of what alien species fly and drive around in. For us on the narrative team, ships are so important to Star Citizen that we have to be very careful when using them. The safer route for us is when we're talking about stuff hundreds of years ago, we have a little more leeway to just write for what we need. But when we're talking about present day stuff and what you encounter, that takes a lot of coordination between us and the ship design team. And so it's not something we do lightly. So wondering about, oh, where's the science ships? How come you haven't ever mentioned the Xi'an having a tank, and all this kind of stuff? That's kind of the reason behind it: we really try to let them take the forward step with introducing a new ship into the universe and then we follow up.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

Oh, we have so much food. Eventually, there'll be a Banu recipe book. Food is a special interest of Will and me both. So we have spent many a work hour developing the cuisine of the different alien species. Look forward to learning more next week.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

And it's also one of these things that we have a little more liberty with as a writing team in the game, because unfortunately we don't yet have a way for you to taste things when you click on it. But music and stuff you can actually hear, and someone is actually going to have to build that music the way we describe it. So we have plans and ideas for that, but that'll take coordination down the road with those separate teams. But food, we can say this tastes like spicy beetles, and you just have to take our word for that.

Adam Wieser · Writer

Yeah, and even though we haven't specified a specific instrument, I know we have called out with the Xi'an that they do love a certain type of opera, which you could almost compare to very minimalist, modern classical music. It's very droney and drawn out since they have long lifespans, and it takes them to a meditative state. So we can describe that experience, and it would be like a day-long opera rather than a four or five hour opera. Yeah, we have ideas for where we would like to take that and some sound, but again, it's not something we would go out there and say it's got to be this specific instrument, at least at this point.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

And we've talked a bit about the Tevarin having this unified chanting system as kind of a timekeeping and keeping everyone in lockstep for their movements and stuff, and so bringing all their voices together.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Yeah, it was about, again, because the Tevarin also came from a planet where they were besieged by a lot of predators, so the idea with their music was that it would be a lot of... The drum circle becomes kind of the classic example, but this idea that it's about augmenting your numbers to make it sound like you're a really big, fearsome thing. So it was that sort of coordinated, like I said, rhythmic type thing to amplify your size or boast about the size of, like, you don't want to come over here, there's a big thing here that will mess you up.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

I like to imagine that the Tevarin can all harmonize with anyone, like John Denver could.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Spoiler alert, they are John Denver.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

And the Banu didn't really have much of a music culture before they encountered the humans, and so they've taken to human music strongly, as it's a well-known fact that they enjoy karaoke. And also because of their less sensitive hearing, they really like music cranked to 11. And so it can be dangerous to go to a Banu concert.

Adam Wieser · Writer

Yeah, absolutely. One of the current senators, the first Tevarin senator elected, was formerly in the Navy and had joined the Navy to essentially earn his citizenship and then obviously integrate. And a lot of Tevarin like to join the Navy or stuff like that as a way to better integrate into the society, and they see it as a ladder to get to better positions and stuff like that. One of the current things in the current election cycle we're dealing with is some of the candidates and their preference to wanting to encourage more Tevarin to join the armed forces and stuff like that, as a way to give them more opportunities and a more diverse fighting force for the UEE. So there's definitely a lot out there, but I'm sure there's still plenty of Tevarin that have no interest in joining or just don't see the use in it. So I think it's more of a personal choice.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

There's an interesting split going on within the Tevarin, where a certain percentage of them are trying to rediscover their old ways. I can't remember, I think they went to Branaugh. Yes, Branaugh. And so they're trying to go and isolate themselves and start to resurrect the old Tevarin Rijora and stuff. And then there's another group that Suj Kasi, who's the Tevarin senator, is sort of spearheading, of, we need to play our part. We're part of this empire. Let's act like it, type thing, and really trying to inspire the Tevarin to take up their mantle as members of the UEE and really do their part. And then there's the third who ignore both and are just still somewhat disaffected and don't want to contribute at all.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

Yeah, I think the Tevarin serving in the Navy was a big step forward for them in terms of finding their place within the empire, because there was a lot of distrust at the beginning. We were at war with them. They were living among us. They were kind of segregated. And so that opportunity, when they made the invitation to allow Tevarin to serve, was kind of the first normalizing step in a lot of ways of humanity getting used to the idea that maybe we can trust these people. So it's kind of interesting in the historical significance of it. And it still goes on today, I think. Tevarin have a reputation for being fierce warriors.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

I'm going to answer this. Any Banu who knows the answer is dead, so we'll never know. The end.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

So Banu don't really preserve historical records that outline big events that happen. It's not out of any kind of malice or pacifism. It's just because it's not useful for them to remember stuff like that. Their culture is centered around the present moment, making things that have use, like tools and instructional guides.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

Yeah, they preserve knowledge.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

Yeah, they preserve knowledge. They don't preserve history. So them recording a reason like, why didn't the Banu terraform this branch of system? No Banu would care enough to write that down.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

And it's kind of like humans existing in the UEE now have noticed this discrepancy themselves and wondered and tried to figure it out. And one thing is that it's hard to get travel information from the Banu, the way that we've talked about them setting up their navigation: it's very proprietary and controlled. And so we didn't instantly get access to all the Banu star maps when we became friends with them. It's been a long trading process over time of finally gaining access. You have to purchase rights to get their star map data. And a lot of them are very carefully held because people want to control trade routes. They don't want the humans coming in and doing these things. And it's not like we can just take a Banu ship and download the information, because of the way that they build their drives, it's all hard-coded into it and you can't remove it. It's an interesting thing where they're very protective of that information.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

We do our best.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

A lot of it's conversations. Yeah, conversations. I would say good communication where we brainstorm.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

If it seems like stuff's going to have gameplay implications, we will try to either get really cryptic in the stuff that we're talking about that's actually directly referencing gameplay, as well as just reach out to the design team, directors and stuff like that, and just say, hey, is this roughly accurate? Is this completely flying in the face of everything that we're heading towards? We would try to get buy-in basically from the other team members before writing anything. Because yeah, the last thing we want to do is throw out something arbitrarily that has massive gameplay implications, then have to walk it back, because people read our stuff pretty closely.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Yes, because it's still based off of, if I'm a Banu and I steal from Banu Will, Will remembers that I stole from him.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

And I would hire a security company to track down Dave, and that contract, as long as it's in existence, would mark Dave as a wanted person. But how far that knowledge spreads, maybe. It's kind of a personal, immediate kind of transgression.

Adam Wieser · Writer

Yeah, it feels like with the Banu there's less of that next step, as in that doesn't just become a general 'you are now an outlaw for everyone.' It's a very personal thing at that moment. And if Will disappears or dies, Dave may no longer be considered an outlaw because no one really cares. It's not useful to anybody else to go track him down because whatever happened there has no significance.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Will's contract with his mercs that he hired to kill me would be annulled because Will's dead. So it's sort of, as we've talked about in the past, the inherent comedy around the humans and Banu having to constantly renegotiate their trade agreement.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

It was a really long process. I think it was Sokolovich, Neil Sokolovich was the general in charge, but it was several months of them working with the Banu. Wait, sorry, Banu or Xi'an?

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Which was the one for First Contact, Banu, right?

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Banu. Yeah, but it was a very long, weird, arduous process.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

Many xenolinguists gave up their lives to deliver this information.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Not yet. I do want to cast him as, if we have an in-lore language tutor, sort of a Rosetta Stone instructor, that would be my goal. Unless he has a preference of what he would like to appear as, but that would be my...

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

For those who maybe don't know and just heard a name come out of nowhere: Britton Watkins is our official xenolinguist for Star Citizen.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

I recommend watching his How to Speak Xi'an videos.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

He also actually has a documentary on constructed language. It's awesome.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Outside of pure environmental stuff, we have started integrating them. I believe we have Banu stuff on some of the food vendor carts and stuff like that.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

We have Banu and Xi'an signage.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Area18 has a book.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

Yes. I was like, oh God, are they up yet?

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

But yeah, again, the way we'd always been talking about it, we'll see as they come more online. I believe the early conversations were always like, if you take the time to learn this stuff, it will open up some possibilities and facilitate some kind of cool stuff. And you might get to navigate some social minefields that other people might fall into because they're not familiar with the language. But it was also trying to balance it, because we don't want to be punishing to people who don't have time to learn an alien language. That seems kind of unfair to me, because I'm terrible. I speak English. And so it's making it fun for the people and rewarding them for learning Xi'an, which is impressive, but not being too crushing to people who haven't, or making the game unplayable to people who haven't.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

I can see a mission that doesn't require you to be able to read Banu to complete it, but a secondary objective, like an optional objective, that would benefit you more if you could.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Or you can read the signs on the ruins and it'll take you down a different path or something like that, that still leads to the same place, but maybe you get...

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

We also have to figure out how our 30th century tech ties into this, because we're talking about how your mobiGlas AR ties into the world around you and what information you're going to be getting for identifying stuff. Our whole idea is that if we do end up having automatic translation happening through your mobiGlas, that it's rough. It is the bare bones.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

70% accurate type thing.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

Trying to do a translation online in 1999, that kind of level of translation.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

Maybe it just translates the words in the order that they're written, but since it doesn't translate the grammar, it's like, box big.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

You're missing out on the nuance, which might give you a leg up.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

We haven't talked with the design team yet about the idea that there would be a skill that you could acquire where it's, I know Banu now, and it translates it differently or something like that. I don't know where we would fall on that.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

I want to make sure that folks heard the part: we have not talked to design about that.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

This is all speculation.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

These are all cool ideas. Have not talked to design.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

We are not describing actual gameplay.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Deep love for Jerry. No, actually, we don't. Just outside of the fact that he was on the run from some Banu, that's why he came across Vernon Tar. But yeah, I don't think we've ever really delved too deep into them.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

It's definitely a good short story candidate, maybe something fun for us to do in the future.

Adam Wieser · Writer

Yeah, as we've been further developing the Banu species in general, I think it's helped bring a few more specifics. So now that we've honed that in a little bit, it might be a good time to revisit and provide a little more color to his journey and a little more context.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

Great question. It's one of those proprietary information things where they don't want us to necessarily also have trade with the Vanduul, where it's a money revenue stream that they have complete control over now, so they're not exactly breaking it down. They're also not exactly advertising it. It's more just inferred from the fact that maybe you'll see a Banu who's selling Vanduul-made items and you're like, how did you get those? And he's like, I got them. They gave them to me for money. So yeah, we do know from context that they perceivably have some kind of connection with them, but it's unclear to what extent or how they did it.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

They're dead. They are dead.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Yeah, so for those who don't know, the Hades system is basically a wrecked, totally wrecked system. There's a planet that's been cracked in half. It's basically the only thing that humanity learned about it was, somebody used to live here a while ago and they messed each other up pretty bad, to the point where they presumably wiped themselves out.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

It depends on where you are in the universe. There are some Tevarin clans outside of the UEE that would certainly still preserve the language, but most of the Tevarin that were absorbed into the UEE, when they got rid of their culture, they most likely threw away their language too. They're just like, this is shit. This didn't serve us well. None of this protected us when it counted. So why should we still bother to use it?

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

I mean, again, yeah, I don't know. I think it might be one of those things that once we get the language online, we figure it out. Because at the same time, definitely they were like, screw Rijora, it was useless. But it still feels to me like there'd still be patches where the language has survived, because that was just their way of communication. It's out there. Definitely in Branaugh. Definitely, like you said, the ones who were trying to resurrect the old Tevarin ways would probably adhere more to it.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

I think there's definitely been renewed interest in recent times. Sorry, Adam, go for it.

Adam Wieser · Writer

It's been like 300-plus years since the end of the Second Tevarin War and the species officially being integrated into the UEE. In that amount of time, you can see the language has probably dropped off a lot, but it's still not so old that it's like Latin, where it's completely lost. There are still probably people that have been speaking it and keeping it alive. I believe there is a bit of a resurgence right now, at least in the game world.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

One thing that would be really fun, once we start tackling the language itself, would be to have, similar to what you said with Latin, it patchwork-integrated into human common, so that you might get words that carry over. They might still speak a dialect of it that's a bit more integrated with the language of the UEE: more of an assimilated, UEE Standard old Tevarin. And then you have the purists who are back to Rijora, speaking pure Tevarin, which is like the broken one, but a little bit more refined. But just to give it that sense of, even their language is sort of assimilating into English or UEE Standard.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

Yeah, with the big rejection in that whole period of time, I think there's a large population of the Tevarin who only speak UEE Standard. That's it. That's their language. And now you start getting people, maybe, who grew up only speaking Standard who are like, I would like to connect more with my past. I'm going to take a class to try to learn how to speak Tevarin again. And to Adam's point, it's really interesting, because this isn't like a lost language, like how we don't understand ancient Greek, because we encountered them in a digital age, so there's good documentation on this language.

Adam Wieser · Writer

Even though they did purge their culture after the Second Tevarin War and tried to clear a lot of that out, there'd still be a digital record. The Kabal system was recently discovered with a bunch of ancient Tevarin artifacts there. That's always a well we can go to and say the language or things that might have been lost have been re-found here.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

From a linguistics perspective, 600 years is a very long time. We don't speak the same language. We speak English right now, us here, but English 600 years ago did not sound like this. The Tevarin that exists now, even if there was an unbroken chain from the Tevarin on Kaleeth to the Tevarin on Branaugh, they're not going to speak the exact same language, just because of how language changes.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

I've seen the conversation on Spectrum about people being like, well, in 2950, humans would not be sounding anything like... We have chosen not to do, like some authors do, that really cool thing where they create almost an entirely new language to show how different it's become over the hundreds of years. That might be more accurate, but we definitely have gone for more of a stylized version of the future.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

It's the stylistic choice, like the no-AI thing. It was sort of a choice to make it not that very unusual-sounding English language, to keep it conversational so it still sounds grounded and real to us as players, rather than trying to accurately depict or predict what English or various languages will evolve to in 900 years, which I do not have the brain capacity for.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

Yeah, like when you're watching a movie and everyone's Russian and you're like, why are they speaking with British accents? It's one of those suspensions of disbelief in order to be able to tell the story.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

Who says we ever left the rabbit hole?

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

A lot of it comes from need. Maybe we start with the base supposition of, they have a lot of religions. With the Banu, we said they're going to have a lot of different belief systems that they try to incorporate. And that's enough for us to start going on. And then we start filling that in as we need it. So talking about the God of Luck, that's a very important one, and so we've learned a little bit more about how that works. Or we decide that they're a little more monotheistic, like the Tevarin had this major belief that was instilled as part of their culture, and that's kind of surmounted, like it was part of their identity. And so that focused it in. So I think it's usually like that. Even for the human stuff, there's a bunch of sports. Humans play a bunch of different sports, but we talked about Saddleball. We just have to pick and choose our battles, and a lot of times, it's that need: I'm writing this thing right now, and I need more detail about this, so I'm going to dive into it. Because otherwise, you'll just go crazy. You can just sit forever thinking of bands for hundreds of years.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

I think it's also one of those things. I always try to equate a lot of this to drawing a picture, where you draw in the sort of block shapes to block out your composition and your sizes and your framing and stuff like that. And then you fill in the details as you go and you refine down as you need it, as opposed to starting really detailed and trying to do a picture; it'll take you forever. You get what you need to get you through and sell what you're trying to sell, as far as the flavor or a location or something like that. And then just move forward, because, again, there's so much stuff to cover that hopefully, as we are moving down, we're still filling in all these little things, getting specific on stuff, because we go, oh, I have this Banu, and I don't want him to worship Teren, so I want him to do a new god. So I've got to come up with a new god. So now we have a second one that we can flop in there. Yeah, it's just about trying to keep moving forward.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

I think this is a really interesting difference between the kind of nonlinear storytelling we do and a more traditional linear storytelling, where if you know exactly where you're walking and where you go, you can fill in a lot of detail on that path. So your character goes to this one bar and has this one drink, and you can describe the full history of that. But with us, where anyone can do so many different things, it becomes a lot harder to have that kind of controlled level of detail. So Dave's analogy was great for that kind of high-level rough sketch and then filling in the details as we go.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

I mean, again, originally the idea was that it was anything below spacefaring, that the idea of the Fair Chance Act was that all the cultures are going to leave this species alone until they basically take off and get into space, and then they'll be basically met by some Vanduul. And then they can be integrated into the galaxy as a spacefaring species. Now that we're able to do full planetary exploration, which again back in 2012 was a dream, I think we're probably going to shave it down. I don't know. It's an interesting question. It feels like it's easier to make them not as developed technologically, so it's easier to just make a world, and then it's just a type of creature that's running around on the surface of the world, rather than having to develop architecture or vehicles or stuff like that. Like they were in the 1800s, or the equivalent of our 1800s, type thing. So I don't know. It's going to be an interesting question.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

The Fair Chance Act overall is very interesting to me, because not everyone agrees with it. There's some people who think it's mean not to lift up a developing species. If we have medicine and they're suffering from a disease, is it really right that we don't help them? That's one of the science fiction stories that I'm really fascinated by, and I hope we get a chance to explore that more as we go.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

There are a few developing species in the Genesis system. There's a group of cephalopod-like species who are just beginning to explore the surface of their world. And they have engaged in warfare with a land-dwelling species who doesn't like them. And the people who are observing are like, ethically, should we interfere in this? Because there's a good chance that one could wipe the other out. And does that violate the tenets of the Fair Chance Act on its own? Because it's a very murky issue. Lots of interesting perspectives.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

I would keep it.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Dave?

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

I'd keep it.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Will?

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

Man, I would modify it. Basically, I would acknowledge that these are claimed planets that we don't have a right to, but I would probably push for opening contact with these species.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

But the bill up for vote is just to abolish it, not to amend it. Do you keep it or do you abolish it?

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

No, I would keep it until I can introduce a new law.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Adam?

Adam Wieser · Writer

I would keep it, personally, yeah. But I would point out the Fair Chance Act doesn't just apply to developing species. It can also affect mining rights to certain areas and stuff like that. If a species is developing, they don't want people up in the asteroid belt or going down to the planet to pull out these valuable resources and potentially mess with any of the species there. There's even one candidate in the current final five of the Imperator election, Paul LaSalle, one of whose core campaign promises is to basically revisit the Fair Chance Act as a way to open it up for miners to be able to maybe use new technologies or access certain areas of the empire that were previously off limits. So there is a pro-business stance too. It's like, maybe it needs to be refined, because we can do this in a better way that can benefit both humanity and the UEE and the economy without necessarily affecting the development of these species. So there's lots of different areas that it does split up into.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

I'd say a little of both.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Yeah. I mean, what kicked it all off was basically some human terraformers came charging into a system and just started terraforming a planet without checking to see if it was uninhabited. So that doesn't send a great message. So there was definitely some antagonism from the Xi'an.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Do we need to set up the Xi'an's admiration for anti-grav, or is that self-explanatory at this point?

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

They're highly developed. They have really good anti-grav tech. A lot of the human knowledge of anti-gravity comes from our contact with the Xi'an and their technology.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

I almost want to say that in their development timeline, they came up with that before they came up with space travel.

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

Yes.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

I believe so, yeah. They're real good at it.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

What would be the most petty or silly situation they'd use anti-gravity for?

Cherie Heiberg · Archivist / Associate Writer

My idea is that they use anti-grav at the dinner table to levitate tables and levitate chairs. A Xi'an comes to join the big family meal and she finds that there's no chair. She'd just whip out an anti-grav device and kind of hover there.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

We have talked about their ancestral clothing, these really ornate outfits. So it'd be funny to me if someone got a really heavy outfit that has a bunch of intricate things sewn into it, that they use a little helper device when they're walking around so they don't get weighed down.

Adam Wieser · Writer

Yeah. It varies. Most of them would like to better integrate them, or at least are going to put forward the idea that they want them to be better integrated into the empire, because Suj Kasi has become a senator, and there does seem to be a rise of people of Tevarin descent rediscovering their culture. So they're trying to appeal to that voter base.

Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

A lot of the more extremist views on Tevarin and human-alien species didn't make it into the final five. There's people out there that like to see it. I think the closest may be Paul LaSalle, who thinks they deserve equality but not special treatment; that's kind of his stance on it.

Adam Wieser · Writer

Yeah, both Leilani Addison and Mira Neo have called out specifically that they would probably create programs that would aim to better integrate the Tevarin into the Empire. Mira Neo, I think, would even want to set a certain percentage of each UEE office that had to have, let's say, 10% Tevarin working in it, as a way to integrate their ideas and their influence into the UEE. So there are some people that, if anything, are going to be more proactive about trying to get them to participate. There's no bad will in these final five candidates. If anything, they just would raise their hands and be like, they can lift themselves up by their own bootstraps, and they have the same opportunity as anybody else if they want to try to achieve that.