Proginoskes Wrote:So how does this version's Supertechnology/Handwavium work? Is it basically what "we" have, but subtler? Or is it something else entirely?
Working from my notes...
This particular version of handwavium isn't the magic material from the mainline: there's no 'apply wave, get stuff' mechanics to it. Still working out the hows and the wherefores, but it's more of a black-box nanotech of sorts (again, very preliminary). However it's presented the stuff basically works as a tool to build the tools to build super-empowering technology.
There's four main gradients of the technology handwavium can produce: lightsci, graysci, darksci and madsci. This isn't a moral division, it's a how-much-do-we-understand-it division. Lightsci tech are things that obey the laws of physics in general but we just can't reproduce, like for example carbon nanotubes of arbitrary length. Greysci tends to bend the laws of physics a little bit more, or go into things that we know work but still don't understand: artificial intelligence, brain-machine interfaces and things of that nature would be good examples of greysci. Darksci is where we get into the openly 'yeah, we must have something wrong in the models' stuff like artificial gravity, inertial control, reactionless drives, FTL and so forth. Madsci... madsci is probably closest to mainline wavetech in how it works; it's all bespoke, generally can only be reproduced by the person who made it and tends to treat the laws of reality as vague guidelines. As you can guess, it's the rarest and most worried-about part of the whole thing.
[size=smaller](As for Candle, we're working on it I swear to Xenu. Please don't kill us, we have too many bills to pay to die!)[/size]
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
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