The great Reboot

Primus (as in, forum Primus) wrote a ficlet about it on the WtC boards. I'll see if I can unearth a link for it later.

I'd rather like to see Primus replaced, but different. I'm not quite sure how I see that working just yet, but it makes for an intriguing idea.

How about primus goes rogue? And since he's still alive, he's not replaced. That would be interesting.

I new to planescape modern but what if the rouge mos were used as a sort of steam valve for primus who is constantly asorbing the chaos then he relaeses it to the rm's thus balancing out the law chaos ratio

Of course... the gate-town to Mechanus was named Automata, was it not?

Maybe the reason Primus fell isn't a set of coincidences... maybe it occurred because he was no longer needed.

I had some ideas for the post reboot Mechanus but scrapped them because they came out being way too much like a cross between Reboot and the Matrix.

A dual-layered plane, hardware and software.

The software is a perfect world where everyone lives in harmony. Here, the modrons build buildings, repair damage, etc, to the very code that keeps the place together. They would appear much like normal perfect humanoids, no matter the caste, and each would wear a badge marking their level on the heirarchy. Here Primus sits on a great building, working on paperwork and such things. THe Modron Temple would be here as well, a massive Star Trek Voyager-esque star chart serving as the Orrery.

The hardware is a great silicone world of resistor-buildings. Great quantum engines and computing devices dot the landscape and in the farthest reaches vacuum tubes and such old-fashioned devices blaze futilely as the march of progress pushes them away from the plane's heart. In this level, the modrons are beings of plastic and energy. They travel instantaneously through the channels of silicon and then appear as walking beings of space-age plastic and glowing energy (I'll draw some pictures later). In this layer Primus rises out of a great CPU type building hooked into the entire infinity circuit.

Parai (Virii?) would be like a cross between Agent Smith, Megabyte, and Hexadecimal. On the hardware they would infect entire locations, changing their color and structure and transforming the beings within into themselves. They'd wear the white masks still (Hence Hexadecimal) and still be a hive mind. In the software they'd probably appear similar to the way they do now, and have the power to infect the software bodies of creatures. However, a creature's software body is not is real body, its a manifestation of his mind - much like the astral plane does, so creatures infected thus are made parai only in psyche not in physical attributes.

The inevitables would be shining robots some massive with death lasers, others man-sized and superiorly physical (superspeed strength etc). They'd be the same on either.

Hmm... this seems kind of odd.. I don't know when the original thread on the so-called "Great Reboot" started, but wouldn't that result in all the other planes of existence being rebooted as well? I mean, your talking about the quintessential plane of Law being out of commission - even for a few seconds - and yet, that would cause such a massive alignment flux across all the other planes, which would cause them to all collapse into Limbo, because no Law exists - that is "great" enough to counterbalance against the chaotic pull of Limbo. Its like how the gate-towns function - they have to maintain a minimum balance of alignment opposition in order to prevent the gate-town from getting swallowed up by the plane they lead to. An example of this is how the Order of Anarchy exists in Automata. Although they plot against the town - they in fact keep the town in existence. Paradoxically, Mechanus and Limbo keep each other in check, for the sake of balancing the planes of existence - the strictly moral planes of good and evil would be immune (or neutral) because they have a balanced pull from both ethical extremes. Minus out Mechanus and all the planes will come tumbling down. Also, Why are the Modrons the only concern of Mechanus? What about the Myconids or the Formians? or the Mechanus dryads? I suppose they were all destroyed in this so-called Great "Reboot"...

Personally, I would definitely go with making the reboot "the new Primus decides to change Mechanus from mechanical computation to electrical." This would be quite an upheaval enough to qualify for the name "Reboot."

I very much like the idea of making Mechanus a computer rather than (or, at least, replacing) a machine; the imagery of people walking down the halls of giant quantum calculators and, further out, old vacuum tubes, is appealing. The existence of layered rings of computer styles suggests the interesting notion that Mechanus is changing rapidly, which almost seems counter to its personality as the Plane of Perfect Order. However, if perfectibility was made part of the theme of the plane, then it would make sense. What is Mechanus calculating? Among other things, it is redesigning itself to increase its calculational abilities. To what end? User lacks sufficient access permissions.

You know, if the plane was modular, distributed, and parallel in many ways, this would make redesign fairly straightforward. Furthermore, it would allow mortals to request use of processing time and memory on the Plane itself, by co-opting a small, nearby processing unit. If Primus is the sysadmin, then he would even have motivation to make contact with other races and obtain resources by letting them use rationed quantities of unused computation time -- as sysadmin, any secret you store on Mechanus is in his possession. Encryption? Don't make Me laugh. Oh, wait. I don't laugh.

Maybe you could even take small Mechanus units from the plane. They'd doubtless be the best decks in existence.

...computer mines. Heh.

I also like the idea of the Babbage Engine => Circuit-based Computer aspect of the Mechanus change. I could also see some funny things happening with a quantum computing Mechanus...

Scene:

(a town in Mechanus)

Walker: Why are things popping in and out of existence randomly?? This isn't Limbo...

Native: No one knows. That's been common ever since they upgraded to MechanOS 3.0. It added support for quantum computing...

They've doubtless been upgraded from their earlier mechanical versions as well, though physical bodies would necessarily have some kind of mechanical parts. High-quality androids, basically. Well. Not ANDRoids per se, since andr- means "human-like." Hmm.

Monodrones: silvery spheres with jointed arms and articulated hands, scooting around on hoverjets. They see with a simple camera eye and lack a mouth in favor of a speaker. The "messenger" monodrones replace the arms with brackets to hold more powerful lifts that allow real flight. More energy-intensive, less efficient Newtonian reaction thrusters (i.e., rockets) employed on planes without atmosphere.
Duodrones: 1' by 1' by 2' blocks on directible tracks on two of the long sides, arms on the other two long sides, communicator organs on the ends.
Tridrones: metallic tetrahedrons that travel using small, directible wheels held on short rods projecting from each of their four corners. Each of the four faces contains an eye in the center and a speaker and socket on a rotating circular track around it, so the drone is fully capable of acting in all directions if flipped.
Quadrones: larger cubes with a greater array of sensory and communications equipment. They possess four mechanical legs in the humanoid pattern and use them to travel like any four-legged creature.
Pentadrones: ditto the monodrones' hoverjet, although it seems they regularly use the Newtonian thruster with their natural ability. Other than that, they don't seem to need much changing except for switching their organic parts for robotic.

The hierarch modrons probably just get less organic and more metallic.

Sound about right?

secundai could appear as liqiu-metal beings,but what of the rouges they would still look like the old clockworks would'nt they I mean if some survived the pre-reboot era they would never have upgraded.

Could also work. It really comes down to the question, "What is Mechanus actually doing?" I like the answer to that being, "It is thinking," although the characters don't know that.

Another proposal for the purpose of Mechanus' gears is that they symbolically turn the Universe, causing and governing physical law for other forces and objects; but then, this can be just as well symbolized by calculations in a computer.

Now, if power transmission is an important part of Mechanus, electrical conduction would work fine but eventually it would have to be converted back to mechanical power... somewhere. The question then becomes, where is the power generated (or, 'from where is it captured'), and, where is it sent and what is done with it. Those questions also not being answered in canon, one might as well make the known portion of Mechanus transmit power electrically.

Now theres a thought. Mechanus draws power from the chaotic planes, and a large portion of Mechanus is actually converting taht into lawful energy, which is eventually depositied in the modron energy pool.
This might also explain why some Modrons go rouge, they end up with a bit of nonconverted chaotic energy. nothing too differant, but enough that it throws their link to the other modrons in the collective off kilter.