Aberrant RPG - Nova Fertility

[Elizabeth Rayne]

I'm at work so I have to go off the top of my head but... I'd say it depends on what you mean by publically. Not a deep dark secret guarded by a hoard of mystical shapeshifting ninja assassins but neither has it made the front page of all the papers yet.

PHEW!

Call it an open secret. Of course each mother is guarded by one of the top Elites at all times with Annie getting Totentanz as her personal man Friday / Invisible Badassness.

If you're thinking about the "OMIGOD PROTEUS IS GOING TO COME AND KILL THE BABIES IN THE WOMB" thing that most people assume is the case, then I should point out that the AB:Utopia books actually mentions that there are nova parents with nova offspring in the world.

No... I think Proteus knows that would be a bad idea. If a pregnant nova were to get murdered all eyes would turn to Utopia. Thetis isn't stupid. This is why they put up with the odd nova pregnancy. Now if DeVries were to start offering the treatment to more novas - especially unaffiliated ones - they might feel constrained to act.

However I think the Utopia book mentioned fertile novas not specifically parents. The children were artificially created at Bahrain.

This a matter of some schizophrenia in the books.

The right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.

Now why are you highjacking my thread to talk about nova fertility? Bad Becka!

Moved it to here. Happy now.

Becka

[Fortune's Son]

Quote:

Originally posted by Elizabeth Rayne:
Moved it to here. Happy now.

Yep.

I'm moments away from splitting so I'll take a look tonight for the AB:U reference as soon as I get home.

[ 07-09-2002: Message edited by: Jack Chance ]

[Jager]

Page 17 in the Elites book. It doesn't say anything about it being top secret, either.

As for conflicting information in different books; Oh yeah!

Just recently, I brought up the Trans-Tanzanian Conflict. It's in the Utopian book, where is gets several paragraphs. It isn't even mentioned in the DeVries book. It even mentions a large battle in the Congo. Again, no mention of the struggle, even though the DeVries book covers the Congo in a whole section.

The right hand doesn't know what the left is doing? I don't think the right hand knows there is a left hand, at times.

[Fortune's Son]

I found it!

It only took me three sweeps through the book to finally locate the information again but I finally found it. A more thoroughly ambiguous passage you'll probably never see regarding nova reproduction or any other subject but here it is anyway. And it appears that we were both right, Becka. you jumped right into the information about the Children but there's this short little blurb at the very beginning of the information regarding the children;

"Curious about the fact the most novas, even the few born to nova parents, don't erupt until well into puberty..."

AB:U, pg 133, second column

So how many novas were born of novas? More than four and probably less than 20 would be in line with the assumptions of the background in my mind.

Wherein lies the ambiguity?

If the first nova officially erupted in 1998 and, with the exception of Divis Mal, all other possible novas were actually stalwarts then how old were these kids when they erupted. Ten years old seems to be a little early to be considered post-puberty.

Special Bonus round question; why are the Teragen kids born MR Node active while these other kids are born dormant and erupt post-puberty?

[Kirby1024]

I'd have thought that Teragen kids get their M-Rs at birth because their conceptions are quantum-assisted.

Effectively, They've been exposed to quantum before they were even conceived.

Of course, just a theory...

[Fortune's Son]

That would make sense if its assumed that the nova parents reported in the Utopia quote were unerupted at the time of their children's conception but again there's that ambiguity. It doesn't actually say.

Then again, if I understand what you're implying, the parents self image as something other than human may be the defining characteristic that influences the prenatal eruption of the children.

[ 07-10-2002: Message edited by: Jack Chance ]

[Elizabeth Rayne]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jack Chance:
That would make sense if its assumed that the nova parents reported in the Utopia quote were unerupted at the time of their children's conception but again there's that ambiguity. It doesn't actually say.

I'd forgotten the "Even the few born to nova parents" bit. Things I'd say... I've heard that Stalwarts aside there were approximately 10 novas prior to Galatea but I'm not sure where it's from but I've seen it said here.

Even scarier "Most" implies not all...

Then again, if I understand what you're implying, the parents self image as something other than human may be the defining characteristic that influences the prenatal eruption of the children.

[ 07-10-2002: Message edited by: Jack Chance ]

Hum... I think he's refering to Bounty's intervention in the procedure not the fact that the parents are novas. However in the section on the nursery (Teragen page 92) it says that most have yet to erupt.

Becka

[Fortune's Son]

The Terats may be refering to that fact that all of their children have the DNA intron sequence that allows them to express a MR Node, ergo none of them are baselines. With the few nova children born there would be many questions concerning the reproductive cycles of the novas in the early days.

And the "10 novas" quote is from the APG but I think you're taking it a little out of context. It was trying to convey that, before Mal machinations, there was an average of approximately 10 novas born every century. We don't really know how many there were in the 20th century beyond Mal himself, although there is quite a bit of talk about Sophia Rosseau for no reason I've ever been able to figure out.

IIRC, the developers for A! said that as a working rule they assumed Mal was a 15 point nova with enhancements, no quantum powers initially and that any novas before 1998 would be similar. Without the knowledge of genetics, only the barest beginnings of quantum understanding and no noetic sciences it would be impossible to distinguish between 'inspired' and novas any way.