Lord Mihko, the Quantum Syndicate Lord

[EditorRUS]

There is one moment I want to ask: Where is Lord Mihko? Lemme explain this moment. If you have enough rank to talk with Lord Mihko, you can actually ask for him at ANY black market station and he will answer you. How is that possible? Lord Mihko exists at all black market stations at once? Of course not (or is it?). In this case I can assume you just use some communications to talk with each others. Ok. But now we add one more condition - you had destroyed a black market station. Now what? As soon as you dock at any black market station, you are to be killed by Lord Mihko HIMSELF, provided you had not enough money. Therefore, Lord Mihko was on the black market station himself, breaking the suggestion about communications. So...

Where is Lord Mihko?

[Song]

Where is Lord Mihko?

Yes.

[JohnBWatson]

I would assume that he's multiple people, with one "Lord Mihko" per station. Underground organizations are rather keen on pseudonyms.

[EditorRUS]

I would assume that he's multiple people, with one "Lord Mihko" per station. Underground organizations are rather keen on pseudonyms.

Interesting.

[Ultimate Chicken]

Lord Mikho is just like Thor.

He is everywhere.

Perhaps he was the patron god of mafioso before Domina became the dominant (heh) religion.

[PM]

Do not forget that insurance works by cloning people. Important and unlawful NPCs could have many copies of themselves everywhere.

Insurance and/or perfect cloning means death is cheap for the wealthy. Come to think of it, the Katami subplot seems silly with insurance in the game. Let the Black Market whack him and Kate can simply rescue Katami by raising another clone.

[JohnBWatson]

Do not forget that insurance works by cloning people. Important and unlawful NPCs could have many copies of themselves everywhere.

Insurance and/or perfect cloning means death is cheap for the wealthy. Come to think of it, the Katami subplot seems silly with insurance in the game. Let the Black Market whack him and Kate can simply rescue Katami by raising another clone.

Of course, premiums do increase in a logarithmic manner, and Katami may be a former gladiator himself...

There's also the fact that consciousness isn't transferred between clones for normal people. Pilgrims may be able to get out of dying through being transferred to a cloned body, but for everyone else, it's just a copy of them, and they'll still be dead.

[Song]

From memory, I think he's canonically one person right now, who just happens to be at the right place at the right time. It's just coded that he's a timelord so he can always be there to off you. But there's not a great deal of detail known about the Syndikat operations yet....so what's already canon (and it's not much) wouldn't prevent him from hiring a lot of actors who look like him to be at every BM station to keep an eye on people, on the other hand. If they pootle around in fast ships in-system, then anyone moving between two stations who knows about him will assume he took a different route or overtook them, and people will just think he moves between stations a lot.

(Or if he's really sly, he'd hire a lot of actors who don't look like him, but all look the same. Then he can work from the shadows as a 2nd class janitor or something and really know what's going on.)

[PM]

There's also the fact that consciousness isn't transferred between clones for normal people. Pilgrims may be able to get out of dying through being transferred to a cloned body, but for everyone else, it's just a copy of them, and they'll still be dead.

It makes no sense - if it works for pilgrim or other PC class, it works for any human. Cloning as seen in Transcendence is at least a Raise Dead spell.

[JohnBWatson]

It makes no sense - if it works for pilgrim or other PC class, it works for any human. Cloning as seen in Transcendence is at least a Raise Dead spell.

Transcendence canon is that everything has scientific limitations, with even the core minds simply using very advanced scientific means to warp reality. Cloning someone creates an identical copy of them(presumably neural mapping has advanced to the point where the memories are also identical across clones). However, they are not the same consciousness(this is, of course, obvious for an instance of multiple clones).

For the player, the clones serve as extra lives, which the player takes direct control over. This can be a gameplay abstraction(though that wouldn't explain why Dominia relationship is transferable across clones, given that Dominia's methods are vastly more advanced than human technology. It also wouldn't explain why the player continues their pilgrimage across clones, as it is implied to be some degree of mind control, which would not transfer across clones), or it can be a hint on the nature of the core minds(though that wouldn't explain why it also works for CDM mercenaries).

[neogoliath]

it also raises a question of why the player doesn't send a clone to care for his family while his other self goes on the pilgrimage.

[SyntaxError]

I think we're missing the obvious here, though--Lord Mikho isn't at every station, he's at every one you visit. So clearly he just hides on the player's ship the whole time, right?

[Song]

I think we're missing the obvious here, though--Lord Mikho isn't at every station, he's at every one you visit. So clearly he just hides on the player's ship the whole time, right?

Plot twist: Lord Mikho is the player.*





*Insert references to relevant bits of Fight Club, Lord of the Rings, etc.

[catfighter]

I think we're missing the obvious here, though--Lord Mikho isn't at every station, he's at every one you visit. So clearly he just hides on the player's ship the whole time, right?

Plot twist: Lord Mikho is the player.*

*Insert references to relevant bits of Fight Club, Lord of the Rings, etc.

Then why the heck did you let yourself get dragged to meet yourself, then kill yourself and dump yourself out the airlock? Geez, people these days have no sense of self-preservation.

Further plot twist: Mikho is Domina, who can be everywhere at once.

[digdug]

Lol at the plot twists !

But yeah, a couple of points:
- cloning increases in price every time you do it and it's limited. That makes me think that cloning is not perfect and cloning a clone becomes more and more difficult at every iteration. So while rich people can eventually clone themselves multiple times, normal people might be limited to just a couple of times, like the player. This is the same as Raise Dead spell, every time you do it, you lose constitution points. (at least that was the case until AD&D )

- There might be restrictions of how the cloning process works: maybe to clone, you actually have to kill the person in the process (extract brain data?), making it not feasible to have another "you" around. In fact, most of the time, you meet a "young, dark-haired woman in a tight neo-linen suit" and not Lord Mikho.
Or maybe Commonwealth laws prohibits people duplication. This will also explain how Lord Mikho is on all the stations, because, of course, BM doesn't follow Commonwealth laws, but normal people are forbidden to clone themselves at will.

On the other hand, rich people can clone themselves to generate sons and daughters, and this is the case with Kate Morgental, AFAIK.