So Humanity has conquered the Galaxy, exterminated all hostile xenos, all humans live like philosopher kings and queens over lesser races, and everyone can have a harem of sexbots and aliens. Also immortality and biomancy are things now and everyone is Emperor tier. Now what?
>>45248735
You have the Culture.
>>45248735
The birth of Double Slaanesh and the Eye of Terror 2.0?
>>45248735
Race war now.
Then, I'll have a coke.
>>45248735
Time to kill off the non-psykers and non psyker sympathisers.
>>45248776
Is that a ship powered by death stars?
>>45249361
Death Stars are fucking toys compared to that ship.
>>45249361
>>45249377
It can unleash an attack of literally infinite energy by braking hard enough when FTL.
>>45249377
What is it?
Forgive my stupidity.
>>45248735
Presumably the problem of material scarcity is effectively resolved. Then we fight over things that are not material, like friendship, love, prestige, the first to be served by the galaxy's best chef, etc.
>>45249879
>Entire interstellar empires are treated as pawns in a war.
>The war is over which show is better.
>>45248735
Lord Zarus is proud of his children.Except for consorting with non-Humans, you sick perverted freaks. Heretics, the lot of you.
Time to conquer the other galaxies.
>>45249844
Some book series where the main organization is stupidly powerful to the point where it's not even interesting. When a single ship could solo the whole 40k universe, it stops being fun or even remotely relatable.
>>45248735
Now it turns into an ERP.
If Jaune really is a prince that will really be awkward for his friends.
>This guy is gonna rule Vale some day... we are so screwed...
It was endearing when he was "just" gonna be a hunter, but the King of Vale?
>>45250201
Wrong thread my bad
>>45249952
Like you wouldn't.
>>45250248
I see nothing wrong with the picture you posted. It is perfectly natural for a warrior to want to fuck his sword.
>>45250289
But she isn't human so that is heresy isn't it?
>>45250313
She's a human forged blade, is she not?
Fuck demon girls of course!
>>45250149
Hardly, it's not like the Culture could destroy the rest of its own setting.
Besides, the vast majority of the books are about people who are distant from the the Culture.
>>45250343
Where do I get one?
>>45248735
civil war, sooner or later
>>45248735
>everyone is Emperor tier.
Society crumbles from crippling autism, uncontrolled fedora tipping, and massive retardation.
>>45250411
I meant with abilities.
>>45248735
Well, Andromeda is the nearest galaxy from us, they probably have a Xeno infestation as well...
>>45248776
That op.
A stagnant, hedonistic, slightly xenophobic society where people are treated like children, based on space magic.
>>45248735
It's my firm belief that the Emperor never had *any* of this as his end-goal.
A stable, steadily but not rapidly expanding human empire maybe.
Well-controlled and regulated evolution into a psychic species for sure.
But he never wanted ordinary humans to be powerful and happy, he just wanted us to be content and to love and serve Him. He was down with some pretty horrific shit after all, including slavery of the cyborg-gladiators kind.
He wanted us to survive in the big picture, but he didn't trust us to do it on our own, and he certainly wouldn't trust us with power on his scale.
>>45250560
That's kind the point of the Culture (a series of books by Ian M. Banks). Life is swell for everyone and everything worth fighting for has been long since solved, so the OP's question remains: What now? Their society has been ready to transcend to the next level of existence for quite a while now, but they've chosen to stay behind and make sure that all the younger civilizations in the galaxy play nice. The main reasons for this are enlightened hedonism, and that they're afraid of losing their big boy status (shown in Excession, where they encounter someone far more powerful than them from the outside).
This, and the fact that every one of the books is told from the perspective of someone who disagrees with the Culture for a reason or another, the outsiders and outcasts at the fringes of the utopia, makes them interesting if light space-opera.
>>45250620
I'm guessing he wanted some other Emperors around. If only to help with the loneliness. The Primarch project for instance.
If he could have, he'd have made Malacador a New Man I'm sure. Whether subordinate or a partner, not so sure.
>>45250644
He just misses Enkidu.
>>45248777
>The birth of Double Slaanesh and the Eye of Terror 2.0?
I LIKE IT!
>>45249879
>Then we fight over things that are not material, like friendship, love, prestige, the first to be served by the galaxy's best chef, etc.
>>45249915
>>Entire interstellar empires are treated as pawns in a war.
>>The war is over which show is better.
I LIKE IT!
>>45250175
>Now it turns into an ERP.
I LIKE IT!
>>45250345
>Fuck demon girls of course!
I LIKE IT!
When everybody is nigh-omnipotent, stories are no longer about what you can do, but about what you choose to do.
>>45248735
Start a a new game. You won.
>>45250620
I'm guessing he was going for unity first, stability and happiness later. He tried to let us do it on our own, and as far as I can tell it was actually pretty great, but then that fell through and he had to take things into his own hands to make sure shit gone done on time.
I think there's a little evidence for him having some post-Great Crusade jobs for his primachs and their Legions, which might also explain why he didn't whack any of them harder. Maybe he was trying to bring back the Age of Technology? We can't be sure what life was like then, but it sounds like the non-religious Space Empire you see in so many sci-fi books and such. Maybe he just assumed humanity could quickly reach that again, and that was his real failing.
>>45250772
Dammit, ND likes things. We have to stop liking them now.
>>45248735
Now, after peace is restored and all the filthy xenos are gone, is time to decide once and for all who is the best team of Space Marine Dodgeball!
The answer to that question is inconceivable to us because living that kind of life is as beyond our comprehension as our lifestyle would be to the earliest civilizations in Africa or the Middle East.
Just as an ancient Sumerian would be mystified by our casual domination of the entire planet, so too are we earth-bound humans mystified by the idea that the entire galaxy will be ours. What does such a being want, even? He's already gotten everything there is to get, right?
Of course not. Just as we don't live philosopher king / queen lifestyles with harems of beautiful men / women (although we certainly could, if we cared to- there's more than enough food right now, and the only thing keeping people from having as much sex as they can handle are social norms and a lack of access to contraceptives), neither would these potential future beings live a life of ceaseless, stifling luxury.
>>45251955
>Dammit, ND likes things. We have to stop liking them now.
OR JOIN ME!!!
>>45248735
Tournaments to (what would be) the death (if not for our amazing advancements) for our entertainment.
>>45248735
Now you purge all the blacks. Duh.
>>45248735
Burn it all down and do it again.
FUCK ALL THE ELVES!
>>45248735
Now I want a coke.
>>45253538
OP already says mankind will rule over that, isn't that good enough?
>>45248735
Bards and writers are the most respected people in the galaxy. Entertainment is one of the most important things to mankind now, as they see all their other goods and possessions as rights they deserve.
This tread needs more lewd elves.
>>45248735
Boredom, apathy and wanton hedonism eventually leads to downfall and then Dune, and thus humanity ended up back where they started.
Either that or WW2 in space with giant robots.
>>45257763
>>45248735
The human race was engineered to deal with adversity, not prosperity. It is amazing how long and how well the human body can perform with minimal nutrition, but it is equally amazing how many health risks come with overnourishment.
The same applies morally, societally and culturally. A culture of abundance is one of decay and lazyness. The generation that created the utopia will be virtuous and near perfect. Their sons will remember the struggles of their parents but be a bit more lax because they never experienced these struggles themselves. THEIR sons will be lazy and hedonistic, as they cannot relate to the struggles of their grandparents at all.
It's only a matter of generations before greed, corruption, lazyness and relativism take hold, and the utopia collapses. The only lesson history teaches us is that nobody ever learns from history.
>>45248735
Wasn't this way the Eldar managed to fuck themselves, and miscarry a new Chaos god?!?!
>>45248735
See >>45258412
/thread
>>45258412
So how do we balance it?
>>45259144
Ain't that the million dollar question? The Romans couldn't figure it out, so I doubt I can give a correct answer. I guess I'd say moral decay is a bit like smoking: it feels good and you don't notice anything wrong, until one day you have lungcancer and then it's too late. We need to somehow convince the man who smoked one pack a day ever since he was 13 that he's destroying his own body.
>>45250510
This guy gets it.
Alternatively, Agent Smith was right and we multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. Then, we have no alternative but to move to another area.
All species become another galaxy's Tyranids if they live long enough.
>>45260185
>Defend our Hives from the Human invaders!
>>45251955
>ND likes things
No, ND likes one thing - and he shoves it into every post - but narcissists can't believe their shitshow ever gets tired and played-out so, unless he gets banned, we'll all just have to deal.
In Stars Without Number, you have the Scream, destroying the FTL gate system, driving psychics dead or insane, and the insane ones wreck the AIs. Then 600 years civilization rebuilds, this time with less trust in gates and psitech.
Historically there are two big practical reactions to the existential void of consciousness: hyper-socialization, where gods (or upper classes, or celebrities) are invented who can imbue life with meaning by having extra social agency...or artificialization, where engineers and nerds reshape the world directly and technologically.
I suggest a massive AI-driven artificialization completely rewilding the universe with procedural generation, until a new, artificial nature of nanotech wonderland-life encompasses the universe with such power and variety that humans are once again reduced to noble savages [albeit immortal, wiser, sexier, and capable of prodigious physical feats], this time with real magic command words.
Alternately, you could go orthodox transhuman and have Vile Offspring clones or some other post-capitalist machine life subsume existence, erasing humans as a side effect.
Then again, you could take the alternate counter-transhumanist philosophical position that intelligence optimization has been essentially debunked as one of Stirner's spooks because it's orthogonal to functional human values. But the artilects also realize this and are in no hurry to increase their intelligence to the point where network effects destroy their consciousness...rendering them closer to mythological deities like Athena, Yahweh, and Skynet instead of universal paperclippers.
>>45248735
So basically either we end up like the Eldar and give birth to Slaneesh
Or we end up doing what humans usually do. Kill ourselves in a bloody civil war.
>>45266733
See, if I had godlike abilities i'd be in no hurry to transcend too far. I'd be some Thor like entity and enjoy my god life.
you figure out how to go to other universes, point yourself at the biggest, nastiest thing you can find and fight it. that stave off boredom for a while.
>>45248735
Why climb a mountain? Because it was there.
So yeah, that happens we keep on exploring, either turning inwards to figure out the minutia of matter and quantum foam, or we leave the galaxy, to find out what's over there.
>>45248735
There's always more universe.
>>45259265
anti spirals
>>45250346
I don't know much about it. I just see so many people circle jerk about how powerful the Culture is that I'm already turned off from the setting. Fans ruin things for me a lot (Harry Potter, Doctor Who, ADnD). So I get a little salty.
>>45266733
>yfw D&D is the next cycle of the universe
>people who can survive falls from orbit, produce fire on a whim, curse people's genetic lineage, etc.
>reality warpers at their finest
Eternal intellectual pursuit I guess. Or if we're still talking about 40k, then decadence and Slaanesh 2.0 or whatever the Tyranids seem to be fleeing.
