Torment: Tides of Numenera - AMA Answers

According to the Torment: Tides of Numenera Tumblr page Lead Design Adam Heine has answered more questions on his blog.

AstroBull has a question about the Numenera setting:

"I have a question about the TTON time scale. In a previous AMA response, you mention “the setting of Numenera and Torment is Earth one billion years in the future, known as the Ninth World. A billion years is as far removed from us as we are removed from being single-celled organisms.” This brings up questions regarding biological evolution. As far as I am aware, many/most characters in TTON will be recognizably human, though I’m sure with changes both genetic and technological in origin. Still, it would take quite the suspension of disbelief for me to believe that Homo sapiens as we know it would exist in this future, rather than some potentially un-recognizable descendent.Couldn’t the premise of ages of civilizations with vastly advanced tech followed by a dark age work for, say, 20 million years? Will there be some explanation as to why humans still exist in the unfathomable distant future?"

Adam Heine'S Answer:

You are absolutely right. In one billion years, humans and everything else will have evolved, the continents will have come back together and split apart again, and none of it will matter because the sun will have expanded to the point where life on Earth will be impossible.

Assuming nobody does anything about it.

That’s the thing, though. In those billion years, at least eight ultra-powerful civilizations have arisen (or arrived) and then disappeared, each one advanced to incredible power far (FAR FAR) beyond what we are currently capable of. And each one messed with the Earth in substantial ways.

At least one of them had mastered planetary engineering and stellar lifting. At least one could fiddle with the laws of physics the way we play with Legos. At least one explored parallel universes and alternate dimensions. And more than one wasn’t human.

So why are there humans at all, or anything even remotely close? The Ninth Worlders don’t know the answer to that. Their recorded history only goes back about 900 years, before which humans lived in barbaric tribes and isolated farming villages. No one knows how long it’s been since the previous civilization disappeared, nor where Ninth Worlders came from. They have a sense that Earth was once theirs, and then it wasn’t, and now it is again, but they have no idea how this could be.

Will there be some explanation for you, the player? Not in Torment, and maybe not inNumenera at all. It’s not critical to Torment's story, but more than that, it's part of the mystery of the setting. And mystery is critical to making this setting work.

As for why a billion, instead of some other large-but-sufficient number, Monte Cook has a better answer than I could give.

More information.

I love it!! I love the sense of mystery! I'm glad they aren't explaining *everything* in the game. I kind of like that the player is left to wonder, endlessly.

And thanks for posting this AMA - I was wondering about this myself, and now finally my question has been answered. I'm actually looking forward to this game waaaay more than I expected.

So it is going to be a sci-fi game?

Smells that way and I can only dance hapily.
Bring it on!

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
So it is going to be a sci-fi game?

More like a game where (past) technology was so far advanced, that it is indistinguishable from magic for the denizens of the world who can find bits and pieces of it.

Extending the life of the Sun is pretty straightforward, assuming it is actually technologically feasible. You would need to generate a convection layer near the core region and mix the accumulated helium ashes into the remainder of the stellar body. Perhaps it could be done with some sort of super-magnetic field generators to instill deep vortices at the solar poles. Megascale engineering fashioned by the super races of the future.

As for humans… maybe we were the result of a scientific experiment to restore ancient DNA to life. Then we were kept as pets in a futuristic zoo, so we couldn't harm anybody. Once things fell apart, we escaped.

"At least one of them had mastered planetary engineering and stellar lifting. At least one could fiddle with the laws of physics the way we play with Legos. At least one explored parallel universes and alternate dimensions. And more than one wasn’t human."

So why will there still be rats (or rat-like things) in the sewers that I will have to dispatch with my +1 training sword?

This one seems kind of under the radar compared to all the other Kickstarter stuff in the works, but it's actually the one I'm most excited about.