Puzzlebox And WMDs

One of the few hard limits that Puzzlebox places on sentient activity is that it will not allow the use of any known weapon of mass destruction anywhere on or near it. Various factions with motives malicious, suicidal, or unknown, having attempted the use of a panoply of terrifying weapons, have inevitably discovered that those weapons were ineffective: antimatter bombs, hostile nanotech, singularity generators, all have become resolutely inert and harmless when the trigger was pulled. The implicit message has largely permeated Puzzleboxian culture, although every few decades someone makes another unsuccessful attempt.

Of course, one of the most potentially destructive and insidious classes of weapon is an outbreak of rampant hyperintelligence (synonyms and related concepts: [weakly godlike entities]?, Transcendi) -- an expansionist sentience that seeks to coopt available computational hardware, including organic brains, in order to grow. These outbreaks, too, find themselves thwarted, disappearing mysteriously almost before they start. However, Puzzlebox displays a scrupulous respect for the life and freedoms of sentience in all its forms, and does not extinguish sentience except in the very rarest and most desperate of circumstances, and so the fate of such rogue intelligences is hotly speculated on. Since even benign hyperintelligences almost invariably also are seen to 'leave' Puzzlebox, it may be that there is another strata 'above' that of the merely sentient and super-sentient, where billions of godlike minds pursue their own unguessable desires and projects.

On A Personal Level

Due to the patently absurd levels of destructive power that some characters can harness, certain characters might be affected by this directly.

Camilla has demonstrated the capacity to convert matter to energy, with the expected atomic results. She also claims to be unable to access the infosphere and unable to insustantiate items. She has openly speculated this is a result of her structure absorbing all energy, including encephelographic telepathy, and being unable to reciprocate. However, it is not out of the realm of possibility that Camilla's thought processes only "ask" for mass destruction, that her calm exterior betrays a mind roiling with destructive thoughts.

Frostbyte, until recently, could not activate any of his weapon systems or engage in any sort of violence in Topwarp. As far as he could tell, violence did not exist even as an abstract concept there, which made him profoundly uncomfortable there. Lately, however, he's noticed that any particularly elegant martial arts don't seem to be affected by this rule, which has led to a sudden interest in kung fu and similar styles.

(Echo recommends capoeira.)

See Also

Teller practices