That’s interesting about the Talmi and it explains why Rei and Jigsaw hit it off so well. Also might explain why Jigsaw looked a little shocked besides Jigsaw meeting someone who out massed her by that much.
Though that’s still puzzling, The Dijnn I thought were of origin of earth and the Celeste had the Talmi as slaves. This is a puzzling, yet so interesting. Not only that, but we learn that hybrid Celeste Talmi are probably the youngest of the hybrid Celeste.
Though this either means the star org ship was returning her to her people or were keeping her hidden away.
@Josh.C
The backstory in the rulebook seemed to suggest that there were Djinni-si on other worlds, but the Celeste had managed to exterminate them on most planets, except Terth.
Much of that is right but earth had vampires which were unknown to Celeste and that alone with reapers and Terth’s military might drove them off.. after all earthing have been perfecting the survivable war for untold generations using each other as test subjects.
@zarpaulus and e_voyager: Though I also noticed the way its being said here, that the breeding with other races seems to be a method of increasing the numbers of the Celeste and had less to do with keeping their powers strong through the generations.
Hmmmmm…I wonder if some mistake was made by her elders that Rei and the Talmi discovered and are now trying to fix. Might further explain why Arikos had such a huge following of Talmi. Besides being a cultist freak.
It might also explain why Binary and Melody seem to go against the grain and not appreciated Murphy’s activities or any of the other politics of the year of fear. Talmi seem awfully cagey around the politics and touched and hybrid Celeste seem no different in that regard. Then again, does anyone appreciate Murphy?
Okay, so, D’jinn helped save the universe, things happen, former teammate Celeste destroyed them all. For a while.
Good to know.
So check me on this. Rei was going to go for a two generation population explosion the old fashion way (go you randy mama, go!) and the other Celeste decided on a slave society instead. Do I have that right? I like Rei more now. A lot more. On several levels.
Also, yeah, if I saw my friend (lover(?)/father-to-be of untold generations(?!)) carted off, I would turn militant, too. Turn on my society so violently that I had to be imprisoned and exiled? Sure. Assist a one man guerrilla force beating on the enslaving military? Okay! Tell the history of the universe to a child of the enslaved race (and, unknowingly, the first non-human vampire, a prophesied sign of the apocalypse)? Sign me up!
My question is to what extent Rei was involved in the freeing of the Talmi from enslavement (Rei as Moses? I can dig it), and whether that was what got her exiled?
@Rippy: Rei’s solution wasn’t so much breeding with Talmi as much as it was to use them as a supplement in order to maintain enough genetic diversity; nine people is just enough to make a species very, very inbred.
@Rippy Yeah, the hybrids (who managed to easily outnumber the purebreds already by this point) opted to make sure they couldn’t just “wait ’em out” or risk letting the Talmi go ahead with their idea and succeed at it even if they had only Rei cooperate with them.
Because of course the new technology is ALWAYS evil, right?
@The_Rippy_One : it does sound like the Talmi were taken as slaves….
But it seems like the other Celeste chose other space races to breed with. If you like, the other surviving Celeste were of breeding age, while Rei was just a child at the time. So Rei would have been working a relationship as a child and creating a potential extended family after she came of age.
The older Celeste would have had several years to breed with other alien races. Of coarse their children would feel like Talmi Celeste would be a possible threat to their position with how they would be late coming addition to the hybrids and like with sibling rivalry, they would be against a new child taking away the spotlight from them.
Strange thing is, you would think the other Celeste would think more genetic diversity would be a welcome addition from the Talmi race. So why didn’t the other Purebred Celeste tell their children to back of Rei and her chosen race?
@Jigsaw Forte: Oh! I totally missed that point about gene splicing….
So Rei’s rout with her friends was less of breeding with a compatible race and more about using the technology of gene splicing to save her race…..
Wait…that might mean that if Rei went with the idea she was thinking of, her descendants would be more powerful then the current hybrids. No wonder they went after that race before Rei could have her first child.
i saw the splicing comment but i didn’t think about it in terms of Genetic engineering. humm it seems that i over looked a crucial fact thinking he was simply talking about about blood lines.
@Starcat5: Probably s simplified term use to explain both the relationship of being one of the 9 Celeste survivors and the need for as much diversity of the Celeste gene pool as possible.
In smaller more manageable terms they both had an emotional investment and their races survival invested in all 9 purebreds.
So if I’m understand it…Rei’s plan was to splice/interbreed with the Talmi, while the other Celeste did something similar to every *other* race around (and then for some reason added a thing about being required to crossbreed further?), and then decided to enslave Rei’s Talmi instead of just adding them to the mix. I’m guessing there’s something else ‘special’ about the Talmi race (other than apparently being able to spawn vampires, a trick thought to be for humans only up until now)?
@ Vulpis: After 4,000 years of “doing” anything with a pulse, it is a good bet that almost any individual in the galaxy has at least some Celeste DNA in them. Different species or people from other worlds would, in theory, have different bits of Celeste DNA than your species has. The whole crossbreeding thing is probably based on the hope that if you carefully breed every specie in the galaxy together, you can get a “true” full-blooded Celeste like Rei.
Based on what is said in the strip and Jigsaw’s comments, it seems that Capt. Eyepatch’s plan was to use Rei and the other eight Celeste as genetic templates, splicing in DNA from a wide variety of Talmi donors to create genetically distinct individuals.
Basically it was a cloning program, but instead of hitting “Copy” 10,000 times, you change the randomize some genes in each one to avoid catastrophic inbreeding.
Just a wild guess here, but I think the Celeste (the species) were already procreating with anything that moved long before the events shown, based on how there appear to be adult hybrids running around before Rei can start her plan. With the other eight “Pure-breeds” furiously copulating to save the species, the Hybrids had probably gained a good deal of power in their absence. Rei’s plan would have created (almost) Pure Celeste, with the full power set and everything, while the hybrids had their powers diluted with each succeeding generation. This would have threatened their power, so the hybrids…nipped the problem in the bud. They enslaved the Talmi because the Talmi scientists had figured out how to implement Rei’s plan, thus removing the threat to their continued galactic domination.
@WarsmithBob
Given that the events jigsaw is talking about happened 4000 years ago and that Rei is still alive (at over 4000 years old), I wouldn’t bet that there were adult hybids when Rei started to plan, only that by the time she could actually pull off her plan, there were.
Yeah, but they’re going to have to do it without Djinn cooperation this time – the Djinn may or may not fight as well, but given the last cycle…if you were Djinn, would you trust the masters of your genocide enough to coordinate combat strength?
@The_Rippy_One: That’s another thing that’s surprising.
The Djinn and Celeste use to be allies. Though by the time they came to earth, the Celeste were surprised and found themselves fighting Djinn and what information that has been shared in the rpg, they weren’t expecting the Dead inside on earth.
I have a feeling that something happened to the past allies of the Celeste and the hybrids are to blame.
Hey, if the hybrids willing to enslave the Talmi over keeping themselves in power, why not declare war on the allies of the Purebreds? Make sure they’re the only game in town.
@Josh Either that, or the Hybrids have a little problem of being nowhere as long-lived as the original Celeste…which gives them the classic information-warfare tactic of ‘revisionist history’.
Though I wonder if that might explain some of Veled’s attitudes–she’s learned similar truths to the ones Jig is getting told.
Assuming, of course, that Rei isn’t actually an Adorable Complete Monster who lied her fuzzy ass off to Jig for sympathy…
It also might be why they turned on them to begin with – Vamps and other immortals can be frighteningly good Chess Masters, just because of how much time they have to play with. A society that enslaves is is often given to paranoia, and the potential alone might have been enough to cause them to turn on their long lived allies. If a Djinn tried it and got caught out…blood in the water.
@Josh: I think part of their shock wasn’t so much “We missed some Djinn?!” as “There’s an entirely different flavor?! And they are visually indistinguishable from normal humans?!”
@Josh.C: The_Rippy_One’s right about the Celeste reaction to Terth. 🙂
@Vulpis: Totally possible. Just because something’s 160 times older than you are doesn’t necessarily mean it’s trustworthy. 😛
I get the feeling there might be another side to this. If the Celeste held themselves responsible for saving the galaxy, they probably held some responsibility for maintaining order in it. Selecting just one of the many races in the Connection to save the Celeste probably wouldn’t have gone over too well with all of the others. The Hybrid route may have been the most politically palatable, and likely avoided infighting against the Talmi and the Celeste.
There’s also nothing in this bedtime story saying that the Djinn and the Celeste were genuine allies back then. It could have simply been an alliance of convenience against a common enemy. 😕
@Sulucamas: I suppose we also have to take in the credibility of wha Rei actually tells Jigsaw.
But I have a funny feeling this is more of a well known story told to Talmi children from their parents. The story may be a well known story of Talmi history.
Though we also have to take into account the credibility of what others say. After all, from Daisy’s reaction and what she said, Rei’s kind might be rarer even today then way back then. Could it be possible that there might be less then a single handful of purebreds left at current time?
@josh.C that’s entirely possible. Rei was there youngest female at time but now she’s clearly and adult and we have no ideal how old there other Celeste were at the time or if there was a younger male then Rei.the Celeste may have bred with each other as well while Rei was an chile but some of them may have died of old age by now so the number of purebred my be at nine then again it may be a dozen ore more or it may be less. the only thing we know fore sure is that it’s rare for anyone to see a full bred so for all we know they could have been locked away like Rei was. on top of that we don’t know who or what the other-worlder’s were for all we know they could be the one’s who started the endless or the ones who started Vampires on earth.
And it’s also assuming the hybrids are willing to let the purebreds mate at all…for all we know, any pure celeste born after Rei is one that was born in spite of the hybrid’s efforts.
It’s hard to tell just from Daisy’s reaction whether Purebreds are more rare than they were 4,000 years ago but everyone knows about them, or they’re more common but only a few have the special knowledge to know one when they see one, or some combination of those.
@Josh.C: I could definitely see it being common Talmi knowledge, but I could also see the Hybrids spending all those millennia trying (successfully) to beat it out of them.
@The_Rippy_One: Bet you’re right about that. At first, I thought the “threat” was Rei and Captain Eyepatch, but now I’m thinking it was the Purebreds. If the older ones were “bound to Rei,” it would seem that they weren’t bound to the Hybrids, despite being their progenitors. 😐
…Crap…if any of this is true, the character I’m thinking of will have some catching up to do, its either a)A darn good Libary, b) a well keep orally-resited-story, c)Jig is the only one deemed trust worthy or (and I’d find this HIGHLY unlikely) d…Rei’s race aren’t as secretive as I thought.
In the days before the otherworlder war, the purebred Celeste may well have visited earth, if you want to go with an “ancient astronaut” theory for the origin of angels. The purebred look a lot like First Temple style Cherubin, so there could be a connection there between human and talmi Jews.
oooohhh boy, so much explained in a single page, and you didn’t even need to use a wall of text!!!
This is how a skillful author can give a history lesson without it sounding like a history lesson. Very nicely done.
By making it sound like a star crossed love story?
Interesting. Also a bit ominous too.
otherworlders? is this a lovecraft kinda thing? did they even state how many celeste were around before this happened?
That’s interesting about the Talmi and it explains why Rei and Jigsaw hit it off so well. Also might explain why Jigsaw looked a little shocked besides Jigsaw meeting someone who out massed her by that much.
Though that’s still puzzling, The Dijnn I thought were of origin of earth and the Celeste had the Talmi as slaves. This is a puzzling, yet so interesting. Not only that, but we learn that hybrid Celeste Talmi are probably the youngest of the hybrid Celeste.
Though this either means the star org ship was returning her to her people or were keeping her hidden away.
@Josh.C
The backstory in the rulebook seemed to suggest that there were Djinni-si on other worlds, but the Celeste had managed to exterminate them on most planets, except Terth.
Much of that is right but earth had vampires which were unknown to Celeste and that alone with reapers and Terth’s military might drove them off.. after all earthing have been perfecting the survivable war for untold generations using each other as test subjects.
Part of me wonders if the ‘Otherworlders’ were somewhat ‘bald’ critters that share DNA with apes… 😉
@zarpaulus and e_voyager: Though I also noticed the way its being said here, that the breeding with other races seems to be a method of increasing the numbers of the Celeste and had less to do with keeping their powers strong through the generations.
Hmmmmm…I wonder if some mistake was made by her elders that Rei and the Talmi discovered and are now trying to fix. Might further explain why Arikos had such a huge following of Talmi. Besides being a cultist freak.
It might also explain why Binary and Melody seem to go against the grain and not appreciated Murphy’s activities or any of the other politics of the year of fear. Talmi seem awfully cagey around the politics and touched and hybrid Celeste seem no different in that regard. Then again, does anyone appreciate Murphy?
Okay, so, D’jinn helped save the universe, things happen, former teammate Celeste destroyed them all. For a while.
Good to know.
So check me on this. Rei was going to go for a two generation population explosion the old fashion way (go you randy mama, go!) and the other Celeste decided on a slave society instead. Do I have that right? I like Rei more now. A lot more. On several levels.
Also, yeah, if I saw my friend (lover(?)/father-to-be of untold generations(?!)) carted off, I would turn militant, too. Turn on my society so violently that I had to be imprisoned and exiled? Sure. Assist a one man guerrilla force beating on the enslaving military? Okay! Tell the history of the universe to a child of the enslaved race (and, unknowingly, the first non-human vampire, a prophesied sign of the apocalypse)? Sign me up!
My question is to what extent Rei was involved in the freeing of the Talmi from enslavement (Rei as Moses? I can dig it), and whether that was what got her exiled?
@Rippy: Rei’s solution wasn’t so much breeding with Talmi as much as it was to use them as a supplement in order to maintain enough genetic diversity; nine people is just enough to make a species very, very inbred.
@Jigsaw Are you referring to the fifty five hundred rule for species survival?
@e-voyager I think that’d be it
@Jigsaw I figured it’d either be a diversity thing or a ‘let’s do some artificial science’ type of thing.
on a side note, it would appear this is going to be another page with lots of discussion, this is gonna be fun!
Thanks for the info Jigsaw! But Rei’s actual idea is still better than the way the Celeste actually went (I did get the slavery right, right?).
@Rippy Yeah, the hybrids (who managed to easily outnumber the purebreds already by this point) opted to make sure they couldn’t just “wait ’em out” or risk letting the Talmi go ahead with their idea and succeed at it even if they had only Rei cooperate with them.
Because of course the new technology is ALWAYS evil, right?
@The_Rippy_One : it does sound like the Talmi were taken as slaves….
But it seems like the other Celeste chose other space races to breed with. If you like, the other surviving Celeste were of breeding age, while Rei was just a child at the time. So Rei would have been working a relationship as a child and creating a potential extended family after she came of age.
The older Celeste would have had several years to breed with other alien races. Of coarse their children would feel like Talmi Celeste would be a possible threat to their position with how they would be late coming addition to the hybrids and like with sibling rivalry, they would be against a new child taking away the spotlight from them.
Strange thing is, you would think the other Celeste would think more genetic diversity would be a welcome addition from the Talmi race. So why didn’t the other Purebred Celeste tell their children to back of Rei and her chosen race?
@Jigsaw Forte: Oh! I totally missed that point about gene splicing….
So Rei’s rout with her friends was less of breeding with a compatible race and more about using the technology of gene splicing to save her race…..
Wait…that might mean that if Rei went with the idea she was thinking of, her descendants would be more powerful then the current hybrids. No wonder they went after that race before Rei could have her first child.
i saw the splicing comment but i didn’t think about it in terms of Genetic engineering. humm it seems that i over looked a crucial fact thinking he was simply talking about about blood lines.
Err… HOW were the other 8 “Bound” to Rei?
@Starcat5: Probably s simplified term use to explain both the relationship of being one of the 9 Celeste survivors and the need for as much diversity of the Celeste gene pool as possible.
In smaller more manageable terms they both had an emotional investment and their races survival invested in all 9 purebreds.
So if I’m understand it…Rei’s plan was to splice/interbreed with the Talmi, while the other Celeste did something similar to every *other* race around (and then for some reason added a thing about being required to crossbreed further?), and then decided to enslave Rei’s Talmi instead of just adding them to the mix. I’m guessing there’s something else ‘special’ about the Talmi race (other than apparently being able to spawn vampires, a trick thought to be for humans only up until now)?
@ Vulpis: After 4,000 years of “doing” anything with a pulse, it is a good bet that almost any individual in the galaxy has at least some Celeste DNA in them. Different species or people from other worlds would, in theory, have different bits of Celeste DNA than your species has. The whole crossbreeding thing is probably based on the hope that if you carefully breed every specie in the galaxy together, you can get a “true” full-blooded Celeste like Rei.
Based on what is said in the strip and Jigsaw’s comments, it seems that Capt. Eyepatch’s plan was to use Rei and the other eight Celeste as genetic templates, splicing in DNA from a wide variety of Talmi donors to create genetically distinct individuals.
Basically it was a cloning program, but instead of hitting “Copy” 10,000 times, you change the randomize some genes in each one to avoid catastrophic inbreeding.
Just a wild guess here, but I think the Celeste (the species) were already procreating with anything that moved long before the events shown, based on how there appear to be adult hybrids running around before Rei can start her plan. With the other eight “Pure-breeds” furiously copulating to save the species, the Hybrids had probably gained a good deal of power in their absence. Rei’s plan would have created (almost) Pure Celeste, with the full power set and everything, while the hybrids had their powers diluted with each succeeding generation. This would have threatened their power, so the hybrids…nipped the problem in the bud. They enslaved the Talmi because the Talmi scientists had figured out how to implement Rei’s plan, thus removing the threat to their continued galactic domination.
@WarsmithBob
Given that the events jigsaw is talking about happened 4000 years ago and that Rei is still alive (at over 4000 years old), I wouldn’t bet that there were adult hybids when Rei started to plan, only that by the time she could actually pull off her plan, there were.
This page is a goddamned bombshell. Eet’s too much! 😀
@Vulpis: The Endless, the ones with that prophecy, started on Earth, so the Otherworlders probably aren’t those pesky bald critters.
@The_Rippy_One: I wonder the same thing about the Talmi Liberation, since this is really all we know right now. 😕
@Warsmith Bob: I think you hit all the nails on their heads. 🙂
So it’s been more than 4,000 years. Seems about time for the Celeste to have to save the galaxy again…
Yeah, but they’re going to have to do it without Djinn cooperation this time – the Djinn may or may not fight as well, but given the last cycle…if you were Djinn, would you trust the masters of your genocide enough to coordinate combat strength?
@The_Rippy_One: That’s another thing that’s surprising.
The Djinn and Celeste use to be allies. Though by the time they came to earth, the Celeste were surprised and found themselves fighting Djinn and what information that has been shared in the rpg, they weren’t expecting the Dead inside on earth.
I have a feeling that something happened to the past allies of the Celeste and the hybrids are to blame.
Hey, if the hybrids willing to enslave the Talmi over keeping themselves in power, why not declare war on the allies of the Purebreds? Make sure they’re the only game in town.
@Josh Either that, or the Hybrids have a little problem of being nowhere as long-lived as the original Celeste…which gives them the classic information-warfare tactic of ‘revisionist history’.
Though I wonder if that might explain some of Veled’s attitudes–she’s learned similar truths to the ones Jig is getting told.
Assuming, of course, that Rei isn’t actually an Adorable Complete Monster who lied her fuzzy ass off to Jig for sympathy…
It also might be why they turned on them to begin with – Vamps and other immortals can be frighteningly good Chess Masters, just because of how much time they have to play with. A society that enslaves is is often given to paranoia, and the potential alone might have been enough to cause them to turn on their long lived allies. If a Djinn tried it and got caught out…blood in the water.
@Josh: I think part of their shock wasn’t so much “We missed some Djinn?!” as “There’s an entirely different flavor?! And they are visually indistinguishable from normal humans?!”
@Josh.C: The_Rippy_One’s right about the Celeste reaction to Terth. 🙂
@Vulpis: Totally possible. Just because something’s 160 times older than you are doesn’t necessarily mean it’s trustworthy. 😛
I get the feeling there might be another side to this. If the Celeste held themselves responsible for saving the galaxy, they probably held some responsibility for maintaining order in it. Selecting just one of the many races in the Connection to save the Celeste probably wouldn’t have gone over too well with all of the others. The Hybrid route may have been the most politically palatable, and likely avoided infighting against the Talmi and the Celeste.
There’s also nothing in this bedtime story saying that the Djinn and the Celeste were genuine allies back then. It could have simply been an alliance of convenience against a common enemy. 😕
@Sulucamas: I suppose we also have to take in the credibility of wha Rei actually tells Jigsaw.
But I have a funny feeling this is more of a well known story told to Talmi children from their parents. The story may be a well known story of Talmi history.
Though we also have to take into account the credibility of what others say. After all, from Daisy’s reaction and what she said, Rei’s kind might be rarer even today then way back then. Could it be possible that there might be less then a single handful of purebreds left at current time?
@josh.C that’s entirely possible. Rei was there youngest female at time but now she’s clearly and adult and we have no ideal how old there other Celeste were at the time or if there was a younger male then Rei.the Celeste may have bred with each other as well while Rei was an chile but some of them may have died of old age by now so the number of purebred my be at nine then again it may be a dozen ore more or it may be less. the only thing we know fore sure is that it’s rare for anyone to see a full bred so for all we know they could have been locked away like Rei was. on top of that we don’t know who or what the other-worlder’s were for all we know they could be the one’s who started the endless or the ones who started Vampires on earth.
And it’s also assuming the hybrids are willing to let the purebreds mate at all…for all we know, any pure celeste born after Rei is one that was born in spite of the hybrid’s efforts.
It’s hard to tell just from Daisy’s reaction whether Purebreds are more rare than they were 4,000 years ago but everyone knows about them, or they’re more common but only a few have the special knowledge to know one when they see one, or some combination of those.
@Josh.C: I could definitely see it being common Talmi knowledge, but I could also see the Hybrids spending all those millennia trying (successfully) to beat it out of them.
@The_Rippy_One: Bet you’re right about that. At first, I thought the “threat” was Rei and Captain Eyepatch, but now I’m thinking it was the Purebreds. If the older ones were “bound to Rei,” it would seem that they weren’t bound to the Hybrids, despite being their progenitors. 😐
…Crap…if any of this is true, the character I’m thinking of will have some catching up to do, its either a)A darn good Libary, b) a well keep orally-resited-story, c)Jig is the only one deemed trust worthy or (and I’d find this HIGHLY unlikely) d…Rei’s race aren’t as secretive as I thought.
In the days before the otherworlder war, the purebred Celeste may well have visited earth, if you want to go with an “ancient astronaut” theory for the origin of angels. The purebred look a lot like First Temple style Cherubin, so there could be a connection there between human and talmi Jews.