Tales from the Dawn #3: "A Question of Life" (Hermes)

[EaraGrace]

I'm not sure the Ancients really had a 'class' of genuinely sapient familiars. Having done all the quests in Elpis, many of the researchers seem shocked that you're capable of understanding complex ideas and especially that you have a soul. One of them even gets kind of uncomfortable about the implications.

The vibe I got was that cases like Meteion are still very fringe, and people didn't really know what to do with them. There was probably a cultural conversation to be hard there.

See I actually have to hard disagree. The example of the Lyssa in Ktisis suggests they played fast and loose with sentience.

Let me use an example because I'm playing through Mass Effect again atm. Long story short, a group called the Quarians created synthetic helpers to handle their labor needs and gave them a very limited level of intelligence that was nowhere near sentience. Unintentionally however, they eventually did develop sentience. The Quarians, realizing what happened, went "oh no, we basically have slaves now," and quickly panicked thinking the Geth would rise up. This led to them trying to destroy the Geth and losing their homeworld.

Now the game rightfully points out how badly the Quarians fucked up, but I think the initial reaction is interesting to compare. The Quarians overreact and believe their slaves would destroy them because of their sentience, the Ancients go "wow neat! we should remake it with vocal cords for more experiments!" It kind of highlights what makes me squick at the Ancients handling of these things. They have the knowledge to know what is sentient and what isn't, the power to protect and coexist with that sentience without much cost, and yet they don't seem to care. I compare that to the Sundered, who yes struggle with this as well and deserve to be called out when aren't in the right, but still have many who try their best like with city states and the Allied tribes. In the Ancient world its just really Hermes who seems to care.

And on the question of queer representation, if were going to have Artemis as an example we would be remiss to not include Ryne and Gaia, who have a lot of evidence pointing to a queer reading of their relationship.

I also just love my gay daughters and wish them happiness so I will take every opportunity to mention them like a mom who constantly shows family photos.