#noumenon

Lalapril 2026 ~ #26: Reason

By Abstract Nova

Noumenon is a role-playing game of mystery and abstraction. Players assume the roles of the Sarcophagi, strange insect-like creatures trapped within the Silhouette Rouge, a place where the conscious and subconscious merge, where the real and unreal are one in the same. The Sarcophagi lack memory and identity, and walk the Silhouette Rouge hoping to divine its secrets for only revelation and enlightenment can grant them release. In Noumenon, player cooperation is key. Noumenon uses a domino-based task resolution system that enables players to build upon each other's successes.

Deep-sea fish anthro be upon ye.

[Image description: A digital sketch of an anthropomorphic abyssal halosaur standing facing right. He has dark purplish-grey scales (lighter on the underbelly and the backs of the limbs), a black mullet, and broad, webbed hands and feet (the latter being digitigrade). He is wearing a loose white tank top with cutouts on the back to let his dorsal fin through as well as under his arms, and equally roomy peach shorts. A purple scar, labelled “Regeneration scar”, goes around the upper part of his tail.

Text reads:

Noumenon

Abyssal halosaur

He/him

Mid-20s

Overheats easily (the deep sea is cold!), wears light + loose clothing

it's about a convoy of generation ships sent to explore a variable star--something is surrounding the star intermittently blocking its light to earth, maybe a natural phenomenon, maybe artificial

so i'm halfway thru the book, they've arrived, they're like 4-5 generations into the mission, and part of what's freaking them out is that there's no signal from earth and hasn't been for the last tenth of the journey. while they were in FTL transit, that could have been equipment failure back on earth--the FTL communication equipment is pretty specialized--but back in ordinary space they should have been receiving earth's tv broadcasts and such from a time period that, if i understand the relativistic time dilation correctly, they were still in communication and knew earth was still rolling along.

one of their theories is that the thing surrounding the star that they've come to investigate has some kind of communication dampening effect, seemingly borne out by the fact that all of their probes stop transmitting data when they get near it

but my question is. it's a convoy, right? it's not one generation ship, it's nine of them. and to fit the communication dampening theory with the loss of contact to earth in transit, its range has to be light years. they aren't light years away from the object; the jumped in about six months sub-FTL flight away and have flown in pretty damn close to it. So. How is ship to ship comm doing?? Is it affected by the theorized dampening effect or are they still communicating between ships with radio signal or whatever, not just shuttles going back and forth? if ship to ship comm is fine, what's the thought, that they are close enough to each other to override the effect or possibly close enough to the object to be within its "bubble"? they've sent probes towards the object and lost contact which might indicate there's a proximity of object/proximity of signal ratio at play; have they tried sending probes or shuttles in any other direction to see if/when they lose contact, to see if that matches the ratio they're finding with the probes and possibly the ratio of their distance from earth when communication dropped?

i am tearing my hair out that they're up to planning to send humans in a shuttle to go poke the object and haven't mentioned any of that yet. like! how the dampening field works is something i would like a lot more detail on before throwing people at it! what if the probes stop sending data because the dampening field straight up blacks out the probes' sensors? what if it does the same thing to human senses? what if you send people on and their brains shut down? and unlike the mechanical probes, they can't reboot when they come back out of range? wouldn't you feel better if you knew you could send a shuttle a few light minutes away and not be able to communicate with it, which would indicate maybe that the dampening is working on signals rather than receivers?

The Darkest Philosopher in History - Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)

In philosophy, a noumenon (/ˈnuːmənɒn/, UK also /ˈnaʊ-/; from Greek: νoούμενον; plural noumena) is a posited object or event that exists independently of human sense and/or perception. The term noumenon is generally used in contrast with, or in relation to, the term phenomenon, which refers to any object of the senses.

Ding an sich

/ˌdɪŋ an ˈzɪx,German ˌdɪŋ an ˈzɪç/ noun

(in Kant's philosophy) a thing as it is in itself, not mediated through perception by the senses or conceptualization, and therefore unknowable.