Hey @jacktrash, on your tumblr you've been brainstorming about reactors on a helmsman-equipped troll ship and what would happen if the ship crashed. I don't have a tumblr, but I do have both IDEAS and EMOTIONS about this topic that I will share if you're interested.
i p much decided to go with 'gross biotech' but i could perhaps be swayed if your ideas make my plot more awesome :D
Well if there's not gross biotech in your troll technology you're doing it wrong. It's perfectly plausible to say that's all you need.. Option 1: That's Telekinesis, Kyle The Helmsman is the power source as well as the drive. All the ship needs to do is control the Helmsman, who can produce ridiculous amounts of energy to power the ship's systems and weapons as well as throwing it around at superluminal speeds. Your bioware in this case is mind fungus, centered around controlling and tapping into the Helmsman. Salvage operations would become very psychological as the bioware starts messing with people. This one is easy to explain, and most likely to be Homestuck canon. It's also the softest science fiction, if you care about that kind of thing, and if your Helmsman is still alive afterward you've got a sentient petawatt - exowatt power source walking around your high-scarcity frontier society, which might raise plot issues. So if you want a non-troll power plant there are a few other ways to go... Option 2: Lean Sideways, Double Fistbump Fusion! The nuclear reactors you were discussing on tumblr were fission reactors, which are indeed super messy and also not very efficient as futuretech power sources go. Fusion plants use hydrogen, which is a much more plentiful fuel, especially for a spacegoing society. There's less of a long-term radiation hazard, especially if the most radioactive bits get exploded in space before the crash when the plant loses containment. It might be attractive to a society that also uses helmsmen, because a fusion reactor contains and focuses the reaction using magnets or lasers instead of physical structure, and if the only way you can get the power to keep your fusion plant from exploding is the fusion plant, there can be... issues. The bioware would be plasma-eaters, some kind of microbial layer or hive structure that could convert the intense heat from the reactor into a kind of energy the helmsman could use (biochemicals? electricity?) to ramp him up from "blow up your house" to "launch your intergalactic dreadnaught." The plasma-eaters would be nearly indestructible and would probably spread in the fires around the crash site. Option 3: The Hawking Reactor A really cool thing about black holes: due to weird physics just outside the event horizon they emit radiation, using energy converted from the mass of the black hole. The effect is slight for large black holes but much more powerful for small ones. So in theory, if you kept a very small black hole carefully contained and fed with matter, it could serve as a reactor that totally converts the mass of the fuel into energy, without having to manufacture or store antimatter. Fuel could be literally anything, though hydrogen is probably still easiest. This is a reactor that probably can't be run without a psionic hooked to a computer, because the singularity needs to be suspended without touching it and fed with fuel very precisely, lest the black hole swell to uselessness or evaporate entirely. If the helmsman manages to evade his behavior controls he can sabotage it really fast - the time between "something looks wrong" and "everything is ruined" would be way faster than a troll's reaction speed. (Either you drop containment during maneuvers and let the singularity fall right through the hull, or stop feeding it fuel and let it evaporate/explode.) The radiation from this reactor would be mostly photons/gamma rays, so the bioware would be the blackest of black goo, designed to absorb and use the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Possibly more killable than plasma eaters, but it would grow and spread in sunlight. Option 4: The Star Sucker This idea hypothesizes that helmsmen are power plants in a way, but they do it by tapping another large power source, like Alternia's apparently intense star. (Presumably they don't need line-of-sight to do this.) Therefore, the outer hulls of troll ships are coated with something that focuses and amplifies this power-tap, letting a helmsman draw power in much greater amounts, much further from the star in question. Still, this would mean that troll ships could only start, stop, or turn within a solar system, and you could hide from them in deep space. Aside from the power-drawing layer (maybe it draws energy from things on its own even when a helmsman isn't reaching through it?) the ship's bioware would include a lot of computing power and good sensors - if you're making an interstellar hop with this system you need to Aim Properly The First Time. You can't adjust your trajectory on the way and if you miss the destination star, you're fucked. The helmsman is the power plant again in this one, so he can't just cause a catastrophic system failure and laugh helplessly all the way down, he has to actually stay in control long enough to ram a planet. Since you still have to control the helmsman with any of these, you could fit the mind fungus/nightmare fuel into any of these ideas if you wanted it. (You probably do want it, I would.) It might be integrated into any power and/or computer system bioware, or be a separate organism.
