Scritt empire

[Gimme Cookies.5634]

If scritts intelligence depends how many are in an area or community, can we do a back story of scritts that once had a thriving city state that almost militarily took over more land and now they are culled to keep them in check?

[Morg.5986]

I'm all for wiping out the Skaven menace

[NotTooFoolish.7412]

2 hours ago, Morg.5986 said:

I'm all for wiping out the Skaven menace

The only rats that deserve to go extinct are Asura xD

[Danikat.8537]

I think that's why the asura don't like them. Before the destroyers drove them both to the surface the skritt and asura were competing for space underground and while small groups of skritt aren't a threat to the asura I think large communities could be a problem. Get enough skritt together and they can understand, use and repurpose asuran technology.

I don't know if it ever reached the point of all-out war though. Even in large groups the Skritt aren't that organised, and I don't think their leaders could command skritt who aren't in the same colony.

[mercury ranique.2170]

to be honest, in war, mass intelligence is useless, unless it is a hyve mind intelligence. (And the skritt do not have a hyve mind intelligence, it seems).

Even though they gain intelligence from the masses, this intelligence is shared among all soldiers. This makes it impossible to establish a chain of command. Who makes the decisions?  Who just needs to fall in line.
In human armies, most soldiers do not need to think or be intelligent. They just need to follow orders and not ask questions. Only those in charge needs intelligence AND you want to those far away from the actual battle.

A hyve mind is different as it functions more as a single intelligence shared by all drones.

[Farohna.6247]

2 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

I think that's why the asura don't like them. Before the destroyers drove them both to the surface the skritt and asura were competing for space underground and while small groups of skritt aren't a threat to the asura I think large communities could be a problem. Get enough skritt together and they can understand, use and repurpose asuran technology.

I don't know if it ever reached the point of all-out war though. Even in large groups the Skritt aren't that organised, and I don't think their leaders could command skritt who aren't in the same colony.

Skritt chew on power cables.  Really ruins things for Asura.

[Scolix.4879]

4 hours ago, mercury ranique.2170 said:

Who makes the decisions?

The one with the biggest hat.

[Evildeadedd.7128]

1 hour ago, Scolix.4879 said:

The one with the biggest hat.

makes perfect sense, bigger hat makes more room for thinking. It's like popping the button on your pants to make room for pie, at thanksgiving. 

[Vyr.9387]

I always thought the analogy was profoundly beautiful.
In the real world, the most popularly iconic animal for scientific experiments is the rat/mouse due to numerous similarities to our inner clockwork.
In Tyria, on the other hand, skritts' "group smarts" illustrate perfectly how humans in reality are capable of building wonders by standing on the shoulders of giants.
Except where our egos make us ignorant of others' contributions, skritts get literally brighter in every aspect.

As such, the most important question to be answered would be: is there a limit to how intelligent a skritt can get?

If there's an area of effect to the peer-to-peer enhancement - which there must be, considering the race doesn't get global boosts in IQ with every single newborn - then we're talking at the very least physical boundary.
A large enough group of skritts would then, naturally, conclude that the best thing they could do, even if their potential brain power had a cap, is getting as many other skritts around themselves as possible.

Now, Danikat - and the Wiki - claim that there's evidence for skritt intelligence getting (at minimum) as far as being able to understand and reverse-engineer virtually anything that has been made.

Spoiler

Wondering about them wondering about Omadd's Machine.

We also know of at least a single instance of an asuran mind being uploaded into a golem.
You can see where I'm going with this: a supercomputer of skritt minds packed as closely together as Tyrian rules of physics allow.

Of course, what we do not know is how exactly does the skritt INTeger-in-numbers works, and perhaps the magic would be lost upon leaving their physical forms behind.
Even if, however, after getting enough members together by chance to understand reaching the INT cap as quickly as possible is probably even more vital than physical sustenance, always staying at or near that cap would become a priority post-haste, as the benefits of having so many intellectually adept individuals pulling the same rope are insurmountable.

One could ask, then, why haven't we been conquered by our shiny overlords yet.
To which a certain quote from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fits wondrously:
"Man has always assumed that he is more intelligent than dolphins because he has achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - while all the dolphins had ever done was muck in the water having a good time. But, conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons."

[voltaicbore.8012]

4 hours ago, Vyr.9387 said:

We also know of at least a single instance of an asuran mind being uploaded into a golem.
You can see where I'm going with this: a supercomputer of skritt minds packed as closely together as Tyrian rules of physics allow.

I'm (happily) shocked that someone else out there thought of this too lol.

That said, my own (preferred) conjecture on this subject is that the skritt-density vs skritt-intelligence relationship operates on some magical-biological level. I like to think that there's something special about the physical creatures known as skritt that permits this density-intelligence thing to occur, and nobody can figure out how to replicate it purely with magitech.

However, that doesn't mean some Inquest (or particularly desperate Rata Sum collegiate) krewe hasn't extensively researched the matter, with commensurately horrifying results. I think ANet could make an interesting fractal out of a story like that.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

They occupy most of Brisban Wildlands with a massive (though junky) city. No other race that isn't one of the big five occupies as much land or has such a large open-world settlement.

Edited December 8, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[Kalavier.1097]

21 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

I think that's why the asura don't like them. Before the destroyers drove them both to the surface the skritt and asura were competing for space underground and while small groups of skritt aren't a threat to the asura I think large communities could be a problem. Get enough skritt together and they can understand, use and repurpose asuran technology.

I don't know if it ever reached the point of all-out war though. Even in large groups the Skritt aren't that organised, and I don't think their leaders could command skritt who aren't in the same colony.

I'm pretty sure the Asura simply dislike them because Skritt have the ability, with focus, to actually reverse engineer Asura Tech on their own to various degrees.

 

18 hours ago, mercury ranique.2170 said:

to be honest, in war, mass intelligence is useless, unless it is a hyve mind intelligence. (And the skritt do not have a hyve mind intelligence, it seems).

Even though they gain intelligence from the masses, this intelligence is shared among all soldiers. This makes it impossible to establish a chain of command. Who makes the decisions?  Who just needs to fall in line.
In human armies, most soldiers do not need to think or be intelligent. They just need to follow orders and not ask questions. Only those in charge needs intelligence AND you want to those far away from the actual battle.

A hyve mind is different as it functions more as a single intelligence shared by all drones.

As far as it's presented, Skritt "getting smarter" is due to two things. A: them communicating in their natural way (which is a hypersonicish method IIRC, that other races simply can't even detect) means more of them together means more ideas bounced back and forth and discussed, and B: Greater focus on singular ideas because everybody is talking about it and thus allowing them to solve an issue without as many distractions.

So while they don't have an actual hive mind, it means information is communicated much faster.

 

[Vyr.9387]

11 hours ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

That said, my own (preferred) conjecture on this subject is that the skritt-density vs skritt-intelligence relationship operates on some magical-biological level. I like to think that there's something special about the physical creatures known as skritt that permits this density-intelligence thing to occur, and nobody can figure out how to replicate it purely with magitech.

However, that doesn't mean some Inquest (or particularly desperate Rata Sum collegiate) krewe hasn't extensively researched the matter, with commensurately horrifying results.

Always a possibility; the concept which the skritts represent is about as rich and ripe for imagination to let flourish as portals are, both being equally as wasted.
Because it's rather difficult to imagine that any species with the most miniscule semblance of self-awareness would pass on the opportunity to learn how they work, not to scale it up to proportions of the innate curiosity of the skritt race multiplied by their mental acuity increasing with simple presence of their kin.
But perhaps each group that reaches the critical mass gets away from Tyrian surface and its petty squabbles as quickly as possible precisely due to discovering how they - and the world's own circuitry - really work.

Spoiler

What if the thing that made the inner workings of the skritt smarts tick was emotional connection to other skritts, which could then work both for "honorable" skritts like the Commander to be used as a plot device yet also introduced the ages-old conundrum of cold logic versus fiery emotion not as one being objectively (no pun intended) superior at solving issues than the other, but both being instead actively required in consonance for the intellect to grow, naturally restricting any one group from ever going too far in either direction lest they become pure sociopaths or utterly losing their sense of self to ego dissolution?
Maybe even create a literal hive mind in the latter case if enough of such skritts get together.

 

12 hours ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

I think ANet could make an interesting fractal out of a story like that.

DON'T.

Spoiler

A skritt body horror instance, where an inquest scientist by the name of Crownhill merges hundreds of the poor things into a single abomination in order to ask the ultimate question, which the players then have to fight while it also fights itself due to the sheer wrongness of its existence but, true to all life, still strives to survive, and, at the end, Crownhill asks her question, which the dying monstrosity answers, screaming with its last six hundred breaths: "I... LIVE!"
Crownhill has a rare chance to drop Sikandar, while the Skritt Amalgam rolls for Nina.

DON'T.

 

 

9 hours ago, Kalavier.1097 said:

As far as it's presented, Skritt "getting smarter" is due to two things. A: them communicating in their natural way (which is a hypersonicish method IIRC, that other races simply can't even detect) means more of them together means more ideas bounced back and forth and discussed, and B: Greater focus on singular ideas because everybody is talking about it and thus allowing them to solve an issue without as many distractions.

So while they don't have an actual hive mind, it means information is communicated much faster.

That's most likely not the whole truth.

In the personal story, if the player chooses to go with the Skritt racial sympathy at level 50, Ftokchak is presented as a regularly-spoken skritt at the beginning in Rat-Tastrophe, but then, in Set to Blow, he sounds more like a Priory Magister than a member of a "lesser" race, indicating there's much more to their intellect than simply cosplaying neurons.
It's more like they get portions of their psyche "unlocked" when they're with other skritts; think weapon skill 1 while solo, weapon skill 2 with a friend, the third one while in a party of 5, the fourth one in a 10-man raid group, and the fifth one in a full world boss zerg, which get locked again when people start leaving after the first failed attempt.

[TheLadyOfTheRings.9148]

It's skritt, not scritt 😄 

But anywho.

A militaristic type of skritt society sounds too funny not to make it an actual thing in-game. Imagine the charr feeling threatened by them 😄 I'm down for that. 

[TheLadyOfTheRings.9148]

(no idea why this posted twice)

It's skritt, not scritt 😄 

But anywho.

A militaristic type of skritt society sounds too funny not to make it an actual thing in-game. Imagine the charr feeling threatened by them 😄 I'm down for that. 

Edited December 8, 2022 by TheLadyOfTheRings.9148

[Kalavier.1097]

3 hours ago, Vyr.9387 said:

That's most likely not the whole truth.

In the personal story, if the player chooses to go with the Skritt racial sympathy at level 50, Ftokchak is presented as a regularly-spoken skritt at the beginning in Rat-Tastrophe, but then, in Set to Blow, he sounds more like a Priory Magister than a member of a "lesser" race, indicating there's much more to their intellect than simply cosplaying neurons.
It's more like they get portions of their psyche "unlocked" when they're with other skritts; think weapon skill 1 while solo, weapon skill 2 with a friend, the third one while in a party of 5, the fourth one in a 10-man raid group, and the fifth one in a full world boss zerg, which get locked again when people start leaving after the first failed attempt.

Besides the fact the description matches both what has been stated officially for the skritt, as well as mentioned directly in those very missions you quote?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Those_Sneaky,_Sneaky_Skritt 

Quote

Skritt are small, rat-like creatures in Guild Wars 2 who come from deep beneath the surface of Tyria. At first glance, these skittering fur balls may seem barely capable of rational speech, but they wield weapons and wear clothing and armor like more advanced races. Also, as the asura will tell you (or as any careful observer might note), the skritt actually gain intelligence when many of them congregate. Speaking in chirps and squeaks so fast that it sounds like buzzing to human ears, they share information, parse knowledge, and determine actions between themselves. The more skritt there are to do so, the more rational, intelligent, and cunning their activities become. One skritt alone is a simple-minded individual, capable of performing basic tasks and keeping himself alive, but an entire colony of hundreds? Clever enough to challenge even the brainpower of the asura.

In the missions listed, the skritt outright ask for more of their numbers to be rescued. "Need more skritt! More skritt, more voices, faster answers. Plan One: find missing skritt!"

The more Skritt there are in a location, the more information they can process with their natural methods of communication, and the more focused they can be to solve an issue rapidly. The official lore is literally "The more skritt that are together, the more information is exchanged at an incredibly rapid pace nobody else can really hear, and the more focused they can solve issues.

[Vyr.9387]

31 minutes ago, Kalavier.1097 said:

Besides the fact the description matches both what has been stated officially for the skritt, as well as mentioned directly in those very missions you quote?

 

4 hours ago, Vyr.9387 said:

That's most likely not the whole truth.

Feel free to let those ego shields down, I'm not interested in attacking anything besides ideas, and even those solely in order to get to the bottom of how things work.


 

36 minutes ago, Kalavier.1097 said:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Those_Sneaky,_Sneaky_Skritt 

In the missions listed, the skritt outright ask for more of their numbers to be rescued. "Need more skritt! More skritt, more voices, faster answers. Plan One: find missing skritt!"

The more Skritt there are in a location, the more information they can process with their natural methods of communication, and the more focused they can be to solve an issue rapidly. The official lore is literally "The more skritt that are together, the more information is exchanged at an incredibly rapid pace nobody else can really hear, and the more focused they can solve issues.

Hey, thanks for the link, that was one good read.
And not merely because it only makes me more sure about skritt intelligence being more than simply sharing dataz.

Checking out the paragraph specifically talking about that:

Quote

No one really knows how the skritt hive-like intelligence works. The most likely theory is that the skritt simply communicate so rapidly that, when together, they can vet their ideas and choose the best one within seconds, rather than going with whatever plan each individual first conceived. Certainly, the skritt have exceptionally sharp auditory skills. They can communicate with one another almost instantly if they are within earshot. If you meet one skritt alone, he might not appear particularly intelligent, but if you meet several, they can discuss their surroundings in amazingly swift, almost ultrasonic chirrups and chitters, and are able to process information and make more intelligent decisions. Therefore, the skritt seem less intelligent in small groups and more intelligent when they gather in larger ones. Because of this, the skritt in their scratches are the most intelligent—and possibly the most dangerous. Even the bravest asura hesitate to attack a hollow when it is filled with skritt.

Keeping the backdoors open with "no one really knows" notwithstanding, it is heavily suggested that communication, although playing a role of paramount importance, doesn't amount to everything there is to the race's mental capabilities.

The "Behind the Scenes" section, specifically the Flowers for Algernon part, hints at that even more:

Quote

We had a quest chain that involved skritt at one point; although it didn't make it into the game, it was a fascinating story. A small colony of skritt came upon a tribe of kodan and listened to the kodan philosophy. As a group, they were able to understand it very well, and one of them was impressed and wanted to learn more. The other skritt left the area, but that one stayed behind to study with the kodan. Unfortunately, once the other skritt left, he found himself in a terrible position—he was no longer intelligent enough to understand the kodan philosophy or remember why he idolized them so much. The feelings remained and he stayed with the kodan—but, tragically, he would never be able to truly understand them. It was GW2's version of Flowers for Algernon. I hope that one day we'll be able to put that tale in the game.

Close Your eyes. Do You suddenly forget Your name or what we're talking about? Do You lose the ability to do basic math because You don't have any paper at hand to touch?
If all skritts are doing were just quick talking, then their base intelligence should always be the same, right? Like having a PC without input - no matter how fast or slow, the document will stay empty if no key is pressed, and, just like with the idea You're proposing, the more skritts around to communicate - which equals keystrokes on our allegorical keyboard - the better the output.
This would also mean that a lone skritt should be able to accomplish the same intellectual feats as an INT-capped group, albeit at a much slower rate because the solitary guy would need to obtain all the information needed themselves.
Except lonely skritts actively make worse decisions, lose vocabulary (you don't really invent words already in use by growing more intelligent, do you), and get overall more primal.

Of course, on the writers' side, there's a plethora of tiniest pieces of information capable of completely changing the perspective. "Skritt brains work differently than all the other races'" or "the solitary dumbness is only an illusion based on flawed perception".
Yet as far as we currently know there simply has to be something else going on than just having the eyes of a thousand heads, because five idiots standing on top of each other don't add up to a genius.

[Kalavier.1097]

On 12/8/2022 at 5:45 PM, Vyr.9387 said:

The "Behind the Scenes" section, specifically the Flowers for Algernon part, hints at that even more:

Close Your eyes. Do You suddenly forget Your name or what we're talking about? Do You lose the ability to do basic math because You don't have any paper at hand to touch?
If all skritts are doing were just quick talking, then their base intelligence should always be the same, right? Like having a PC without input - no matter how fast or slow, the document will stay empty if no key is pressed, and, just like with the idea You're proposing, the more skritts around to communicate - which equals keystrokes on our allegorical keyboard - the better the output.
This would also mean that a lone skritt should be able to accomplish the same intellectual feats as an INT-capped group, albeit at a much slower rate because the solitary guy would need to obtain all the information needed themselves.
Except lonely skritts actively make worse decisions, lose vocabulary (you don't really invent words already in use by growing more intelligent, do you), and get overall more primal.

Of course, on the writers' side, there's a plethora of tiniest pieces of information capable of completely changing the perspective. "Skritt brains work differently than all the other races'" or "the solitary dumbness is only an illusion based on flawed perception".
Yet as far as we currently know there simply has to be something else going on than just having the eyes of a thousand heads, because five idiots standing on top of each other don't add up to a genius.

Here's the thing about the behind the scenes part. That isn't canon. That's never referenced ingame/other lore, nor is stuff like that presented. It's an interesting story, but not one they went with in the final product. Like the translated Manual bits about the gods which has never been referenced in other sources, or the GW Utopia ideas.

At most, the Skritt are depicted as very easily distracted, and less focused, but still fully capable of surviving or even being messengers or gatherers (We have lone skritt in Orr being used to run and gather materials, and in Metrica a lone skritt is used as a lionguard runner/courier). While they get distracted, they are fully capable of doing the job.

 

The other thing to note about vocabulary is it's stated the "English/common" talking is not the Skritt's primary language. It's their second. The ultrasonic chirrups/squeaks/chirps/chitters whatever is their primary method of talking. So A distracted, lone Skritt may not process which word is the correct one, while a more focused skritt in a group can bounce "What's the word?" off everybody in the scratch, find the right answer, and speak more clearly. In Skrittsburg there is an event related to that last part. A group steal golem parts, bring it back, put it together but it goes haywire and starts attacking everything.

Afterwards, they go "Next time, we'll grab the manual with the parts."

[Vyr.9387]

34 minutes ago, Kalavier.1097 said:

Here's the thing about the behind the scenes part. That isn't canon. That's never referenced ingame/other lore, nor is stuff like that presented. It's an interesting story, but not one they went with in the final product. Like the translated Manual bits about the gods which has never been referenced in other sources, or the GW Utopia ideas.

It's not canon, but it's a story built upon a framework we're discussing the shape of, which should be known the best to its creators.
On the other hand, I've seen enough WP's lore videos to know that this might not (have) always be(en) the case with ANet writers, and anything can get changed by a new detail at any point, but I'm also not claiming what I'm saying is the Tyrian Theory of Everything. I'm working with the information I have, leading me to the ideas I'm proposing.
The BtS story is basically a hypothetical example to illustrate the concept, and there's no logic behind attacking something HYPOTHETICAL for not being real, is there.

 

 

44 minutes ago, Kalavier.1097 said:

At most, the Skritt are depicted as very easily distracted, and less focused, but still fully capable of surviving or even being messengers or gatherers (We have lone skritt in Orr being used to run and gather materials, and in Metrica a lone skritt is used as a lionguard runner/courier). While they get distracted, they are fully capable of doing the job.

 

The other thing to note about vocabulary is it's stated the "English/common" talking is not the Skritt's primary language. It's their second. The ultrasonic chirrups/squeaks/chirps/chitters whatever is their primary method of talking. So A distracted, lone Skritt may not process which word is the correct one, while a more focused skritt in a group can bounce "What's the word?" off everybody in the scratch, find the right answer, and speak more clearly. In Skrittsburg there is an event related to that last part. A group steal golem parts, bring it back, put it together but it goes haywire and starts attacking everything.

Afterwards, they go "Next time, we'll grab the manual with the parts."

Guess I need more field experience; will get back to these points.

[Kalavier.1097]

On 12/10/2022 at 12:52 PM, Vyr.9387 said:

It's not canon, but it's a story built upon a framework we're discussing the shape of, which should be known the best to its creators.
On the other hand, I've seen enough WP's lore videos to know that this might not (have) always be(en) the case with ANet writers, and anything can get changed by a new detail at any point, but I'm also not claiming what I'm saying is the Tyrian Theory of Everything. I'm working with the information I have, leading me to the ideas I'm proposing.
The BtS story is basically a hypothetical example to illustrate the concept, and there's no logic behind attacking something HYPOTHETICAL for not being real, is there.

No attacks, just pointing out the BTS story is just that, from concept stages of the Skritt. It also doesn't match up with what we actually see ingame, with lone skritt being capable of understanding instructions and remembering things.

BTS has the lone skritt completely unable to at all understand what the Kodan is saying, just a vague memory of it. That is not how the Skritt of the final game behave.

Things can change, but I've run into people who fixate and make opinions and viewpoints on the lore based on non-canon/questionable canon sources like the GW1 point of interest texts or such.

[KnightofPhoenix.3679]

The Skritt remind me a bit of the Geth from Mass Effect - through biological (and possibly magical though the two are tightly linked in GW), Skritt intelligence on a group level is enhanced the larger the group much like the Geth.

 

That said, I don't think heightened intelligence would necessarily translate into militarism or into effective military structure for reasons mentioned above.  I don't see the Skritt being interested in war - if their collective intelligence reaches the stage where they become aware of how it works, then by definition they would not be eager to risk losing Skritt in wars (this also is similar to the Geth or the majority of them who preferred isolation). 

 

Honestly, I think the Asuran "concern" is pure population control and, let's face it, Asuran supremacism rather than anything else. 

Edited December 14, 2022 by KnightofPhoenix.3679