Trope-a-Day: Genius Loci

(‘Bout time I got back to these, I think.)

Genius Loci: Quite a lot of them, from the simple usually-non-sophont AIs that run people’s houses and apartments (the “house brains”) to the increasingly sophisticated “city managers” and other AIs that run cities, provinces, transport networks, ports, and so forth, up to the planai and other archai that are responsible for the infrastructure of entire planets and star systems.  And, of course, to a large extent the Transcend can be interpreted as a Genius Loci for the Empire as a whole.

(This, of course, from the local perspective, is merely the realization of ancient thoughts on animism.)

Trope-a-Day: Companion Cube

Companion Cube: This tendency has only amplified the traditional animist features of eldraeic religion, the more so since there are lots of AI-driven machines exhibiting quirks of personality and intentional behavior around these days.  (In-world, this memeplex is called mechanimism.)  And while everyone understands that mechanimism isn’t literally true, everyone also understands that it is nonetheless fundamentally true.

This is why even the non-sophont drones get medals.