Mind Manipulation: The entire science of sophotechnology, which is to say, the science of mind, both natural and artificial – and the laundry list of technologies derived therefrom: artificial intelligence, Brain Uploading, memetics, psychedesign, noetic backup and analysis…
Brain Uploading
Trope-a-Day: Dogs Are Dumb
Dogs Are Dumb: Averted – partly because it’s not universally true in non-fiction anyway, and partly because one thing that differentiates the Elieran bandal from the Earth dog is that, being in need of assistance in many areas due to the relatively small, relatively slowly growing population that tends to be the case among the very-long-lived, the Eldraeic breeding masters concentrated very hard on breeding for increased intelligence. (And, key point, by which they meant the kind of intelligence that includes understanding and creative problem-solving, not just the ability to follow orders. Basically, they wanted co-workers, not tools.) Essentially, even the non-uplifted examples are appallingly clever, probably on a par with Dragon Age‘s mabari.
Also, uploading/reinstantiation technology works exactly as well on dogs as it does on anyone else, and you can just imagine how a lot of people, immortal as they were, felt about regularly losing their beloved pets/junior family members, so… well, there are more than a few very old dogs out there. And they know all the tricks.
(And if you remember what we said back in Brain Uploading about the afterlife… all dogs around those parts really do go to Heaven.)
Trope-a-Day: Brain Uploading
Brain Uploading: Pervasive and universal, just about. The Eldrae, after all, being naturally unaging, find the notion of accidental death rather unpleasant, and so took to this technological advancement with enthusiasm; and, as rabid technophiles, even more so once the other technologies it enables – reinstantiation, mindcasting, forking, gnostic overlays, etc. (unlike a lot of universes, there are no convenient laws preventing you from screwing around with mind-states in all the ways you might expect to be able to) – came along; and now are enthusiastically selling immortality to the entire rest of the Galaxy, or at least everyone they can reach. (And, incidentally, considering governments that ban this sort of thing as, essentially, being morally, if not legally, guilty of the mass murder of everyone who dies in their jurisdiction and would have preferred not to; immortalists vs. ephemeralists is a major galactopolitical issue.)
To the point, in fact, that modern – and thus highly engineered – brains come with the technology (“noetic architecture”) for minds to hop in and out designed right in.
Also, this is how you reach the afterlife (see Deus Est Machina).