Ygthkb

Our study of human history has numerous problems. 99% of history isn’t recorded. Writing has been around only for 5 thousand years, and much of what we know comes from archaeological evidence. Information is being shared more today because of the internet, but there is so much we still don’t know in the modern age. Adding to this, there is much interpretation built into any historical analysis and historians struggle with the concept of objectivity.

In this world, human beings share a universal consciousness. When a person dies, they are subsumed into this consciousness, which is known as "God".. Thoughts, emotions, ideas, etc, are all subsumed into this consciousness and becomes part of a whole. In this way, it can be viewed as a perfect recording of all historical events, being completely unbiased in regards to facts.

Oracles are human beings who have trained to tap into this consciousness in order to gain a true picture of the past. This skill must be learnt, and is accessible to anyone. They are regarded as the historians of this world, passing on what they see for future records. They are used to discover and record big moments from history so we can gain a clear understanding of past events and why they happened, such as the rise and fall of empires, ancient cultures, etc.

However, there is a problem with this when you break it down. If this god is the seat of all earth history, it stands to reason that a person tapping into it can find out things about just anyone. A detective investigating a murder could solve a case without having to do the leg work. A rival king could tap into this consciousness to find information on their enemies and their empires or armies, or business rivals can use it to spy on competitiors.

I need to limit this system to the big moves and shakes of history. Events equivalent to WW2, rise and fall of Rome, cultures of Mesopotamia, etc. The big and important moments that shaped the world on the grand scheme, rather than the lives of individuals. This way, there can be one, linear, version of historical events that dont depend on interpretation, but leave the lives of people out. How can I make this happen?

Read the histories of the oracles and you'll see they have certain quirks. Consider Cassandra, her curse was that her predictions were always accurate but that nobody would ever believe her. Other oracles were known for giving riddles or predictions that couldn't be interpreted until it was too late.

Your Oracles can see clearly into the past, but not so clearly into the present. That means that while they know exactly what happened, they're not very good at communicating it to others. In the simplest case they're talking to someone who was asking questions last week. In the worst case no two consecutive words are from the same conversation.

Riddles, confusion, and disconnection in time. The oracles know everything, they just can't tell you about it.

The next step is to find a balance.

An oracle at the pinnacle of their profession will be able to speak to a single person about an event with no other witnesses, say the victim of a murder, but they're also going to be the worst case of being unable to communicate with the present. A new oracle is still going to be relatively well grounded in time, but only be able to find out about events with loud voices in the past, great wars and civilisations with tens of thousands of witnesses. Their speech may only be light riddles, but the fine detail can never be seen.

If the collective mind containd memories of people, well... It contains what people remember, not the factual truth. This poses multiple problems:

• Conflicting memories, which may either be mutually destroyed upon merger, or lead to great levels of confusion;




• Poor attention. You have found the memories of the sole witness of whatever, but they didn't see the murder because they were playing some My Little Pony game on their cell phone.




• Fragmented memories. It is quite common for people who have undergone post traumatic stress or child abuse to have a kind of dissociation called fragmentation. This screws up the way the person collects, maintains and recalls memories. I think murder victims would have poor memories of their last moments.




• False memories, planted on purpose to confuse the oversoul, either by one's own self and volition or forcefully.




• The oversoul will contain waaaaay too many stoned memories. Seeing history through the eyes of a junkie may be interesting, but not very useful for fact finding.




• Storage. The oversoul has more capacity than you. It may be that in order to get some info from it, you have to forget an equal amount of info just to make space.




• Emotional content. If you experience someone else's memories, you may feel what they felt. You will need psychological help if you go through a rape victim's memory.

Assassin's Creed has a similar concept, and its lore added two additional problems for people going through the memories of others:

• Poor search indexing. You can't just go to that single precious moment which is all that you want. You have to spend 20-odd hours playing previous memories until you reach what you want.




• Bleeding effect^TM: spend too much time visiting memories and you start hallucinating pieces of those memories even when unplugged from their source.

"This way, there can be one, linear, version of historical events that dont depend on interpretation, "

RL Example: In WW2, During Battle of Britain both sides were convinced that RAF was on verge of collapse. This belief shaped strategical decisions - RAF even started saving aircrafts, in order to still have some reserve, which made Germans think that not much is left. The only problem... recent studies show that both sides incorrectly estimated other side production rate and in the darkest hour Allies were decisively winning aerial war of attrition.

This information may be hard to get from a collective consciousness, but a dispassionate quartermaster (or accountant) may be a bit more useful. ;)

You don't want to make it a game breaking? Except already raised issues like false memories (including hallucinations), emotions... Why the process should be immediate? I mean if a soul needs a few decades to truly merge, then it does not matter for ancient history but makes it mostly useless from military perspective.

There may be even some interesting mechanism that for example sinner, individualist or very stron personalities would simply need a much more time to merge.

EDIT: Events equivalent to... evolving on savanna? Almost getting extinct 70k years ago? Leaving Africa? Ice age cycles? Slaughtering all megafauna on the way? Having sex with other hominids like Neanderthals and Denisovans? Domesticating plants and animals? Going in huge migrations throughout continents? (recent DNA test show that Europeans are mixture of local population + Middle Eastern + Siberian)

It can be quite interesting as history would start at dawn of mankind and not at invention of writing.