WIP
The Ethereal Gathering
Unknown. Whatever they were once has been lost, and only these organic/synthetic platforms remain, imbued with the undying and insane intelligence of their creators.
The Ethereals are unique to the galaxy in that they are beings who seem to inhabit more than one plane of existence simultaneously. This gives their ‘bodies’ a sort of transparency, and means they cannot technically be killed. However, to actually interact with matter on this current plane, they possess a conduit of sorts to act as a miniature gateway into this realm. Destroying this Core will instantly shut off the connection, and the Ethereal will vanish from this plane, until a new connection can be established. As such, more important individuals usually utilize armor plating and advanced weaponry to protect their Cores.
There are various constructs and forms used by the Ethereals for all areas of life, purpose built and fine-tuned to be efficient and cheap to mass produce. All these platforms have a slot or chamber to store an individual’s Core, and results in great diversity amongst their population. All constructs are combat ready, with some defensive capabilities against threats. What follows is a listing of encountered Constructs:
Doll: The lowest tier of Ethereal Hiearchy, a Doll is simply a reanimated or Possessed organic, with slight augmentation to allow it to complete its assigned duties and maintain control. Their role is often the most varied, from slave labor and menial tasks to cannon fodder on ground operations and dangerous missions. They are expendable, and considered nothing more than tools to be discarded by Ethereal society in general.
Sister: Sisters make up the bulk of actual Ethereal populaces, and could be considered standard ‘civilians’. They usually have a height of 4 feet, and hover ever so slightly from the ground. Their Cores are the least powerful, only able to sustain a gravitational field powerful enough to suspend two or three tools or weapons around their frame at most, and generate a laughably small amount of power. These Sisters are found mostly as managers or directors in small operations such as manufacturing or mining, and in standard squad formations during combat.
Witch: Witches are unique, in that they possess no actual panels or attachments at all, and barely move at all. In fact, much debate surrounds whether they are even sentient, and are possibly analogous to other races AI constructs. Rather, their Cores are built directly into ships or facilities, and act as pilots, basic system runtimes or information archives. The more Witches built into a facility or ship, the more powerful and quicker that machine can react and reason.
Matron: Rarely seen as most encounters with a Matron tend to be fatal, these beings are quite tall, at 10 feet when fully upright, and immensely powerful. They resemble female humanoids minus any arms, and can run or hover dash quickly to close in on targets. Instead of upper limbs, Matrons possess high energy Cores to sustain up to 12 separate gravitational fields, each one levitating a long blade like device. In ground combat, they double as ranged and melee weapons, twirling and slicing through anything that gets too close or firing quantum decay energy to combat distant foes. These blades can also be replaced with Mass Entropy cannons or Zero Point boosters (among countless other things), effectively turning Matrons into ground, air and star fighter vehicles.
Matron’s are often found as Special Forces contingents, as well as assassins and military tacticians. They also act as standard offensive vehicles, and fill the role of more traditional weapons of war such as tanks or fighter aircraft.
Matriarch: More of a calculated guess than actual fact, it is assumed that an individual or group of individuals is directing the Gathering towards some sort of goal. This leadership, and the individuals who make up this leadership, are designated Matriarchs.
Description of government: Religious Order/Military – While their motives and goals are largely unknown, many eyewitness accounts show the Gathering to be intensely fanatical to some divine being, to the point of near madness. It is this faith that drives the Ethereal armies to conquer and wage war with whomever they encounter and cannot avoid.
Description of military: Precise statistics on their offensive capabilities are unknown, as most encounters with Ethereals tend to be fleeting detections of their armadas, or small strike teams encountered on what they would consider critical missions on various frontier worlds and installations. These strike teams usually consist of several Dolls, Sisters and technical support in the form of autonomous drones. In larger joint strike operations, one or two Matrons may also be encountered, ordering and leading the fire teams towards their objectives.
All Ethereal ships are the same, and are multipurpose cruisers that act as fabrication plants, organic processing rigs, mining vessels and combat fleets. The only exception to this is the rare Cathedral Dreadnoughts, massive ships whose purpose is currently unknown.
Technological Overview: Ethereal technology is confusing and dangerous to most minds, as it often uses warp fields and unstable exotic energies that can obliterate all matter surrounding it if handled incorrectly.
FTL: Ethereal ships possess quantum entanglement drives that vaporize the ship and recreate it at another destination nearly instantaneously, with all crew and equipment as well. While incredibly fast, these ships have some major drawbacks, as the ship must then be converted from antimatter back into an original form, taking some time and making in-atmosphere warp impossible. Also, all Cores must re-establish their connections before anything else can be done, leaving them vulnerable to attack.
Weaponry: Most weaponry and defensive fields are quantum in nature, accelerating or slowing entropy in pin point fields or completely tearing apart molecular bonds in matter. Ethereals have no use for magic, and as such have very little defensive capability against it.
Cores: A core is simply a small, trans-dimensional communication device that allows the Ethereal to interact with matter and energy on a given plane. Cores also generate energy to sustain various Construct systems via Quantum Foam seeders, though how this process works is unknown.
Cultural Overview:
Ethereals are enigmatic and mysterious in nature, and generally avoid large scale conflict if possible. More often than not, Ethereals will seem to arrive at random locations without warning, for what may be considered bizarre or weird reasons, collecting artifacts and samples or mining for apparently useless materials.
Culture for the Ethereals revolves around finding an end to their torment and misery, as existence seems to be almost painful for them. Combined with the fact that they are trapped between life and death in limbo, unable to fully die, it has broken and fragmented their minds severely over the millennia, slowly eating away at their sanity. They will take whatever action is necessary to completely ascend from this reality once and for all, even at the cost of all life in the galaxy.
History:
‘All shall bow before the Goddess, and despair. And all shall burn, so that We may be set free…’
The Ethereal Gathering are relatively new to the galaxy, their origins being unknown. At first, they avoided contact as much as possible, and kept to themselves without interacting or responding to the other civilizations. It was believed that they were extra-galactic in nature, and they were watched uneasily for some time, when they could actually be found. Even today, some people believe that they are only a legend or folklore, a story told to children.
In all actuality, the Gathering are the result of an experiment in trans-dimensional travel gone horrifically wrong. Their entire race was phased half out of reality, trapped between dimensions, and this has led to their current predicament, whereas they cannot die. Ever since this incident, their drive has been to find a way to fully ascend, and abandon this realm.
As of late, the Ethereals have become more aggressive, and begun to move their forces around to various locations. They have also attacked several alien colonies, capturing all they have come across and destroying as much evidence of their existence as possible. Whatever their plans are, it is almost certain that the galaxy in in peril.
The Ethereal Gathering
Unknown. Whatever they were once has been lost, and only these organic/synthetic platforms remain, imbued with the undying and insane intelligence of their creators.
The Ethereals are unique to the galaxy in that they are beings who seem to inhabit more than one plane of existence simultaneously. This gives their ‘bodies’ a sort of transparency, and means they cannot technically be killed. However, to actually interact with matter on this current plane, they possess a conduit of sorts to act as a miniature gateway into this realm. Destroying this Core will instantly shut off the connection, and the Ethereal will vanish from this plane, until a new connection can be established. As such, more important individuals usually utilize armor plating and advanced weaponry to protect their Cores.
There are various constructs and forms used by the Ethereals for all areas of life, purpose built and fine-tuned to be efficient and cheap to mass produce. All these platforms have a slot or chamber to store an individual’s Core, and results in great diversity amongst their population. All constructs are combat ready, with some defensive capabilities against threats. What follows is a listing of encountered Constructs:
Doll: The lowest tier of Ethereal Hiearchy, a Doll is simply a reanimated or Possessed organic, with slight augmentation to allow it to complete its assigned duties and maintain control. Their role is often the most varied, from slave labor and menial tasks to cannon fodder on ground operations and dangerous missions. They are expendable, and considered nothing more than tools to be discarded by Ethereal society in general.
Sister: Sisters make up the bulk of actual Ethereal populaces, and could be considered standard ‘civilians’. They usually have a height of 4 feet, and hover ever so slightly from the ground. Their Cores are the least powerful, only able to sustain a gravitational field powerful enough to suspend two or three tools or weapons around their frame at most, and generate a laughably small amount of power. These Sisters are found mostly as managers or directors in small operations such as manufacturing or mining, and in standard squad formations during combat.
Witch: Witches are unique, in that they possess no actual panels or attachments at all, and barely move at all. In fact, much debate surrounds whether they are even sentient, and are possibly analogous to other races AI constructs. Rather, their Cores are built directly into ships or facilities, and act as pilots, basic system runtimes or information archives. The more Witches built into a facility or ship, the more powerful and quicker that machine can react and reason.
Matron: Rarely seen as most encounters with a Matron tend to be fatal, these beings are quite tall, at 10 feet when fully upright, and immensely powerful. They resemble female humanoids minus any arms, and can run or hover dash quickly to close in on targets. Instead of upper limbs, Matrons possess high energy Cores to sustain up to 12 separate gravitational fields, each one levitating a long blade like device. In ground combat, they double as ranged and melee weapons, twirling and slicing through anything that gets too close or firing quantum decay energy to combat distant foes. These blades can also be replaced with Mass Entropy cannons or Zero Point boosters (among countless other things), effectively turning Matrons into ground, air and star fighter vehicles.
Matron’s are often found as Special Forces contingents, as well as assassins and military tacticians. They also act as standard offensive vehicles, and fill the role of more traditional weapons of war such as tanks or fighter aircraft.
Matriarch: More of a calculated guess than actual fact, it is assumed that an individual or group of individuals is directing the Gathering towards some sort of goal. This leadership, and the individuals who make up this leadership, are designated Matriarchs.
Description of government: Religious Order/Military – While their motives and goals are largely unknown, many eyewitness accounts show the Gathering to be intensely fanatical to some divine being, to the point of near madness. It is this faith that drives the Ethereal armies to conquer and wage war with whomever they encounter and cannot avoid.
Description of military: Precise statistics on their offensive capabilities are unknown, as most encounters with Ethereals tend to be fleeting detections of their armadas, or small strike teams encountered on what they would consider critical missions on various frontier worlds and installations. These strike teams usually consist of several Dolls, Sisters and technical support in the form of autonomous drones. In larger joint strike operations, one or two Matrons may also be encountered, ordering and leading the fire teams towards their objectives.
All Ethereal ships are the same, and are multipurpose cruisers that act as fabrication plants, organic processing rigs, mining vessels and combat fleets. The only exception to this is the rare Cathedral Dreadnoughts, massive ships whose purpose is currently unknown.
Technological Overview: Ethereal technology is confusing and dangerous to most minds, as it often uses warp fields and unstable exotic energies that can obliterate all matter surrounding it if handled incorrectly.
FTL: Ethereal ships possess quantum entanglement drives that vaporize the ship and recreate it at another destination nearly instantaneously, with all crew and equipment as well. While incredibly fast, these ships have some major drawbacks, as the ship must then be converted from antimatter back into an original form, taking some time and making in-atmosphere warp impossible. Also, all Cores must re-establish their connections before anything else can be done, leaving them vulnerable to attack.
Weaponry: Most weaponry and defensive fields are quantum in nature, accelerating or slowing entropy in pin point fields or completely tearing apart molecular bonds in matter. Ethereals have no use for magic, and as such have very little defensive capability against it.
Cores: A core is simply a small, trans-dimensional communication device that allows the Ethereal to interact with matter and energy on a given plane. Cores also generate energy to sustain various Construct systems via Quantum Foam seeders, though how this process works is unknown.
Cultural Overview:
Ethereals are enigmatic and mysterious in nature, and generally avoid large scale conflict if possible. More often than not, Ethereals will seem to arrive at random locations without warning, for what may be considered bizarre or weird reasons, collecting artifacts and samples or mining for apparently useless materials.
Culture for the Ethereals revolves around finding an end to their torment and misery, as existence seems to be almost painful for them. Combined with the fact that they are trapped between life and death in limbo, unable to fully die, it has broken and fragmented their minds severely over the millennia, slowly eating away at their sanity. They will take whatever action is necessary to completely ascend from this reality once and for all, even at the cost of all life in the galaxy.
History:
‘All shall bow before the Goddess, and despair. And all shall burn, so that We may be set free…’
The Ethereal Gathering are relatively new to the galaxy, their origins being unknown. At first, they avoided contact as much as possible, and kept to themselves without interacting or responding to the other civilizations. It was believed that they were extra-galactic in nature, and they were watched uneasily for some time, when they could actually be found. Even today, some people believe that they are only a legend or folklore, a story told to children.
In all actuality, the Gathering are the result of an experiment in trans-dimensional travel gone horrifically wrong. Their entire race was phased half out of reality, trapped between dimensions, and this has led to their current predicament, whereas they cannot die. Ever since this incident, their drive has been to find a way to fully ascend, and abandon this realm.
As of late, the Ethereals have become more aggressive, and begun to move their forces around to various locations. They have also attacked several alien colonies, capturing all they have come across and destroying as much evidence of their existence as possible. Whatever their plans are, it is almost certain that the galaxy in in peril.
