As the last men and women of Earth, it is our duty to make one last ditch effort to reach paradise... however long the journey.
Millennia ago the human species was rendered extinct.
A thousand years ago, our kind was born again.
From the wombs of machines born to live on a humid tropical world.
From the few thousand raised by machines came the future.
From the first tribe would develop every civilization that exists today.
Having to struggle in a humid environment filled with alien beings.
Worse still, some of them were smart and genuinely a danger to us.
As they would be monitored by custodians and attacks by the natives.
Still, our ancestors persisted despite the constant struggle.
And went on to build the foundations for billions to thrive once more.
And from those foundations we launched yet again into space.
To colonize other worlds and understand this strange place.
It was known the other worlds also had life.
Still, it was a massive shock to find intelligence still.
It became a fact of life, how common civilization is.
As even Solomon proves not as secure as it was initially assumed.
For we have been just scratching the crust when there is far more.
Layers upon layers of underground jungles on Solomon and sprawling ghost cities.
Some still maintained by mindless and mad custodians.
Overwhelming it all can become, the more you take it in.
The whole star system being touched in some way by the degenerative descendants.
Of the true creators of the worlds we live upon.
And every time we look we see swarms of activity.
Be it from the numerous ecosystems of wildlife across multiple worlds.
Giving rise alien civilizations primitive and advanced.
Or how every day a citizen sees specks of light drifting.
That weld the means to oblivion at the push of a button.
The flux and traffic of activity between the orbital cities we have set up.
Has created endless traffic around and between the worlds of Gabriel.
The scariest part is knowing how so few people can affect the lives of billions.
Across multiple civilizations, worlds and species.
Making the only certainty we have now being uncertainty.
May the first tribe save us all!
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Out of Character
The Grand Enigma or "The Grand Enigma of 82 Eridani" is a fusion of near-future technothriller and planetary romance and is the product of a desire to make a sci-fi NRP that is neither sol or has a galaxy to worry about. For here there is only one star system, near future technology in the far future and lots of exotic locales to work with across multiple worlds.
In terms of applying for Grand Enigma, all you need to do is PM me your first IC post as a trial after making some lore and promise to work with other players in regards to collaborative world building while not doing the things on the list of NO. For ideas, check the list of YES which you can also add to by saying what you as a player want to have someone else take on the role of.
But first you must understand the Eridani 82 system and the worlds you are to inhabit and figure out where you want to set up.
Overview of the Gabriel System
The Gabriel system is a binary planet system with three other smaller celestial bodies that have managed to eek out gravitational niches in what is a very peculiar arrangement of worlds.
One of the most notable aspects of the Gabriel system is that every world has complex biospheres with the potential for intelligent life.
It is this place that the center of most activity presides in this NRP and more detailed maps for Ezekiel, Solomon, Luke and Ezra will be of great use.
I strongly recommend sticking around this moon system as the rest of the star system is much less hospitable and much less interesting. Well, there are interesting things out there but I want the locus of action to be within the Gabriel system of worlds. Distance is 0.8 Au.
Gabriel
Gabriel is the largest world and the main planet of the Gabriel planetary system. It is a world comparable in size to Neptune host to global ocean that runs over a hundred kilometers deep. Gabriel is 13 times the mass of Earth and is for all intents and purposes an ice giant. However, it is a habitable ice giant with massive water-ice cloudscapes with huge pockets of breathable air. Gabriel has all matter of huge creatures dwelling from the clouds to the abyss.
Gabriel is host to a large range of resources, mainly exotic organic products that are naturally produced in huge quantities found nowhere else.
Stats Life: Complex Biosphere Biodiversity: Extreme Ruins: Moderate-low Drone Activity Level: 3 Gravity: 2.6 Gs Atmosphere: Extremely Thick Surface Temperature: 70-90 C Weather: Extremely Stormy. There are frequent lightning storms, turbulent wind systems and huge hurricanes
Luke
Luke is the innermost moon of the Gabriel system and is an icy moon with loose geographic activity and a salty subglacial ocean where aquatic life thrives in high quantities with internal heating from the rocky mantle to keep everything warm. Luke is less like a Europa and more like a Snowball Earth, though with much lees gravity and deeper seas in general with sunken mountains and trenches everywhere. Luke’s surface is barely habitable to humans, having Antarctica-like conditions with only a few pockets of semi-habitability around volcanic vents while the rest of the world is a frigid, endless ice filled place with little to no life to be seen.
Stats Life: Complex Biosphere Biodiversity: Very High Ruins: High Drone Activity Level: 2 Gravity: 0.24 Gs Atmosphere: Thin Surface Temperature: -30 C Weather: Howling Winds, ash storms and blizzards, heat seasons can cause the surface to be unstable Geology: Lots of hotspots and volcanic activity, geysers on the surface.
Solomon
Solomon is a earthlike world with heavily tropical environments. Besides dense jungles, there is also lots of wetlands, swamps and hilly regions, cliffs and salty flood plains along the coast. There are regions better suited for agriculture at the 'polar' regions, but most of the world is very humid and tropical in nature with some dry regions in the southern hemisphere. Solomon is bigger than Earth, at 1.3 times its mass and is a world that is rich in hidden infrastructure including various lost highways that connect the continents and lead to much deeper regions full of extremely hostile caverns & fauna.
Solomon is the world humans landed on and began their current age of humanity.
stats Life: Complex Biosphere Biodiversity: Extreme Ruins: Extreme Drone Activity Level: 5 Gravity: 1.2 G Atmosphere: Average Surface Temperature: 27 C Weather: Flooding is common Geology: Volcanoes, Sinkholes, Earth Wetness: High, there are oceans, rivers and seas with a frequent swelling of ocean levels that caused huge tidal floods in low lying areas.
Ezekiel
Ezekiel is a desert world of a size between Mars and Venus. It is highly xeric in nature at parts due to the large amounts of underground water that has eeked impressive cave systems throughout the moon. Ezekiel is a cold desert world however, and thus it snows on Ezekiel especially in the cold regions spotted about the world in highlands while the low lands tend to have warm, but sterile deserts. Ezekiel is host to a diverse range of life due to the many habitats and the many ecosystems isolated by the stretches of hostile, dry and freezing cold deserts.
stats Life: Complex Biosphere Biodiversity: Very High Ruins: High Drone Activity Level: 4 Gravity: 0.7 Gs Atmosphere: Average Surface Temperature: 15 C Weather: Howling Winds, Sandstorms, Tornados, Blizzards, Cold Snaps Geology: Volcanoes, Earthquakes, Mineral Rich Wetness: Medium, there is lots of water shored up underground
Ezra
Ezra is a world that is by far the smallest of the Gabriel system and uniquely is in close orbit of Ezekiel, not Gabriel. Ezra is a metallic world with extremely, extremely vertical cities that took advantage of the low gravity and all manner of still functioning, massive transit networks exist with many pockets of habitation zones still around even though the mechanisms that once protected the world from harsh radiation storms are long gone. The depths of Ezra tend to be extremely radioactive and it's hard to tell where the city ends and the ground begins with spires budding off spires and various pathways leading to all matter of places.
The original intent of Ezra is unknown, but the drones that inhabit Ezra in the swarm still are building ever slowly and they try to keep things tidy despite the relative lack of occupancy.
stats Life: Isolated to habitation zones Biodiversity: Low Ruins: Extreme – the whole world has been made into a abandoned city far more vertical and deep than anything seen in other parts of the star system. Drone Activity Level: 10 Gravity: 0.1 G Atmosphere: None Surface Temperature: -130 C Weather: Radiation Storms occur at times Geology: Moonquakes, Structural Collapses, Nuclear Plants sometimes destabilize and irradiate a region of the world Wetness: Water storage plants have drinkable water, but the drones tend to undersupply
Vulcan Belt There is a Vulcan belt with two tiny worlds, Romulus and Remus in tight orbit. A variety of fossilized O’Neil Cylinders, some still with functioning habitats exist in the region. At the star itself, there are solar faculties that are near the surface of the star of unknown purpose.
[Paradise - Dead, Strip-mined Super Earth Life: In the fossil O'Neil Cylinders only Biodiversity: Extremely Low Ruins: Moderate, there is old mining sites and fossil O'neil cyllinders Drone Activity Level: 2 Gravity: 2.3 G Atmosphere: None Surface Temperature: 369 C Weather: Radiation Storms are extremely frequent Geology: Moonquakes, unstable grounds from mining cavities Wetness: N/A
Purgatory System
Distance:
[Purgatory - Acidic World with extremely, extremely dangerous life Life: Exotic, primitive (nothing advanced – Read; no native sapients) Biodiversity: Very High Ruins: Unknown (it is unlikely they survived the hostile environment) Drone Activity Level: 1 Gravity: 1.7 G Atmosphere: Average density but very, very toxic to terran life Surface Temperature: 375 C Weather: Sulfuric Acid Rain, Aluminum Snow and Storms Geology: Flood Seasons, Long but weak earthquakes, toxic fumes, landslides Wetness: The world is mostly clay islands with a world spanning ocean of sulfuric acid
[Virgil - Barren world with lots of crystalline caves and a loose, spread out network of underground cities Life: Habitat area limited Biodiversity: Low Ruins: High, lots of underground city centers connected with a still functioning transit network. The architecture is radically different from Ezra. Drone Activity Level: 7 Gravity: 0.15 G Atmosphere: None Surface Temperature: -170 C Weather: Radiation storms Geology: Moon quakes and decaying infrastructure collapses Wetness: Water storage areas
Hell System Distance:
[Hell – A mysterious and extremely hostile world Life: ??? Biodiversity: ??? Ruins: ??? Drone Activity Level: ??? Gravity: 3.4 G (3.4 times that of earth, good luck landing!) Atmosphere: Extremely dense and suffocating, but doesn’t extend that far up due to the extreme gravity Surface Temperature: 486 C Geology: ??? Weather: Superdense smog everywhere you Wetness: ???
[Plato – A barren, strip mined world filled with horded up resources Life: N/A Biodiversity: N/A Ruins: Moderate, Various stashes of minerals, all heavily guarded in obscure areas and ruins of unknown purpose Drone Activity Level: 3 Gravity: 0.06 Gs Atmosphere: None Surface Temperature: 121 C Geology: Moon quakes are frequent, mineral rich Weather: None Wetness: None
[Midas – A gold filled world Life: ??? Biodiversity: ??? Ruins: ??? Drone Activity Level: 8 Gravity: 0.2 G Atmosphere: Extremely thin Surface Temperature: 140 C Geology: Mineral Rich, earthquakes and radiation storms Weather: weak dust storms Wetness: ???
Asteroid Belt An asteroid belt separates the inner worlds from the outer zone, with twelve dwarf planets of varied sizes and unknown properties given the months of the year as their names. Mining drones and drone hives are everywhere in the asteroid belt, but there is still quite a bit of resources to mine even if the asteroid belt clearly once was far more resource filled. Distance: 1.5-3.5 Au
Leviathan System
[Leviathan – A more conventional gas giant Life: None Biodiversity: None Ruins: Moderate, gas mines dote the world Drone Activity Level: 5 Gravity: 2.1 G Atmosphere: Very standard jovian atmosphere Surface Temperature: -103 C Geology: N/A Weather: Lightning storms, massive cyclones and extremely fast winds Wetness: ammonia-ice and water-ice clouds Distance: 4 Au
[Kraken – The innermost moon, hosts many layers of acidic oceans Life: ??? Biodiversity: ??? Ruins: ??? Drone Activity Level: ??? Gravity: 0.45 G Atmosphere: Extremely Tenuous Surface Temperature: 486 C Geology: Cyrovulcanism and Radiation Storms from Leviathan’s Van Allen Belt Weather: Superdense smog everywhere you Wetness: It’s an ice world and thus extremely wet
[Charbydis – A mysterious and extremely hostile world Life: Exotic Biodiversity: Complex Biosphere Ruins: A Drone Activity Level: ??? Gravity: 1.4 G (3.4 times that of earth, good luck landing!) Atmosphere: Thick enough to obscure the surface Surface Temperature: 486 C Geology: Weather: Superdense smog everywhere you Wetness: ???
[Scylla – A mysterious and extremely hostile world Life: ??? Biodiversity: ??? Ruins: ??? Drone Activity Level: ??? Gravity: 3.4 G (3.4 times that of earth, good luck landing!) Atmosphere: Extremely dense and suffocating, but doesn’t extend that far up due to the extreme gravity Surface Temperature: 486 C Geology: ??? Weather: Superdense smog everywhere you Wetness: ???
Chroma System [Chroma – A earth sized, barren world Life: None Biodiversity: None Ruins: ??? Drone Activity Level: ??? Gravity: 3.4 G (3.4 times that of earth, good luck landing!) Atmosphere: Extremely dense and suffocating, but doesn’t extend that far up due to the extreme gravity Surface Temperature: 486 C Geology: ??? Weather: Superdense smog everywhere you Wetness: ???
[Tangerine – A world tinted with orange colors from tholins and nitrogen Life: Simple Biodiversity: Low Ruins: ??? Drone Activity Level: ??? Gravity: 3.4 G (3.4 times that of earth, good luck landing!) Atmosphere: Extremely dense and suffocating, but doesn’t extend that far up due to the extreme gravity Surface Temperature: 486 C Geology: ??? Weather: Superdense smog everywhere you Wetness: ???
[Verde – A world tinted greenish colors from alien flora that manages to survive Life: Simple (No natives) Biodiversity: Low Ruins: ??? Drone Activity Level: ??? Gravity: 0.3 G Atmosphere: Thin Surface Temperature: 486 C Geology: Low level activities, very calm world on the whole. Weather: Winds Wetness: Aquifers exist under the surface
[Amarillo – Sulfur rich, volcanic world like Io Life: ??? Biodiversity: ??? Ruins: ??? Drone Activity Level: ??? Gravity: 3.4 G (3.4 times that of earth, good luck landing!) Atmosphere: Extremely dense and suffocating, but doesn’t extend that far up due to the extreme gravity Surface Temperature: 486 C Geology: ??? Weather: Superdense smog everywhere you Wetness: ???
Visage & Mirage
[Mirage – A strange, distant world with extremely strange activity Life: Complex??? Biodiversity: ??? Ruins: Extreme??? Drone Activity level: 10??? Gravity: 1.02 G Atmosphere: ??? Surface Temperature: -233 C Geology: ??? Weather: ??? Wetness: Oceans???
[Visage – A large, dead world Life: ??? Biodiversity: ??? Ruins: ??? Drone Activity Level: ??? Gravity: 1.7 G Atmosphere: Thin Surface Temperature: -221 C Geology: Geological activity from Weather: None Wetness: Aquifers???
Beyond Various small worlds are known to exist further out from observation. What they hold is a total mystery.
Please stick to the Gabriel system for now! It has the only human habitable worlds and Solomon is the world humans colonized. As well, it has the most interesting worlds as all of them have complex life, ruins and are places intelligent natives to develop. Now dedicate to one of three perspectives and put your work within said perspective. You can make individuals from another perspective, but you cannot make civilizations or species from other perspectives once you make a civilization for one of the three perspectives.
The first perspective is the perspective of humans or other beings who came in just one spaceship and had to redevelop their civilizations from scratch over the last thousand years.
Once there was the first tribe after the rebirth of our species, there was a original sin that happened after a century of unity and a Arcadian existence that led to us spreading around the world in a dark period (which players define).
Space travel became possible once more around three centuries before the starting time or the year 700-800 Post Birth.
Humans landed on Solomon and thus should have most of their civilization on Solomon, with any societies on other worlds being younger and likely having some relationship with a Solomon based human society.
Human technology should be internally consistent, which means that all human players share a tech pool and that every time a human player adds a new human tech, every human faction is likely to also have the tech you want to give yourself (especially if it is common use). So for instance if you decide to have swarm missiles, other human factions also know how to make swarm missiles.
In general humans are more faction explicit and deal with each other in a symmetrical fashion (meaning humans have similar tech to each other in general) but have to deal with the other two perspectives asymmetrically. NPC human isolated colonies and such can be set up by other players to do whatever they want with. As a human you just need a faction sheet.
Terms
PR Post-Rebirth. We still use the gregorian calendar even though day cycles are far faster on Solomon. However, the sheer significance of our rebirth as a species means that a new year one separate from the birth of Jesus had to be established. The starting year is 1000 PR. (Times before PB are Before Rebirth, or BR)
The First Tribe The first several thousand or so humans raised by dumb machines who managed to be united as a species for the first hundred years. One of the few points in human history where the human species was at relative peace. Lots of good press from this time.
Original Sin The undetermined event that caused the first tribe to split for (player determined) reasons and lead to the dark period.
Dark Period The centuries of time in-between the launching of the first spaceship by 700-800 PB and the Original Sin. I leave what happened here to whoever opts to make a human civ as it is in this archaic period your civilization likely began its developments even if your civ has continuity with the first tribe.
Arcology A city that has its own internal farming and is self-contained instead of dependent on outside resources.
Your perspective as an alien is the most unique perspective, for to be an alien is to be of many potential perspectives all different from each other due to the limited knowledge you have. Your biology and life style dictates a way of life suited to the world you evolved on.
Aliens should be alien, not humanoid. You can have a biped, but it can't be humanoid.
When making an alien, focus on making an interesting alien form that is a believable product of the world you want to set up shop. Avoid trying to make something to win a game. Think in terms of asymmetrical advantages and disadvantages instead of trying to match the tech of the humans or custodians. Be creative about this, try to avoid high tech solutions to the human problem. For your focus is on having a cool culture, strange tech and on making them feel like aliens. Weird them to death!
When making an alien, keep the species app separate from the civilization app as all species made are public domain (unless there is some lore reason why it can't be).
For a species is treated as a parent to the civilization, and thus a species can have multiple civilization along with all manner of less developed groups (or your sapient may just be 100% tribal, in which case you don’t need a civilization app).
NPCs of your species can be assumed to exist somewhere on the planet you base your species on. Like with humans, should multiple players share a family of sapients who know each other well, technology is easier to share between them. Tech is harder to share between sapients with larger differences, though you can always trade anyways.
You can set up your sapients anywhere a complex biosphere is.
Sapients should avoid independently developing space travel unless there is a good reason for it.
In exchange, you get to have much higher populations and better adaptations to the world you set up shop on. You also get to define the environment, fauna, flora and so forth of the regions you want your alien to occupy much more than custodians or humans get to. So please be someone who likes making strange, horrifying creatures and landscaping if you seek to be an alien.
The third perspective is that of the custodians.
Custodians are ancient beings, related to the Creators who built the megastructures and systems that keep this star system from falling to total ruin. How you define your relationship to them is up to you and due to not being a primitive or interloper you can set up shop anywhere in the star system. Be warned that the rules regarding space travel still apply.
Custodians are shockingly diverse entities, be it strange synthetic things, monolithic drones with a scary voice, surreal eldritch beings or as some memetic fuzz entity it is up to the player. Custodians have access to the most advanced technology of all three perspectives and are much more individual oriented than the natives or the humans.
Which means as a custodian you are more or less expected to be a character with powerful capabilities. You can be a drone collective unified by a personality too. It's up to you!
When you are in the custodian perspective, you can direct the drones and define the tech of the drones in the region you want to have your custodian make their main basing area (nomadic custodians may have many smaller outposts). You also can be the dungeon master for the various megastructures and define what technological artifacts exist in them. In terms of technology, you can go high-tech more than the other two perspectives can. However, remain within the limits of the NO list. Custodians due to having a pervasive information gathering network have a lot of knowledge in regards to raw data about all the societies inhabiting the worlds of 82 Eridani. There is lots of spying going on in regards to the inhabitants of the Eridani System.
Custodians tend to be independent minded in nature and so often have their own ideas of the past. This is not helped by the periods of generational warfare that break out that distort the past.
Custodians can communicate with any species with ease by nature, they’ve done their homework and have had ages to understand everyone. They even can talk to the giant colonial gas bags that inhabit Gabriel.
Custodians are not invincible. Don’t make them so.
Terms
Primitives- The technologically primitive sapients Interlopers- Humans and any sapients who come from another star system. Creators- Vague term referring to the ancients who you have some connection to, however far back that connection is. Generational Warfare- Custodians have generational wars from time to time, often fought by proxy and in the shadows. It is unknown how long these generational wars have gone thanks to the frequent revisionism the victors engage in, just that it has gone on for a long time.
The Comus
There is a Comus who will speak to you in private privates OOC who has an agenda. Even as a custodian you aren’t fully aware of who the Comus is. Disobeying the Comus has IC consequences, but it isn’t against the rules OOC-wise and if you want you can be a rogue custodian from the start, though this means you are an enemy of all other custodian players (maybe the primitives or interlopers may be of better company?) The Comus is story important! You can converse with the Comus in the PM, but remember that the Comus is an authority figure who benefits you in some explicit way. The Comus is your father in many ways, he cares for you ultimately but expects loyalty from you and to understand that not everything can be explained upfront.
There are also hybrid perspectives and guidelines regarding any potential mixture of the above three perspectives.
Hybrids are a diverse bunch and various players may fall into the hybrid range. What this means is that parts of multiple perspective guidelines may apply to you. I consider hybrid perspectives a more complicate role to take due to the element of making sure they balance right as you can get very unfair advantages if you get the advantages of multiple perspectives.
Here are some examples of hybrid perspectives:
An alien species native to 82 Eridani that once had a interplanetary empire which collapsed into a degenerative state with remnants and lost colonies spread about the system. (alien/custodian)
A non-human alien species from another star system. (human/alien)
A human who is an agent of Comus or a human faction that has a intelligentsia ran by an agent of Comus (human/custodian)
Finally, use the following form to make your app- Name: Perspective: Information:
And PM me an introductory IC post to start playing!
DO NOT HAVE THIS STUFF!!! Other players can contribute. -humanoid aliens who minus well be people -Furry aliens -Interstellar invasions -Planet killers (overkill, no?) -Massive space fleets (again, overkill when you just have one planetary system to worry about... Though one filled with drones that hate you and other civilizations who also hate you) -Pop cultural things (This is not a fandom Rp, please don't treat it like one) -Anything that has control over an entire world (don't be greedy! These are big worlds with lots of things to control, no need to monopolize it and you probably won't be able to as things are too multi-polar for that... Too many thinking creatures and robots with surface-orbit missiles) -Making a world with complex life elsewhere in the star system. I want most of the action and content for this NRP within the Gabriel planet system. Note: If you can make the case for adding a new planet with complex life elsewhere I may consider it, but Gabriel's Planet system will remain the only notable place in the human habitable zone. -Elves. Please no. -AI gods. AI is fine, but for go full retard on it okay? -Tech that is advanced. Most advanced I'd prefer people get are orbital killsats or spaceships with kill rods in terms of WMDs. For this NRP is not a matter of how fluffy you can be! (Custodians even, should focus on surreal, esoteric tech much more than hypertech) -Human cultures that have blatant continuity with today's nation-states (so try to avoid having something called "New France" or such). Having something Abrahamic is fine (I am using biblical terms to name the worlds after all). However, please consider the theological impact the environment and its strangeness has had on the human factions. Also consider the dark ages and split that happened centuries earlier. We can work backwards on the details. -Spacecraft that can go more than 1% the speed of light, no matter the faction. -Species/entities that are redundant to what already exists. Consider forming a family with said already existing species (give them some trait continuity) or use the already existing species in play but with a separate civilization. Worlds are huge places! -Anything that is just mindless military emphasis.
A wishlist of things that the GM and players hope to see at some point. -Multiple human factions based in Solomon -Native intelligent life for Solomon -Outsider beings stationed on an exotic world somewhere in the star system.
Name: The Manifold Sight (also referred to as Manifold Eye or, more rarely, Manifold Gaze).
Perspective: Custodian.
Information:
Among the innumerable structures in various stages of decay covering the surface of Ezra, few are as baffling as regards their design and original purpose as one particular complex located in what appears to once have been an industrial district, at a roughly equal distance from the world's northern tropic and pole. This installation, known to its inhabitants as the Cortex, consists of a small fission power plant, regularly supplied and maintained in a functional state, a large number of empty warehouses, several production facilities, most of them inactive, and a number of buildings whose intended function is unidentifiable, having elaborate, sometimes labyrinthine internal structures and containing features and instruments outlandish even by the standards of 82 Eridani's almost omnipresent cryptic ruins. What is especially remarkable is that the placement of buildings within the Cortex seems to be entirely haphazard, with no detectable pattern or scheme aiming to increase the efficiency of the complex's more recognisable processes, and that their architectural styles are wildly inconsistent, with unsightly, utilitarian blocks steps away from complex arrangements of three-dimensional geometrical figures, entirely curvilinear towers and twisted shapes founded on strangely concave angles.
Near the centre of the Cortex, at a short distance from the power plant, there gapes the mouth of a vast sinkhole, the bottom of which would be invisible even if a strong projector light were to be shined into it. From its sides, a number of tunnels branch off into parallel wells and mine shafts, at least one of which reaches deeper than the original cavity, as well as a few systems of subterranean caverns, some of them as vast as the Cortex itself. The sinkhole, known as the Axial Conduit, is the main focus of the complex's inhabitants, the custodian drones calling themselves the Manifold Sight.
The Sight as a group is rather difficult to define in a manner accessible to human knowledge. In basic terms, it is a set of beings who, although capable of functioning optimally separately from one another, become capable of accessing new, extended abilities only when closely cooperating. Another crucial observation would be that several of their core functions are essentially useless unless employed in conjunction with those of the others, rendering the relationship between them similar to a hypothetic instance of endo-organismal adapted symbiosis and reinforcing the supposition that they might have been created or modified (possibly by themselves) to operate as a collective.
The exact nature of the individual entities forming the Sight is unclear. The fact they can directly act through numerous unintelligent, non-living physical bodies or conduits at once (unconfirmed in the case of Dweller) would seem to suggest they might be some form of intelligence designed to be capable of employing various unusual mediums as hardware bases. However, there are several factors opposing such a theory, chief among them the fact that the guises controlled by each entity at any given time do not emit or receive any sort of signal directed at each other, indicating that they cannot be virtually connected by conventional means; additionally, they are only able to interface with each other if at least one (or a section) of their physical forms is located at a specialised terminal, referred to as Nexus, of which there exist several throughout the Cortex and the subterranean network below, alongside a section of their communication's intended recipient. The apparent absence of anything that may resemble a personality or individual psychological profile in any of the beings, and the fundamentally mechanical nature of their actions ad cognitive processes, might contest the theory that they are sapient, or even sentient individuals, and instead support the view that they are extremely complex, but comparatively unsophisticated constructs; yet this would fail to take into account such things as the Sight's remarkable abilities of unprompted innovation and the lack of regular patterns in its overall activity. Altogether, all that is truly known of these beings is that they are clearly artificial in origin, are capable of advanced cognitive, evaluative, strategic and creative mental activity and do not exist as material entities, instead coordinating the actions and properties of distinct bodies created by themselves.
The most visible of the Manifold Sight's components is Watcher, whose main activity is constructing mechanical drones out of the strangely resilient crystalline formations which abound in the mines around the Axial Conduit and putting them to use patrolling the Cortex and maintaining its few active installations, mining materials for further drones and operating the machinery to assemble them, as well as interacting with outside influences. The drones are typically uniform in shape, having a vaguely triangular body (with the figure being positioned horizontally, the hypotenuse directed towards the ground) supported by seven segmented limbs and possessing an array of antenna-like organs of perception at the front. They can, however, be distinguished by the colour of the crystal variety they are built of (which may be either translucent white, opaque violet or a combination of the two) and their size, which varies depending on their function (smaller maintenance drones can reach a minimum of twenty centimetres, while conveyor or combat drones may be as large as five metres). Specialised drones may possess hybrid features, as mentioned below.
Seeker appears to fulfil the role of main information gatherer within the Sight. It does not possess solid physical bodies like Watcher, but rather propagates its consciousness through an artificially designed noble, gas, mildly toxic to most life-forms, being present wherever a sufficiently large mass of it is gathered. Projecting itself through the gas enables Seeker to perceive its immediate surroundings down to their molecular components, as well as detect vibrations, light and temperature fluctuations. The major disadvantage of this conduit is that Seeker cannot actively control its "body" and must rely on other agents, typically Watcher's drones, to move independently of environment factors. Specialised drone models exist that exploit the gas's refractive nature to improve their visual perception, or are capable of releasing it around themselves.
Sentinel is the Sight's equivalent of a weapon, in the broadest sense of the word. Its material presence is represented by webs of fibrous, rubbery biosynthetic material, interspersed with bulbous cartilaginous clumps, typically found in mounds of viscous ooze scattered throughout the Cortex and its nether regions. However, those are not so much its actual conduit as a form of infrastructure necessary for the latter. Sentinel's consciousness is effectively contained in sequences of chemio-electric luminous impulses coursing through the organic constructs, which function somewhat similarly to a neural system, albeit without synapses. If necessary, Sentinel can project itself outside the webs in the form of potent discharges, which can inflict electric shock and considerable blunt physical trauma even at comparatively large distances, or generate temporary static fields which hamper the motion of physical objects and the propagation of energy. Thus, drones designed for combat by Watcher have Sentinel projector webs embedded in their bodies.
The last member of the Sight, Dweller, remains largely an enigma. Its primary function seems to be preserving an artificial ecosystem situated in the deepest caverns below the Axial Conduit, which apparently simulates conditions akin to those present on an Earth-like world during relatively early stages of the evolution of organic life (comparable to the early Terreneuvian series on Earth). The ecosystem is entirely aquatic, with several submerged chambers being maintained at more or less evenly warm temperature; complex algae are abundant within it, as are pluricellular invertebrate animals of various sorts. Dweller has been known to experiment on the life forms it breeds in subterranean laboratories, afterwards releasing the specimen onto Ezra's surface to test their resilience (none has survived for long thus far) or handing them to Watcher for hybridisation with drones or conduits. It is unknown what Dweller's own physical medium is, but, on the basis of its activities, it can be presumed it is organic, perhaps animal- or plant-like in composition.
I am presently working on my own introduction, which, if all goes well, shall be ready within the evening; afterwards, judging by the thread's current title, we may have to wait for a human player to appear in order to begin.
@Arawak I'll work on a draft later today, I forgot to say that I post quite slow as I really do put a lot of thought into what I Role-Play, trying to appeal to a tactile interactive sense to the reader, but I should be able to post either before or on Saturday.
basically hypercapitalist military-industrial complex nationalists with a highly split congress and a third party president. i was waiting for a politics friend to get back to me, but ill probably just make shit up when i get home.
