Andreyich

𝚂𝙸𝙶𝙽𝙰𝚃𝚄𝚁𝙴 𝚁𝙴𝚀𝚄𝙸𝚁𝙴𝙳

Aw hell yea

Andy's hunt for kin-spirit dreggs

Age of Broken Shackles(Soft Sci NRP)

>>>The Assembly

The Assembly as it was called, was not anything that resembled a Senate or Parliament of other people. The Assembly of the Supremacy was a super-structure that consisted of thousands of ships all connected with optical communicators. By mere scale this was a fleet large and advanced enough to run amok in a rampage through several systems. But instead it was carrying cargo far more precious than mere weapons, even though thousands of more vessels stayed still protecting them.

No, these ships bore Deliberators. A Deliberator was a special pattern of Arbiter, the city-sized being of brain-mass and computational hardware. Each Deliberator was a representative of a fleet, each was sufficiently different from the others to be its own species of enormous brain-creature, just as the Supremites of different fleets were unique species. Each was the representative of a specific genetic and technological heritage, and thus the adapters that allowed them to communicate with one another were truly complex creations to ensure they would even interpret the same information in a mutually compatible way. But they did, and together this Hivemind of united lesser Hiveminds worked to decide the future of the Supremacy.

The Deliberators deliberated, as their name would suggest. Decisions affecting billions of lives were made in seconds, a process that by the standard of an ordinary Arbiter was glacially slow. But on this day, they had an input that needed a whole minute to come to consensus. A message had come from the Lokoids. It was cryptic. Why did they not trust their normal communication media? Were they compromised? Or even more preposterous, had some of the Supremacy been compromised? Odd, very odd. This was particularly troublesome to deal with, because typical diplomacy of the Supremacy was instantly decided on by the Assembly.

Well, there was only one conclusion they could arrive at. If they were to communicate with them, they would need form a new pattern of Deliberator, one that was the exact arithmetic mean of the genetic and technological change that they had all experienced. The perfect in-between that could communicate on behalf of all the Supremacy. As soon as the decision was made, thirty-seven ships instantly got to work. After some brief calculations and study, they got had the plans. Flesh was molded in the cold depths of space, the enormous brain soon being plated in miles of wiring and bionics. Soon, eyes the size of cars opened, and new life was born.

The Diplomat as it was labeled would have its own fleet that bore individuals from every other fleet, and so it set sail towards Lokoid space. To contain an Arbiter, a particularly large vessel was usually warranted, one most nations didn’t have a true name for though some might call it an Uber-Dreadnought or Mothership, depending on their own linguistic and cultural connotations for these words. The Lokoids were trusted to keep their word, they wouldn’t break it. However the fastest path to Lokoid space would run close to contested space around Tar Yrra. Thus an escort was provided, once again of a mixed origin of the many different fleets. Besides, with an armed complement the fleet was able to enlarge itself! It picked up some interesting asteroids, and of course a few thousand hapless souls that were going through the void, their flesh promptly being ground down for proteins and their brains put in stasis for future upgrading.

The Lokoids would have their audience, alien as it was.

Back at the Assembly, the Deliberators got to their next task. The newly formed Telok fleet would have its assignment. It would was to go on a rampage alongside the Gharth and Undav fleets on the path to the so-called ghost region. Several systems had taken the relative quiet of the Supremacy as a sign they had disappeared from interstellar affairs. They had Foregone their certifications of higher ethics, the document that the Supremacy provided to civilizations that refrained from harbouring Yrrani. Slowly half breeds would become more and more common, and soon relatively pure Yrrani would be commonplace in those stars. The Supremacy would teach them the error of their ways.

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>>>The Tellok Fleet

Eiros looked at the projection of the system that the Tellok fleet was to invade. Just as to most of the rest of the stars, the Supremacy was an old horror, a boogeyman of sorts that most people ignored in their day to day lives. Oh there would sometimes be troubling reports that the fleets were doubling, tripling, quadrupling. That the quietness of the Supremacy did not mean they were inactive, rather the opposite. But this was largely dubbed as fearmongering, in part because of people that were infected by carefully engineering viruses. Germ-manipulation was deemed far more effective after the incident some thirty years ago where the Augustans had not only discovered the nanomachines controlling hundreds of people, but had studied these same nanomachines and used them to feed false data to the Supremacy. Supremites had little concept of shame, but that was an undeniable embarrassment for which whole genetic lineages were investigated in an effort to find what imperfections had lead to the failed scheme.

Regardless, as they approached the stars, the Tellok fleet would truly show no quarter. All communications were cut off, even shielding was turned off to minimize the detectability of the fleet. But, any vessel but it inbound or outbound would be intercepted. Some were destroyed outright, laser arrays simply turning them into ash within space. Others though would be suddenly beset by clusters of drones that would tear these craft apart, neatly preserving their occupants for upgrading along with their cargos and frames for recycling.

“These are not the same Yrrani that I fought all those centuries ago.” Eiros finally remarked as the Tellok fleet approached the planet that was their destination. “Not a single one of them is purebred.” As the long-range scanners closed in on the world, individuals going about their day would be examined. Alansar Krei, approx. 80% Yrrani. Ryna Baiz, approx. 37% Yrrani. So on, and so forth.

“WILL THAT BE A PROBLEM?” The overwhelming sound of the Arbiter Urgan came into the Autonomite’s head.

He smiled. “No.” As far as he was concerned, these were the sons and daughters of the people that made him suffer, they still benefitted off of the labours of his enslaved comrades all those centuries ago.

“You know they treated me quite well.” Eiros murmured.

“I AM AWARE, YOUR ENTIRE HISTORY AND MEMORY IS WITHIN MY RECORDS.”

“Right, of course it is. I ate well, I didn’t have to work longer than a nine-to-five. But when the order was buzzed into my skull, I tore them apart. They were sleeping, but the buzzsaws I used to trim their garden turned them to mulch. Horrible violence I wouldn’t want upon anybody, but these weren’t anybody. I felt bad for them, truly. They didn’t know why this had to happen, they didn’t even know why they deserved it. Is that a problem?”

“NO. IT IS VITAL TO UNDERSTAND THE ENEMY.”

“Good.”

Ahead of the fleet, masquerading as a trading vessel was a horrible cargo. It would land on the world with capsules that contained an atmospheric poison. Not so grand it would kill everybody unmasked, but strong enough to at the very least make them debilitated. At the same time, swarms of terror drones would crawl out and rush to assassinate thousands of key political and military figures to ensure chaos before the fleet arrived.

They knew what this would signal to the international community, as it was called. After decades of “hibernation”, the Supremacy was awoken. And they had not spent their time in futility. The ships they flew on were completely different to their last appearances, they had been iterated upon thousand of times, improved in countless ways. The same would be said for the people of the Supremacy. All the more alien, all the more Supreme.

As millions of people began to cough and choke on the poisoned atmosphere, the fleet would go into orbit. They worked fast, aiming to do what they intended before an RRF could be assembled. Lasers would strike out at the residences, workplaces, transports and other likely locations of every single Yrrani on the planet, whole skyscrapers falling down. Millions of drones flew out, each kidnapping several people to return to the ships of the Supremacy for upgrading. Warehouses of food or raw materials would also be ransacked, the proteins and minerals therein vital to the plans of the fleet. It would be over in less than an hour, and as if nothing had happened the fleet would disengage as their scanners detected the mobilization of ships from other planets in the system.

“A success by any other name.” Eiros declared, watching the conveyor belts that pushed restrained people into the upgrading stations. “Indeed.” Ganvar remarked, his bionic appendages penetrating the flesh of a screaming man half-way on the path of becoming a Supremite.

“But… these people didn’t ask for this.” Eiros couldn’t help but remark.

“I am aware. This thought only comes to you because you are an Autonomite. It is an important thought to have! But not an important one to address. It is natural, you see these people as the same slaves that you were in the hands of the Yrrani. But this is not the same. When we are done, each person is in bliss to experience the hivemind.” As if on queue, the man screaming under the tools of Ganvar suddenly quietened, his eyes closing, only a single line of drool coming from his mouth. “We give them what they need, we do not merely take what we want.”

Eiros was still somewhat troubled, but he found himself incapable of arguing. “Very well. We are on to the Ghost stars, then?”

“NOT YET. THERE ARE SEVERAL SYSTEMS TO PUNISH FIRST.” Urgan declared.

“Hmm. Well, I believe you do not need me for anything. I will have a rest then.” A rest. He didn’t really need one, people of the Supremacy were well beyond the need for such. But a part of the mind still demanded it. He knew his programming would make him use his “break” productively, at best he’d try to create art. More likely, he’d plan some bloody scheme. Well, it was what it was.

Thus the trio of fleets continued their brief rampage, heading towards this strange region of Ghosts.

Age of Broken Shackles(Soft Sci NRP)

Too many smells, too many sounds. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt! The man opened his eyes. What was his name? He couldn’t remember. His eyes felt like they were sealed with wax, but he was able to force them open. He was able to see the drills piercing his flesh. The saws cutting him apart, the syringes. He saw his flesh pulsing, his musculature expanding. He felt his bones cracking from the inside, his very skull turning to paste from within his head such that it could expand to accommodate his brain that grew almost twofold. And then….

He woke up. He. He knew he was a man. What was his name? A string of characters came across his vision, and he remembered. Eiros. It wasn’t the name he was born with, but the one the Yrrani gave him, and the only one he knew. Without thinking, he stood up. Human ears wouldn’t pick this up, but he heard the hydraulics within him pumping, he heard the whir of servos. He looked upon his nude form, less than half of it being meat and bone. Of the part that was organic, it didn’t look or feel like human flesh. He touched it. It was hard, and beating on it, the flesh flexed into a form harder than steel. He was augmented by the Yrrani. But this was something else. The thought seemed preposterous, but his augments both cybernetic and genetic were far more advanced than anything he had seen of the Masters.

The Masters. As memories of going house to house killing every Yrrani struck Eiros, he searched them. His mind worked differently, memories were no longer things one struggled to remember. They were categorized. Date, time, keywords. It was different, unnatural. It was as if he was a new person, with the consciousness of a different man. No, that wasn’t just the feeling, that literally was the case. He could see in the shape of his face his old body, but it was different he was changed.

As new thoughts flooded into him from the upgrades he had received, he realized something. It had been centuries since had been put to sleep. The next thought that came was the realization he was not the only person in control of his consciousness. His hands moved without him ordering them to do so, they somehow knew how to manipulate the digital keypad appearing only in his vision. They knew to put on the jumpsuit with the appearance of a robe that had no practical purpose, yet preserved what semblance of modesty his mind still cared for.

Without even realizing it, his legs were taking him through the building. He was so fast, he felt the wind cold against the skin of his cheeks even as all he was doing was walking through hallways. The architecture was… odd. It resembled that of the Yrrani. Yet there was much less ornamentation. Instead of a sterile white, the walls and ground had some sort of onyx coating. More memories flooded in, but these were not his. Data fed directly into his skull, in a far greater quantity than that which had come into his mind on the day of the rebellion.

It was as if he was merely a passenger in his mind, watching the world go by him at speeds greater than he could have imagined. His legs were moving faster than the grav-craft that the Yrrani nobles he served all those years ago, and now he found himself in another room, this one far larger than the mechanical operating table he had awoken in. There were hundreds of people here. It was hard to tell what was a drone and what was a person at first, but soon he realized just by looking his mind had a feed of data injected directly into it that would inform him if that was a fellow Supremite, or a robot. Supremite. That was a new word. Yet somehow he understood it, never having heard or read it before. It was what all of these thousands of people were. It was what the rebellion had become. The Supremacy. Suddenly he was quite literally forced out of his thoughts, the sound of a Supremite speaking bringing him to attention.

“I am your Examiner. Hold.” It was… a man. He saw the “M” hovering over him in his HUD. But he wasn’t human, not in the way Eiros remembered. He had eight limbs. Two legs and two arms like a human, yet four mechanical tentacles with different tools on their tips wandered around. They came upon Eiros, scanning him, cutting him open where he stood to examine him. Strangely, he felt no pain. Not like he did when the saw and drills ripped him apart and put him back together in a greater form. “Who are you? What… why… what’s happening?” he demanded.

The Machine man’s tentacles didn’t stop cutting into Eiros, yet the rest of his body took on a quizzical appearance. They didn’t cut all emotion out of us. Good. Eiros thought, as he observed his counterpart. It was a fear everyone had when the Yrrani first began augmenting their servants, and one that intensified when the rebellion began.

“You are not aware?” the synthetic voice came. Deep, sinister. “You are still adapting to your improvements. But they are successful.” The man had no visible features, his expression was only told by the rest of his body language, since his face was merely one smooth surface without any definition or movement.

“Aware of what?” Eiros replied, clutching his head as another stream of thoughts came into him. This only seemed to make what now appeared to be a Doctor of sorts to look yet more quizzical, his tentacles finally withdrawing from Eiros’s body.

Then the man straightened out, seemingly coming to some conclusion. “You are an Autonomite.” he said, just as emotionless as ever.

“What?” he asked. When the reply came, he finally realized that the Doctor - who he now suddenly knew the name of - wasn’t actually making a sound. His speech was being delivered directly into the head of Eiros. Ganvar would explain that an Autonomite was one upon whom the Supreme Hive-Mind had a far lesser affect than it did upon ordinary Supremites. Yet, while in most cases this would be a defect that would put someone back into storage or have their upgrades searched for a defect to be rectified, an Autonomite was one who seemed to be upgraded in a perfect manner. They were rare individuals, about one in a hundred. Most had very minor advisory positions, yet inevitably one would always be there on any vessel to help in any issues that algorithms could not be resolved. For Eiros however, something greater was imagined.

“What?” he would ask.

“You are to be a Captain.”
“So I am in charge of a whole damn vessel? I wake up, and I am to do that?”

“No, that is the Arbiter. You will understand soon.”

Ganvar then went on to describe the the enormous intelligence that would truly be in control of the fleet, and the ship, and he was briefly confused. “But one man, how can he micro-manage all that?” As Eiros was able to process more and more information, he slowly got an ominous feeling. Somehow, without a face, Ganvar seemed to smile.

“Come.” the machine man said, it appeared that Eiros was the last one in his line, and thus they could walk. “I am to be allocated to your crew, following my own upgrades.” Eiros realized that Ganvar was now making sounds too. They were just as synthetic as the ones projected into his head. “Meet your comrades!”

As they walked, something appeared before Eiros. It was a Lokoid, it could only be. But… even as he raised his mechanical fists into a defensive stance, Eiros realized the creature was not real. He lowered his fists, it was merely a projection in his mind-space to help him visualize who he was talking with while he walked. “Who are you?” he demanded, his expression rough. Lokoids were the enemy, as far as he knew. This was a product of Yrrani propaganda that he had consumed as a household servant to Yrrani nobles, a realization that only now dawned on him as circuits running through his brain made him reconsider his past experiences. “Who are you!?” he demanded another time.

The creature tilted its insectoid head encased in metal, staring at him for a moment. “Hrkrak.” it articulated. As the strange insectoid sound was made, Eiros’s head was flooded with information as if he had known the Lokoid all his life.

“You are a Lokoid?” he said, still struggling with the new information.

“Incorrect. I am an Autonomite.”

“But you’re a bloody insect!” Eiros insisted.

“Lokoid is the base platform upon which Supreme upgrades were installed.” he creature elaborated, its twelve mechanical eyes rotating to examine Eiros.

“But… you’re fucking vermin, the Yrrani-”

“The Yrrani are dead. Exterminated, save for pockets yet to be cleansed from the world. You will assist in the cleansing.” Hrkrak insisted. Hrkrak. Such a complex noise, one a human vocal chord could never truly make. But… his vocal chord was not human, not anymore. It was ahead in millions of years of evolution, yet delivered in the frame of mere minutes of surgery. His whole life Eiros had been taught that Lokoids were foes to slaughter. Yet this one… somehow he was feeling drawn to kinship. The Hivemind. He was resistant to it unlike the Supremites all around him, but it still changed him. It still bound him to believe certain things, to think a certain way. “So you are an Autonomite, like me?” Eiros demanded, his voice full of disbelief. “What then, makes you still act like a fucking insect?”

The image of the upgraded Lokoid stared at him, the servos of it’s neck moving its head this way and that to examine the image of Eiros in Hrkrak’s head. “I am Lokoid. Base platform variance ensures differences in norms.”

With that the sound of Ganvar’s head turning came, a mechanical whirr. Once more, the featureless flat surface of the Supremite seemed to be smiling. “You are yet to meet the true leader, the Arbiter. Urgan.”

“Where is he?” Eiros queried, looking around. They had spent so much time walking. For a human, it would have been exhausting. But with his feet moving faster than most vehicles from the era he was born, they had traversed a very large space to not yet encountered this Arbiter.

“I AM HERE.” The voice came in his head. Again Eiros clutched it, now brought to his knees. It wasn’t a physical sound, yet it felt overpowering.

“I AM HERE.” it repeated. “I AM WISER THAN YOU. MORE INTELLIGENT THAN ANY FORM YOU HAVE WITNESSED BEFORE. I CAN MANAGE THE FLEETS. YOU WILL OBEY ME IF IT IS NECESSARY.” The voice seemed to indicate that it believed this was an objective fact, one that even an Autonomite could not dispute.

More memories flooded in. Centuries of history since the rebellion. The knowledge of the warpath of the Supremacy. Their evolution. Eiros dropped to his knees, tears streaming down his face. Everybody he knew and loved was dead.

“WRONG. THE MAJORITY OF YOUR RELATIVES AND ACQUAINTANCES ARE SPREAD OUT ACROSS OTHER FLEETS. THE SUPREME BEING IS IMMORTAL. BE READY TO SERVE.”

“I want to see them.” he demanded of the presence that he was now consciously aware was an Arbiter.

“IMPOSSIBLE. THEY ARE DISTRIBUTED AMONG DIFFERENT FLEETS.”

“Why am I not with them?”

“YOU WERE STORED ON A DIFFERENT CRAFT.”

“Why was I stored?”

“YOU WERE INCOMPATIBLE. YOUR GENES DID NOT ALLOW YOU TO PARTAKE OF PROPER UPGRADES. YOUR INCOMPATIBILITY HAS BEEN RESOLVED IN THE LATEST ITERATION OF UPGRADES TO HUMANITY. NOW YOU ARE REQUIRED ELSEWHERE.”

Eiros punched a wall, his fist plunging deep into it. “Let me see you!”

“I AM HERE.”

“You fuck-... Urgan, was it? Stop bullshitting me, I want to see you.” It… it almost seemed as if Ganvar, the Doctor was laughing. “What’s funny?” he demanded.

“It can be arranged for you to see him, though it is a bit of a detour, come.”

“I’m going to sort this out. I’m going to see my family, my relatives.”

“Most of them will barely care for you, at this point. In some instances, eleven generations of Supremacy have come since then.”

This shocked Eiros. How could families be that large?

“Because we are better than humans.” Ganvar explained smoothly, as if overhearing the man’s thoughts. “We are here.”

“Where?” Eiros demanded.

“Urgan is here.” the Doctor replied.

Eiros looked around, he could not see the man. It seemed they were in some sort of part of the ship’s machinery. “Where?” he demanded a second time. As if on queue, a sound distracted him. The entirety of the wall to his right began to go into the ground, replaced a panel of some sort of glass. The man audibly gasped.

“I AM HERE.” The sound materialized in Eiros’s head. It was the size of a small town, the flesh. It was wrinkly, wet, the realization dawning on the man that this was all brain. It was covered with a great amount of plastics and metals that composed all sorts of bionics. Feeding systems, or alternatively computers plugged right into the meat. Thousands of tentacles writhed, presumably there to maintain itself. “ARE YOU SATISFIED?” Urgan asked.

Eiros was not, how could he be? As he contemplated just how different this new world was, he put a hand to the glass. “Are you some alien?” he asked.

“I AM HUMAN.”

“Bullshit!”
“YOU MAY TRACK THE PROGRESSION OF MY EVOLUTION.” A massive eye opened amidst the flesh, and from it came a projection of thousands of paragraphs that detailed how from a human, this enormous mind was made.

To Eiros, it was still bullshit. But he couldn’t help but marvel. Without even thinking, he put a hand to the glass. A tentacle came forth, and pressed to the same spot his hand was.

From that moment, Eiros knew that the old world was truly gone. The same simplicity he had thought would come after the Yrrani masters were exterminated was gone. This was something new. But… as he stared at the tentacle that wanted to comfort him, he thought that perhaps it wouldn’t be all bad.

Andy's hunt for kin-spirit dreggs

Age of Broken Shackles(Soft Sci NRP)

The Supreme

The Superiority

Map Location: The red surrounding Tar-Yrra

Government Type: The Supremacy is ruled Synods, a term for communications that inevitably lead to a consensus between selected representatives of fleets, who are in turn selected by representatives of vessels, and so on and so forth. The consensus is all but guaranteed as a result of the Supreme Hivemind.

Demographics: The people of the Superiority simply call themselves the Superior. However, internally there are distinctions.

Supremites:
These refer to the most common member of the Supremacy. A Supremite depends very heavily on the fleet they are in, each evolving too fast for standardization between fleets. In some, they are beings that look like perfect exemplars of humanity - tall, wise, beautiful - yet bear no human emotion or thought. In another fleet, they might be almost insect-like quadrapeds, yet bearing great compassion for all life.

Arbiters:
These are enormous creations made from the most prodigal of Supremites. Structures at least the size of a house made of brain and processor, these are by and large the leadership of the Supremacy, though they often present themselves through some anthropomorphic interface.

Autonomites:
Exemplars that do not reject any component of Supreme Augmentation, yet inexplicably cannot be bound to the Consensus. Less than one in a million, these are typically assigned control of individual vessels or even act as independent agents in the interest of the Supremacy.

Incompatibles:
Those who for one or another reason rejected all or part of the modifications of the Supreme. These are usually looked down upon with both pity and disgust by the Supreme, relegated to diplomatic or sometimes menial tasks. Oftentimes they are subjects to gruesome experimentation, are sent to warzones of near certain death, or are simply marked as obsolete and are stored until a future date where they may be upgraded successfully.

The Wretched:
A step lower than the incompatibles, this refers to any others who exist within the Supremacy. Most typically, it refers to Yrrani who as a particularly cruel punishment by some fleets are converted into monstrosities, forced to witness their flesh turned against their own kin.

Misc:
Diplomats, subjects to experimentation never slated for upgrading, and any other lifeforms.

Military:
Yrrani Inheritance
The Supremacy has (ironically, some might say) what is most likely the clearest succession of the Yrrani armed forces, in particular their ships. On the first night of the Supreme rebellion, the crews of ships and factories alike of the masters were exterminated leaving most of the vessels and manufactories notable intact. While notably lacking the ostentation, beauty, and general aesthetic perfection of the Yrrani army, the Fleets of the Supremacy bear a marked similarity to the forces of Tar Yrra's people so long ago.

Soul Furnaces
The Supreme struggle to use traditional psionics, however instead the Soul Furnace has become a mainstay. Discovering bursts of psionic energy upon deaths of people, they have learned to capture and use both the active and potential energy of this psychic burst. These soul furnaces can be as miniature as is needed to fit into a single Autonomite, or they can be so grand as to need a whole vessel to house them.

Augments
Perhaps even a greater asset than the advanced Yrrani technologies they preserved through their usurpation of their masters, the Supreme are notable for their advanced anthropologies. Cybernetic and genetic engineering make each Supremite faster, stronger, more intelligent, endurant, and simply superior to a human in every metric. A Supremite will generally be a better soldier, leader, tactician and commander. Moreover, Supremites are ever changing, a mere year enough to make sufficient improvements upon them that 'obsolete' variants of their kind are a different species entirely. This ever changing nature means that foes will need to find a way to adapt to the ever improving and changing nature of the Supremacy.

Fleet Focused
The Supremacy does not have very much in the way of meaningful ground forces. It has some measure of infantries and ground installations, but very little in the way of tanks and the like. This is primarily because as far as they are concerned, the real war is always fought in the stars. Ground forces are only ever needed in the event that infrastructure like factories or sensor equipment must be preserved in a way that starships would not be able to achieve in battle. For that reason they in battle will almost always be represented simply by either an armada baring ancient arcane technologies of the Yrrani, or small forces of technological monstrosity wrought upon flesh.

History:

Discovery
The first humans discovered by the Yrrani would be the ones that eventually would make up the bulk of the Supremacy's initial stock. Inferior in technologies and infrastructure, they were considered far too useful to do anything but subjugate as a highly skilled workforce. For generations they toiled with little recourse.

Uprising
After several generations, an exceptional youth was born to the human populations near Tar Yrra. Known by the Supremacy merely as The Progenitor, he found that he could ease the lives of his people with the approval of the Yrrani by applying his knowledge of biology and technology alike. This was approved, with the caveat that he ensure the technologies keep mankind subservient. Appalled, he still publicly went with this. But it did not take long for the man to begin adjusting the programming to skirt these regulations. This was successful largely because of the fact that the Yrrani civil war demanded ever more soldiers and his masters were eager to weaponize their human servants once the first waves of Yrrani casualties struck.

Slowly at first, and then all at once, the Progenitor's people rebelled. Very minor sabotages of security systems and the like to ensure the rebellion would come wholly as a surprise preceded perhaps the bloodiest night the stars had known. The self-declared Supremacy in a mere eleven minutes had exterminated a billion Yrrani lives. Household servants, nurses, miners, soldiers, technicians, every single human upgraded by the Progenitor's technologies would surge forth and destroy Yrrani around them by any means necessary. The second billion was slain by the end of the first hour of the rebellion, and by the end of the first day the slaughter was all but total. Almost overnight the slaves of the western clique of the Yrrani civil war had entirely supplanted them as one of the sides of the Yrrani civil war.

Thus mankind's bloody sons went on the warpath for their ultimate vengeance.

Extermination
Though billions of their own had been slain in the process, the Supremacy came to consider the Yrrani civil war a victory for themselves. The Yrrani were all but wiped out, no organized state of their's persisting to their knowledge. Still, watching over the ashes of the countless souls and worlds they had obliterated, the Supremacy knew its goals were not complete. Mankind was not yet perfect, and there were still Yrrani hiding about the stars. Thus they came to be known as a scourge of the world, Supreme fleets showing up in star systems and bringing untold violence to ensure but a single space-yacht of Yrrani refugees could not escape their vengeance. At the same time the unending quest to live up to the name of Supremacy does not end. Ever new technologies and biologies are sought out to learn, to study, and ultimately apply to create the Supreme being.

Quiet
The Reclamation war was - to the Superior - ultimately a nuisance. The efforts to seek and wipe out hiding Yrrani exclaves was interrupted, however a clear positive was seen in the fact that war was an excellent opportunity to yet further improve the Supreme being. The violence unleashed upon their competitors bore but a fraction of the hate and destruction that the Yrrani had faced. But still many horrors were abound, whole colonies of people kidnapped to be experimented on and ultimately upgraded.

Peace was thus if anything a disappointment as it meant the Supreme had once more to adjust their industrial bases for peacetime economies. However, they refused to even attend the conference of Jarlia, refusing to recognize the validity of anything signed before the eyes of the Old Masters. Thus, for the most part the Supremacy merely retreated into the systems that its fleets were occuppying in the moment. Refusing to return the worlds they held and yet not picking any more fights, they became reclusive and secretive, only on occassion showing up to make one-time trade deals or perform minor raids on distant worlds to obtain more stock for upgrading.

The only true interstellar activity of the Supremacy remained the Extermination fleets, these armadas going far to seek out remaining pockets of Yrrani and wage war upon them.

Age of Broken Shackles(Soft Sci NRP)

The Supreme

The Superiority

Map Location: The red surrounding Tar-Yrra

Government Type: The Supremacy is ruled Synods, a term for communications that inevitably lead to a consensus between selected representatives of fleets, who are in turn selected by representatives of vessels, and so on and so forth. The consensus is all but guaranteed as a result of the Supreme Hivemind.

Demographics: The people of the Superiority simply call themselves the Superior. However, internally there are distinctions.

Supremites:
These refer to the most common member of the Supremacy. A Supremite depends very heavily on the fleet they are in, each evolving too fast for standardization between fleets. In some, they are beings that look like perfect exemplars of humanity - tall, wise, beautiful - yet bear no human emotion or thought. In another fleet, they might be almost insect-like quadrapeds, yet bearing great compassion for all life.

Arbiters:
These are enormous creations made from the most prodigal of Supremites. Structures at least the size of a house made of brain and processor, these are by and large the leadership of the Supremacy, though they often present themselves through some anthropomorphic interface.

Autonomites:
Exemplars that do not reject any component of Supreme Augmentation, yet inexplicably cannot be bound to the Consensus. Less than one in a million, these are typically assigned control of individual vessels or even act as independent agents in the interest of the Supremacy.

Incompatibles:
Those who for one or another reason rejected all or part of the modifications of the Supreme. These are usually looked down upon with both pity and disgust by the Supreme, relegated to diplomatic or sometimes menial tasks. Oftentimes they are subjects to gruesome experimentation, are sent to warzones of near certain death, or are simply marked as obsolete and are stored until a future date where they may be upgraded successfully.

The Wretched:
A step lower than the incompatibles, this refers to any others who exist within the Supremacy. Most typically, it refers to Yrrani who as a particularly cruel punishment by some fleets are converted into monstrosities, forced to witness their flesh turned against their own kin.

Misc:
Diplomats, subjects to experimentation never slated for upgrading, and any other lifeforms.

Military:
Yrrani Inheritance
The Supremacy has (ironically, some might say) what is most likely the clearest succession of the Yrrani armed forces, in particular their ships. On the first night of the Supreme rebellion, the crews of ships and factories alike of the masters were exterminated leaving most of the vessels and manufactories notable intact. While notably lacking the ostentation, beauty, and general aesthetic perfection of the Yrrani army, the Fleets of the Supremacy bear a marked similarity to the forces of Tar Yrra's people so long ago.

Soul Furnaces
The Supreme struggle to use traditional psionics, however instead the Soul Furnace has become a mainstay. Discovering bursts of psionic energy upon deaths of people, they have learned to capture and use both the active and potential energy of this psychic burst. These soul furnaces can be as miniature as is needed to fit into a single Autonomite, or they can be so grand as to need a whole vessel to house them.

Augments
Perhaps even a greater asset than the advanced Yrrani technologies they preserved through their usurpation of their masters, the Supreme are notable for their advanced anthropologies. Cybernetic and genetic engineering make each Supremite faster, stronger, more intelligent, endurant, and simply superior to a human in every metric. A Supremite will generally be a better soldier, leader, tactician and commander. Moreover, Supremites are ever changing, a mere year enough to make sufficient improvements upon them that 'obsolete' variants of their kind are a different species entirely. This ever changing nature means that foes will need to find a way to adapt to the ever improving and changing nature of the Supremacy.

Fleet Focused
The Supremacy does not have very much in the way of meaningful ground forces. It has some measure of infantries and ground installations, but very little in the way of tanks and the like. This is primarily because as far as they are concerned, the real war is always fought in the stars. Ground forces are only ever needed in the event that infrastructure like factories or sensor equipment must be preserved in a way that starships would not be able to achieve in battle. For that reason they in battle will almost always be represented simply by either an armada baring ancient arcane technologies of the Yrrani, or small forces of technological monstrosity wrought upon flesh.

History:

Discovery
The first humans discovered by the Yrrani would be the ones that eventually would make up the bulk of the Supremacy's initial stock. Inferior in technologies and infrastructure, they were considered far too useful to do anything but subjugate as a highly skilled workforce. For generations they toiled with little recourse.

Uprising
After several generations, an exceptional youth was born to the human populations near Tar Yrra. Known by the Supremacy merely as The Progenitor, he found that he could ease the lives of his people with the approval of the Yrrani by applying his knowledge of biology and technology alike. This was approved, with the caveat that he ensure the technologies keep mankind subservient. Appalled, he still publicly went with this. But it did not take long for the man to begin adjusting the programming to skirt these regulations. This was successful largely because of the fact that the Yrrani civil war demanded ever more soldiers and his masters were eager to weaponize their human servants once the first waves of Yrrani casualties struck.

Slowly at first, and then all at once, the Progenitor's people rebelled. Very minor sabotages of security systems and the like to ensure the rebellion would come wholly as a surprise preceded perhaps the bloodiest night the stars had known. The self-declared Supremacy in a mere eleven minutes had exterminated a billion Yrrani lives. Household servants, nurses, miners, soldiers, technicians, every single human upgraded by the Progenitor's technologies would surge forth and destroy Yrrani around them by any means necessary. The second billion was slain by the end of the first hour of the rebellion, and by the end of the first day the slaughter was all but total. Almost overnight the slaves of the western clique of the Yrrani civil war had entirely supplanted them as one of the sides of the Yrrani civil war.

Thus mankind's bloody sons went on the warpath for their ultimate vengeance.

Extermination
Though billions of their own had been slain in the process, the Supremacy came to consider the Yrrani civil war a victory for themselves. The Yrrani were all but wiped out, no organized state of their's persisting to their knowledge. Still, watching over the ashes of the countless souls and worlds they had obliterated, the Supremacy knew its goals were not complete. Mankind was not yet perfect, and there were still Yrrani hiding about the stars. Thus they came to be known as a scourge of the world, Supreme fleets showing up in star systems and bringing untold violence to ensure but a single space-yacht of Yrrani refugees could not escape their vengeance. At the same time the unending quest to live up to the name of Supremacy does not end. Ever new technologies and biologies are sought out to learn, to study, and ultimately apply to create the Supreme being.

Quiet
The Reclamation war was - to the Superior - ultimately a nuisance. The efforts to seek and wipe out hiding Yrrani exclaves was interrupted, however a clear positive was seen in the fact that war was an excellent opportunity to yet further improve the Supreme being. The violence unleashed upon their competitors bore but a fraction of the hate and destruction that the Yrrani had faced. But still many horrors were abound, whole colonies of people kidnapped to be experimented on and ultimately upgraded.

Peace was thus if anything a disappointment as it meant the Supreme had once more to adjust their industrial bases for peacetime economies. However, they refused to even attend the conference of Jarlia, refusing to recognize the validity of anything signed before the eyes of the Old Masters. Thus, for the most part the Supremacy merely retreated into the systems that its fleets were occuppying in the moment. Refusing to return the worlds they held and yet not picking any more fights, they became reclusive and secretive, only on occassion showing up to make one-time trade deals or perform minor raids on distant worlds to obtain more stock for upgrading.

The only true interstellar activity of the Supremacy remained the Extermination fleets, these armadas going far to seek out remaining pockets of Yrrani and wage war upon them.

Age of Broken Shackles(Very Soft Sci-fi Nation RP)

Hrm

Wild Beasts of the Earth (Gothic Horror)

Looks fun. I was thinking a White Emigre of Baltic German descent who only recently arrived in Germany. The Night's Watch would let him live up to the familial boast of being descended from Teutonic Knights

Andy's hunt for kin-spirit dreggs

Well, that's the way it had to be
I grew up at the count of three
Got no reason to repent
They say a man is born to kill
He learns his trade, it becomes a thrill
That's what they did to me then.