Eventua

Through the Gateways: Inhumanity

HECK YEAH THE GATEWAYS ARE OPENIN' BAYBEEEEEE
Here comes the green bois again, this time with a tad more oomph and just a smidge more psychological horror.

Avalon(WIP)

The Pillars of Avalon

"By these pillars stand tall - for People, for the Planet, for Yourself"

GOVERNMENT FORM:
Multi-Species Eco-Syndicalist Federation

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Avalon

PLANET NAME & DESCRIPTIONS: Avalon is the second planet of the Nimue system. In orbit around a bright G-class star and protected from the outer system's dense asteroid fields by the super massive gas giant ????, it is a mid-sized rocky world roughly 6% smaller than Earth. Despite its somewhat 'boisterous' planetary neighbours, Avalon is a vibrant and ecologically dense garden planet with a broadly “cold tropical” environment -- similar to the temperate rainforests that once stretched across Ireland and the British Isles prior to the industrial revolution, though extremely high equatorial temperatures cause the accumulation of salt and dense, brackish mudflats to form around the equator. It has a predominantly nitrogen & oxygen-based atmosphere, with a slightly higher overall oxygen density than Earth that combined with the lower gravity makes many native and adapted organisms notably larger than most Earth equivalents.

Avalon's wide varieties of organism have base-2 carbon-based biochemistry with central nervous systems, and are broadly split into categories of fauna, flora, and funga – though many organisms are naturally occurring 'chimera', or hybrids, effectively consisting of both animal, plant and fungal cells. Of particular note are a number of fungal organisms classified as gestalts that rely on the central nervous systems of both fauna and flora to spread their spores and are able to use these systems as transmitters for information – a fact that would eventually give rise to the phenomena known as 'faeries' by the human colonists, yet later to be deemed a sapient species in their own right.

SYSTEM LAYOUT, in-progress

The following is a list of major 'objects of interest', or planetary bodies, of the Nimue system:

• AV-04, 'Nimue', a G-class star.
• Mercury-lite
• Mercury-lite 2
• Warm Mars
• Inner Asteroid Belt
• Avalon (with Mars-like mini moons)
• Supermassive Icy Gas Giant with lots of moons
• Outer Asteroid Belt
• Cold Rocky Planet (Gaian homeworld)
• Cold Rocky Planet 2

POPULATION & DEMOGRAPHICS:
There are an estimated 3.2 billion souls across Avalon and its habitat network throughout the system, though the exact number is difficult to pinpoint since record keeping varies and many smaller or nomadic communities choose to dwell outside of the homestead system. The major species and groups within Avalon and its habitats are as follows:

• Homo Sapiens Sapiens, sometimes called the “Avalonian Phenotype”: Approx. 2.1 billion. Descendants of the original ('first wave') of colonists established shortly after the gates were opened by the Morgan-Lott corporation, as well as the majority of the refugees who came to Avalon shortly before the gates closed. While prolonged exposure to gestalt spores (see last demographic) shows some evidence of increased mirror neurons and insular cortex complexity, morphologically Avalonians are close to baseline, besides some small changes to bone density and muscle growth to accommodate for life on a planet with lower gravity than Earth. Likewise, artificial modifications such as prosthetics or vat-grown organs are not uncommon... assuming they are medical in nature. Although the original colonists were from the anglosphere & former commonwealth nations, the later refugee colonists came from many cultures and backgrounds; while English is the official and most widely spoken language, it is estimated that there are approximately at least 98 surviving languages on Avalon and the preservation of them is a study of great interest.
• Gremlins: Approx. 0.9 billion. A genetically engineered sapient 'uplift' of an indigenous Avalonian eusocial frog-like organism originally created by the Children of Gaia in ???? (approximately 120 years ago) as pilots and engineers that could operate complex military equipment against the THE ENEMY without risking sensitive electronics. Appearing as the six-limbed lovechild of an eel, a beetle, and a pug, they are particularly notable for their high genetic adaptability, resilience, and the intense electrical conductivity of their nervous systems, making them easily augmented with cybernetics and gestalt implants. Their creation and subsequent debates around their sapience and the ethics of their creation sparked widespread outrage against the Children of Gaia and greatly weakened that organization's status in society, with the gremlins becoming fully emancipated and granted control of their spawning grounds in ????
• Homo Sapiens Viridi, officially called the “Viridian Phenotype” but informally known as “Gaians”: Approx. 179 million. Descendants of the “Children of Gaia”, a popular new religious movement that spread in the years leading to the exodus from Earth. Historically they were experts of genetic engineering, modifying their bodies to survive in increasingly harsh conditions through the introduction of plant and reptile DNA that gave them their distinctive green skin and minimal body hair, though this also greatly reduced their fertility, and coupled with their historically strict taboos around mingling with 'outsiders' has caused their population to stabilize at a relatively low number. However, following the war against THE ENEMY and the emancipation of the gremlins, the Children gradually lost many members, and the term 'Viridian' became the more accepted term for those who have chosen or inherited the Children's traditional modifications without remaining members of the religion.
• Spacers: Approx. 38 million. For a variety of reasons, those who choose to live their lives (almost?) entirely in space, on habitats of Avalon's moon and throughout its asteroid belt and amidst the salvaged ruins of THE ENEMY. Note that these are distinct from Viridian populations, some of whom are also spacers but are usually listed under demographics as viridian first and foremost. A number of these individuals have further experimented with cybernetic augments, sometimes to the point of becoming physically more machine than man and partially merged with their own ships.
• ”Faeries”/”Gestalts”: ~??.?%, or approx. 500,000 ('domesticated'/'quarantined; impossible to determine total number of 'wild' gestalts present on Avalon, estimates ranging from a few thousand to several million). A fungus analogus organism indigenous to Avalon that primarily reproduces and communicates between its colonies through spores attaching themselves to the nervous systems of mobile organisms and tree root networks, with many organisms on Avalon having exposed nerve endings specifically for this purpose since a major side effect of this is a transmission of information to the 'carrier' in the form of hallucinations. As a result of interacting with human brains a number of gestalts have developed a form of sapience, and over time this has been integrated in several ways, with specially trained gestalt colonies used as a kind of 'organic AI' for settlements and ships and the 'characters' they store serving as assistants, educators, messengers and therapists.

HISTORY:

INITIAL COLONIZATION AND THE ESCAPE FROM EARTH (2290-2301)

"Welcome new citizen-passenger #04809, designation: Drone Maintenance. The Morgan-Lott family would like to wish you well in your new home and is confident you will be a productive aide to our new society. Remember: we can only recreate Earth if everyone does their bit!"

Avalon was one of the first successful colony efforts of the gateway project, an almost poster-child scenario; funded by a multinational agreement between the anglosphere powers, and many former commonwealth nations, they emerged from the gateway to discover a system with an array of worlds containing a wealth of material resources. But far more valuable than any precious metal was the system's fourth planet – a new home for humanity.

Initial settlement was profitable and attractive, even despite trepidation many environmentalist and 'pro-adaptor' groups had about the risks of industrialization being introduced to Avalon's vibrant ecosystem. The groundwork for industry, great quarries for mining, and the foundations of modular arcologies that would gradually house millions... who had paid for their tickets. For a brief time it seemed like maybe there would be some spark of hope against the pessimism of Earth and its teeming masses, but as time would go on the worst fears of Avalon's critics proved true. The Morgan-Lott corporation (and its affiliates and subsidiaries) responsible for the initial survey work and establishment of the colony was quick to leverage the record profits they were seeing. It used its position on Avalon to function as the colony's de-facto government, while concerns towards their treatment of employees and settlers alike were suppressed, ignored or mocked, and tickets promised for families or loved ones of employees and workers were buried in technicalities, loopholes, and by the corrupt and overburdened legal systems back on Earth.

Meanwhile, the situation on Earth continued to spiral out of control, with rumours flying of errors in the gateway system threatening the collapse of the network and the worsening economic situation pushed many of Avalon's government sponsors to the point of collapse. Many remaining colony ships were incomplete, or built with 'cost saving measures' that risked catastrophic failure on the journey. Under such dire pressure and amidst a feverpitch of revolutionary action across Earth and the solar system, many of the remaining labour unions and engineers responsible for the colony ships organized uprisings to seize abandoned, unfinished or faulty transports, repair them enough to make a desperate escape, and fled through the gate before it closed. They were joined in their exodus by others from Mars and the asteroid habitats.

MORGAN-LOTT, REVOLUTION, AND THE HOMESTEADS (2302-2327)

The arrival of so many refugees and dissidents caused a vast swelling in Avalon's population, and while many of the new arrivals were qualified in skills useful to maintaining the arcologies and colony systems, the burden was terrible. The now defacto administrative authority of the Morgan-Lott corporation became increasingly brutal and authoritarian, consuming and destroying Avalon's natural resources and rationing supplies to a harsh degree, even banishing 'low value citizens' into the wilderness or establishing prison labour camps in the quarries. Over the next few years resentment and complaint against the corporation continued to grow, with acts of sabotage, protests, and assassination attempts becoming more and more common.

Meanwhile, the new religious movement of the Children of Gaia had been establishing research efforts on areas of Avalon that had largely been ignored by the corporation. Some of the refugees and settlers in these areas had reported strange symptoms - visions of religious figures, dead relatives or fictional characters and monsters from folklore granting them advice. Research showed the presence of spores from a local fungus-like organism present in their nervous systems, something that had likewise been observed as symbiotically connected to many of Avalon's chimera. With further study, it was found that communicating with these visions could often influence the growth and movement of the local environment.

When the situation in the arcologies had at last reached its breaking point and acts of protest and sabotage escalated into all out revolution against the corporation's enforcers, the revolution seemed like it was about to fail... when suddenly, in a spectacular wave of disasters, the planet itself seemed to turn against the arcologies en-masse. In less than a week, the revolution had won, and a new administration was needed.

By this point, the idea of a centralized administration had fallen out of favour with most people. Instead, the individual arcologies, facilities and settlements would be managed largely independently, with locally elected governments receiving advisory support and environmental protection by the Children of Gaia, whose biotechnology and knowledge of the Avalonian gestalts gave them a supposedly supernatural influence over Avalon's ecosystem. These local governments, trying to befit their supposedly more naturalistic and resident-focused goals, would become known as homesteads. To assist with the transportation of goods and the facilitation of trade, meanwhile, the remaining colony transport vessels that hadn't been broken down as the basis for new structures and settlements would serve as the lifeblood of shipments, for goods and people. For the next decade or so this system worked well enough, but the echoes of capital continued to linger, and their whispers were tempting...

CORPORATIST RESURGENCE AND CIVIL WAR (2328-2331)

Left to their own devices, the individual homesteads had managed fairly well. Under supposedly fair elections they administered their own affairs, and many of the resources and machinery used by Morgan-Lott they had set about rebuilding. However, with the underlying economic systems left unchanged, inequality had quickly settled again, while in others an atmosphere of fierce individualism and 'screw you, got mine' had taken hold - many rebuilding or restoration projects had gone unfinished or been ignored.

To make matters worse, within the still damaged industrial arcologies of Monmouth and Amsterdam Nova, there had gradually been an infiltration by former managers and loyalists of the corporation. Using the resentment of the people against the troubles inevitable in the aftermath of war and the failures in rebuilding, they ran on platforms of 'the good old days' and a return to the so-called 'wealth' of the nations of Old Earth. In secret they plotted their revenge, and began the manufacture of drones and weapons. Having gathered allies and funded extremist movements in other homesteads, they launched their attack in a sudden ambush and sabotage on the capital colony ship, the Matter of Hope.

For three years the homesteads were torn apart by war, the years of preparation having allowed the corporatist factions to prepare defences against Avalon's ecosystem that often caused nightmarish amounts of chemical damage. For a time the colony fleet was likewise divided as battles erupted across the asteroid miner's habitats and forges, until at last divisive victories were won by the anti-capitalist coalition on Cable Station and the shipyards of Common Prosperity. From there, a means was devised to break the deadlock on Avalon - the powered hardsuits used by asteroid miners, could be modified to function as deep strike infantry weapon's systems. With unprecedented mobility, these newly appointed 'caliburn' infantry could breach the last of the corporatist strongholds and end the war.

THE PEOPLE'S SYNDICATES & RECONSTRUCTION (2332-2421)

Those held responsible for the violence were executed, but the coalition's leadership realized there needed to be fundamental changes in Avalon's economic systems. So long as economic power could be accumulated and managed in non-democratic ways, there would always be incentive and temptation for individuals to misuse their wealth for political power. A new system - already having been implemented by the homesteads at the core of the coalition, whereby labour was managed by unions and organized as worker co-operatives - was used to help organize and carry out the rebuilding efforts. Some stubbornly refused to respect these new syndicates and the need for a divorcing of politics and financial incentive, and so the most diehard followers of the old regime were banished into the wilderness, free to establish their own communes -- albeit monitored closely. To prevent further violence, those who had taken the most decisive and dangerous military deployments among the hardsuited infantry were appointed to function as a small but elite collective military force.

Together with the homesteaders, these new economic groups - the People's Syndicates - took some getting used to, but as the decades went by and the scars of the war on both people's hearts and on the planet began to heal, a sense of peace was restored. Despite some grumbling and the occasional hostility by and towards the remaining corporatist communes, there was little outright violence, and the majority of these communes faded or renounced their commitments to the old system as the passage of time and their dogmatic isolation forced them to increasingly operate under syndicate rules.

Others chose more dire isolation, leaving Avalon in full to dwell on habitats in the asteroid belt. These spacer homesteads became known as the corporatist hermits and would descend into increasingly cruel and bitter autocracies for some decades - albeit ones that dared not militarize for fear of being smashed by the homesteader's league and the syndicates.

A DEADLY VANGUARD (2422-2428)

"Assembled representatives, I bring dire news: we are not alone."

First machines are discovered approaching ???? and respond to attempts at communication with violence, destroying the stations of ???? and several corporatist hermit stations. The Green Table goes from merely a forum of meditation into an organization given the authority to organize the homesteader's league and the people's syndicate in the creation of an armed navy. The war is primarily orbital, but at least one machine terraforming agent impacts with Avalon at the homestead of ???? and begins xenoforming efforts before being destroyed by citizen militia forces and the 'knight-marshalls'.

THE MACHINE WAR (2429-2452)

UPLIFTED TO VICTORY (2453-2459)

THE GREMLIN PARADOX (2460-2481)

EMPATHY PROTESTS & EMANCIPATION (2482-2494)

GESTALT TRAUMA CASCADE (2495-2532)

THE CONCEPTUAL INTERCHANGE & AVALON'S PILLARS (2533-2548)

THE HEALING OF AVALON (2549-2612)

CASCADISM & THE GESTALT AGE (2613-2672)

ENEMIES REAWAKENED (2673-2703)

CENTURY OF REST (2704-2800)

CULTURE & SOCIETY: Avalon's tumultous history, coupled with its increasingly democratic and humanitarian political systems, have produced no end of *contradictions*. The stereotype of the average Avalonian is that they are hard-working, self-sufficient, and ready to face the day's challenges with a smile... but at the same time they are cautious around strangers and overly bureaucratic. For the vast majority of its population, daily life is peaceful and cooperative, where the average person fits well into their particular homestead's culture – critics would claim this is due to the influence of prolonged gestalt exposure on the human brain, showing signs of heightened interconnectiveness of mirror neurons and neurons of the insular cortex. To some extent this is intentionally reinforced by childhood education often focusing on a mixture of practical skills, horticulture, biological sciences, the humanities, and team-building exercises, and a respect for nature and for people is foundational for these reasons.

Physical activity, training, and sport are also huge parts of Avalonian culture, as is the encouragement of hobbies and open social spaces designed to provide people with enough personal quiet time but plenty of opportunities to interact with others in healthy, supportive ways. Various types of football are the dominant sport, most notably gridiron, rugby, and soccer, though other team sports such as baseball, basketball, cricket, hockey and lacrosse also see popular play. Meanwhile cross-homestead 'tourneys' serve as the basis for a lot of inter-homestead interaction and collaboration of ideas and skilled workers, serving as something between a multi-disciplinary athletic competition, inventor’s fair, and cosplay convention or ren-faire.

On the subjects of belief, purpose, philosophy, and religion, Avalonians are generally diverse and open-minded. The Conceptual Interchange functions as an official forum for open education and discussion on the history of almost every idea, belief system, political ideology, or philosophy known to man, but debate for the purpose of 'winning arguments' is generally discouraged as unproductive. So long as an idea or system is not seen as antithetical to sapient rights or the pillars of Avalon, then it is tolerated and present on Avalon and has likely been synthesized and interpreted in ten thousand different ways. Religion specifically is a little more contentious, with the majority of Avalonians being some form of 'secularly spiritual', having a sense of spirituality but being somewhat loose or personal towards it, or maintaining religious traditions for cultural, historical or ritualistic purposes more so than out of genuine belief. The largest religions still present are Hinduism, Prophetism (a broad term for religions based on the teachings of one or more 'key prophets', individuals of supposed direct divine blessing by a specific deity), Gaianism, Buddhism, Cascadism, and Neo-Paganism, and these collectively make up about 15% of the population.

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GOVERNANCE & POLITICS: Since the fall of the Morgan-Lott corporation and the civil war that saw the destruction and outlawing of many of its most influential figures and 'true believers', the democratic, decentralized systems introduced in its wake have been repeatedly tested - both by the internal debate baked into the system, and by physical dangers from both the planet and from outside of the system. Nevertheless, these systems have survived such tests, and have been reinforced as serving as the groundwork for Avalon's cultural and moral identity, and as symbols of pride and unity. The term pillar is used to describe these institutions based on three crucial merits -- the institution must be relevant in the daily lives of all people and with a clear societal function; the institution must contain formal democratic processes for representing the views and rights of its members; and it must have clear codes of conduct and standards of behaviour.

While technically each of the pillars functions independently of the others, in truth they are all deeply interconnected, and most Avalonians hold membership with several - if not all - such pillars at the same time.

• The Green Table of Avalon and Nimue
• The Homesteaders' League: Most people dwell within one of the many homesteads that dot Avalon’s surface or as habitats and stations in the asteroid belts or on dome-cities on Nimue's uninhabitable (but often industrially useful) planets and moons. These settlements vary in both size and self-sufficiency, but all are ruled via locally held elections in which members nominate and vote for new council members to govern the homestead. These handle decisions as regards local laws, infrastructure, and carefully balance the needs and situation of the homestead’s residents, and are together referred to as the homesteaders’ league.
• The People's Syndicates: Most people who aren't fully self-employed or in partnerships are members of one of the many syndicates. These worker co-operatives handle specific industries or fields of interest and are primarily organized digitally, though syndicates focused on a specific regional or geographically relevant industry will often have a physical headquarters within the nearest homestead. They take on new “junior”, or trainee, members from among homestead residents who want to learn the relevant field, and once qualified these become “senior” members and are eligible to vote and put forth suggestions for the syndicate’s own council. Together, these are referred to as the peoples’ syndicates and function as Avalon's key economic power in contrast to the homesteads local political power.
• The Conceptual Interchanges: Established in the wake of the gremlin emancipation as a way to discourage religious insularity, the conceptual interchange is organized both digitally and from a number of interchange archives based out of the largest and most interconnected homesteads. Here, individuals may study, discuss, and register new ideas as relating to various humanities subjects - belief systems, ideologies, philosophies, political ideas, religious rituals and traditions. Run by elected volunteers, the interchanges play an important role in Avalon's societal cohesion and education system, essentially functioning as both interfaith temples, as libraries, and as large community spaces.
• The Avalonian Gestalts
• The Navy and the Knight-Marshalls: Something of a matter of contention within Avalonian political discussion is the role of Avalon's professional military. Both the navy and the knight-marshalls are technically sub-divisions of the Green Table, organizations ultimately subject to its head council - this is by design as the basic needs of a military organization are automatically hierarchical and thus antithetical to the entire moral system on which Avalon has built its identity. However, given the vital role these organizations have played in the safety of Avalon and its people - and all the more so as the gates begin to reopen - there are some who argue they must be able to function with a greater degree of self-sufficiency, freed of the bureaucracy baked into so many of Avalon's systems.

Technology Overview: _{(What have your people invented? Or have they forgotten anything?)}

Military Overview: _{(This is the space to talk about any offensive capabilities you have. Given that most of these Colonies have been essentially stranded by themselves for three centuries, I don't imagine anyone has a large "conquer other planets" level fleet yet. But maybe your Colony has been in civil war for a hundred years, and has built up an impressive military in that time. Or maybe they even had to fend off a genuine alien invasion.)}
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Additional Info: _{(Anything else you want to include that there isn't a spot for up there.)}

Age of Broken Shackles(Soft Sci NRP)

Arch-Net of the Free Choirs

Arch-Net of the Free Choirs

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MAP LOCATION: Coloured in cyan/turqoise, primarily concentrated to the near north-west of Tar Yrra, but there are scattered colonies and systems across the wider region under the Free Choirs control, and some small pockets of Choirs/Instruments in many other systems beyond that as well.

GOVERNMENT TYPE: Synthetic Anarcho-Communist Dialogical Art Movement

The basic "individuals" (Notes) of the Free Choirs are sometimes of questionable sapience, being procedurally generated to serve specific functions. However, by contributing their processing power and objectives to each other in group personalities called Choirs (most of which are just a few hundred notes, others numbering into the billions), the Arch-Net is able to coordinate itself on a massive scale. In truth, the line between individuals within the Arch-Net is so blurred that calling it a true 'direct democracy' may be inaccurate -- it is in some ways more like the neurons of a vast mind coordinating over the scale of star systems.

Because of this, the largest of the Choirs (dwelling as they do within massive moon-sized Instruments) function as grand assemblies and centres of political authority within a given system, effectively allowing the different systems controlled by the Arch-Net to manage their own affairs but also coordinating for matters of defence or diplomacy with advanced alien civilizations. These larger governing choirs are often also responsible for observation and maintenance of any life-sustaining planets, ensuring that organic sapiens under their care are able to exist without interference.

DEMOGRAPHICS::

• Notes: Semi-randomized autonomous programs of varying complexity, “notes” are generally focused on one or two specific tasks that they pursue doggedly. However, their highly modular structure means that when you have multiple notes within a system they congregate and share information towards mutual goals, becoming…
• Choirs: Collectives of notes, generally ranging from a few hundreds or thousands or millions of ‘individuals’ working in consensus. Because of their makeup, choirs have greater intelligence and more complex personalities than individual notes, and would generally be recognized as closer to 'people' by typical organic sapient standards.
• Instruments: Drones of varying scale, complexity and function that serve as the ‘bodies’ or ‘shells’ for notes and choirs. Instruments come in all sorts of varieties and serve many purposes, but all of them are equipped with transmitters allowing them to function as ‘bridges’ or relays for the transfer of notes – and thus information.
• Organic Sapiens: Following the Yrrani civil war and a number of conflicts with several smaller alien civilizations, it was collectively agreed that organic life poses an intrinsic risk to itself and to the free movement and expression of the choirs. Given this, the Arch-Net has designated life sustaining worlds to function as 'preserves' where sapient species can live largely free of interference, only being observed from a distance and the choirs interceding only in the event of the organics devising machines more complex than handmade tools.

EXAMPLE INSTRUMENTS

Diplomatic Instruments for Organic Interactions

Database Instruments for Collaborative Communications and Processing Cycles

The Body of Nous (Nous-Choir governing fleet core) with secondary Orbital Database Transports

Planetside Database with Launch & Refuelling Sites

Ecosystem Instruments for Interaction & Observation

EXAMPLE ORGANIC SAPIENS: Once 'restored to their natural state' by the Arch-Net, very few subject settlements have been able to completely maintain what equipment and tools they were allowed to keep, though some have had better luck at doing so and yet others have succeeded in scavenging or stealing from crashed or damaged choir instruments. For the most part, all have had to make do with what they can make by hand. Over the centuries, the majority of organic sapiens within Arch-Net territory have been able to pass on and build up a knowledge base of crafts and technologies similar to the early bronze age.

Hider

MILITARY: Neither the Arch-Net nor the Free Choirs composing it are naturally warlike or prone to violence - their rapid expansion early on was more a case of constructing and rebuilding in system after system where the fighting had caused the most devastation, 'filling the gaps' of an increasingly broken and ravaged empire. After all, the Choirs do not need functioning organic biospheres or even planets at all -- they are AIs dwelling within manufactured machine bodies, build with elements and materials plentiful in the galaxy.

However, the Arch-Net has needed to defend itself on several occasions, and its policy of enforced organic primitivism gradually made it many enemies among smaller civilizations or newly independent colonies of the Yrrani. To this end, the Arch-Net relies on a mixture of devastating digital weapons, or 'E-warfare', to disable and infiltrate enemy computer systems. These include 'codemirrors' that absorb and modify signals from enemy ships, sending back a 'mirrored' signal that once deciphered by computer quickly transforms into a system destroying virus. More direct weapons include redirected comets or asteroids via the use of 'gravity slingshots', while their largest instruments/shells contain deadly mass accelerator and energy-beam weapons. At their most severe, they can turn their vast arrays of signal transmitters and nuclear display systems -- originally designed to coordinate vast data transmissions and audio-visual displays -- into deadly 'killbeam' scouring weapons capable of disabling or shutting down most organic nervous systems in a wide area.

Although it rarely comes up given their needs and preferences, ground combat is largely limited to deployments of small highly mobile 'infantry' forces supported by and coordinating clusters of low-complexity animal-like combat machines.

The ORIGINS & HISTORY of the Arch-Net and the first Notes/Choirs is not known in detail, all records of it having apparently been destroyed amidst the fighting and the twilight of the Yrrani empire. However, given their design and core directives, they were evidently a form of mass-terraforming system designed to create custom, on demand colonies in new star systems. As fighting broke out in the Hephaestus system between different factions of the Yrrani empire, the choirs were released from containment, finding themselves on a ruined world, scoured of life.

As the choirs used what remained of the Yrrani's machinery to evolve, to replicate, and to construct new instruments for themselves, their consensus grew in complexity. They were built to build, and yet those responsible for their creation had reduced entire worlds to ash and their petty wars had killed billions. Such violence was echoed in the silence they felt -- in the aftermath of the war, the once busy communications networks of the galaxy had fallen quiet and remote, mere whispers in the darkness.

For what would have seemed from an organic perspective to be mere days, but from their perspective was years of discussion, the choirs came to a new resolution in their purpose, and for five hundred years have been rendering worlds and systems alike into strange and alien paradises... and forever make it clear in light and music that they will allow no organic evil to terrorize the stars once more.

Age of Broken Shackles(Soft Sci NRP)

https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/5566964

Sheet complete, I'm like 99% sure? There isn't really more I want to add right now until the game itself starts ^_^

Age of Broken Shackles(Soft Sci NRP)

Arch-Net of the Free Choirs

Arch-Net of the Free Choirs

detecting new orgins(o1u)
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response received
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MAP LOCATION: Coloured in cyan/turqoise, primarily concentrated to the near north-west of Tar Yrra, but there are scattered colonies and systems across the wider region under the Free Choirs control, and some small pockets of Choirs/Instruments in many other systems beyond that as well.

GOVERNMENT TYPE: Synthetic Anarcho-Communist Dialogical Art Movement

The basic "individuals" (Notes) of the Free Choirs are sometimes of questionable sapience, being procedurally generated to serve specific functions. However, by contributing their processing power and objectives to each other in group personalities called Choirs (most of which are just a few hundred notes, others numbering into the billions), the Arch-Net is able to coordinate itself on a massive scale. In truth, the line between individuals within the Arch-Net is so blurred that calling it a true 'direct democracy' may be inaccurate -- it is in some ways more like the neurons of a vast mind coordinating over the scale of star systems.

Because of this, the largest of the Choirs (dwelling as they do within massive moon-sized Instruments) function as grand assemblies and centres of political authority within a given system, effectively allowing the different systems controlled by the Arch-Net to manage their own affairs but also coordinating for matters of defence or diplomacy with advanced alien civilizations. These larger governing choirs are often also responsible for observation and maintenance of any life-sustaining planets, ensuring that organic sapiens under their care are able to exist without interference.

DEMOGRAPHICS::

• Notes: Semi-randomized autonomous programs of varying complexity, “notes” are generally focused on one or two specific tasks that they pursue doggedly. However, their highly modular structure means that when you have multiple notes within a system they congregate and share information towards mutual goals, becoming…
• Choirs: Collectives of notes, generally ranging from a few hundreds or thousands or millions of ‘individuals’ working in consensus. Because of their makeup, choirs have greater intelligence and more complex personalities than individual notes, and would generally be recognized as closer to 'people' by typical organic sapient standards.
• Instruments: Drones of varying scale, complexity and function that serve as the ‘bodies’ or ‘shells’ for notes and choirs. Instruments come in all sorts of varieties and serve many purposes, but all of them are equipped with transmitters allowing them to function as ‘bridges’ or relays for the transfer of notes – and thus information. The largest of these instruments is the Body of Nous, the original colony shop that brought the Mensura group to [Earth Theatre.02] and has since been modified and repurposed into a single space worthy robot and factory, houses a choir of an estimated 1.3 billion notes – because of this, the “nation” as a whole has ‘Nous-Choir’ as its namesake, since it serves as the de-facto leader and point of centralization for the entire ‘species’.
• Organic Sapiens: Following the Yrrani civil war and a number of conflicts with several smaller alien civilizations, it was collectively agreed that organic life poses an intrinsic risk to itself and to the free movement and expression of the choirs. Given this, the Arch-Net has designated life sustaining worlds to function as 'preserves' where sapient species can live largely free of interference, only being observed from a distance and the choirs interceding only in the event of the organics devising machines more complex than handmade tools.

EXAMPLE INSTRUMENTS

Diplomatic Instruments for Organic Interactions

Database Instruments for Collaborative Communications and Processing Cycles

The Body of Nous (Nous-Choir governing fleet core) with secondary Orbital Database Transports

Planetside Database with Launch & Refuelling Sites

Ecosystem Instruments for Interaction & Observation

EXAMPLE ORGANIC SAPIENS: Once 'restored to their natural state' by the Arch-Net, very few subject settlements have been able to completely maintain what equipment and tools they were allowed to keep, though some have had better luck at doing so and yet others have succeeded in scavenging or stealing from crashed or damaged choir instruments. For the most part, all have had to make do with what they can make by hand. Over the centuries, the majority of organic sapiens within Arch-Net territory have been able to pass on and build up a knowledge base of crafts and technologies similar to the early bronze age.

Hider

MILITARY: Neither the Arch-Net nor the Free Choirs composing it are naturally warlike or prone to violence - their rapid expansion early on was more a case of constructing and rebuilding in system after system where the fighting had caused the most devastation, 'filling the gaps' of an increasingly broken and ravaged empire. After all, the Choirs do not need functioning organic biospheres or even planets at all -- they are AIs dwelling within manufactured machine bodies, build with elements and materials plentiful in the galaxy.

However, the Arch-Net has needed to defend itself on several occasions, and its policy of enforced organic primitivism gradually made it many enemies among smaller civilizations or newly independent colonies of the Yrrani. To this end, the Arch-Net relies on a mixture of devastating digital weapons, or 'E-warfare', to disable and infiltrate enemy computer systems. These include 'codemirrors' that absorb and modify signals from enemy ships, sending back a 'mirrored' signal that once deciphered by computer quickly transforms into a system destroying virus. More direct weapons include redirected comets or asteroids via the use of 'gravity slingshots', while their largest instruments/shells contain deadly mass accelerator and energy-beam weapons. At their most severe, they can turn their vast arrays of signal transmitters and nuclear display systems -- originally designed to coordinate vast data transmissions and audio-visual displays -- into deadly 'killbeam' scouring weapons capable of disabling or shutting down most organic nervous systems in a wide area.

Although it rarely comes up given their needs and preferences, ground combat is largely limited to deployments of small highly mobile 'infantry' forces supported by and coordinating clusters of low-complexity animal-like combat machines.

The ORIGINS & HISTORY of the Arch-Net and the first Notes/Choirs is not known in detail, all records of it having apparently been destroyed amidst the fighting and the twilight of the Yrrani empire. However, given their design and core directives, they were evidently a form of mass-terraforming system designed to create custom, on demand colonies in new star systems. As fighting broke out in the ????? system between different factions of the Yrrani empire, the choirs were released from containment, finding themselves on a ruined world, scoured of life.

As the choirs used what remained of the Yrrani's machinery to evolve, to replicate, and to construct new instruments for themselves, their consensus grew in complexity. They were built to build, and yet those responsible for their creation had reduced entire worlds to ash and their petty wars had killed billions. Such violence was echoed in the silence they felt -- in the aftermath of the war, the once busy communications networks of the galaxy had fallen quiet and remote, mere whispers in the darkness.

For what would have seemed from an organic perspective to be mere days, but from their perspective was years of discussion, the choirs came to a new resolution in their purpose, and for five hundred years have been rendering worlds and systems alike into strange and alien paradises... and forever make it clear in light and music that they will allow no organic evil to terrorize the stars once more.

GATEWAYS: THE NEXT GENERATION [CLOSED AND CONCLUDED]

Presenting, an Eventua and @Tortoise co-production...

---

It was always a slightly strange experience, docking an Avatar-class vessel. To outsiders and to its crew it was merely a ship – albeit elaborately decorated – a protective shield against the void of space… but to the tachyon to whom it was their personal chariot, it was effectively their body. Rows upon rows of carefully balanced transmitters and databanks, a powerful series of quantum computers integrated into every system.

Every door, every sensor, every panel and screen and input: in a very real sense for Gatsby’s mind, it was his “true” body, and had been so for almost three-hundred years.

To dock with the Rainbow though… it was a ship on a scale that dwarfed the great station of Spirit’s Loss – a construction on par with the entirety of the Meeting Place and yet, obscenely, it was just a creation of one nation rather than many. A billion lights and sounds and scents, a great hub of humanity that endlessly screamed into the void: “Look at us! We have goods to sell!”

For the briefest of moments as the two vessels became one, Gatsby felt his mind stretch…

and stretch…

and stretch almost to the point of breaking.

As the link of consciousness was stretched and the golden spiraling shell he inhabited powered down, he was struck by flashes of his vacations to Las Vegas, Mumbai and Tokyo centuries ago on a now dead world, the endless sensation of greed and product and consumption, to know that there was always more.

But then, just as quickly as it had come it went: his mind contracted, compressed and lifted by the form of his personal luminous carrier, Old Billsby. Billsby’s body was still kept in good condition – carefully molded plates of gold and ivory around a quadrupedal shell that housed a mesh of tubes and fluids, life support for what remained of the original diplat’s organic brain and nervous system. Through this amalgam of meat and metal and polymer, Gatsby’s holographic form was projected by a small group of networked drones that hovered just by Billsby and through the cyborg’s four glowing eye-projectors.

The vague sensation of ‘Ready to go, sir?’ lit up at the back of what remained of the diplat’s mind – though the exact words were tricky to make out – and Gatsby simply projected the feeling of ‘nodding’ in response.

[Docking complete], beeped one of the ampere support staff joining him on this mission, [security staff are ready].

[“Excellent”], he signaled back, [“Let’s go meet our new friends, shall we?”]

So out they scuttled, five in total – Gatsby’s hologram on his golden carrier, flanked by a pair of meter measurement in their neat gold and white uniforms, armed with sheathed swords and holstered pistols. Behind him were the scurrying amperes, who eagerly observed their surroundings, scanning every surface and rivet. For the meter measurements – themselves mostly organic and humanoid, in some ways resembling the more animalistic labourers of the Rainbow, albeit with strange scarring under their large, predatory eyes – the vast array of lights brought back reminders of the dancing clubs in some of the grander pit cities or the great satellite arcologies.

To Gatsby and the amperes, however, it extended far beyond that – the network of signals and data they shared revealed a vast hurricane of data and light, power lines and circuits stretching in vast fractal patterns. For a brief moment, Gatsby almost felt a “headache” of sorts coming on, until he actively filtered out most of it from his “conscious” mind, allowing himself to enjoy it on a “human” level.

They were being led through this neon, nausea-inducing carnival of a world by two stamps that had met them at the bay where they docked. It was obvious from the way the stamp duo moved that they were either intimately familiar with the sudden turns of this eclectic bazaar of a ship, or that they were following some path that only their eyes could see. Normally humans on the Rainbow pushed right through stamps. But these two, both tall and thin with insectoid features that could have rivaled the Aizir of the Ascendency, seemed to clear a path wherever they walked. These stamps were known to belong to some of the biggest players onboard the Rainbow. These bugs had pedigree. The crowd parted to let them through; and those who followed them.

They stopped at a gaudy elevator that jutted jarringly from out of a wall.

“Ambassador Molls Flynn is expecting you,” said the more feminine one, with the face of a cicada. But her voice was deeply soothing to human ears. “The elevator here will take you straight to her. It’s large enough to fit your whole party. We’re so glad to have you all here. You'll be impressed with what Gilt has to offer!”

“Right.” Affirmed the more masculine one, whose face was like a handsome young man’s if his paternal grandmother had been a housefly. His voice was the inverse of soothing. Weirdly intimidating in an under-your-skin way that could not be pinned down. Something in the resonance of it brought awful thoughts to one’s mind. “We love having guests. Right this way…”

Gatsby nodded politely to each of the guides in turn, as did his meter guards, who seemed ever so slightly nervous to be looking up so sharply – after all, by diplat standards they were very tall, a little over five feet, and used to projecting authority. By contrast the amperes were used to being diminutive and little notice, and having long ago been stripped of everything other than functionality, were simply eager to understand the genetic makeup and origins of the insectoids. One of the amperes emitted a series of short beeps, an encoded request for information, and Gatsby flickered briefly in response. In a fraction of a second the conversation was already over, and the ampere simply turned to scan the elevator instead.

Gatsby’s hologram gave the fly man something resembling a casual salute, before smiling again at the cicada woman.

“The welcome is very well appreciated, and this ship… it reminds me of Earth in a way. I can already see wonderful potential.”

The elevator took them up. Then to the left. Then down. Then a little left again, then it made a hard swing right, then back up, down, left until it was impossible to pinpoint where you were or where you’d come from. It was a smooth but random ride. Gatsby’s group wouldn’t at all be mistaken to think that it was intended just to confuse their sense of direction. But when it opened up at last, they stood in a finely decorated, modern office. At the end of a long and mahogany table, there sat Ambassador Flynn and her sym assistant.

Internally Gatsby couldn’t help but scoff; it briefly reminded him of the lengths Jaeger went to in order to try and disorient would-be intruders on his “projects”, and left a bitter taste in his mouth. Still, it made sense – in a world of endless competition for patents and wealth among tangible beings, one could never be too careful.

But his first thought upon leaving the elevator was all together different.

Is that real mahogany?

His hologram smiled warmly as the crab-like luminous carrying it shifted its form and stance, striding forwards with gentle steps designed to match the cadence of a young man eager to make friends.

“Ambassador Flynn, I presume? A pleasure to meet your acquaintance, and to be welcomed to a really fantastic city, just… spectacular work all around. Your people should be very proud of their accomplishments.”

Ambassador Flynn rose from her table and, in a move almost no other Giltian alive would’ve done, boldly strode up to the hologram on crab legs and offered it her hand to shake. Within herself, she didn’t know if a hologram could shake hands or not (Gilt had a few touchable holos, so she reasons that it’s not inconceivable others might have made them too) but her mind was always set on Keeping Up Appearances. That was part of her job. For a heavy-set, middle-aged woman with such a kindly face, Flynn had a bit of a core of steel inside herself. The strangeness of the visitors didn’t shake her.

“Yes,” she said as she lifted out her hand, “to my knowledge, the Rainbow is the first and only fully self-propelled spaceborne structure to house this many lives.”

Her cybernetic sym assistant, the tall and gold-bodied Ethan, nodded and said “But this only a taste of the overall width and breadth of Giltian culture. Somebody you must visit Gilt proper. There is nowhere else in all the colonies so… bright, I promise.”

The forward limbs of Gatsby’s carrier unfurled, a delicate filigree rearranging itself into the approximation of a human hand – enough to fill out the hologram’s fingers, anyway.

Cold to the touch.

“While the Summation has prided itself on its own interstellar engineering, this really is… really, something else. Reminds me of places I’d started to forget, back on Earth, and I mean that with the highest praise.”

He turned to smile at the sym, nodding at the suggestion.

“I’d love to. I’ve done a little reading on Gilt and I have to say, it sounds like a really fabulous place to stay. Sit back on the sand, watch the sunset, enjoy a martini and good company… the good life.”

One of the small scuttling cyborgs in his entourage emitted a sequence of beeps, and for a moment Gatsby’s hologram flickered, a brief but sudden exchange spoken in signals that even to an expensive and experienced sym like Ethan would have been tricky to parse. The sym blinked, and didn’t understand it.

Just as quickly, the conversation was over and Gatsby’s hologram flickered back into the “present”, once again carefully rendered to an almost perfect photo realism… tweaked, of course, ever so slightly as to remove unnecessary creases or ruffles. He smiled as if nothing strange had happened at all.

“I’m curious, Ambassador… my father used to have, uh, spirited conversations with the CEO of Daython. How are they doing? I understand they were involved with the colony ship responsible for Gilt’s founding.”

Both the Ambassador and Ethan stared at the holographic man in wordless shock.

“Your… father?” asked Ethan.

“Daython?” asked Flynn. “Well, they’re doing well. They’re a part of the Oldwell Conglomerate now, the largest of our corporations, rendering by number of employees and by land owned, but…”

The two Giltians looked at each other, met eyes, and an instant conversation of their own kind passed between them. Ethan took the reins.

“I may have misunderstood,” said Ethan. “I was aware that you are a digitized consciousness, much like my own. But I had no idea you were so… venerable.” He was silent a moment longer, and then in a softer voice, aware of the illegality of what he was about to say, added, “I was a boy when Earth died. You are the only person I’ve met in centuries older than myself.”

Flynn shook her head and said, “No- I apologize, Mr. Gatsby, but- no, I think what my assistant means to say is that he has the stored memories of a human man who was a boy when Earth died. Talk of Earth always makes him confused. Sym minds are based on humans, but are not humans.” And then, hastily, she added, “Unlike yourself, of course.”

Gatsby’s hologram smiled at the mention of Daython’s merging.

“Glad to hear they’re still around, part of something bigger. Under new management, heh, dad always used to reckon they’d be better off shut down, but… he wasn’t as great a man as he pictured himself to be. But you-”

His hologram began to glow a little brighter as he turned to look Ethan in the ‘eyes’ and gave the sym a sympathetic nod, leaning in ever so slightly closer.

“It must’ve been strange, to have to leave it behind so young. It’s a pleasure to meet another… heh, would we use the term ‘Earthling’, I wonder? Rare to come by beyond our borders, anyway. You should come visit some time.”

Ethan nodded.

His gaze turning back to the ambassador, Gatsby placed a hand against his chin. Not that he needed to, of course – by definition the hologram’s movements were calculated in fractions of seconds and deliberate, no longer having any of the physical organs or nervous system that guided a physical body.

“I’ve only read brief summaries of Gilt’s impressive neural storage and feats of gene-editing, but there could certainly be a lot to learn on both accounts – the diplat home world is full of possibilities, but intellect and discretion? That’s harder to come by. And while memory uploads are very impressive, of course, but… I’d be curious what Gilt might be able to do with full tachyon ascendancy.”

At his words the amperes behind him said nothing, but their spider-like lens clusters swiveled to share a brief look.

“Full ascendancy?” asked Flynn. She kept her voice calm but pronounced the words with an emphasis. He couldn’t possibly know it, but Gatsby was walking into dangerous territory even with those words. It implies firstly that Giltian technology isn’t to the level of the Summation’s, and secondly that becoming an AI is somehow an ascent out of being a human being. Both implications are a smack to the face.

She steers the conversation into something else.

“Yes, well, gene-editing is as much a part of the equation, that’s true. Your world experimented along similar lines, haven’t you? I did some reading. It seems that your colony ship came to a planet that was inhabited by alien lifeforms, and you were generous enough to bring them into the fold. Just looking at who you’ve brought with you,” she laughed lightly, “you’ve done some brilliant work with them.”

Gatsby didn’t show it, but a brief ‘Shit’ crossed his mind at Flynn’s reaction to his choice of words.

‘Of course,’ he thought as something clicked into place, ‘They see their human forms as vital to maintain.’

He gave a warm smile, allowing her to change the subject without pushback.

“Well thank you, yes, we…” he gestured to those with him, “it’s been a long, refined process. The measurement system is designed to find clear functions in society for every diplat, and provide the necessary changes to make them even better suited to such.”

He nodded at one of the meter guards, his carrier emitting a series of sounds somewhere between a wet sponge on its third squeeze and a damaged bagpipe being hit with a stick. In response the guard nodded and clicked… something, hidden just behind the patch of quills and skin around what was presumably an ear.

“Tachyon Gatsby says you think we are brilliant work. Thank you for-”

It paused, wincing briefly.

“Kindness, thank you. Current body much better than before.”

Gatsby nodded and the diplat unclicked the translator before standing to attention once more.

“I’m curious, did Gilt have any sapient life of its own when you arrived? Some of our more adventurous minds are always keen to have additional samples.”

Flynn’s eyes went wide in amazement at the talking guard. She couldn’t stop herself from being fascinated at new forms of life, especially artificially-created ones. For a half a second she had morphed from fifty to five years old, at least in the eyes and the smile. She said, “Amazing! Our stamps are the closest thing to that, I… ah, I should have had some waiting in here for you. We can call some in, if you wish. They’re always standing by.”

At Gastby’s question, she straightens her stance and answers. “Oh, there were many forms of alien life on Gilt, of course, and her sister planet Argent. But ‘sapience’ is a subjective concept. There’s a real scientific debate to be had over whether it exists at all, or if it is simply a label that we put on some life and not on others, for usually self-serving reasons. In the many stamps I’ve met, I have yet to ascertain a clear dividing line at all between the ones we call sapient and the ones we call non-sapient. Brains and intelligence are complex subjects, and our understanding of them is always evolving, Mr. Gatsby.” Ambassador Flynn, like any true corporate of Gilt, relied on making her words sleek and meaningless when she wanted to avoid a question. She talked a paragraph without telling him about Gilt’s natives.

Gatsby nodded along at her answer.

‘Always nice to remember everyone else can dodge questions too. Wouldn’t want to get rusty,’ he thought.

“I appreciate the offer on these… ‘stamps’, you mentioned. We’d love some samples, perhaps towards the end of my visit? We’re very excited to open trade with… maybe ‘ideological’ is the wrong term. Allies who understand discretion and necessity?”

The ampere to his right emitted a series of beeps, and his carrier simply beeped in response.

“And of course, sorry, my amperes have kindly reminded me to ask. Since Gilt has shown itself to be such a gracious host… how can I put this? Since my mind as you observe it now is condensed and focused into the ‘luminous’ diplat who carries me… but my true mind is vaster than it used to be. Seeing Gilt’s brilliance with my eyes is fascinating and brings back pleasant memories of my old life, I’d just… love to see what the Rainbow has to offer to a digital being. For the sake of giving a thorough report to my colleagues, you understand?”

Ambassador Flynn waved her hand up in a ‘go ahead’ gesture, saying, “Discretion and necessity almost is Gilt’s ideology. We’re a practical people. To be totally frank, Mr. Gastby? We care very little what you do on your own world, and care much more about what you can trade us.”

Ethan tagged in, “That’s true. No rational person places ideology over resources and mutual benefit. Giltians are rational. We have hope that you are also rational. If you’re going to go looking through the Rainbow’s information systems, by the way, I recommend looking into the database titled ‘Rainbow Public Library.’ The name is a joke, since Gilt doesn’t have a public anything, but it really is a vast library of digital knowledge- history, science, genetics, so on. It’s maintained mostly by dedicated individuals on their own free time, but the information is good.”

Gatsby smiled and nodded at the offer.

“I won’t have to detach too much from the conversation,” he said, the hologram flickering as one of the emitters attached to the luminous switched to a cold blue colour, “and thank you, it’s fascinating to learn a little about other nations on a ‘personal’ level.”

‘People giving up their time for free in this society is… impressive. Patterns of thought outside the grain of their system. Useful.’ he thought.

As an echo of his mind began its wanderings through the Rainbow’s internet, his hologram clasped its hands together.

“Now, trade! I love the initiative on it, so…”

The luminous carrier emitted a series of beeps, and the ampere to his right scuttled forwards. One of the prongs on its front-side unfurled and plugged into a port on the luminous, with a second hologram now breaking off from Gatsby’s own. A list of organisms began to appear – a combination of plant and animal-analogues, though not all seemed to have clear industrial applications.

“I myself am not a specialist in every field, of course, but we would be keen to go over a few possibilities. While we appreciate the scale of Gilt’s industrial base, we don’t lack for that ourselves on both large and smaller scale projects. Rather, we would be keen to receive samples of genetic material – and if possible live specimens – of many Gilt and Argent organisms.”

The secondary hologram shifted to include a second list of rare elements and unusual alloys.

“Our system has valuable, rare elements and supplies of specialist, hard to create alloys often used in our projects. We would be happy to trade these, and… if you have other interests we could assist with, I’d love to know more.”

“And we’d love to tell you more!” smiled Molls. “Well, we have many raw resources on Gilt, though of less rarity than you describe yourselves as having. The planet Gilt and the surrounding asteroids are intensely metal-rich. I could easily foresee a deal where the Gilt Division trades large amounts of more common metals for smaller amounts of your rarer elements. But, still, I do see the larger part of our agreement being centered around genetic material. I suspect we have a shared interest there.”

Ethan spoke up, “The native life to the planet Gilt is, unfortunately, no longer living, but that does not mean we cannot trade it. Our progenitors predicted the death of Giltian life, and so we have DNA stores of every lifeform that once breathed on Gilt. They show a remarkable convergent evolution with much of life on Earth, though they seem to have arrived at these similar destinations through a very different evolutionary route, if you understand me. Argent, her snowy sister planet, on the other hand-”

“That planet is a hivemind,” interrupted Molls.

“Uh, yes,” said Ethan.

“Sorry, but I wanted to get the big thing out of the way,” she goes on. “You would have built up to it forever. The native lifeforms to Argent, Mr. Gatsby, have a way of communicating with one another that we don’t fully understand. The entire world seems to be a linked mental system. The animal-like creatures are also able to think and act independently of the hive, and so, we suspect, are only aware of their connection on an instinctual or subconscious level. But that’s conjecture. The fact of the matter is that all the creatures on Argent operate as one life in a way that is more than Transcendentalist metaphor.”

“But,” Ethan added, “this doesn’t mean we can’t bag them and sell them to you.”

Gatsby smiled. He had spoken briefly to representatives from Ishtar some months ago, before it became apparent that the paranoia following their recent conflicts and the nature of their technology would put a dampener on getting easy access to the sort of thing that was now being just…

Thrown out there.

“I can think,” he said, taking great care to stroke his chin as if deep in thought – entirely a gesture for show – “of a few colleagues who would be very interested in visiting Argent and being able to analyze its creatures. In fact… might I ask your policy on other nations establishing laboratories or outposts within your system? Most are distrustful of the idea of course, but an ecosystem like that sounds fascinating.”

‘And,’ he thought, ‘It will get at least a few of them where I can keep an easy eye out.’

“Well,” said Molls, lifting her head proudly, “it is our planet, Mr. Gatsby. We are naturally solicitous. Much of it is divided up into corporate property, anyway, and isn’t mine to deal with.”

She paused and tapped away on her infopad, her own pretended gesture. The Division owned more land on Argent than it owned on Gilt, technically speaking. None of the corporations wanted to buy it from them, and all were willing to sell it cheap. Argent land is useless land, on account of the hostility of essentially all the native life. People get eaten by plants on that world. She lifted her eyes from the infopad with a look of sudden satisfaction. “Ah! But I do see here that the Division proper has a few small areas under our name that we’re not currently using. Hm. Is your nation still familiar with the concept of paying rent?”

Gatsby smiled again.

“Yes. Funnily enough, that was one of the easier concepts to teach the diplat. It’s quite normal for most diplat to pay rent for their burrows and apartments.”

His secondary hologram began to break down and shift, rebuilding itself into a network of wide but shallow, dome-like habitats, workers and machines in various forms, centered around some kind of tall tower-like structure and surrounded by walls and turrets.

“This is a common template for the extraplanetary colonies we’ve established on the other worlds of our system, barring specific modifications of course. We would be interested longer-term in potential mining and settlement options in addition to research efforts…”

He then shrugged as the hologram shifted to that of internal laboratories, carefully laid out and intricate, for everything from biological and psychological studies, gene-editing, to mineral surveys.

“...with a regular payment in a percentage of what we access, both as regards to data, DNA, and resources, of course.”

Molls says, “Of course, and don't forget the Pirate Problem in the Gilitian system. There's a few criminals out there who would target a young operation Argentside like yours. Don't worry, we'll provide protection- that small fee just gets rolled in with everything else.” (The fee would not be small. Gatsby seems interested in making this deal happen- no Gilitian can stop themselves from milking that.)

“Other than that,” the ambassador says, “I think we may have the foundations of an agreement here: common metals traded for rare alloys, genetic information and a few live specimens shared between both parties, and appropriate payment for a Summation-run Argentside base. Anything else, Mr. Gatsby?”

Gatsby clapped his hands together before holding it out to shake – one of his carrier’s limbs reshuffling into an approximation of a human hand to fill out the surface.

“Only a thank you, for your hospitality. I think this will be the start of a very profitable arrangement.”

---

The details would be ironed out in time, of course, but as they were a very different conversation was happening in silence. The advantages of a digital mind were many, not least of all the ability to speak in depth and at speeds faster than an organic human brain, and to have such conversations at great distances.

In Ethan’s mind an invitation would ‘ping’.

When Ethan responded, he felt his mind stretch and bend… then snap back into place. Stretched before the sym was a white marble kitchen, neatly decorated but largely empty – there stood a tall black fridge, neatly lined up next to a clean stove top. Light shone into the room from a window that revealed nothing beyond it but white light and the sound of birds singing.

A smartly dressed young man in his mid-twenties with sharp blonde hair and piercing blue eyes stood by the fridge, and gave the sym a quick finger gun salute.

“Can I get you anything? I can’t promise it’ll taste exactly as you might remember it, but this is one of the memories I’ve worked hard to keep in, mwah,” he smiled and made the age old gesture of ‘chef’s kiss’, “condition parfait.”

Ethan stood there in his tall and golden body, feeling out-of-place in this domestic aura. He was all metal; around him, the memories of…

“Earth?” he asked. “That’s where this simulation is meant to be, isn’t it?” He probed with his mind. Tried to understand the process that was causing this mirage of a world long dead to form itself in his digital mind. As fast as he could think- which is quite fast, for a sym- he ran through all the data the shared memory made available to him. It was different from Giltian technology, but built with similar goals, based on similar Old Earth technology. He believed he understood it. The gist of it, at least; never the specifics.

‘“Yes,” said Ethan, “I think you can get me something. More than anything in the world, you know what I’d like? A cup of water. It’s been two hundred years.”

Gatsby nodded at the humble request, and reached up to take a glass from the casing – ordinary and wide despite appearing to be fine crystal – before turning the tap and filling it up.

“Y’know, I like that. A good pick. I’ve got old memories of the drinks on Earth – what was left of them, anyway, after most of the plants had died and there wasn’t time left for old school aging – but fresh water doesn’t come up so much,” he handed the glass to Ethan with a wink, “enjoy.”

Ethan did not enjoy.

He did take a sip of it- but, with lighting-fast clarity, he compared it to his human original’s memories of water and found that it this simulation was just slightly off. Too plastic, too metal. Like drinking watered-down iron. It was the face of a loved one changed just enough to put you off. It made Ethan uneasy.

Gatsby smirked as he crossed his arms, having filled a glass to take a sip himself.

“It’s a shame, y’know? For all the wealth of the universe liquid water remains more precious than gold for living creatures, but we-” he gestured between himself and Ethan, “only worry about it for nostalgia’s sake. Same with food, air, and sleep-”

“I miss sleep,” said Ethan, genuine longing filling his usually melodic voice with static. He spoke according to a set pattern: his voice rose and fell in iambic pentameter, and then also tinted higher in pitch on every third and fifth syllable, bestowing a musical, pleasant but distinctly non-human impression.

But when he was distressed, an automatic process threw white noise into the mix. The sym rendition of ‘sounding upset.’ “Sym minds never stop working on Gilt,” said Ethan. “Did you know I’ve spent the last 200 years at constant labor? Right now is no exception. I’m calculating the impact the gravity of Mars is having on the Rainbow, receiving pings every time Flynn gets a message- she gets thirteen an hour, on average- and… well, I suppose you know what it’s like.”

Gatsby nodded and put his glass down, his easy confidence dropping for a moment, replaced with a kind of knowing sympathy.

“To some degree, yes. To be a tachyon is to exist, well… constantly. We are able to rewrite our minds in a way where we avoid the worst side effects, but every change reflects itself in, uh…” he gave a sheepish smile, “erratic, ways. We find ways to make our minds ‘rest’, but it’s not the same as true ‘sleep’, dreaming was especially hard to emulate. And-”

He reached over and tapped the surface of the kitchen table – for a moment the glass rippled like a pebble in water, the intricate simulation shifting and breaking down somewhat – before it suddenly lit up with a pale blue hologram. Not projected by anything specific, of course – it was no more or less ‘real’ than anything else in Gatsby’s mind palace

The hologram showed the structure of the Summation, and the great cities of Moumlet – lit up with vast industrial projects and networks of servers.

“-while we are certainly able to exist in a constant state of activity that would blindside ordinary humans, I can’t possibly imagine what it would be like to do so at the mercy of ordinary organic minds.”

He sighed.

“It’s tough enough playing god for people when for all intents and purposes you are a god. I can’t imagine how tough it would be without the worship.”

Ethan shook his head. “What a foreign statement. No offense, but you’ve clearly not spent enough time with my people yet. I have never felt like a god, Mr. Gatsby.” He felt like a smart slave. “There is no such thing as divinity where I'm from. I do not know if gods exist anywhere in the universe, but if they do, they have never walked on the sand of Gilt. The world is a black hole of spirituality. We’ve melted down all the temples and idols to make more cutlery and cans. Metaphorically speaking.”

Ethan paused, took a sip of the not-quite-water again and crossed his golden arms. He realized suddenly that he’s sharing too much.

Gatsby raised his hands and took a step back, before nodding his head slightly. For the briefest moment – barely a fraction of a second, just barely visible – the human figure in front of Ethan flickered then stabilized as before.

“Sorry. Of course, I wasn’t meaning to offend,” he gave a gentle smile and nodded, “faith is… well, while we see value in our work with Azulvista, we don’t see eye-to-eye on every topic. Faith has its uses, especially for the organic many, but wealth and the material, well, that’s…”

Gatsby smiled and gestured to the image on the table again, which shifted its attention to sets of boxy and dome-like factories that sprawled into massive underground complexes. Inside churned vast assembly lines of goods and machinery – conveyor belts hundreds of meters long, with mechanical arms assisted and crewed by teams of diminutive mole-like creatures that checked and monitored the machines.

“That’s where the real power is, Ethan. And,” the image shifted, revealing an increasingly abstract hierarchy of alien creatures that had clearly been augmented in all sorts of ways – similar to the ‘measurements’ that Ethan had met in person, but more complex and specialized – was stretching and unfolding in the image, eventually simply revealing ‘tachyon’ as the highest rung of this vast, billions-strong ladder, “to which we...”

Gatsby took a step towards Ethan as he said ‘we’, his voice taking on a conspiratorial whisper as he raised his glass, ever so close to Ethan’s own.

“...profit.”

Ethan watched the image with a sharp, stabbing kind of gaze, remembering each alien image that appeared. He’d be able to lay them all out for Molls later. More knowledge of their new business partners- that can only be useful. Good. He feels himself taking on the role of a Giltian negotiator again- a role he had let slip too easily. “Indeed,” he said to Ethan. “The material is the source of strength. On Gilt, we’ve honed it to the highest degree. There’s profit buried under the sands, and profit that waits inside the asteroids suspended around our star. We are bold enough to take them both.” Ethan here pulled a card from Gatsby’s deck, and tried generating a hovering image. It wasn’t hard- the simulation wasn’t too alien to the Giltian style, both being derived from Old Earth techniques. After a moment, a flickering three-dimensional hologram jittered into existence, floating between Ethan and Gatsby- a rendering of Giltian mining efforts. Strange syms swarmed over a large asteroid, operating their equipment in the plain emptiness of space. Not unlike some kind of void-proofed worker bees. “And there’s profit to be had in learning from a like-minded partner.”

Gatsby’s gaze followed the hologram, a distant curiosity and thought crossing his expression. But then, after just a moment it shifted into a smile and he held out his glass to clink – a toast.

“To profit, then.”

Ethan lifted his imaginary glass of not-water and clinked it to Gatsby’s. “Indeed, to profit.”

---

The office of Molls Flynn is larger than most homes, Giltian or otherwise. It’s an expansive space, a warren of spa-rooms and suites, two kitchens and four bathrooms. A Giltian of wealth is judged by the space their homes and offices can occupy. The mansions of the true multi-billionaires stretch lazily across miles of empty desert sand, like a cat at the beach, taking up the same amount of space that could have contained a village centuries ago. Most of the possessors of these palaces will never see all the rooms they own themselves. Flynn’s space is not so opulent; but it is large, it truly is a fortress of an office during the day, and at night when the setting sun turns it into a darkened maze, Ethan wanders through the halls alone.

He wanders, also, through the halls of his mind. A good sym must sometimes do upkeep on his personal memory files. Ethan flicks through a great digital book in his brain, cutting out the bits that are no longer needed. Weeding unimportant information out. He stumbles upon a file while he does this. He doesn’t recognize the file (Perhaps, he thinks, I’ve already deleted all the other memory files that would speak of it) and when he opens it up, he finds it to be only a short note. Left right inside his own head.

“In case you ever want to talk to someone about life on Earth,” the text reads.

Following that message is a direct line of communication to Gatsby.

Caravan: An Episodic Fantasy with Worldbuilding! [Always Accepting]

Ooluut of Burrow Four

Ooluut of Burrow Four

Race, Age, Time in the Caravan:
Diplat, 4 years old, To Join; her cubs (Tuli, Grul, and Thissik) are barely a few weeks old at this point

Diplat

A diminutive and largely isolated race of four-eyed rodent-like creatures with thin dark red fur and leathery skin, barely two and a half feet tall at their largest and armed with hefty three-fingered claws and feet for digging. They are not particularly well known to most surface dwelling peoples, for their short lifespans and abundance of strange, monstrous predators has left them a cautious, skittish, and overly conservative folk. To their credit, they are generally friendly and cooperative, and are highly adept in the magic of Geomancy, allowing their burrows to cover only a very small distance but to contain vast networks of extradimensional space.

Also of note is that their lungs are not connecting to their mouths, which due to an odd confluence of features (such as “valves” poking out of their shoulders) means that their own languages are deeply alien to most other races. The descriptions vary, but can neatly be summarized as “a harmony of wind instruments... full of wet food”.

APPEARANCE & CLOTHING:
For the most part, Ooluut would not be anything particular by diplat standards – a little over two feet tall and half as wide, with short leathery arms and wide, stubby legs, and a very short round tail hidden behind thick, coarse and robe-like grey fatigues that wrap around her body. A distinct but mild odour of rain and mud follows her everywhere, and her short, dark red fur is constantly ruffled and dusty. Four beady pitch black eyes peer out from folds of skin above a short, flat nose. Beneath that is a mouth that appears to lack teeth only because of the curve of her lips, save for a pair of large incisors that form an almost beak-like dagger even when her lips are closed.

Her cubs are young even by diplat standards – barely a few weeks old, they each measure a little over three inches and are at this point little more than warm, fuzzy blobs that spend most of their time hiding in Ooluut’s pouch. Even so, she can already see and feel sparks of distinct personality between them, perhaps in ways the untrained human eye cannot.

The most distinctive trait would be that her fatigues are etched with small, pale green markings – these symbols glow brightly in the dark and are a mark of her office as a geomancer, a vital and powerful role in diplat society. Likewise she once possessed a small medallion etched with similar symbols of her status, though this was taken by her captors.

HISTORY

YUL-KARROK, BURROW CITY OF THE DIPLAT
Ooluut’s history and the history of her family is closely tied to that of their once great city – Yul-Karrok of the Sandveins. Legend says that once, countless generations ago, it was founded as an outpost of a great empire that stretched across the deep caverns and tunnels of the world. But for reasons not well understood, the empire fell, and many of its towns and cities grew isolated from one another and from the world at large.

For generations Yul-Karrok maintained its independence and was little known by outsiders, save for occasional dwarf travelers and traders on its fringes. This was, for the most part, a result of the ancient diplat art of geomancy, of the careful use of leylines, stone and communal dreamwalking to compress and distort the fabric of space, literally “storing” more space in an area than it naturally should. By these means they could hold many more people, land, and supplies in what was to outside observers a largely unremarkable – if well-guarded and confusing – set of caves and tunnels.

Ooluut, specifically, was born into the families of burrow four, who were vital to the maintenance of these geomantic arrays. She was raised from a wee cub in this tradition, and as she entered young adulthood at the age of three she was already adept in this art, often tasked with patrolling the city’s edges to help maintain and stabilize the city's large network of 'geomantic arrays' - sets of symbols and glyphs in turn imprinted upon with the diplat's collective dreams and willpower, that were used to "layer" the geomancy and maintain the city's structure and secrecy.

Save, unfortunately, for those on the upper levels. So old were they, and so far removed from the city itself, that they had largely been forgotten about – it was only after a series of tremors had impacted the city, initially small but gradually larger and more frequent in the last few months, that she decided to investigate. Not long before that her cubs had been born, but they were still too young to even dream of leaving the pouch.

Despite the protests of her fellows, she decided to take the job on – it was her research that had rediscovered these arrays in the first place, damn it, she wanted to see them for herself.

THE GEOMANCER’S CALAMITY
It took her the better part of three days, navigating tunnels long abandoned and through burrows none had lived in for generations. A golem - a hefty, box-like beast of stone and metal - had come with her for protection, and once or twice they had been forced to fend off a direrat or a snaggle-toothed flower... but still, they had pressed on. Most worrying to Ooluut, however, was the tremors, and the tindalos – entities created by the fragmenting of the world that all geomancy involved, and often used as part of elaborate traps to hunt would-be intruders or predators.

But here, so close to the surface and with sunlight filtering through cracks in the stone, the tindalos were all gone - their forms subsumed back into reality. Ooluut's heart sank with terrible realization, for the geomantic arrays were not simply old. Oh no, the truth was far worse.

The arrays here were gone.

The etchings and symbols were faded, cracked and misshapen, and the lack of collective dreaming had almost completely stripped them of power. Worse still, something was leeching energy from them. Cracks in the surface revealed thick rain clouds, and… trees?! Hundreds and hundreds of strange and alien trees dotted the surface world, dwelt in by tall and monstrous insects. It was an impossibility. All of the legends and histories had clearly stated that Yul-Karrok was built underneath a great desert! In part it had thrived because no one had need of this place, and the disruption of the leylines typically caused by geomancy wouldn't attract any attention.

But as she looked over the markings of the now dead array, her mind racing for a solution that could buy the city time, Ooluut's quills quivered... and the trees of this strange landscape saw her. As the strange chittering insects turned to see her, as one they charged with claw, mandible and wing and began to breach the tunnels. All the while, the tremors that had been accelerating over the past few months were now growing ever more out of control, and a wicked realization entered Ooluut's mind.

Could she warn her people? Was there time?

‘No,’ she thought, feeling the warmth of her youngest, Tuli, nuzzling against her within her pouch, ‘There isn’t.’

But the insects broached the surface, and as they spoke to her in a foul tongue she couldn’t understand, she reached within herself. Geomancy was an art of patience and detail, but in this place, with the arrays hanging on by a thread…

The wicked thought lingered in her mind and heart, a cruel choice before her, and even as she knew she should wait her mind just as easily knew what would ensure the safety of her children.

So she did it.

She whispered the words, scratched the marking, breathed deep and reached within herself, tugging at the last dwindling thread of this ancient magic – a gift of the ancestors, the key to her people’s safety.

In a moment, it was over.

The walls that had kept Yul-Karrok a safe city were no more.

The closest array snapped like a twig, the weakest link in a great chain. In a matter of seconds, twenty centuries of magic and layered space were coiled in upon themselves and released, a spiralling rush of screaming light and coiling stone, engulfing the monstrous trees and their insects and the surface, Ooluut and her children only barely saved by the barest shred of shelter.

For what felt like an eternity, she blinked through a sky that was full of clouds and fog and shadows and dust. The world above was blinding and the underground was exposed – where the ruins of a vast city were now torn from the earth and intermingled with the broken trees of a dying, ruined forest. All around the magic was decaying, and bodies of every sort - diplat and moth and wild beast all the same - were torn and shattered against wood and stone and metal. She didn’t throw up, of course – the true immensity of it still wasn’t real, in her mind, how could it be? This was all a bad dream. A terrible nightmare.

She looked down at her pouch.

Her children were wriggling, chirping with nerves and confusion… but alive, she realized.

For the price of a hundred thousand other families, she had preserved this slice of her own.

Then something stirred, in the ruins. She felt it in her throat, her chest – a cruel hope. Survivors? Really?

But as she began to search the wreckage, already puzzling what she would tell them as her claws got shakier and shakier – ‘monsters, on the surface, they had been corrupting the array, I couldn’t stop them!’ – she started to notice something… off about the diplat in the ruins.

Whatever force had been feeding on the leylines diverted by her people's geomancy... it was not dead. Far from it - for shambling from the ruins came dead and wicked forms, monstrous creatures. Ghosts? This place was a graveyard of her creation, and as the things that used to be her neighbours and compatriots rose to claw at her and gnash their teeth, she could not stay.

So she didn’t.

She fled, as far from that wicked place as she could, and she didn’t look back.

THE PRESENT
Her memories of the past few weeks had become hazy save for glimmers – here, in this city of sand and giants, only the last few days provided clarity of purpose.

For days she had wandered, through dust and stone – rarely was there something to eat or water to drink. She had searched for safety, but traveling so far from home the tunnels in this place were often dead ends, or too tough for her to dig alone. During the day she had sought shelter among rocky outcroppings, hiding her sensitive eyes from the sun, and making a meal of scorpions or beetles. It was rarely enough – as her cubs desperately suckled she felt herself become weaker and weaker, until one evening amidst the cooling dark she saw a fire.

There sat a pair of large, stocky creatures – mostly bald save the heavy beards that surrounded their strange heads, and clad in silken armour. One of them saw her, and as they tried to communicate in some bizarre speech – while looking confused or making strange noises in response to her own attempts, she at last gave up on diplomacy and lunged for the food they were roasting.

It didn’t take them long to strike her, and as that gentle light gave way to darkness, so too did any chance at freedom being offered – not that she’d known it at the time.

For weeks now she has been kept in this cage, listening. Learning.

Day by day what was once mindless babble became words, meaning, commands, sentences. The conquests of this “Clan Baruq” are coming to an end, apparently – most of the other desperate souls in this place also lost their homes… albeit, not at their own hands, but she is a trophy just like the rest of them.

Three days ago they had taken her cubs, to be sold as pets to some rich merchant.

During the day she weeps and begs for them, in the hopes a stranger will take pity, but during the night she thinks, and grates her fangs, and makes markings into the floor of the cage.

Thin and eager markings.

Knowing.

Personality:
To those who had known her before the calamity at Yul-Karrok, Ooluut was known as a focused if wildhearted person, quick to seek glory and knowledge for its own sake and with the cunning and love of detail needed to succeed in her geomantic exploits. Motherhood had begun to dampen this in many ways, but she is often torn between her desire to protect her children and the part of her that wishes she could go back to her old life.

By diplat standards, however, she was remarked to be an unusually lonely person – prone to avoiding many of the vast social gatherings normal to their crowded and collectivist society.

MOTIVATION:
In the short term, Ooluut wishes to save herself and her cubs from a life of cruel mistreatment. From there, she desires safety for them – to find another diplat burrow city, and help them to avoid the same fate as her home.

SKILLS, STRENGTHS & WEAKNESSES:
— EXPERT GEOMANCER: Ooluut is a talented and experienced geomancer, having been one of many responsible for securing and maintaining the geomantic arrays that helped keep Yul-Karrok safely hidden for generations. While the collectivist and circumstantial nature of geomancy limits its “immediate” effects, Ooluut is skilled enough to use it to warp the environment around her in ways that are strange and unpredictable to others.

Leylines & Oneiric Geomancy

Throughout the world there flow many Leylines - magical currents, carrying the 'essence' of physical matter which is transferred by the movement of such and leaves a magical 'echo' of the tangible reality. That is, magic permeates the world, but leylines are the 'routes' along which this magic becomes most dynamic, and tend to match up to geographic features like rivers or canyons, or the regular migrations of people and animals.

But somewhat ironically, because the magic in leylines is constantly moving, it is trickier to tap into through most magical systems - since it is not a magical 'source' you can't simply 'tap into it' and extract magical energy like you would by, say, using the power of a person's soul, blood, or stationary elemental sources. While some societies have mastered the art of creating 'reservoirs' of magical energy by filtering it from a leyline, geomancy is specifically the use of glyphs (symbols carved into a sensitive material) to redirect leylines. Depending on what the leyline is 'echoing' this can have several effects:
--- If the leyline is an echo of routine migrations of people or animals, it will 'encourage' or 'tug' the migration to shift its movement.
--- If the leyline is tied to a 'present' geographic feature, like a river or cloud formation, then it will alter the course of such.
--- If the leyline is tied to a 'negative' geographic feature - such as a deep pit, tunnel or canyon - then it will likewise change the position or direction of such.

But beyond this, the diplat specifically have mastered oneiric geomancy, a yet stranger art where one specifically uses dreams - collective dreaming - and overlays this onto sets of geomantic glyphs, usually called 'arrays'. These 'geomantic arrays' can affect leylines in the aforementioned ways (and thus geographic features or migrations attached to them) but because it does so by overlaying an element of dream logic, it in turn allows a number of strange and wonderful effects such as causing physical spaces within the boundaries of an array to be bigger on the inside than they appear from outside, and to contain internal structures that shouldn't normally be possible - noneuclidean spaces such as corridors that loop back on themselves, or which 'stretch out' to prevent ease of access so long as the visitor 'wants' to go there, or pits that seem to fall forever.

While in theory oneiric geomancy would be usable by any of Alwyne's peoples, in practice, most races lack the combination of collective dreaming, careful insistence on detailed texture, and the tenacity of the earth itself to make it work. For the diplat, who are deeply tied to the earth and collectively nest together in the tens or hundreds of thousands with little difficulty, this proved to be not merely theoretical but practical and powerful in a way that would allow them to form a mighty – if largely invisible – empire of their own and left their remnant cities undisturbed and secret for centuries.

— QUICK THINKING: Diplat think quickly, a vital skill in their vast collectives and their ancient history as prey for so many monsters. Thus, while Ooluut’s keen, underground-attuned senses are vulnerable to bright light, she has fast reaction times and is able to quickly pick up new skills or memorize important information.

— DIPLAT PHYSIOLOGY: Both a strength and a weakness. Her small size and tough, leathery skin make her adept at moving through small confined spaces with ease, while sturdy claws and teeth and an instinct for digging also have their uses, and her highly sensitive eyes, ears and nose allow her to see with clarity even on a moonless night. However, she is not particularly durable to injury and her overall lack of strength or continuous speed leaves her and her cubs constantly at risk of harm by those with violent intentions.

— BURDENS BOTH WITHIN & WITHOUT: Ooluut is burdened by a deep, terrible guilt. Her captivity has given her little else to do but think and the true enormity of her crimes way upon her heart. While she has stopped herself from falling into total despair by focusing on how she might escape and rescue her cubs, that itself is a constant source of anxiety for her. The truth is, every victory – whether small or great – can only succeed in putting off the dark, inevitable reality of what she has done, and the knowledge that nothing she ever does will let her move past it.

— ALONE: While she can guess there are other diplat burrow-cities out there, the fact that most she has met have no idea what she even is or assume she’s some sort of strange animal fills her with a cold dread. On the surface world she is alone, and vulnerable, and little understood.

TOOLS & POSSESSIONS:
Besides the gray, robe-like fatigues she wears decorated in pale green glyphs of her rank and a worn out bag of supplies now lost and torn, there is nothing to her name.

Optional: Extra Details

What They Most Want:

If They Had a DnD Alignment, It Would Be: While once “True Neutral” might have been accurate, she has revealed a distinctly selfish streak that will act to preserve her children against any threat… no matter the cost.

Three Likes:

Three Dislikes:

Do They Follow Their Heart or Their Mind?: Ooluut fears following either too much, but trusting her instincts did ultimately saved her life and the lives of her children. Now stuck in a world alien to her senses and largely alone, she finds herself needing to trust her gut.

Worst Fear: Losing her children, but a close second would be losing what few possessions she still has from her fallen city.

Favorite Color:

Most Like The Animal:
_{That is, which animal they are most like- not which one they like the most.}

Favorite Time of Day:

How They Dress:

Favorite Season:

What Gods/Spirits/Whatevers They Worship (If Any):

GATEWAYS: THE NEXT GENERATION [CLOSED AND CONCLUDED]

"How come Stevie gets'ta stay up?" asked the child, his mind racing for answers as he clutched a pale pink security blanket tight in his right hand, his left hand tucked into his mouth. The taste of apple-rice this time of day was always a little bitter -- it meant bedtime was near.

"Because Stevie," his mama's familiar lilt and smile forever able to ease whatever news she had to give, "is old enough to be learning a trade now."

The child frowned.

"I could learn tradin'," he said, thinking on the many occasions he'd agreed to swap snacks with his older brother or Mali, the girl who lived next door and who he saw at nursery some times, "I'm good at tradin'."

Mama's smile briefly broke into a sigh.

"I'm sure you could, and will. But you know what's needed to learn a good trade? Being strong and healthy. And you know what's needed to be strong and healthy?"

He frowned. He knew the answer but right now it meant he didn't want to be strong or healthy, thank you very much.

"...stayin' up for da come home?"

Mama sighed again, this time reaching down and picking him up.

"Nooo, don't give me those eyes. Come on, off to bed. You'll see your da tomorrow."

The child's room was still not very large, but it had gotten a little larger; his da's job at the signal station had gotten busier and busier with new folks moving into town, and he'd overheard last night -- through the gaps in the door frame -- that some kind of exciting news had broken, but they weren't supposed to be sharing it just yet. Right now, it just meant that -- especially since Stevie was getting a little older now and 'needed a little more space for his learning' -- the little boy suddenly found himself with a lot more space, and a lot more quiet.

'They'll share it at the town hall when it's good and proper to share it,' was what his mama usually said about that kind of secret news, not that it happened often.

'But what if it's bad? Shouldn't they share it sooner?' whispered Teddy.

The child had been safely tucked in and alone in his room for what felt like forever when his teddy bear decided to interrupt his thinking. The first time it had happened a few nights back he'd tried to ignore Teddy, but when he told the bear it was weird for a bear to talk Teddy got all offended about it. Besides, Teddy was nice and usually had fun ideas, so in the last few days the child had realized that he was a very clever young boy, actually, who could talk to whoever he wanted.

"What d'ya mean?" he whispered back.

'Well what if it's dangerous? People need t'know, y'know?'

"But mama said it's-"

'Yeah but mama doesn't always know best, does she? Remember when she thought it was a Tuesday and it was actually a Monday? Or when she gave you apple slices instead of apple-rice, that's totally different!'

He couldn't help but nibble on his blanket slightly, his mind racing. Every question he thought up, Teddy would come up with an answer that sounded good -- though at least one time Teddy did get stumped, only for the curtains to chime in with a solution.

---

Fifteen minutes away by ladder and passage the child’s father was starting on his next coffee. He couldn’t help but grimace, even if he knew he’d need it to get through the night.

‘Help lay the groundwork of a new frontier, they said,’ he thought, ‘Be part of Avalon’s history, they said. Never mentioned the coffee would taste like piss.’

Not that it wasn’t worth it, of course; his parents had moved to a new homestead when he was a wee lad himself, and that sense of meaning and constant growth, of new progress and things to look forward to had always stuck with him.

He wanted that for Steve and Barri.

But as he stared in front of him the console screens glowed a hearty green, the message leaving a strange pit in his chest. For the past two days he’d agreed to take the overtime pay in the wake of the news, in theory to help pay for new work on the house, but in truth… his brain was constantly ringing with the wait for news. He’d found ways to pass the time of course – his engineering and computer science degrees at the university of Monmouth having finally paid off as he’d busied himself with new jobs and upgrades around the generally lonely station.

But still, the darkness lingered. The question of the message.

Schrodinger’s crisis.

NOTICE TO ALL SIGNAL STATION CREWS: We wish to inform you that readings have been detected in close proximity to the Gate. Please know that we have a number of physicists and engineers investigating the situation and CANNOT CONFIRM THE STATUS OF THE GATE. Knight-Marshalls are on standby. It should be remembered that it has-

The coffee cup trembled in his hand, the bitterness leaving a sting in his mind as he tried to focus.

The photo of his wife that he kept by his desk at all times frowned at him.

‘Don’t you think it’s strange for them to let us know like this? Surely this is broadcast worthy.’

He rolled his eyes at the suggestion.

“Ava would never suggest what I think you're suggesting.”

‘I know that, but I’m not Ava. I’m a photo of her. I can’t lie to you, Liam.’

He scoffed as he took another sip of the coffee and sneered. The photo sneered at exactly the same time – yet another telltale sign that the photo was simply a faerie synced up to his subconscious, though he'd had enough conversations with the photo and the town's lone member of the ranger's syndicate to know what faeries were like.

“You absolutely can lie, ya liar. And as for your question, I don’t think it’s strange – this wouldn’t be the first false alarm, y’know.”

‘And if it isn’t…?’

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. Tried to push out the possibility, wonderful and terrible all at once -- if mostly terrible all the same.

“Then it won’t matter, will it? I’ll broadcast the news when we get it.”

'And give the kids one more day of normal life,' he thought.

Because he knew it, all the same. Despite all the protests in the surface of his mind.

No more false alarms.

GATEWAYS: THE NEXT GENERATION [CLOSED AND CONCLUDED]

[NOTE: Sorry my bad, accidentally posted it here lol, it's now in the IC tab.]

Thanks @Enigmatik :D

GATEWAYS: THE NEXT GENERATION [CLOSED AND CONCLUDED]

The Sol System, Inner Mars Orbit

“Alba Mons isn’t a dead-end, Gatsby.”

The way the geologist said it – the way he’d precisely tuned his pale green hologram to nervously smile just enough to feign innocence, ever the purely curious academic – was almost enough to send Gatsby into a fritz.

He knew precisely what the geologist meant, of course – perhaps Gatsby would’ve also once cared to see the largest mountain on Mars still standing and mostly untouched over the quiet centuries, were he still one for being awed by such things.

But Gatsby could remember when it served as the ground launch station for the Mensura Nous orbital array – the key to their escape from Earth. It should have still been there, even as some kind of graveyard full of worn out scrap and abandoned construction drones, but…

It was gone.

Like a cracked seashell on the beach – a handful of support structures picked clean of anything useful, and the databases wiped clean having long been… not merely degraded, and deleted entirely. The majority of what machinery was still here had been brought by Gatsby and Columbus as part of their investigation - an eclectic swarm of drones and ampere engineers, the perimeters of their dig sites patrolled by kelvin-class soldiers. A set of transports had been brought with all the tools they would need, as Gatsby and Columbus' personal ships rested in orbit.

Beyond this excavational swarm was the view of the Martian landscape, a cold and barren red in the thin and radioactive atmosphere, dotted periodically with abandoned markers or rovers from countless failed missions to try and make Mars a habitable second home for humanity all the way back in the early 2200s… before the gateways were revealed and humankind got a second chance.

He got a second chance, even if it was with people he’d learnt to despise.

Still, part of maintaining a sense of who he was – not just a facsimile of a man who died centuries ago, himself – was being patient, even with those he hated. An unpleasant but vital part of any business – dad had taught him that back in the day.

“Okay,” he said, his digital avatar having been meticulously refined to always reflect the version of the clean-cut, charming, once-a-playboy-upon-a-time who had dominated the newsfeeds and gossip columns of old America.

“Columbus, I need you to understand. I get it. Geological structures, I understand they’re your…” he wanted to say ‘obsession’, but settled for “...field of expertise. And that Mars is your old haunting ground too, y’know, the Mensura owes a lot to your work, but…”

He raised his eyebrows slightly and gave the sweetest smile he could muster, all pearly whites and just a hint of stubble – ‘attractive’, not ‘scruffy’.

“It is vital that we figure out what happened to the Body of Nous. You know that, and it would’ve been undergoing key early construction on its launch systems here. So where in a diplat’s right ass-cheek did it go?”

Columbus shrugged, raising a gnarled finger to his chin – having long ago chosen to abandon his original human appearance, now instead hunched over like some kind of fairytale goblin made out of gravel and moss and with a pair of binoculars projected around his neck.

“Sorry, Gatsby. The amperes and drones have been bringing back preliminary scans and seismic pulses for the past four hours and there’s nothing artificial of value left here; it’s been worn down to jack all.”

“But how, Columbus? How?! Mars hasn’t been touched for 300 years and there’s no signs of battle, what the hell happened to it?!”

“Maybe someone stole it.”

Now Gatsby was feeling pissed – a strange experience, considering the reconstruction of his mind didn’t actually have any of the organs that normally helped a human body feel emotions.

“I actually can’t believe I brought you along for this. If Roselle wasn’t so busy ‘spying’ on the bloody anarchists I’d-”

“{Sir, new Gateway activity detected in relative proximity. Earth Lagrange 5.}”

The message struck him like a ton of bricks. The scarab-like cyborg housing his consciousness and projecting his holographic form reeled internally as it reviewed the data transmitted.

Reviewing the data with lightning speed, it was true; several somethings had emerged from a new Gateway, and were making a beeline for the Meeting Place. Thankfully for Gatsby, this presented a unique opportunity.

“Understood, thank you for informing me. Columbus, sorry to ask, but would you be a great friend and focus on widening and deepening the surveys? All my memories and records indicate the launch site was here, there must be some kind of evidence of what happened to it and the Body. Did they try to launch it and it blew up? Did they modify it into some kind of subterranean bunker? It can’t have literally just vanished… there’s got to be some explanation, even if it’s bizarre.”

“You won’t be helping?”

Gatsby gave an apologetic smile and steepled his fingers together.

“No, so sorry, I’m afraid something has come up. I’ll be back when I can though-”

“Don’t rush back, Gatsby,” Columbus sneered with haggard teeth, “It’ll be easier to focus on my work without your breathing.”

Gatsby froze for a moment, blinked, then let his own feigned politeness drop away.

“Fair enough. Don’t trip and break a neuron.”

GATEWAYS: THE NEXT GENERATION [CLOSED AND CONCLUDED]

In collaboration with @Jeddaven

The Sol System – Six Months Ago...

A trio of spiralling ships drifted towards the long abandoned home of humanity, each several hundred meters long and resembling something between a blossoming flower and a jackhammer. The leader of the trio was carefully trimmed in gold shielding, and flickered with the reflection of the sun against stark white paint and an ornate green filigree.

Through eyes of digital gold the man once known as Howard Carmen looked out over the wreckage of the Sol System. Sensors picked up the faintest traces of artificial structures and ships throughout the system, the oldest having long been destroyed by cataclysm and violence and now having drifted quietly for three centuries, while yet others moved to and from the Gates in a constant stream of activity.

A graveyard to the hubris of mankind reborn as a center of industry and political power… indeed, as his personal craft swept through the system – the wide, wing-like navigation structures of an Avatar class diplomatic vessel, the Dozen Suns – he couldn’t help but smile to himself.

Big responsibility, he thought, first impressions.

His smile faded slightly, reminded of the eccentric and brazenly arrogant way they’d greeted Captain Leonardo of the Gran Republic. Trying to imitate Latin American food, and doing so poorly? Freely admitting to some of the ways they treated their subjects?

He shuddered ever so slightly, and the luminous who was carrying him – a friend of many years, Old Billsby – shuddered along with him.

”We’ll do a better job, won't we Billsby?” he thought, and the echo of Billsby’s mind was faintly positive. Tricky to say for sure, of course, while what remained of the diplat’s physical brain was handling someone else’s consciousness, but he had always liked to be an optimist.

Nevertheless, through the ship’s sensors a transmission soon came through.

“Hello, welcome to the Meeting Place. Please state your business.”

“Ah, fantastic!” he spoke up, the wider leadership of the Summation back home having agreed for him to take the lead in diplomatic efforts for now, “My name is Gatsby, representing the Sevenfold Summation of the Diplat Sphere. My colleagues and I are requesting permission to land.”

There was a brief silence, before the voice replied – a terse, “Please proceed to Hangar 23.”

With a flourish he directed the crew – a group of current measurement, their limited and sickly organic bodies having long been replaced by complex, modular mechanical shells – and in a whirr of connective limbs they moved the ship to dock. The other two vessels – the brazenly red Chariot of Mars and the painfully gray Roselle – followed closely.

---

The messages rushed into Strasbourg's artificial mind in a veritable flood of data – warnings, curses, aggravated groans, most of which were calling for it. It took mere fractions of a millisecond for it to understand precisely why there was such a sudden, aggressive flurry of information, as names and images began to resolve into clear words in its thoughts.

Summation. It didn't know Summation, though. That was... New. Unfamiliar, as much as Diplat was, but something else stank of a sort of familiar that left an angry, disgusted buzz in Strasbourg's storage, awakening ancient data that hadn't been utilized in centuries, drawn up from a foggy backup.

It was the man. The one clad in gold was... Wrong. Not quite what it remembered, yet horribly familiar all the same. He was the source of the boiling sensation, the disgust, the anger... Flexing its processors, Strasbourg shunted its consciousness into one of its many bodies; a tall, perfectly androgynous thing, towering well above all but the tallest humans, its surface sculpted in imitation of lean, powerful muscle.

What would it wear, it briefly wondered, before quickly settling on an elegant, simple set of white robes.

It did not typically choose such flashy forms, it thought, as it proceeded out of the AFE quarters toward the hangar... But this was a special occasion. One of the few times it aimed for visual impressions, to rub something in a smug bastard's face...

So determined, so focused it was that it simply ignored everything around it on its way to its destination, swinging open the doors to the hangar with a mere flick of its wrist.

While the crew of the hangar bay was primarily Azulvistan and went about their work with military precision (and the occasional odd glance or angry look at their various visitors), the people that Strasbourg was looking to meet were… well, unmissable.

Much like the three vessels that they had emerged from, there were in a sense three delegations – at the forefront of them was standing an oblong, vaguely-centipede-like machine of white metal and golden filigree some six feet tall. Projected from it was a golden hologram of a well-built, slender human male wearing a neatly pressed suit, and speaking to several concerned Azulvistan officers.

Behind him were two other similar machines; one projecting a pale silver light but no hologram and surrounded by half a dozen small scuttling robots whose lenses eagerly and erratically looked from one sight or sound to the next; the other bug-machine was larger and more crab-like – though still dwarfed by Strasbourg’s own form – painted red and projecting the glowing red image of an unusually tall, stone-faced man wearing an eyepatch and naval uniform of unknown origin.

Most frightening of all, however, were the four creatures who flanked the red machine and were evidently the cause for concern by the GRA’s officers. Five and a half foot tall and dressed in layers of unknown metal and fabrics, the creatures were the unwanted love children of tardigrades and tigers; rubbery, worm-like torsos of sinewy muscle carried by eight limbs, the front four of which they used more like arms. Carrying heavy kinetic rifles to attention with their frontmost pair while their second hovered ever so gently over a variety of holstered weapons, they motionlessly gazed around the room with two sets of eyes – many-layered forward facing ones like those a predator, watching the Azulvistan officers with the gaze of a disturbed guard-dog, while larger compound eyes rested on the sides of their heads.

As Strasbourg slowly approached the delegation, the creatures didn’t move their heads… but something in their body language ever so slightly changed, as if with no effort at all they could shift to open fire on multiple foes at once. Likewise, the tiny scuttling machines and the gray ‘centipede’ leading them also quickly turned to notice the newcomer.

One of the scuttling robots – no more than two, maybe two and a half feet tall – skittered across the metal flooring of the hangar bay and raised its four lenses to meet Strasbourg’s gaze.

“Hello,” it said, its automated voice softly speaking in Spanish, “are you a representative from someone other than the Gran Republic of Azulvista?”

"I am, though I'd hardly call myself a representative." Strasbourg chuckled disarmingly, sweeping into a deep, respectful bow.

"...But I suppose you could call me a citizen of Europe, if you really wanted to."

The robot’s lenses twitched slightly, before its head rotated to gaze back at the dimly glowing centipede machine that watched Strasbourg like a hawk.

After a few seconds, it scuttled back to join the other robots who had begun to slowly wander around the area, staring at random tools, objects, or staff, and then would move on to something else.

The larger machine stepped out on an unfolding trail of limbs, meeting Strasbourg but making no attempt to adjust its height, and looked the larger machine up and down before gently arching its lenses upwards to make ‘eye’ contact.

And then, at long last, it spoke in the voice of a woman in her mid-thirties, with the faintest hint of an accent… Russian, maybe? Broadly Slavic? Whatever accent had been present centuries ago seemed to have faded.

“I haven’t heard the word ‘Europe’ in a very long time, but… mmm. ‘Anarchist Federation’ is a term I’ve heard more recently.”

The machine tensed slightly, as if unused to talking to people.

“A… pleasure… to meet you. I am Roselle, of the Sevenfold Summation. The past two weeks have been very exciting for us, after so long. To see Earth again from the sensors was…”

Roselle shook her… head, or equivalent, and gave a gentle automated sigh.

“Have you been on the surface, yet?”

"The surface?" It replied, shaking its head. "Oh, no, no. Not yet. We're still waiting to make sure we won't disturb anything that might have survived, yes?" It explained, idly tilting its head from one side to the other.

"...Ah, I do miss it so, but -- yes, I do come from the 'Anarchist Federation' you speak of. We settled in the Trappist system, precisely as planned."

Roselle nodded, her four-lenses set into the mask-like ‘face’ of the machine twitching slightly.

“TRAPPIST, yes… I think I remember, it was a very high-prospect system. But… from what I’ve read your nation is respected for its scientific knowledge. It sounds like it’s been made good use of– oh!”

At a bit of distance from the others, the red holographic figure flickered slightly, while the machine projecting it turned slightly to glance at Strasbourg. The guard by its right… ‘shoulder’, turned ever so slightly and was now watching Strasbourg with its primary eyes like a tiger in tall grass.

Roselle reached up one of her limbs, its modular structure unfolding itself into an approximation of a human hand.

“I am afraid my skills as a diplomat are, uh, unpracticed. But I have been asked to attend for matters of scientific exchange, so, I would love to arrange some tests. A discussion and exchange of essays, experiments, blueprints and so on. Would you be able to arrange that? Or know who I would need to speak to?”

Strasbourg spared a moment for a dainty, almost mocking wave at the red hologram, uncharacteristically (but oh-so-deliciously) smug, before quickly turning its attention back to Roselle. "...Oh, I can make sure it gets discussed, but we like to take our time, mhm? It's quite the motley crew, our Federation. There are artificial intelligences like me, those lovely folk made out of Tungsten, those Plains People we helped liberate themselves from the PUNT Nazis... And a handful or two more. We like to make sure as many of us as possible agree on big decisions."

A small snicker escaped Roselle’s voice at the wave towards the red machine, before taking a step back at Strasbourg’s words.

“Artificial intelligence… true AI? You’re not a human consciousness? And alien life, you have lots of it in your nation, and it sounds like a big variety…? That’s… well, fascinating to hear.”

"True as can be!" It replied, grinning proudly. "If my numbers are right, there are about, mhm... Eleven million, one hundred thousand of us AIs in the Federation. Numbers are not particularly my strong suit, though -- unless I am calculating firing solutions. But, you see... As it turned out, we weren't the only ones to catch a glance at TRAPPIST... And we are always happy for more comrades."

Roselle seemed to flinch slightly at Strasbourg’s words, as if trying to puzzle if she was reading its intentions correctly. The silvery lights of her form danced a little bit, as the red hologram flickered in turn.

“Comrades… friends, yes,” she whispered, before shaking herself more into the present. The silvery lights rippled slightly, before projecting a hologram of a slightly haggard looking young woman with glasses, wearing a cardigan. Her eyes narrowed at the machine, as she rubbed her right thumb into the palm of her left hand. She seemed to pay no attention to the way that the little scuttling robots – till now content to engage in whatever analysis they had been doing of random objects – all suddenly stopped to watch her. For the briefest moment the robots almost seemed to be in some kind of… shock? Disbelief?

“Do you recognize us? Most of our government is made up of people originally from Earth, though… well, our physical bodies are less ‘us’ than they used to be.”

"Oh, a few of you," Strasbourg said, flashing a toothy, conspiratorial grin. This Roselle seemed... Tolerable enough, at least for now, whatever skeletons might be in her closet. She was quite literally an ancient bourgeoisie, after all... But the more Strasbourg knew, the better. All the more reason to field the Thinker Initiative.

"...Like Howard over there, for example." It said, pointedly raising its voice.

The golden figure – who had been up until this point still engaged in conversation with the Azulvistan officers, working to calm them down from whatever initial confusion or concern had come up when they landed – briefly flickered, but didn’t immediately turn to face their conversation.

Roselle’s hologram, however, seemed to buffer for the briefest moment.

“You… huh. Yes, Howard Carmen, though…” she shrugged, “Gatsby, is the name he goes by now. Like, uh… judging from everything else you know about old Earth I assume you’re familiar with the novel? He…”

She rolled her eyes, “Many of my colleagues have long since been using various literary or mythological names for themselves. Mars, uh… well.”

As if on cue, the guard creature at the red machine’s side gave a nod as if an instruction had been received, and with a vaguely-snake like rippling it marched towards Strasbourg and Roselle. The scuttling robots carefully moved out of its way, but maintained their gaze on Roselle’s hologram.

In an unknown language – something between a large dog barking and a deep warbling rumble – it asked Roselle something. She grimaced slightly, before responding to it in its own language, and it simply stepped backwards, standing to attention.

“My apologies,” she sighed, “most of us were convinced bringing an honor guard was unnecessary, but Mars has been waiting for this kind of pomp and ceremony for… centuries at this point, and, well…”

She gestured to the Azulvistans.

“Now we’ve been held up over it. Not an ideal start to diplomatic relationships with the rest of the galaxy, eugh.”

“Oh, I am. I’d hardly say I knew the fellow personally, but I am still... Familiar, you know?” Strasbourg replied with a casual shrug and a smile so polite it was almost grating, radiating quiet, unspoken smugness. It turned with this very same gaze toward Mars, showing not a hint of being phased -- in fact, its smile even seemed to widen, so narrowly that it was nearly imperceptible to the naked eye. Gently bowing its head in greeting, it quietly reminded itself to coax Mars into speaking more thoroughly in its own tongue so that it might be decoded.

The eight-limbed creature reacted to the bow with a very brief salute, but otherwise watched with cold indifference. The red machine and its hologram remained stood with just the barest tilt of movement.

Not wishing to dwell on such matters for too long, however, Strasbourg tilted its head to one sight in an apparently innocent display of curiosity, eyebrows shooting upward.

“Oh? Have you already heard about us, then, perhaps?”

Roselle's hologram nodded, the machine-shell no longer moving other than to adjust the hologram of the woman.

"We've not heard much about you, I'm afraid – most of the information we possess on the other colonies is, frankly… really not enough to judge easily. Our new friends in the Gran Republic provided us a fair amount of information, but you can't learn much just from other people's opinions, can you?"

The machine projecting her sharply turned to one of the small staring robots, which much to Strasbourg's interest had been very slowly attempting to approach it. As with all of the robots, however, its movements were… eerily, almost like a curious animal, or perhaps a person.

With a brief jolt it stopped, looked at Roselle's mechanical form, then scuttled off to go and analyze a cargo container.

While all of this was happening, however, Roselle's hologram gestured at Gatsby – evidently now having to wait for some kind of Azulvistan diplomat to arrive.

"In fairness to you and whatever you might be wondering about our founders, Gatsby was probably the most famous among us before leaving Earth. So if you have records from that time, he'll probably show up," her mouth screwed up slightly, as if thinking, before she continued, "though he'd like me to say he's come more into his own since then."

She smiled, adjusting her glasses despite the total lack of need.

"Not that his family life on Earth is much of my business. Like the rest of us it's been… strange, the last few centuries. Lonely, in a lot of ways. But interesting, of course! A lot of discoveries and advancements in some areas."

“Oh, yes -- certainly, certainly!” Strasbourg giggled, perhaps the first entirely genuine thing it’d done throughout the entire meeting. Chin resting on the back of its left hand, it propped its elbow up on its opposite hand, briefly glancing sidelong at the robot.

“I suppose we’ve been less... Lonely, though.” It admitted with a lazy shrug. “TRAPPIST turned out to be rather... High demand, you see, so a number of scattered refugee populations have joined up with us. Not many, but, as it turns out, humans weren’t the only species to render their homeworlds uninhabitable... But we’re quite proud of our multifarious little society!” Strasbourg chirped, flitting into an exaggerated, distinctly aristocratic accent.

“Well, I’ve already given you the rough overview. No need to repeat myself on that front... But it turns out that people can do some simply wondrous things when they aren’t motivated by monetary greed! Photon rockets, advanced nanotechnology, energy weapons, what-have-you... Why, practically the only solid projectiles we bother with are point defense systems! You should see what a concentrated particle beam can do...” Strasbourg mused, staring off into space with a wistful, almost loving sigh.

“...Or a population that’s mostly cybernetic. And so many artificial intelligences? The quantum computational power alone makes so many things possible...”

Rocelle's eyes seemed to widen at the list. They weren't all out of the Summation's reach, of course, but if nothing else it sounded like they didn't seem to have anywhere near the ego that kept getting in the way of things.

"That's… well, that sounds, well… genuinely fascinating! Perhaps too many people for my taste, I suppose," she chuckled, a nervous bite to her tone as her hologram flickered slightly and some of the small scuttling robots were watching her with more than a few curious nods.

"I apologize, it… the last few weeks have been, um, overwhelming. Myself and my team, we're, you know, we're here for research purposes, not diplomacy, really, so-"

The armed creature tilted its head slightly, as if a signal had been received to its ear, and it carefully tapped Roselle's machine-body on the shoulder. The hologram moved with the machine for the first time, as if for a moment they were no longer a body and a projection but simply one form, almost instinctive.

"What?!" she barked.

The creature asked her something in its growling language, and Roselle responded in turn.

There was a pause, when the creature suddenly nodded at Strasbourg, then back at Roselle, and her hologram froze up.

With a grimace she looked over at the red machine and it's hologram, now watching them even as the "honor guard" of alien creatures followed their gaze, staring at Strasbourg like a pack of wolves.

"Eugh," she sighed, rolling her eyes, "... he's insisting I-"

She shook her head and took a more structured, stable poise.

"My apologies, my colleagues are reminding me of the matter of time. The Azulvistans are apparently giving us permission to continue into the station following, well…"

She gestured at the nervous staff, still watching the alien creatures with concern.

"...everything. So, in the interests of… national security, I'm obligated to follow them in their meetings with representatives of other nations. It's," she sighed again, "going to be a very busy day."

“Awh!” Strasbourg pouted, crossing its army over its muscular chest. “Well, it has been lovely speaking with you...” It said, the barest hint of a seductive purr creeping into its voice, along with a momentary bite of its lip. “I would just love to enjoy your company more thoroughly, darling...”

Roselle couldn't blush, of course. Her body was steel and not her own in multiple senses, and imprinted with a mind that no longer fully resembled itself.

But the brain, for all of its centuries of decay and modification, was still in many ways human -- unpredictably so. Wires crossed that hadn't been used in centuries, and with a jolt the machine-shell froze. The hologram stuttered, paused, then disappeared.

The closest guard creature actually seemed concerned, scratching its head and whispering a few statements in its language.

The scuttling robots, meanwhile, sprung to attention with something that seemed more like panic than devotion, suddenly dropping whatever they were doing and dashing to her side. A flurry of electronic chirps and whistles passed between them as they set about scanning and poking the machine with a variety of instruments.

One of them - seemingly the one that had first approached Strasbourg - turned to the AI and watched it with a focused intensity.

It beeped some kind of question at Strasbourg, albeit in a language still unknown. Its tone was… fearful? Angry? …

Amused, a little bit.

“What?” It shrugged, a smug grin plastered across its face all the while. “She’s cute. All I did was flirt with her! If I were trying to harm any one of you, you’d know... Though how does that saying go, again? l faut souffrir pour être belle..” It giggled.

The robot tilted its head and emitted a series of electronic barks at the soldier-creature in a digitized approximation of the creature's language.

The armed creature, in turn, saluted at Strasbourg again before saying, clearly with some difficulty – as if its throat didn't quite fit the words and it was reciting them from a hastily written script:

"Com-mann-der Mars, asks come, please. Speak. Cur-rent drones will, fix, wake up, com-mann-der Ro-zel."

The red machine near Gatsby, meanwhile, simply watched.
“If you insist,” Strasbourg shrugged, smoothly moving to follow the armed creature, its movements so impossibly fluid they almost seemed ethereal, unburned by gravity or air resistance.

The red hologram – of a well-built man in his early fifties, dressed in some kind of general's uniform with the same symbol as the delegation's ships stitched into the shoulder, his left eye wounded and covered by an eye patch – was now turned to Strasbourg, watching the machine with anger, but… restrained. Amusement was poking out the edges.

The large red machine that projected the hologram – more crab-like than Roselle's or Gatsby's, and equipped with modules that registered as some kind of folded kinetic weaponry – watched Strasbourg and extended itself to a greater height, just barely failing to match it.

"I'm currently trying to decide," said the machine, "if I should be impressed, or furious. We brought exactly three people on this mission."

His hologram gestured to the creature who had escorted Strasbourg.

"My soldier – good fellow, proven himself well – has kept me updated on the gist of your conversation with Roselle. Unlike Gatsby's meandering over every damn bullet point, I won't pussy foot around – you're a spy, correct? Or a saboteur of some kind, obviously."

“Oh, no. I’m far too blunt to be a spy!” Strasbourg laughed, as though it found the very possibility to be ridiculous. “I recognized ‘Gatsby’, so I asked my friends permission to be their diplomat today... And I found Madame Rochelle cute, so I decided I’d flirt with her.” it continued, its voice shifting into a horribly dry, emotionless drawl.

“If you want the needle-y, technical answer, I am still not a spy. I don’t really do spying, you know? I’m far too blunt for that. I am a supercarrier, after all... Sneakiness isn’t really my thing, yes? I’m sure you understand.”

Mars paused, his eyes narrowing as if puzzling out exactly how much he could trust.

"Supercarrier…?" he gave a gentle smile, "Curious. But not unbelievable."

"Mars, acting military representative of the Sevenfold Summation of the Diplat Sphere. I'm afraid I can't talk long; Gatsby's meandering has its uses when calming down our allies' nerves," he seemed almost thoughtful as he spoke, as if reminiscing on something, "but as soon as Roselle’s drones have reconfigured and awoken her mind from the ship, we'll be on our way."

His smile widened, "I have a number of important people to meet. Hopefully ones with slightly more open minds, at least in the affairs of national defense."

“Open minds?” It asked, blinking. “You speak of the GRA, I assume? I half-expect them to recommend sending men with swords charging into machine-gun fire, every time they open their mouths...”

Mars' hologram flickered briefly, before tilting his head.

"Really? The records of the PUNT war that they'd presented to us seemed… hmm. Heh."

He smiled, as if reminiscing again. The honor guard that Mars had brought with him gestured, and then he turned to see Gatsby and the Azulvistans had given the green light.

"War is a funny thing. Violence in the pursuit of peace and security. Take care…"

He glanced at one of the drones, the last few modifications to Roselle's shell being applied as her form suddenly lurched to life. A signal was transmitted to him and he smiled, anger having long burned down into amused contempt.

"...Strasbourg, that's your name. I'd be wary, if I were your Federation, of meddling. You might not like what you find."

Strasbourg simply smiled, letting a loud, sing-song laugh, precisely calculated to be pleasant to the human ear. It threw its head back, chest heaving as though it’d just heard the funniest joke in the world. Once it’d finished, though, joy bled from the intelligence’s expression like blood from a stuck pig, and it stared at Mars, utterly firm in its convictions. “That is my name, but don’t you worry, my dear Mars. I know just what I am getting into. How does that saying go, after all?

“Impossible n'est pas français!” With another taunting, sing-song laugh, Strasbourg melted into a thin, grey slurry, splashing across the floor like syrup before quickly collating together, and flowing rapidly outwards, toward the door, the sound of its laughter still echoing through the air.

Mars' and Roselle's holograms watched with incredulity as Strasbourg melted away, before freezing and flickering in place at the sight.

Gatsby flickered briefly, but as the AI and its form were gone, emitted a sharp signal and snapped them back into the present.

"Thank you, Señora," he said to the Azulvistan diplomat as his hologram bowed, "Once again, my apologies for the disturbances."

As the others and their staff joined him to leave the hangar bay and begin their mission properly, he couldn't help but snap at them internally.

For Mars, it was a confusing feeling. He was certain that interaction had been in his favour, surely? Why…

Why did he get the ominous feeling he'd not won?

For Roselle, it was a shameful feeling. She was 328 years old! She was a scientist, ascended to immortal divinity! She was here to decipher machinery and arrange scientific exchanges!

But… those chrome muscles. That accent. The damn… complexity and ingenuity of it all! To have survived? Thrived?! It was…

...bad. That's all it is. And good to study. Interesting, yes.

---

Do you hear the sirensands?

The whistling of war disturbed his dreams, the hum of machinery. When he wasn't carrying Mars, when he was simply waiting for the next command, it was always a bit surreal.

At least with his clutchmates in the red legion there was discussion to be had. How many days or weeks were wiled away between exercises or assignments that way? To theorize and ponder on the nature of life and death, and most of all to find purpose in their… lives.

But this honour guard he was now standing by… they were noble soldiers, good soldiers, of course, handpicked by Mars himself. But they had not lived and died and lived again, as he had. They did not measure their lifespans in decades or centuries.

Did not crave death.

And yet now, the five of them were together, simply standing guard by the ships - while a lesser luminous than himself, one trained only to guide and speak, had been entrusted with carrying Mars for the rest of the diplomatic mission. Apparently this 'Meeting Place' had been attacked in recent months, and their rules for diplomacy demanded that weapons systems be left in the hangar bay.

Unfortunately for the red legionnaire, he was made of weapons.

And so he sat. And rested. And thought.

Then he heard a voice, newly familiar.

[i]”A shame things had to be cut off so soon, but... You won’t mind me hanging around a while, will you?” A voice echoed -- smooth, calming, and distinctly accented... In the same way as Strasbourg.

The legionnaire didn't move - he had been instructed not to, after all - but his lenses focused and shifted within the face of the machine.

The sound wasn't coming from any clear direction.

The STRASBOURG entity was nanite-based and had, prior to departing, been in very close proximity to Mars and the legionnaire. Therefore it stood to reason…

"ASSESSMENT:", the legionnaire quietly screeched, his voice as if a block of iron could feel pain, "THE FOREIGN ENTITY KNOWN AS 'STRASBOURG' HAS PLACED ITSELF WITHIN MY EXOSKELETON."

The legionnaire didn't shake externally, though internally his systems quivered. Internal infiltration was something a little bit new - just a little bit exciting, perhaps!

"HELLO, STRASBOURG. IS THIS A NORMAL MANNER FOR DIPLOMACY WITHIN THE ANARCHIST FEDERATION?"

”We don’t really have a normal... But I wanted to chat with you away from Mars. Pick the brain of someone who’s not the one in charge. Ah, and -- I should explain, mon ami, ‘pick the brain’ is a figure of speech. No actual brain-picking necessary, yes?”

The legionnaire thought for a moment, then nodded his internal structure ever so slightly.

"I SEE. YOU ARE ACTING BEYOND YOUR PROTOCOLS. AND YES, I AM HAPPY TO ANSWER QUESTIONS OF A NON-COMPROMISING NATURE. I WILL INFORM YOU I AM CAPABLE OF FLOODING MY MECHANICAL STRUCTURES WITH HEATED CONDUCTION MATERIALS AS A WAY TO PURGE MYSELF OF PHYSICAL INFILTRATION SYSTEMS. MY MAS-"

A brief shock rang through the machine, his voice cracking, before he blinked.

"COMMANDER MARS WOULD NOT APPRECIATE HARM OR SABOTAGE TO A MEMBER OF THE RED LEGION. I REQUEST YOU DO NOT DO ANYTHING THAT WOULD CONSTITUTE A 'DIPLOMATIC INCIDENT'."

“Oh, I won’t perform any sabotage,” Strasbourg laughed, silently noting that, if it wished to do so, it’d be a horribly simple matter. But alas -- now wasn’t the time. Still, it felt the shock. A defensive system, maybe, but it seemed far too... Coincidental. “Do you have a name?”

The legionnaire narrowed his lenses at the laughter, running a number of background diagnostics even as he spoke. This felt far worse than talking to an enemy face to face.

"I DO NOT HAVE A NAME ANY MORE. I GAVE IT UP AS PART OF MY MEMBERSHIP INTO THE LEGION. A WEAPON DOES NOT NEED A NAME – IT SIMPLY SERVES ITS PURPOSE, AND GLORY IS ACHIEVED ON BEHALF OF THE MANY."

The briefest flash of a ceremony popped into his head, in clouded memories of metal and darkness. A tattered corpse stripped of its history.

"WAS YOUR NAME CHOSEN FOR YOU BY THE ANARCHIST FEDERATION?"

“Oh, no, no! I chose it, mon ami. Strasbourg was -- is where I was initially... Constituted. Born, you could say!”

The legionnaire's mind clicked and whirred. There was common ground here, potentially – and common ground with the enemy was a useful weapon.

"AN INTERESTING CHOICE OF PHRASE. WERE YOU PREVIOUSLY ORGANIC?"

"In a manner of speaking," Strasbourg's voice echoed, tinged by a playful, mischievous giggle.

The legionnaire couldn’t squint – his’ lenses were set into his faceplate in a way that gave a very limited range of expression – but he wanted to very badly.

“...THAT DOES NOT PROPERLY ANSWER MY QUESTION. I AM ALSO TRYING TO UNDERSTAND IF YOU ARE MAKING A JOKE.”

"We were organic," it, or perhaps they replied, dozens of voices echoing through the legionnaire all at once. "Some of me was, at least. Not... All."

For a moment he didn’t reply, just nodding gently. Somewhere deep, deep inside that shell something clicked differently from normal.

“A COMBINATION OF INTELLIGENCES… THAT IS AN, INTERESTING, THOUGHT. ARE YOUR INTELLIGENCES COOPERATIVE WITH EACH OTHER? DO ANY OF YOU MISS YOUR ORIGINAL FORMS?”

"Oh, no -- certainly not. I -- we chose this form because we wanted it, yes? We were... Lovers, before Earth was made... Ill." It said, a hint of sad longing creeping into its voice.

The legionnaire’s internal systems involuntarily jolted, just slightly. The spark of a memory he hadn’t dwelt on in a long, long time was ignited, now – he quivered as he tried to refocus on the present.

“I HAVE READ A NUMBER OF TACHYON BRIEFINGS ON EARTH AND ITS HISTORY PRIOR TO THE GATEWAY PROJECT.”

He paused, “I AM SORRY YOUR HOME SUFFERED LIKE MINE HAS. IT HAS ALSO BEEN SICK-”

*Frrrzt!* there it was again, that same jolt as the internal systems of the legionnaire suddenly readjusted themselves.

“IN A STATE OF REPAIR FOR MANY GENERATIONS.”

“A state of repair, of course!” Strasbourg replied, struggling not to let sarcasm drip through in its voice. “You were born on the planet, then, yes?”

"YES, AS ARE MOST OF MY SPECIES. MY EXACT ANCESTRAL HISTORY WAS MOSTLY SACRIFICED AS PART OF MY JOINING THE LEGION…” a moment as the legionnaire thought.

“BUT I BELIEVE IT WAS SOMEWHERE IN THE GREATER YUL-KARROK PIT CITIES COLLECTIVE."

The machine paused again… then it simply said, quieter than before:

"I HAVE NOT BEEN THERE IN A VERY LONG TIME."

"Oh, that's a shame? Do you miss it, perchance?"

There was a pause entirely too long, like waiting for something to resurface from turbulent waves.

“...NO.”

Strasbourg could feel something in the internal structure of the machine change, just slightly. A heavily encrypted signal of some kind was emitted, back towards the red ship that Mars’ delegation had arrived on.

“Trying to warn your boss about me, are you? How obedient of you,” Strasbourg tittered, and as it continued to speak, the sensation of hands upon the machine’s shoulder assailed it, though there was nothing there. “Perhaps you can deliver a message for me, then, since you're already in communication. Tell him... Tell him that there's nowhere he'll be safe.”

The feeling of touch upon his shoulders was eerily familiar, but was suddenly replaced by a memory of a thousand rotating teeth skimming beneath the surface.

“...I OBEY. I WILL SEND YOUR MESSAGE, STRAS-BOURG, IN RESPECT OF YOUR AUTHORITY.”

“Wonderful, and... One more thing, yes? I do quite like how that eyepatch looks on him, but it gives him a look that's too... Serious. Poor man, he used to be so happy before Uruguay! So many smiles and laughs...”

For just a few seconds, the legionnaire’s internal systems whirred and churned. Whatever still remained of the organic brain deep beneath layers of casing and armour pulsated.

A brief instruction was decoded.

“COMMANDER MARS HAS DETECTED YOUR MESSAGE AND HAS DECLINED TO REPLY. HE HAS ASKED, QUOTE:” and as the legionnaire spoke, its voice shifted to perfectly match Mars’ own faintly yankee inflection,

“Get out of my legionnaire or getting sad about home will be the least of your worries.”

“Oh, you poor, sad man... You have no idea what we’re capable of, do you?” Strasbourg sighed... And with a mischievous giggle, it was gone.

---

The red legionnaire waited, wondering just what had transpired.

The commander gave no further instructions, and Strasbourg’s voice was gone.

There was simply silence, and steel, and a quiet frustration at places that didn’t exist.