urukhai — Roleplayer Guild

The Children of the Void

Standing around 6'7'' on average the humanoid Void Children stand a head or two above most humans, and have a very lithe build to their bodies. This combined with their elongated torso limbs (with the arms and legs being the best examples of this, both of which are near a good foot longer than a humans), give the Void Children an almost graceful appearance. This appearance is not marred even by the deep hock that constitutes part of what would be called the Void Children's "lower leg", though it has led to them walking with a slightly hunched gate and profile. The void children also seem to have more pronounced spinal ridges than your normal human, as well more pointed semi-claw like nails at the end of their longer fingers.

Their normal pale complexion contrasts well with their most noticeable feature, their eyes. Which are crescent shaped pupils with a limited iris, the color of which can range from a deep red to a violet (and anywhere in between) and seem to give off a very slight neon glow when struck by light. Finally their deep silvery hair (which is worn in various styles, none of which extend further than a few inches below the bottom of the neck) completes what some old stories say of them, that they can be things of terrible beauty.   

It should be noted that the Void Children do not breath the same atmosphere as most other races. Theirs is comprised of 91% Nitrogen 4% CO2 3% Oxygen 1% Krypton and 1% other gasses/other particles. This means that Void Children, when not on a Void Child ship or other such environment, must wear a breathing apparatus. They can still breath in an atmosphere much akin to Earths, however this results in labored painful breathing, irritation of the respiratory systems, nausea, loss of effective functionality and eventual death.

Void Child clothing when not in their combat armor is generally a Silksteel underarmor suit covered over with synth-fiber tunics, with various other bits of clothing denoting various things about the individual Void Child (such as rank, home ship, job, etc.)

The fleet above the individual, the city above the fleet.

The Void child system of government can be easily broken up into three levels.

Level 1 (the Justicars and Captains): is the governance of "local" law, as such each ship has a member of the crew that holds the title of Justicar, who enforces the laws of the fleet upon that ship. Each Justicar is outranked by the Captain of said ship alone, and thus is usually the second in command, if not the captain themselves. Still each Justicar will routinly make reports, or hand off cases beyond the scope of their abilities to the Praetor's Hold

Level 2 (the Praetor's Hold): On the city ships reside the Praetor's Hold, the main governing body of the fleets and city ships of the Void Children. They are comprised of the Hold, which is a body made up of the veteran Justicars and an elected representative known as the Praetor. The hold takes care of most of the day to day decisions that effect the fleet as a whole (while the ship to ship decisions are handled by the captains). It is at this level that the Arch-alchemist and the Alchemist caste interact with the government as a whole, with the Arch-alchemist being a member of the Hold and makeing reports along side the Praetor to the Fleetmaster 

Level 3 (The Fleetmaster and the Spirits):  At the final level is the Fleetmaster, a single entity that is above the Hold. It is this Fleetmaster that makes the decisions of extraordinary importance, such as when and where to move the fleet as well as outer fleet communications. The Fleetmaster also has the ability to completely override, or nullify the decisions made in the Hold. With this great power most would think the Fleetmaster the apex of Void Child government, and for the most part it is, but their is a little known entity above them. These beings are only known as the spirits and they control all things that relate to the city ships, overriding even the Fleetmasters, but only in relation to the cities.

The Fleets: serving as both protection and a home to many Void Children, the fleets of the Void Children are immense, having been churned out over their long tenure of space travel and long periods of seclusion. Some even speculate that the size of the Void Children's fleets if all grouped together could be on par with, or even outweigh, a number of terrestrial bound empires. This force of numbers mixed with the fact that the vast majority of combat ships in the fleets being of cruiser, destroyer, or battleship designations (and each capable of carrying a complement of interceptor drones), it would be easy to assume that the Void Children would simply crush anyone in their way, yet this is not the case.

Oddly enough the Void Children seem to mainly fight like ghosts, fading in and out of the background, yet somehow keeping the bulk of their forces away from a frontal engagement. However there are tails of a time when an enemy of the Void Children was spread out and weak, chasing the shadows of the phantom ships, and in this time a great host appeared before their flagship. A rare mass fleet engagement that resulted in the enemies flag ship torn asunder and the vanishing of the Children. 

Still their primary concern is the protection of the City Ships, and will usually stay around them (with a pair of Void Memory class dreadnoughts never leaving each cities side)

The ship classifications (and names of the ship types) are as follows, from smallest to largest
Interceptor < Various Logistical Ships < Echo Cruisers < Shade Destroyers < Arawn Battleships < The Void Memories < The Cities

The Fleet Guard: All children know their way around their home ships like the back of their hand soon after they can walk, knowing every nook and cranny in it. All all taught how to move in zero-G till they are as graceful as they are in gravity, and all are taught how to fight in the tight confines of a ship till they become a weapon. This combined with the fact that all Void Children are technically part of the military, and must go through grueling training, means that each and every Void Child (not of an overly young or old age) is able to fight fairly effectively, a useful practice against any would be boarders.

The Hands: Sometimes a Void Child will commit a crime, for which a normal punishment is deemed too lenient, and sometimes the path is chosen. But whatever brought a Child here the outcome is the same, they will become the Hands. Heavily armored, heavily shielded, alchemicly driven juggernauts, the hands are mindless monsters that are seen mainly on the City Ships, but are sprinkled throughout the highest ranking ships. In terms of armaments all Hands utilize sharpened claw points as well as blades attached to their armored fingers to shred opponents in close quarters, and a light beam cannon housed in one of their arms. They also fight their own version of psychological warfare (though none posses the ability to know it), with each Hand being larger than your normal Void Child coupled with their inability to speak or feel pain, gives them a very imposing presence.

The process by which a hand is created is begun by transfusing various alchemical potions into the potential hand, this continues until the blood of the potential hand is near completely replaced with the potions. At this time the Hands armor is affixed, still white hot from the foundries it is literally welded onto the new Hand in this state, the potions keeping what remains of it alive throughout the process (if what a hand is can really be called "alive").

An ancient marriage of both high technology and what outsiders have come to call Fell Alchemy, a powerful combination that has bent some of the fundamentals of the universe to their will, in ways that seem far beyond the scope of some. Yet ultimately the technology remains stagnant, with little time or extra resources for improvement the Void Children must rely on what high Technology they know, but what they do know, they know well.

Zero-point Vacuum Reactors and engines: There is power abundant in the universe, one only needs to know how to look and how to harness the energy. Long ago the Void Children learned how to do exactly that, by utilizing special reactors they were able to tap into the base constant hum of the universe to power their ships and technology. With the lack of need to refuel, as they pull constantly from the space around them, the engines and reactors could theoretically go on indefinitely. These reactors also produce quite a bit of energy, more than enough for a single large reactor to power most ships. 

But this convince and power come at a price, both in terms of detection and start up. In terms of coming from a cold start, each reactor takes some time to bring its own baseline power output up to the point where it becomes a seamless transition to continuous output ( a process that the Void Children call "The awakening"). This means that the reactors cannot be flipped directly on, instead turning them on begins a start up process that begins preparing the reactor for ignition. In terms of detection the reactors and engines give off a very unique signature, almost like a mute shadow passing over the background static. 

Dark Weapons: Powerful, accurate, yet relatively slow firing, and the main weapons of the Void Children fleet, the Dark Weapons are a class all their own. A beam weapon of ancient design, most ship born Dark Weapons fire deep violet beams of concentrated dark matter, the effects of which are generally described best as a powerful blowtorch hitting a very thin sheet of aluminum with both the heat required to burn through it, and with the force of a speeding minivan behind it. These variants that fire dark matter come in various cannon sizes, from those that easily fit on interceptors to huge batteries meant for punching holes in mainline warships.

 But their exists one more variant of the Dark weapons, the main cannon of the Memories. Now to put it into perspective the Memories cannons are not so much cannons designed to fit on the capital ships, moreover the Memories were designed around the cannons. These behemoth cannons fire the more volatile Dark energy, which has been focused into massive beams specifically meant for gutting enemy Capital ships in very few hits. The nature of the Dark Energy forcing the particles of the effected target to scatter, effectively disintegrating whatever the beam touches. For these immense cannons the normal Dark Weapon rate of fire is slowed even further to almost mind numbing levels, this is due to the difficulty in directing dark energy and it's volatility, as well as the huge power draw.

Particle Impact weapons: Though less powerful than the dark weapons, the PI weapons have one distinct advantage, they are easily able to be scaled down enough for use by individuals. These therefore make up the backbone of the weapons of the Void Children, with their classifications  ranging from pistol  variants to the large beam cannons used by the Hands. 

They operate by accelerating a mass of dense particles into a energized beam. The result is a bright electric blue bolt that cuts through the air, giving off the weapons trademark scream, and dealing thermal damage, kinetic damage as well as small amount of EM damage upon impact. 

The Souls:  Mysterious entities that control the Cities, to a point above even the Fleetmasters, most would think that the Souls are simple special members of the government. This however is quite incorrect. The souls are in fact advanced AIs of immense intelligence created specifically for the Cities, prior to great exodus of the Void Children. They show themselves to very few individuals, and never without reason as their primary goals have always seemed to b the preservation of the Cities and the Void Children.

The Cities: More like huge mobile space stations instead of traditional ships, the great City ships were arguably the greatest creation of the ancient Void Child holding. Each is large enough to house up to 3 million in population, with room for the various life support levels needed for a multi generation ship of their sized. On various points of the ships exteriors are attached dry-docks and harnesses, where new ships are produced when needed. 

In terms of defense, the city ship holds vast amounts of interceptors and has its own array of large Dark Weapon batteries, but lack substantial enough armor for prolonged engagements. 

One last note about the City ships is that due to their size, they cannot move in normal space, save for very slow rotations to align it. It does however have massive FTL drives that allow it to transport itself from location to location, though any sensors in the destination point will light up like a Christmas tree when it enters into the system as the disturbances it makes when dropping out do not allow for any stealth with it of any kind. The jumps also take a momentous time to plot and execute, as (once more) the sheer mass and scale of the City complicate the procedures, and require all four of Cities enormous Zero Point reactors to work overtime to produce the power to FTL.

Currently there are only 3 of these ships

Auspice Sensors: Advanced sensor suites that are the standard on all Void Child ships. These powerful sensors are able to operate even in the most cluttered nebula or protostar disk with minimal interference.

Embrace Shielding: An improvement standard Void Children shield, and built using the same fundamental dark matter manipulation technology as the Dark Weapons. The embrace shield systems not only cover the ship in a kinetic shield and a energy shield, but a thin "second skin" of dark matter. This skin utilizes the space bending properties of dark matter to protect against various forms of attack. It accomplishes this by refracting laser based and energy based weapons, so blows that would normal be a glancing blow roll of the shield like drops of rain and straight on hits seem to bend slightly before they hit the shield. Kinetic weapons would see their punch absorbed and mainly dissipated along the entirety of the skin, being unaffected by the bending. To combat this the embrace shields have a reactant property where they thicken on impact. Like all shield systems the embrace can still be overloaded or broken, it just adds a special third layer.

Fell Alchemy: A blend of spirituality and magic, Fell Alchemy is exactly as it sounds. It is practiced by a select cast that study its secrets for their entire lives, devoting themselves utterly to the pursuit. The potions, elixirs, and salves that come from their shadowy rituals have been a factor in what has allowed the Void Children to exist for so long in space, curing various diseases and blights. Their greatest achievement is only whispered about in the fleets however, The Longevity Immersion. 

A process that is considered the apex of what Fell Alchemy achieved in ancient times, the Immersion takes weeks to preform and requires refreshment every decade. Apparently the rite involved the participant being submerged into a sealed pod or pool full of various elixirs that bolstered them, and kept them in suspended animation. While they were in this state however, the elixirs would change their body, halting the cosmic clock for them (and even reportedly reversing it to some degree). In this way they would achieve a form of artificial immortality, but as previously stated the process must be renewed every decade of life, and take roughly 10 weeks at the fastest.         

Void Child FTL (The Rip Drive): The Void Children's version of FTL is only slightly different than most, its functionality remaining much the same. What they utilize is not a teleportaion real-space type drive, but a translocation drive that gets them from point A to point B with the use of an intermediary fold or wormhole simply called "No space". The wormhole simply appears as a solid black glass like pane in front of the ship and at it's destination point, through which the ship translates through to its destination. ((in a gameplay perspective the operation and travel time is the same, as would be detection, the Rip drive is mainly a cosmetic change))

A large divergence however is the lack of FTL gates, with no Void Child constructed gates anywhere within sight. However their is one legend of a Massive gate matching Void Child aesthetics and architecture near the edge of one of the galaxy's arms, where it leads however no one knows.     

((there are various other technologies, but for time and space I can describe them later or provide links to what they would be most like in popular fiction, an example being the Void Child use of Vibroblades))

We survive, we endure, we remain

If an outsider was to look in at the void children they would most likely call them reclusive, secretive, mysterious, and seemingly disinterested. But, while some of these assessments are true, they may not be entirely fair

From the inside the hum of the Void children is that of a loose family, with all working towards the preservation of said family. Social casts and political standing mean very little to them, with the main attitude being you are judged by your own actions and usefulness to the fleet. As such a Void child could be born on the youngest, smallest ship and work their way into the Hold on the City ship, or they could find their peace and place in one of the many foundries. Traditional honor is a semi foreign concept to the Void Children when dealing with the outside world, as they will do anything to ensure survival (thus adhering to a code of survivalist's honor). It is expected of each individual to show each-other, within the fleet that is, a brand of honesty and compassion one could call honor. 

Religion within the Void Children is in a form that would be considered archaic to some, with alchemical rituals and spoken stories being a core component of most rites. Still no one could call the religion "organized", with most of the emphasis being placed on a sense of spirituality that permeates all levels of the Void Child culture. 

Finally, the Void Children are very very cautious of outsiders, with many never being contacted, even if they happen to enter into the same system the fleet is in. Usually if they are ever discovered (even in such an accidental way), the Void Children will execute a jump away from their current system home to another that has been planned out, this way dodging unwanted attention.

//Welcome to the Xenoarchaeology database, please enter search term...
>History of the Children of the Void 
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//Search has returned 213 results marked current.
//Filtering all marked as speculation
//1 result remained, History and myth, which do we choose? an excerpt from a seminar conducted by Dr. Vesna of the Xenoarchaeology institute. 
//Would you like to access (Y/N)? 
>Y
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//Opening File
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// "Hello, hello, how are we all tonight, comfortable I hope as its going to be a long one! *murmurs of various forms of chuckling from audience* Now im sure you know me, but in case you dont, let me introduce myself. I am Dr. Vesna, I head the Void Child research branch on campus here and I am pleased to see quite the turn out that we have here. 

Now Im sure you all didn't come for the same small talk that one gets at cocktail parties, so let me get right into it. *Dr. Vesna takes a deep breath* The Void children are... well they are simply put a touchy subject because, as any of my self respecting colleagues will probably tell you, most of what we know about the Void Children are considered myths, fairy tails spacers tell their children to help them sleep in the dark of FTL, or legends told by now gone empires to explain certain happenings. 

Yet even today we are getting new reports from various explorers and spacers out there in the dark. Ask any one who has professed to seeing them and they will tell you the same tail of huge, formidable fleets of warships, of massive structures too large to be ships, that stood at the center of these fleets, and how all of this would disappear the moment they jumped away, never to be seen again. But we are not here for story time, we are here for the truth! That is why they give us grants and degrees! Now I wont say I have the complete truth, but I have spent the last 10 sol years compiling and researching, an I can now do something very few in the past have tried, or even succeed at. 

I will tell you the history of the Void Children.

To begin we should probably go to the place where their race was born, where they took their first steps and grew up. Sadly where this  place is located is a matter of debate among the historical records, as well as my own department, as very little in the way of outside information about this time of their history is near nonexistent. Some say the depths of an unexplored region of the galaxy, while others point to them originating in one of the small star clusters that orbit the galaxy. Now when the left their home I also cannot say for certain as the Void Children are old, very old. Few records even attempt to speculate at how long exactly they have lived among the stars, though most sources guess at numbers in the thousands of years, but as it is with these things only the Void Children know exactly how long. 

But how is that possible I hear you ask, how can a race of people survive so long without home or colony. How can they outlive empires and commonwealths, and remain long after some have become dust and ash? The answer is simple really, its because they don't need them.

Now as im sure your all aware from the stories, the Void Children were and are a highly advanced race. This allowed them to construct and preform near miracles of science, such as their mythical great gate, and the immense city ships that form the core of their civilization and the crux of their survival these eons. Sadly near all records I have found of the Void Children ether have no mention of the City ships or their construction. Even if they do, its always the same answer, and that is "We don't know." Quite a roadblock if there ever was one. 

But I have uncovered one account that might possibly shed some light on their construction, what follows is the records the Ysera, a small civilization that lived around a hundred years ago. Now this account is patchwork at best, as we are still in the process of decoding and translating, but I will try my best "Thus it came to pass that the Ysera, for their stalwart help and as payment for allowing those of the void to pass without hindrance, were granted a single question. Many wished to ask of things of old, but Fora, chief scientist of the mission spoke first. She asked where the great cities came from. this amused the great admiral, his hard face returning a smile as he told her what follows-

Many years ago, the Void ones were great, and did great things, but they were lonely. They were caught in a tenuous peace with those few races that surrounded their home, and so they sought to go outside and find others. They chose three great moons and hollowed them to create their cities, each taking the name of their moon. To pilot them, the Void ones brought their gods and gave them form within the cities. The now completed cities were launched through the Great Gate, with a fleet for each. As they left though a huge cataclysm ripped through the Void Children's home and surrounding peoples. Now with nothing to return to, the city ships and what remnants of the military and civilian fleets that were able to flee, turned their heads and continued to parts unknown."   

Now they live among us ladies and gentlemen, and i must tell you, though we do not see them, they are still very much here. As all art work shows them in nebulae or Protostar systems ( my guess due to the ability to hide well among the static the create and, the raw materials available). As shown is that there are great periods where they retract, disappearing from the public eye near entirely, hence their mythical status. But throughout these myth and legends surrounding these reclusive periods it is said they will show themselves again, almost like a cycle. Now I have  done the numbers and I will be the first to tell you, as of late (with the surge of sightings) it appears that this reclusive period is coming to a close and I awate it with bated breath."//

//end transcript

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