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Name: The Gestalt
Location: Eastern galaxy, west of the hives.
History:
Before the gestalt, there was a cycle of civilizations that went on for nearly two thousand years.
The Gestalt as a faction was founded around 350 years ago, from the remains of an older civilization of theirs whose society ever since the 4th collapse had for centuries lived nomadically; it is known that members of the Ixion species around 600 or more years ago became nomadic when their last civilization fell apart due to multiple highly destructive wars waged on their own kind and other species and civilizations. Yet, despite the loss of history of their own historical civilizations the Gestalt rapidly in the last several centuries have become perhaps as powerful as their previous civilization. The Gestalt however, claims to have reformed its ways and in recent times has frequently and actively participated in peacekeeping missions with the human ran council.
The Gestalt’s history begins with the unifier of fleets, X’naldi who after the near silence caused by the seemingly slow, agonizing death of their species after the explosive collapse of their 4th civilization managed to bring together multiple fleets in the eastern parts of the galaxy to establish the beginning of the Xpp-kto system. The gestalt is the most powerful of the Ixion groups, with asteroid settlements that are connected through a ruling fleet that keeps order throughout the local galactic region. The Gestalt is only 350 of age and act mostly as the centre for the Gestalt of fleets. The motherships of the fleets convene on policies at the Xpp-kto system located somewhere on the outer arm. This system tends to have a fleet that locally defends it. Much of the gestalt’s infrastructure is based much more around small moons, asteroids and the rings of gas giants than on planets. However planets are often used for their atmospheric mixtures to compose the gases Ixions need to survive; a thin atmospheric medium that allows for sound to travel through. Sometimes a world will even be terraformed to support the unique composition of gases the Ixion require to survive.
Around 170 years ago the Gestalt joined the council.
Currently the gestalt are highly expansionist, their rapid spread facilitated by their advanced spaceship engineering. Their system of beliefs unites the sugar cubes to their spaceships. Unlike most Ixion cultures that have given up on the concept of having a home world, the Gestalt is unique in that the Xpp-kto system has in a sense, become a new home for their kind. The legitimacy of Xpp-kto being their new home system is due to having ruins from earlier civilizations of their kind and having two worlds with their proper atmospheric make up.
The culture of the Gestalt remains rather violent; frequent it is ritual warfare breaks out between spaceships and frequent it is that asteroids being battered in flesh become featured art works in their society due to quite powerful scanner stimulation they cause. Cultural markings are surprisingly common in the gestalt, often in the form of fractal based patterns. These markings tend to etch into the hull of their vessels and are purely decorative, being more or less a means to signify individuals when using ship scanners. Their art overall is designed to stimulate the scanners of their ships in unique ways or to make radio songs.
Food-wise there is a tendency to “flavor” their atmosphere to give different tastes to their chemical mixture of the gas medium they dwell in. The Ixion however often eat manufactured food products that give them higher metabolism than they could naturally have; their food having more in common with drugs and stimulants than say, actual food. Ecosystems in their spaceships tend to play out darwinistic games, the corridors being lined with creatures similarly adapted for space that are meant to help facilitate the internal atmosphere of the ship as well as make noise even when another Ixion is not around in said region of the ship. Unlike humans who segregate their nature to biospheres, the sugar cubes tend to have nature exist all over their ship due to the whole design of their ship being synthetic as is.
The gestalt have, due to rediscovery of lost annihilator technologies in their local region of space innovated heavily in the rediscovery of lost technologies yielding to a highly asymmetrical tech base that makes use of anti-matter WMDs that are used alongside ballistic and gauss weapons with particle weapons only being used on spacecraft still. The higher ships are known to make use of anti-proton beams and unlike some species which rely on explosive payload for missiles, the Ixion instead uses burst-fires of rapidly accelerating missiles that are meant to go to potentially relativistic speeds; hitting their target harder the further out the range is. These missiles are always smart missiles using AI-guidance systems. The Ixion have energy based shields for defense that can absorb damage at the cost of energy. Due to the complexity of the ship itself, however reactive it is due to mind melding of the elite to the ship makes the hull has less integrity even if armoring is often used by Gestalt fleet ships. Due to the combination of ships, there is a highly diverse array of ‘toys’ that have been imagined by the Gestalt including scatter-shot weapons, torch engines, "screech" waves (overwhelming interference) and a diversity of other nasty weapons. Quantity wise the Gestalt aren’t particularly numerous, instead relying on high power weaponry to strip through enemy defensive systems.
Implants and modifications are highly common in gestalt civilization, such as “face” making devices attached on one side of their bodies which make a simple vector face that talks and various implants intended to “hear” many different mediums from radio signals to gamma radiation. Brutus make use of implants that are usually meant to enhance their physical capabilities.
The Gestalt’s increasing militarization and expansion, along with recent activity insidiously done relating to the [placeholder] has caused great concern among the council and human race in general. The distance of the Gestalt has however helped in maintaining relatively cordial relations with other galactic powers for centuries, but as the galaxy becomes more connected by the council this distance has rapidly decreased.
AIs in the Gestalt usually are used for system maintenance, and robot drones frequently can be sighted crawling around the spaceship.
Other:
The species of the gestalt
Ixion-
The ixion are the current progenitor species of the Gestalt. While earlier empires in the lineage of the Gestalt were ran by other species who have since than died out, the current Gestalt is ran by the Ixion species. Bound to space, the Ixion act both as the rulers and servants of the Gestalt, having a monopoly on all spaceships within the Gestalt and centralizing the power of the space fleets in their caste-based species where there is a sterile elite that lords over fertile commoners. The appearance of the Ixion to humanoid observers has made various diplomats believe that the Ixion were like drones for the Gemini, despite having already known a truly alien intelligence in their encounter with the stoor. Sometimes described as ‘sugarcubes’, the ixion are a species who have a cubical main body with four round eyes at the vertexes. They have what are sometimes described as ‘handtacles’- or fingers that protrude from their tentacles that are like smaller sets of tentacles used for manipulating objects like a human hand. Their mouth outwardly is like a antennae, but is highly retractable. The Ixion communicate through this antenna in a constant hum that when translated takes the form of a never ending stream of words and thoughts. It is from this organ that the Ixion communicate and perceive sound. Ixions size wise range from 6-7 feet, with a 1-2 ft antenna/mouth. The Ixion appearance-wise vary, with the elites having rectangular prism-like bodies as opposed to square-ish bodies.
The Ixion’s skin can absorb sound and radio signals, enabling it to always be able to hear sound even if someone were to cut off the atteanae that used to communicate.
The Ixion are seemingly adapted for space, being able to survive without an atmosphere for a day before dying and being very light weight creatures. However, it is a mystery as to why their body design isn’t more practical for living inside spaceships, and indeed it is frequent debate among xenobiologists on if the Ixion are a manufactured species or a naturally occurring one. Due to the loss of historical records of earlier records, it is a total mystery. Ixion however, insist that they always existed in spaceships.
Psychologically the Ixion fear silence more than anything else, this biological fear having originated from their need of noise to see the world around them. However, culturally it has developed to mean anything where action and change is not occurring- the Ixion are a highly radical minded species as a result. They abhor order and chaos, but frequently oscillate between the two extremes depending on if there is any creeping sense of silence dawning upon the elite or common castes. This has made them at times a totalitarian species, and at times a near-anarchic species in how they culturally set up themselves. The fear of silence also is literal, in that silence for any extended period of time is unhealthy for the mind of an Ixion.
The Ixion get their name from humans due to the known cyclic nature of older civilizations, of which is analogously referred to as ‘a fiery wheel that never stops spinning’.
Gemini-
While on first impression the Gemini seem humanoid, having a mouth, eyes and arms/legs in a seemingly bilateral fashion, the Gemini are a species that have no back, instead having both sides mirror each other. The Gemini as a species are highly bulky and quite big, being on average ten feet in height and have hands big and powerful enough to crush a human’s head in. The Gemini are a species that comes from a line of highly militaristic societies that would integrate into one of the “early empires” some unknown amount of time ago and in the current gestalt have lost all knowledge of how a spaceship even works, having specialized themselves to planetary defense, security, industrial work and intimidation procedures. They sometimes appear in diplomatic talks due to being more relatable just on the merit of having a face to look at, but due to their ease to manipulate the Gemini often are overseen by the Ixions that hold the true power.
The Gemini are known to normally have dual personalities that co-exist in the same mind, a trait of which has given them their human designated name.
Planet Bounded-
The Gestalt has one a couple occasions encountered planet bound societies, however the Gestalt’s nature and lack of say from Gemini members has led to many earth-like worlds to go rather ignored by the Gestalt. In the occasional a industrial society shows up, it is almost as if the Gestalt anticipates it and usually goes into a game-like war with the local species, only using full force if said species for a moment looks like it is getting too much of an upper hand on the local gestalt colonies. Outside observers think it is a form of entertainment or wargaming, but the real reason is to make noise to keep collective sanity.