SYSNES2: On the Lathe of Suns

Disenfrancised · Aug 6, 2012

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Disenfrancised · Aug 6, 2012

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Disenfrancised · Aug 6, 2012

BACKGROUND FLUFF (PART1)

Spoiler Universe Timeline Background :

Spoiler Local Space Background :

Spoiler More on your glorious Apeilic Overlords :

The Iris started off as a hyper-corporate venture, before generations of workers developed a sense of nationhood and staged a revolution (more dispassionate observers might credit the ossification and turnover of the contributed corporate parents over the centuries with the Apeilic success rather than their own efforts), after which they were relatively easily able to repel extrasystem threats. The Apeilics then continued on a Norway type model - with a massive resource managed for the national interest, though Dutch disease prevented export diversification. This second period (the 'Nation Period') saw low population growth by intentional planning once the Iris array reached its full expanse, to keep a stable population ratio to system incomes. The Apeilic nation of a few tens of millions was one of the attendees at the X|! conference on Datha and a minor signatory to the combined fleet. Technological improvements and increasing sector wide demand saw a dramatic increase in Apeilic wealth and several parts of the Iris array was modified for extremely high energy processes like Industrial Alchemy. This Flowering Period was accompanied by immigration of talent and extensive local cultural development, and numerous habitats of foreign and experimental cultural milieus were set up, though the base Apeilic socio-ethnic group remained dominant. It was during this flowering period that the current Apeilic governing style was set up and the pseudo-corporate entities connected with its industrial processes arose. The flowering period was brought to a close by the war with Datha. Generally a pacifistic and isolationist culture, the immense energy resources the Iris could bring to bear in its interplanetary defence were more than enough to ward off threats, and their contribution in the campaigns of the Dathic Coalition was generally supply roles. Once roused, the sleeping dragon seemed to field a near instant massive warfleet with impossibly powerful shields; in actuality array elements of the Iris itself outfitted with intersteller drives, that were gradually phased out in favour of purpose built warships as the war progressed. Their surprise fleet caught the Dathics off guard and gained many victories in the first years, and many of the Coalition partners who had had issues with Datha jumped at the chance to break its hegemony. The Apeilics soon found large numbers of groups they didn't really approve of rallying to their banner, and what was envisioned as a campaign to show strength and establish a parameter snowballed into something out of control. In victory the Apeilics found themselves in a position of power, fear and respect they had never desired or prepared for - the Apeilics had and continue to have no real interest in external systems or planets at all except as customers or tourist destinations. However intersteller trade was crumbling, half their coalition was sharpening knives and looking to settle scores in petty wars, a the numbers of pirate battened on the military surplus. Clearly someone had to restore order and trust to the sector, and the Apeilics rolled up their sleeves even as the images of Datha burning marched ahead of them.

Organisationally the Apeilic Iris is a dichotomy; on the one hand composed of tens of thousands of fiercely individualistic small habitats (easier to armour and large habitats would have currents induced in them by the iris), on the other possessing vast shared enterprises such as the Alchemy crucibles and the Iris itself. This is mirrored in their political set up. Technocrats and corporate leaders rise up through the ranks of the vast organisations (the Iris, the Orbital Traffic Office, the judiciary, the Universities, and now the Navy) to be recognised as Executors, a few dozen individuals in charge presenting and implementing policy. Above or to the side of them are Arbiters, elected by popular vote of every individual in the system and under constant round the clock scrutiny. Arbiters judge and review the Executors and other conflicts, and are constantly accountable in real time to the systemwide datasphere of citizenry, with electronic referenda on policy able to be conducted across all three hundred million Apeilics in under a few hours. Similarly each small habitat runs itself as a capitalist direct democracy. More heterodox worlds might have trouble with such a system, but the homogeneity of basic experience, high living standards and common enterprises of the Apeilics lead to quick and stable mandates. Though their industrial concerns are very cut throat outside the system, within the Iris they are curbed by the watching public. In person they are friendly albeit mercurial, and frequent with bad jokes, they tend to be stereotype prone (not irrationally disliking all outsiders, just some). Ethnically, thanks to a small starter gene pool and some modification, they are very small and slender waifish versions of the Dathic standard* with several zero-g and radiation adaptions such as gripping feet, non-shedding hair and skin, and very dark colouration.

Spoiler Root Dathics and Near Dathics :

Although at its apogee Datha featured extractions from ten thousands cultures and groups under its meta-cultural umbrella, the old Dathics of the first settlements remained a plurality. This group has populated hundreds of daughter worlds in its time, and makes up a significant fraction of the whole Orion sector, though the daughter worlds in time phase into their own models. The Old Dathics are close to the commonly understood Cosmopolitan-Geashial boundary, appearing a blending of ancient Caucasians and east Asian genotypes with tan skin, round face, strong noses, prominent epicanthus, light brown to dark hair and eyes. Extremely ancestral engineering and selection has created further characteristics of higher than average height (near two metres average for males) and extremely low trunk, extremity, and gynoidal fats, time in civilisation losing the ability to even accumulate significant fats. It is relatively easy to date the splitting of daughter colonies from the root culture by longevity, facial attractiveness and symmetry, as Datha itself saw a continual diffusion of gengineering developments from its elites and its tourism industries. Sexual dimorphism has also been tweaked rather higher. Thus the average Standardite, diverging from the root-Dathics roughly four centuries ago, will die a decade and a half earlier, and whilst still extremely handsome by baseline cosmopolitan standards, lack the beauty of the root-Dathics.

Culturally the Dathics have passed through several models, and the daughter worlds have seen a much higher variance. Constants seem an extraordinary devotion to charismatic leaders, the sheer numbers, interconnectivity, and high standard of living of the people all work to depress the agency of the man in the street. Martial relationships are rather more relaxed, with easy formation and breaking, with children being the property of the mother, men are not expected to provide support though they are expected to provide inheritance for all their biological children. The power of the state and law is generally less trusted than individual leaders and political terms tend to be long and feature considerable patronage. Most Dathics try to work in both creative and practical pursuits over the course of their work cycle. Datha was both famous and notorious for the parties and festivals its people threw.

Glossary:

Voidrunner: A group whose journey to the area involved significant amounts of sublight travel
Cosmopolitan: As always, significant amounts of the population are derived from post-Terra cosmopolitan stock, generating by the near full mixing on early habitats and worlds. Melding alleles roughly proportionate to an averaging of the third millenniums human groups, to a pre-spaceflight observer attempting to fit them into known categories they would most resemble Pardo Brazilians, with olive skin, dark eyes and dark curly or straight hair and considerable intergenerational variance. The phenotype in normal gravity conditions is somewhat taller on average than pre-spaceflight averages, but variance is higher.
Geashial: Similar to the Cosmopolitan type, the Geashial are drawn from a cross selection of the east and south east Asian nations of Terra, and similarly difficult to identify as any single type. In actuality the Cosmopolitan-Geashial difference is very much a continuum, but convention draws the clade boundary closer to the Geashial end.
Filtered: Due to isolation (cultural, physical, or temporal), numerous groups came through to the current era with only a subset of Earth genotypes forming their source stock, resulting in a new ethnogenesis. Pure strains of types known to pre-spaceflight observers are vanishingly rare, which most being from several types and contain shading towards the Cosmopolitan or Geashial categories.
Novel: Post-Terrestrial drift, cultural selection, and mutations have led to the emergence of new ethnic in addition to cultural groups, and technological modifications have only advanced such a trend. Most of the more extreme modifications and changes tend to involve very small populations, and therefore have a statistically high chance of loss or ossification by chance.

Disenfrancised · Aug 6, 2012

BACKGROUND FLUFF (PART 2)

Spinward Subsegment:

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Alnitah Subsegment:

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Alnitah

Around the great triple giant of Alnitah (Aa, Ab and B), that brightens every night and day sky in the Segementum with its light, there are no planets; the heat and tides of the triple sun grinding them into dust eons ago, and scattering that dust to the six directions. In this hail of high energy photons the lobed mass of the Apeilic Salamander battlecruiser lurks, apparently good for decades without resupply. Its purpose here is ostensibly to greet incoming merchantmen (Alnitah is such good target for IS traverses that traders can make thousand light year jumps to it, before head out into the Orion sector. However the positioning means the Salamander can leap from its bright lair and touch any of the worlds of the Segementum in under two years. Whatever the policies the Consul decides upon, the potential for enforcement via annihilation is always there.

Sigma Relay

Originally Sigma Relay was a rather ignored system due to a low expected metals and volatiles content (thanks to its broiling close pass to Alnitah only a few million years ago, with the triple giant still lighting up the nights a thousand times as bright as old Earth’s moon) and worries about flares from Alnitah proving dangerous. However the past century numerous Dathic commercial entities engaged in speculative developments with the eye for using the worlds as a springboard for commercial penetration of the segment. The system is therefore one of the most root-Dathic in the segment with a strong common culture. However the rivalries between the commercial entities that authored them has often pitted the various communities against each other. During this period a terraforming association introduced water and a thin biosphere to the desert planet of Hearthfire, with efforts concentrated at each of the poles. One late-comer to this race, as the War was just beginning, was the Hank-Sobor consortium, who selling ‘community insurance’ sought to set up a world far from the conflict zone. Buying out many of the other companies with interests in the system, Hank-Sobor appropriated their resources like the pumping station in the gas giant and the entirety of Hearthfire. However a court injunction back at Datha ruled in favour of the workers of the old TA (now on their third generation) who protested this move and Hank-Sobor only received the northern polar glades. The court also ruled against the rebranding of the planets long established name to ‘Hank’ for being ‘bloody stupid’, though Hank-Sobor managed to sneak an updated name to the ice giant into the charts.

The destruction of Datha lead to a tremendous economic fallout in Sigma Relay and critical supply services were knocked out from under them and the standard of living plummeted. The once carefree root-Dathics turned rather frayed and violent in the aftermath. Hank-Sobor with its exodus only a fraction done, its economic base nearly nonexistant, and a vast shipping fleet, turned to operating merchant runs within the system and beyond, trying to position themselves as middlemen. They spread across the northern glades in sprawling settlements much to the ire of the terraformers. Meanwhile the lunar settlements were bound into one federation by a fleeing military crew from a battlemoon escape yacht.

The most recent arrival, in only the last year, has been the Dardareo in their worldship. In the final climactic battle many of the ancient worldships that comprised some of Datha’s hundred moons attempted to flee, the detonation of the drives of some of them adding considerably to that final carnage. The Dardareo was one that managed to limp to a safe transcend distance and flee into the void. Taking a long time-dilating jump to a distant giant star, their attempt to return to the Orion Sector by way of Alnitah was interdicted by the Apeilic Consul, who ordered them to lay up in a nearby system and await probation. This harsh order probably saved them, as their drive systems were dangerously unstable. Arriving at Sigma Relay the drive core went subcritical and it, plus a large portion of the worldship, had to be dumped onto the nearest world, where it made a quite pretty and deadly radioactive crater. Naturally the Hankish and other Dathic residents of said moon of Hearthfire, were rather irate at this action, and the Dardareo have a lot of fence mending to do and a desperate need for supplies, but hey, they and their world has survived after all. Though they’ve seen considerable cross-pollination with the main Datha culture, the Dardareo remain their own people; ruled by semi-hereditary Captains, still practical and studious, and still loving to fly their little aircraft within the worldships habitat spaces. A very old and heavily filtered culture the Dardareo trace their descent from middle eastern sources by way of old Terra’s south America and the Cassiopeia worlds. Dardareo male and female are always recognisable by their headscarves, originally a mechanism to keep hair out of microgravity air conditioning units having grown into a cultural icon, and decorated with family patterns that are thousands of years old. Generally a Dardareo will own a matching space suit with the pattern.

Disenfrancised · Aug 6, 2012

BACKGROUND FLUFF (PART 3)

The Forest Subsegment: The Natives

Spoiler :

For a long time the forest has been shrouded in myth and rumours, with risky and difficult jumps between stars prior to the beacon, dark plagues and terrifying raiding groups, and hiders willing to perform any atrocity to maintain their silence.

No discussion of the Forest could be made without detailing the Mernt, who have marked the red stars of the forest even in their dissolution. Much like the Yanii the inhabitants of the planet Mern were almost assuredly ancient pre-tumult explorers, predating the founding of Datha by millennia, who collapsed into barbarianism. Unlike the Yanii, perhaps protected by their greater isolation and more hospitable homeworld, the Mernt bootstrapped themselves back into a star travelling civilisation. Transcend physics were reinvented some seven hundred years ago, by which point the Buxe system was home to billions on the much improved Mern and the newly terraformed Tren (the next planet out). The fecund population, combined with a religion and ideology based around a vivifying mission drove them onwards to the other stars of the forest, their huge slow colony ships made from converted asteroids. The difficulties of travel prevented a centrally administrated empire, but the Mernt soon had terraforming projects on over a dozen forest worlds and a light trade with the Cathedral and beyond. Advancement in the physical and technological sciences were slow, as the Mernt preferred to focus their intellects on the puzzles of terraforming and vivifying each world presented. It was about four centuries ago, with the apogee of Mernt population in the 15 billion range, that the Mernt plague struck. The Mernt used a set tool box of fauna in their ecologies, and all of them seemed to act as long term carriers and reservoirs for the disease, enabling it to boil up on nearly every world simultaneously, burning through the population the disease caused a few days of feverish and rabid activity followed by death for 99.9% of the population. The virulence and penetration of the Plague cause many to theorise it was a weapon gone wrong or a rogue terraforming bacteria. The entire fabric of Mernt civilisation unravelled in a few scant years, with only a few million survivors hiding in hermetically sealed dome cities or scavenging the ruins in feral gangs. No sample of the plague has ever been successfully captured, and the fear of its return kept most visitors out of the Forest for the next three centuries. The survivors in the open environments died off or reverted to barbarianism whilst the sealed cities went insane or turned their back on the outside world. Without constant management, the crown jewels of the Mernt empire, the terraformed worlds themselves, began to crumble. The atmosphere of Tren frozen and flee to the earth, the deserts spread on Mern and Oia, and everywhere the plants died and the green faded from the Forest.

Their isolation and collapse has led the Mernt to diverge from mainstream cultures linguistically, culturally, and physically. Linguistically the Mernt dialect has seem an explosion of new terms and a tendency to destress every syllable of Root they speak, as well as developing a profusion of noun modifying suffixes. The -t suffix meaning of or from (most Mernt will give their middle name as [wherever they grew up]-t), a normal speaker of Root should be careful not to miss the end of word noises that can completely invert a sentences meaning. Culturally an intense worship of individual life-baring worlds as mother goddess aspects leads to great devotion and the occasional blood sacrifice (returning things to the cycle), with a spill over into extreme matrilinealism when a mans entire worth and prestige are bound up in their mothers family (though like nearly all less wealthy human societies, the greater political sphere is driven by male tribal identities). That matrilineal line is always tied to a particular biome unit that the family see themselves as protecting and nurturing, will to engage in decades long blood feuds with transgressors against their land and the organisms within it. Physically they are small and petite with pale skin, lower than average sexual dimorphism, a Caucasian cast to their features and wavy blonde hair (typically worn long and thick in both sexes). Both sexes also have two or more alleles for red photosensor pigments (in baselines males have one and females one or two), enabling them to distinguish more shades of red in the often dim light of the forest stars. Iris colours are yellow, orange, or violet, thought this is a cosmetic change that became fixed in the small founder population rather than an adaptive modification.

Summarising all the scattered Mernt tribes is beyond the scope of this monograph, but to touch on each of the significant ones:

The Order of the Fourth Edenic Monks control the city of Eden on the Moon of Lys, the oldest of the settlements off Mern itself. During the plague years the authorities sealed off the city completely forcing a brutal regime of recycling and management of the tiny ecology. Eventually the ecosystem managers became priests, their deity the death of the Mern biosphere. All outsiders are forbidden from their habitat, and those who venture out must undergo a five year ritual of cleansing on their return. They are experts in managing the ecosystems of cities and ships however, and some seek their consultancy services. They have a proprietorial air to Mern itself despite never touching the planet, seeing as a monument or tomb to their religion, the Plague a punishment for some crime.

In earthy contrast to the Monks are the Knights of the Vale. When the Mernt fell, the Vale of SAF1.i (a tidally locked world, with the Vale a vats landform in the sunward hemisphere) proved a small and rich enough planetary biosphere (especially with the nitrate deposits) that it could maintained without advanced technology, merely hard graft. Such management required a large class of workers close to the land, and a feudal system quickly ossified out of those few families who had managed to gain any power in the immediate post collapse. The religion and the need for the serfs to keep the biosphere alive means the lower classes are quite well treated, if forbidden movement, and the Knights themselves have a paternal attitude towards them and the other fallen Mernt tribes. Food ships and a willingness to brawl with encroaching outsiders and pirates (even if not always successful) has lead the other Mernt tribes to look up to the Knights and their armed forces.

The Oiat Kingdom of the Abell system unlike the previous two strains did indeed fall totally into barbarianism, but the wide waterways and canals of Oia (Abell iii) allowed a greater interconnectivity of the tribes even as the biosphere began to crumble. The Oiat had managed to crawl back to raw technological base and atmospheric flight a mere three and a half centuries after the plague. A great hero forged the tribes into a single force to repel a small raiding force, and they refer to themselves as a kingdom in his honour, despite not bothering to elect a new king on his death. The Oiat are nomadic, preferring to travel the rivers and between the oasiss in great houseboats and caravans (built from scavenged aluminium, so much larger and more durable than Old Terra equivalents), setting up farms and grazing lands in different places in each season. The river boats are now crowded with refugees from the mountains, driven out by the new Standard arrivals. The Oiat are rather more tan and taller than the average pre-plague Mernt.

The only other sealed city to make it through to the current era is the settlement on Smi, one of the moons of Buxes outer giants. Most of those cities who isolated themselves generally didnt prove viable over the centuries. The Smit on the other hand had near unlimited volatiles for their small population, and didnt have to be nearly so committed to efficiency. Over time rather than becoming paranoid, the cities bred a trusting personality type (one of the ways society can evolve when there is no external reference), and when explorers began to penetrate the forest they were enthusiastically welcomed. Trying to attract visitors and trade, the Smit touted themselves as a stopover point, and used the old Mernt skill with plant life to reap a vast surplus from their hydroponics to lure passing traders.

The Forest Subsegment: The Hiders

Spoiler :

Disenfrancised · Aug 6, 2012

BACKGROUND FLUFF (PART 4)

The Forest Subsegment: New Arrivals

Spoiler :

With the establishment of the ansibyl beacon the cathedral powers have dipped their toes into the forest, with several stations at SAF2. But smaller corporate entities from the Cathedral have plunged deep (or had set up a few decades before). Some failed and died/slunk back home in shame, but others have succeeded in building little corporate fiefdoms. The JIM Corporation has set up a refinery and Freeport at the planet Murk in the centrally located SAF4 system. A atheist philosophical movement on the Black Castle, they eventually despaired of getting any of their viewpoints across and decided to strike out on their own, positioning themselves to sell refuelling services and construction ships in the assumption that other groups will be following them in an attempt to colonise the Forest frontier. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the pious Saint Rihndell House had to flee the cathedral after one dubious weapons deal too many. Following an ancient treasure map they found the exotic gases of a Robor Gas Giant in an otherwise valueless system a perfect foundation on which to rebuild their reputation as sellers of high end weaponry to all and sundry.

Coming from further afield but with similar aims are an exilic commercial group from the Csserian Confederacy, one of many seeds that state has thrown out in every direction after the post war turmoil. The commerce minded group jumped straight to Abell on the purchased recommendation of the Pavonis Bank; the Forest and the deeper parts of the sector would all be accessible but a slight distance would be maintained from the Cathedral to remain competitive, the Oiat would be a useful client state to mentor up to civilisation whilst supplying the Csserians with foodstuffs, and the second moon of Oia was known to be metal rich from the days of the old Mernt Empire. Perhaps an almost archetypical example of a Cosmopolitan people, the Csserians are defined by their civic religion (and their distrust of augmented clades, even to the extent of refusing the most basic pressure compensating microbes), with a worshipful reverence for their founding social contracts. The new branch culture in the segment as essential copied the old constitution, rolled back a bit on some of its more namby-pamby aspects as benefits a frontier society. Their society is very open and welcoming of nigh anyone who comes and visits (though nearly every Csserian will try and sell said visitor something), and is thickly leavened with optimism and a sense of fun. Families tend to be nuclear due to high population mobility and friendships brief but strong, fashions from the outside wash over the Csserians but leave no discernible trace (the current thing is brocaded jackets in the Oiat style). Arriving with a lot of self-assembling (not replicating!) machinery from their more advanced homeworlds they built some snug domed cities and borehole mines within a tiny span of years and had begun looking outward. However the rosy outlook was complicated by the next set of arrivals, the migration of the Standards.

Though Standard was a small world in terms of the grand systems and powers, compared to the post-Plague forest they were a throng; with millions gleefully seizing on the idea of walking on new living worlds, as marginal as the Mernt worlds might be. A few even schemed of ways to destroy the Ansibyl beacon, and thus cut off surety of access to the Forest behind them, nothing has yet come of it though, and most laugh off their compatriots grandiose plans in favour of practical concerns like food and living space for their clan. Physically the Standards are near-Dathics, removed from the root culture by a few hundred years of separation, being much the same if marginally less handsome, and with musculatures polished by hard labour rather than just the innate Dathic gene modifications. It is culture that distinguishes them from the artistic and calm root-Datha, though they share the ancestral arrogance and hard-partying nature. Believers in personal freedom and the connection of a man to the land he works, the Standards form close, rigid and patriarchal clan groups (when individuals don’t just up and go off on their own) and violence suffuses their society from the top down. A Standardite man without a host of scars and a gun on his hip is respected in the slightest, and losing a limb (oft replaced with a weaponised artificial replacement) is rather a badge of honour. Duels are frequent, though property rights are respected if the duel if fatal; the onus is on the victor in a duel to take the losers body and possessions back to the losers clan, compared to someone who runs from a duel challenge whose life and goods are forfeit. It is only the freebooting and argumentative ethic that stops corporate tyranny in the regulation less Standardites, as no corporate endeavour manages to avoid descent into bickering before it becomes to powerful or damaging, though pollution is a problem despite their love of the land.

Arriving in the Segmentum, the Standards travelled to Abell for much the same reasons the Csserians did, but with rather different intent. As their rag-tag but massive fleet filled the skies of Oia, their armies descended. The Standards had be auxiliaries in the Dathic ground campaigns throughout the war, and worn out though they may be, they still had more men under arms than the entirety of the rest of this rather unmilitarised Segmentum, and the chemically propelled weapons of the Oiat were no match for the ion guns and robohorses of the Standardite conquistadors, even if they hadn’t been outnumbered twenty to one. The Oiat were quickly routed from half the planet’s surface as the Csserians looked on spluttering (the Csserians had no ground forces to intervene, and an attack on the Standard Fleet would kill millions of civilian refugees). It was at this point that disagreements broke out between the Commodores; one faction, the ‘lets-not-be-too-prickish-when-everyone-is-watching’ group, wanting to stop there, set up camp and normalise relations with the neighbours, whilst two other groups (the ‘screw-em-all’ and the ‘I’ve done-the-numbers-and-Oia-can’t-support-everyone’ factions) urged continuing warfare. The Not-pricks won out, but being Standards the other declared undying hatred and fled to the other post-Mernt worlds. The third group had been right as well; even farming as hard as they could the land they had claimed couldn’t support the whole refugees and a second wave spilled across the sector like a horde of locusts. The Commodores on Oia tried to maintain a unity, but each distant group they brought back into the fold pushed the others even further away from this ‘big government’. Wherever they went the Standard attempted to force out a space on any world with a breathable atmosphere, displacing or outright killing Mernt tribes and even squatting right next to the Seffessians. The Standards who went to SAF6 were never seen again. Some even took over abandoned and ruins domes on less hospital planets in a desperate attempt to survive. By far the fiercest fighting took place between a Standard warlord and the Knights of the Vale, with the warlord urging all free Standards to come support the conquest of that bountiful region (which could indeed hold a good 70% of the Standard Migrant population quite easily).

The Handmaidens Subsegment

Spoiler :

The least explored of the inhabited subsectors, the Handmaidens were even dustier than the forest (and spectral analysis predicted life-suitable worlds) and nearly all pre-Beacon exploration had to be done at sub-luminal speeds, and exploitation of the suspected metal troves had to be curtailed. As of the establishment of the beacon on the systems one negligible energy jump from sigma relay have been explored in any detail or developed to any extent. First in were a small consortium of miners who set up a tiny habitat at Glon some sixty years ago, extracting minerals and skimming the sterile waterworld of Glon iv (now iii). Their success inspired others:

The Diamond Network is another meta-empire with a common standard and culture but no centralised hub location; the common culture being a cyborg interface, a specialism in resource extraction and a semi nomadic wanderlust. The Ilosians are one such Diamond network franchise, and arrived at Alnitah on five large ships (ruled by a pentarchy of executives) after hearing of the Glon miners success. Rather than risking a dangerous jump, they crossed to Glon in real space, their ships laser boosted by disposable units in Alnitah orbit, a trek that took some three decades. On arrival some twenty years before the war, they merged their ships into a single habitat in close Glon orbit, the lightsails repurposed as a vast solar furnace. Strip mining the close small worlds to Glon, they reduced Glon i to a husk and completely dismantled the old Glon ii (shifting down the planet designations) and shipped the finished materials to the Cathedral and the wider Orion Sector. During and after the war their commercial agents and contacts in the wider sector were snuffed out one by one and they have hit hard times and have desperate need for new markets. On the other hand after the beacon was established they were first to jump at deeper exploration of the Segmentum, setting up mining operations on three nearby red dwarf systems. In contrast to the usual mental image of dirty and physically powerful mine workers, the Ilosians are ethereal and even angelic in physical appearance, as actual mining is done by waldo units as it has for millennia. Extremely slender and long limbed microgravity dwellers, they possess the Diamond Network founder mix of extreme northern European and northern Geashial genotypes plus larger germline modifications to be near completely lacking in skin colouration, and having grey white or silver hair and eye colouration, plus sharp bone structure with pronounced cheek bones. Their bodies are filigreed with silver and enamel white piping, and the aesthetic is completed by a large spindly ‘wing’ structure mounted off their middle back. This wing structure is actually several steps of vacuum microgravity locomotor arms with a built in jetpack and oxygen reprocessing plant acting as a second set of lungs. Further vacuum and low gravity adaptions include gripping talons in the feet and a dense anti-decompression weave set subderminally. An Ilosian can survive in calm space for several hundred hours with nothing but an airtight helmet and a lose plastic robe to prevent thermal desiccation. As is the Diamond network ethos, the head and eyes are free of external modifications to aide social communication and having an untamperable optical channel available, the additional multispectral sensors and laser mineral samplers instead being built into the wings and hands. Inbuilt communication gear is voice and vision channel only, the Ilosians having a great love for the privacy of mind and the quiet of dark spaces. In their day to day life the Ilosians are quiet and often solitary workers, loving the satisfaction of a job well done and independent discovery. Children typically stay with only one parent until adulthood, with most Ilosians siring or birthing one child they raise themselves and one raised by another, on adulthood new Ilosians typically work for the state for some ten to fifteen year to pay off their creation loans. Politically the Ilosians are still run by the five executives, with a nearly flat command structure under them, when the executives have a job that needs doing they contact a suitable individual directly or advertise a position for a temp contract.

A later arrival than the Ilosians and luckily non-competing is the Order of the Deluge. A student on a religious exchange program with a Cathedral habitat scanned the news feeds out of Glon, and returned to their a source world with a scheme to set up a new monastery for quiet contemplation on the dust obscured waterworld of Glon iii. Convincing higher ups took some years, and the Deluger ark slipped in just before the War broke out. Dynamic but not aggressive they quickly spread all over the warmer shallows of the water worldand rapidly appropriated the pumping stations of the Glon miners with simple squatting, leaving the latter to retreat to their moon city in a huff. With the instability of the War, a not inconsiderable number of Delugers and converts from elsewhere followed the that first wave and soon the nice parts of the world hummed with activity. Setting up a biosphere proved tricky though (the world is thick with water, even the ‘shallows’ being tens of kilometres deep, and the water is very nutrient poor) even though everyone agreed the azure and purple sky with Glon and Alnitah blazing away was very pretty and suitable to devout contemplation on matters of gravity and depth (tehe). A hearty trade with the Ilosians has developed, and some say with the establishment of the Beacon the order should trade further afield. Others retort that the order should seek peace and quiet by probing deeper into the dust of the Segmentum. After several hundred years of cultural evolution and directed genetic modification the Delugers have become a truly aquatic biomorph, where instead of legs they have a very flexible five metre long eel like tail with two small flippers below the hips (to answer the age old question – its retractable). The length of this body is not just to provide locomotion, but it also has many internal voids full of gill structures. Providing sufficient oxygen for an endothermic human brain is not possible with a few measly gills round the neck, and the Delugers wished to keep their capacity to breathe and hence their old lungs. The concentration of aquatic organs in the tail does allow intriguing options for the deluger on a mission to the outside galaxy – a few weeks of surgery will see them tottering about on cloned normal human legs, whilst the tail is kept on ice for their eventual return (the connections between the systems has a socketed design for this very purpose). The few adjustments to the upper body include a much more flexible neck for looking forward, secondary eye membranes, a thicker slightly greyish skin dappled with blue and a thick layer of insulating fats in the trunk and arms (females have impressive gynoidal fat deposits as well), and a few small fins on the back and wrists. The tail can scrub a lot of nitrogen bubbles from the blood, but they can still only dive down only some five hundred metres in earth gravity waters. Typically they live in sunlit cities just below the surface, surround by clouds of green algae which is as far as the vivification effort has managed to get so far. Their society is well ordered and pious with strong marriage ties, with the physicist-priests wielding spiritual rather than political power. The floating cities are democratic, but no planet wide legislature has yet been implemented.

Some groups did make it back from the sigma-relay proximate SAH3 and SAH6 in the perilous time before the beacon, and the tales they brought provoked considerable interest. At SAH3 two small biosphere worlds orbited in a close binary, the microbes from one raining down into the others sky, one chlorine rich and deadly the other more conventional. At SAH6 the moon of the hot brown dwarf SAH6 ii was covered in jet black selenium-carbon vegetation. Both of these attracted exploratory consortiums from Datha and her great power allies, at SAH3 the commercial Saldrid group sought to set up some sort of holiday destination, whilst at SAh6 a pure science expedition set out to find all there is to know. Both had no true character of their own being composed of representatives from dozens of worlds, and both have been cast adrift by the Destruction of the war. Both possess quite high end technology but little development base.

FACTION THEME MUSICS!

Spoiler :

Disenfrancised · Aug 6, 2012

Update 0: Glass Shards, Descending

Pava unfolded from the lotus position, and a twitch of her hands restored the floors binding field just as her feet touched down. A second gesture banished the floating ghosts and data read outs from her vision like a flock of startled sparrows, leaving only the glowing alert that Vice-Captain Perera was requesting entrance to the sanctum. She sighed and looked around at the blank white dodecahedron.

Not even giving me time to pick out some furniture are they?

In truth it had been some hours since she had arrived at the strategy offices here on the 465, normally more than enough time to get settled and order the room into Shapes, but the outgoing Consul had left a number of engrossing ultra-secure files for her on the rooms datastack. One of them even had held some advice regarding the upcoming confrontation with the Vice-Captain.

She conjured an image of herself in the room, the rooms field piping the sensorium directly onto her optic nerve as she checked her presentation; spotless and seamless coal black uniform with only a few adornments of gold and platinum at the neck and belt, long braid clipped to the waist against floating free in microgravity, black eyes with a stare colder than space itself, something practiced and primed to stop those who would dismiss a waifish woman dead in their tracks. She also conjured the Vice-Captain standing impatiently outside, tapping his hand against the wall; no doubt frustrated at facing one of the few rooms on the battlecrusier he couldnt look in at will.

Oh well time to get it over with, she thought to herself. Shed often wondered how she could be both so keen on unravelling a foreign cultures political games, and so irratiated at playing the intrigues of her own people. Maybe it was a subconscious assumption that we were better than them? She tasked a ghost to examine that thought further, letting arrogance leak into diplomacy was precisely the kind of error she was preparing to chew out Perera over. She commanded the door to slide back.

Vice-Captain? So good to meet you,. I knew you had the bridge when I arrived and met the rest of the command staff, but I thought I was not scheduled to meet your bridge crew for another seven hours she said, a flat tone making it clear it wasnt a question.

He was put off balance for a second, then flicked back with a respectful tone flecked with genuine-subordinate-concern-no-5.

Considering my complaint revolves around issues that will occur in the next four hours, I felt I needed to make my objections known at once and in full-person

And your complaint is? she replied, knowing full well the answer. From the look that flashed across his eyes he knew she knew too, but that touch of fire was dampened just as fast. Considering her expectations, she was impressed, perhaps he would be salvageable after all.

This last minute reorganisation, youre stripping vital members of our teams and sending them back with the Old Consul, and replacing them with academy graduates so fresh they still have the shrink wrap on. This will severely compromise our operations and task forces.

Pava smiled at him, I agree

This wi-what?

I agree. This rips gaping holes in the long term plans the Iris has been formenting in this Segmentum, several of which you have hung your career on. But neither of those things matters in the slightest to me, for the game has changed.

He looked lost at that, Pava couldnt be bothered to speculate how he thought this confrontation would have gone down, but this clearly wasnt it.

The Executors and the Arbiters are in agreement; our entire strategy is to be reworked from the ground up. Our best military thinkers, like my predecessor here, are needed elsewhere, and this position needs a refocusing on diplomacy and monitoring. Thus those in still in the mindset of the Dathic War need to be sent to sectors where that mindset is appropriate, and we need fresh blood here. Blood that wont be so quick to judge, and so quick to expend scare military resources interfering in primitive cultures. I know you had only tangential involvement in the Hinld incident, but it is exactly that sort of thing I have been sent here to stop. Old warriors can move on up, but those who want a career here need to adjust to the new paradigm. She smiled inwardly; getting to make speeches without being interrupted was one of the few true joys of being in charge. This would have been explained at the upcoming meeting you know

He looked off for a second, before gathering his thoughts and replying So weof a more martial inclination I supposedo we no longer have a place in the fleet? Is the clock turning back?

No, we will never turn all our Harpoons back into Hydroponics. But aggression will be the tightly contained tool of a broader pacifistic policy. No one will let us forget the Burning, but we might as yet be redeemed of it.

So youre asking me to be a tool?

I dont think it will be a stretch. In fact lets start right away Ive been asking each of the senior staff to give me their briefing on the political situation here in the Alnitah environs, now its your turn.

But surely you have read the reports?

Differing perspectives are vital, and I enjoy face to face recounting when I can get them. Not to mention how you interpret a dataset I have access to already tells me a lot about you, you overly focused simpleton Pava thought whilst keeping her face clear of expression.

Wellthe most crucial factor continues to be the on-going chaos and migrations from the closing of the War. The arrival of the Dardareo worldship at sigma relay promises to twist the whole spinward economy. That sort of production capacity could kick-start a whole new level of development, but they desperately need to set up supply routes to keep themselves afloat. Ditto the Hankish on Hearthfire, they have the potential to change everything with their skills and fleet but need to cement relationships and networks as soon as possible. The minor Dathic communities in Sigma relay will help or hinder, but are not relevant or the higher scales. Any sort of new stable power structure centred around these post-Dathic polities will prove bad for the Iris, due to their inherent opposition to us.

A cogent analysis, though I disagree on the last point. If they do achieve stability, eventually new generations of leaders will arise that can work with us on a more realistic bases. If we keep the situation chaotic, they will never reach a state where pragmatic decision making can overrule emotion, or where they can appreciate the structure well provide to interstellar relations. Continue.

Those out in the depths of the Handmaidens, the Angels and the Aquatics, are going to be neutral towards us. They have their own quiet schemes, and absolutely need the navigation beacon in order to continue their operations so deep in the cloud. They will play into the sectors politics only as resource brokers. This may change if the spinwards powers start to aggressively push into the cloud though. That Saldrid Company do need a patron if they are to continue operation, the news of their headquarters destruction came through last year. They could offer prizes the Spinwards powers would fight over.

In the opposite direction the worlds of Yan and Atooa may be a lot of trouble. They were Dathas true foothold in this region, and unlike the Sigma polities are stable and prosperous. The Yanii have been un-warlike up to now, but then theyve always had the Dathics to protect them. Nothing can drive rash action quite like having your security blanket taken away. Atooa has already been flooding media markets with anti-iris propaganda. The Quasi shouldnt be a problem, those sort of peaceful traders are exactly the type we want to encourage, and given their environmental preferences they are not going to be running out of expansion room for some time. We have intercepted a lot of communications that look like map data and cryptology thinks the Quasi know a lot more about the worlds of spinwards than anyone suspects.
The Heph at Lipsid Iota wont be a problem; they were rude and standoffish to the Dathics and theyll be the same to us. If someone else tries to set up mining colonies in the Iota worldlets we might haveincidents though.

Lipsid Gammas going to be an issue though, nothing more nasty than when a slave gets hold of their masters. No one quite knows what to do with the Zera, but if they get blood on their hands that could very much change. The lack of any interstellar capacity makes them tempting target for Extortionists, particularly privateers-

Hexcali has disavowed all relationships with those executives, apparently the Adama corporation overstepped. But you know how much Hexcalis word is worth

Anyway the Cathedral powers offer the biggest opportunity for us, heck theyre only a century or two of development away from being able to afford Iris products. The rest of the segementum is going to be defined by their relationships with that nexus of wealth. Getting involved in there would be difficult as theyre a tightly woven balancing act between the BIR, the Valk, and the Corans. I think the Valk a gearing up for another power grab, and it would best if that was directed away from the other Cathedral powers. The other two dont look like theyd go for colonisation sprees, but they are certainly going to play the game of clients and markets, if only to ward off Valk aggression. Its ironic how they all need each other, with none of them being truly self-sufficient or closed.

The Mernt Forest is the new ground the Cathedral Powers and the post-Dathics are going to be fighting over, but it has its own issues. The biggest upset is the Standard Migration. Id like to give whoevers idea that was a piece of my mind we dealt with those buggers in the Battle for the Quincunx, once they go to ground theyre harder to remove than cockroaches! Theyre engaged in a ground war with the Mernt primitives on a score of worlds and causing massive dislocation and loss of life. What might even be worse is that theyve stirred up a host of Hiders two scary eusocial hives that might do damn knows what, and another clade of transhumans whose bioproducts might warp the whole economy of the Forest.

Pava smiled slightly at that, the reports from other sources had offered rather more analysis on each of the Hiders; like the Leeni strong ethics or that the Praxzen had been gearing up to re-emerge onto the interstellar stage for some time in order to over their long recession, but it suited Pereras character to focus on the overt trouble of the Standards. Her reaction didnt stop his flow.

Some of the Mernt have one group on their side, pity its some Csserian ideologes who dislike us as much as the Standards do, and a couple of the Mernt factions might be able to resist them. But to me it looks that entire subsector will be a post-Dathic culture within the decade. Things need to be taken in hand!

Are you finished Vice-Captain? Your analysis is appreciated but I feel forced to repeat myself - the period of us taking decisive proactive action is over. The rules have changed, and we will let the little players make their moves first.

Random Events

None (count yourselves lucky)

On-going agreements

BIR-Coran supply pact: BIR guarantees to fulfil up 55 m per year to the Corans, at 1:1 v:m, 2:1 f:m, and 2:1 e:m. Failure of a years fulfilment will result in the following year being free. Either party may end the agreement with one years notice.
Valk-Coran supply pact: Valk guarantees to fulfil up 25 v per year to the Corans, at 1:1 e:v. Failure of a years fulfilment will result in the following year being free. Either party may end the agreement with one years notice.

Open Market Trades

BIR is offering 3 lots of 50m for 125e at Lipsid Beta
Valk is offering 6 lots of 80v for 120e at Lipsid Beta

New Technologies Discovered

BIOTECH 4
Ship Components
Ecology Matrix Improves range provided by habitat modules
RNA Processors (With MATHS 4) Multiplier of computer module power, reduces EW Vulnerability, squidgy and reduces maximum dodge and IP speed.
Army Attributes
Immunity Biotech augmentation, improves survivability, operation in hazardous environments, healing.
Senses I Biotech augmentation, improves stealth and detection and init.
Buildings
Ecology Matrix Improves output of farms and hydroponic
Social Policies
Ecopoetic Values (Other requirement not known)
Green Economy (With MATHS 4) First justice economy, optimises economy to reduce environmental stress and population consumption and upkeep at the cost of raw output. Also okay for producing talent.
Other
Enrich Biosphere II
Establish Biosphere
Adaption region specific environmental biotech, population becomes immune to a specific regions Toxic, Medium Rad, Warm, Chill, Thin Atmosphere, and any Storm trait, Advancers receive for free (in terms of s) after a time with pop in the region
Modification region specific environmental biotech, population changed to utilise a specific Exotic Biosphere type - now treat as being a rich biosphere
Amphibious seas higher value
Senses I - Better growth in harsh, fondness for frontier, armies receive senses I automatically
Longevity I Longer and healthier lifespan leads to increased e and s development, reduced growth rate
Communication I A form of advanced person to person communication (the exact form varies), and a better built in understanding of language leads to bonus to e and s synergy, trading bonuses, but increased foreign stress when migrants cant fit in so easily.

COMPUTATION 4
Ship Components
Repair Bay (with CONSTRUCTION 3) Provides 3 repair actions
Crypto Module Augments computer modules contribution to Electronic Warfare skill
Field Scanners (other requirement not known)
Array Scanners (other requirement not known)
Sapper (with ENERGY 4) Device which can directly attack enemy shields at close range, letting other weapons deal more damage
Army Attributes
Electromuscle Cybernetic augmentation, gives an extra action from increased movement
Sensors I high tech optics and audio give increased Init and EW, detect and stealth
Vacuum Cybernetics improved operation in vacuum environments
Basic Power Armour (with CONSTRUCTION 4) small suit of powered armour, giving increased all round infantry capability
Buildings
Robots Assembly Centre add on for factories that allows the leveraging of computer technology towards improving e production
Social Policies
Other
Electromuscle Basic labour cybernetic augmentation, improves e production, armies start with electromuscle
Sensors I Augmentation cybernetics, Armies start with sensors I, improved growth in harsh, better talent generation
Vacuum Cybernetics Society wide environmental modification, Immune to Thin and Trace Atmospheres, Medium Rad, reduced effect of vacuum, armies start with vacuum cybernetics I
Pressure World specific environmental cybernetics sealing and toughening organs, gives immunity to thick atmosphere here, reduced sea and ocean problems, increased resource extraction in these environments
Shielding (WITH MATERIALS 4) World specific environmental cybernetics, gives immunity to high radiation here
Filtering (other requirements not known)
Thermal Gear (with ENERGY 4) World specific environmental cybernetics, gives immunity to cold here
Networking I (with MATHS 4) gives built in connection to data devices, improves s synergy, network effect

CONSTRUCTION 4
Ship Components
Pellet Fusion Core (With ENERGY 3) powerful energy unit, low mass but high volume
Salt Sinks (WITH MATERIAL 3) improved heat sink, costs m instead of ice sinks v, smaller and heavier
Army Attributes
Basic Power Armour (See computation)
Buildings
Arcologies (also requires MATHS 4)
Space Fountain (other requirement not known)
Pressure Domes enables building of Domes in thick atmospheres and under seas and ice seas
Social Policies
Other
Drain Seas terraforming action, lets you remove seas and reap a one-time v bonus
Landscaping I terraforming action, lets you reduce or accentuate hills or mountains, reform land/water boundaries to increase or decrease moisture load and storms

ENERGY 4
Ship Components
DHe Fusion Core fancy pants power core, requires access to exotic gases to supply
Plasma Tap (with CONSTRUCTION 2)
Laser Fusion Drive (With PROPULSION 4) laser modulated fusion gives very high throttlibility drive, more powerful version of pulse drive but high volume (albeit low mass).
Plasma Sail (with PROPULSION 3) sail that lets ship ride on the particle output of other ships
Visible Laser (other requirement unknown)
Laser Net (With WEAPONS 3)
Confinement Field II (Other requirement unknown) allows you to take a second confinement field option to boost your ion cannons and jets
Army Attributes
Field Generator Root and enabler of all other ground based shield activity, is a mobile generator. Consumes supply but can be refined to be much more rugged and portable.
Surface Screens Powered by the field generator, a large and defuse surface screen can make orbital assaults on this army more difficult.
Buildings
Fusion Reactor
Exotic Fusion Reactor (With PROPULSION 4) Can use the fancier light elements to create cleaner and hotter fusion chambers and more efficiently produce power.
Social Policies
Other
Warm Dome terraforming action to heat a dome in a cold environment up to something comfortable, requires continual e expenditure.
Thermal Gear, see Computation

MATERIALS 4
Ship Components
Molten Radiators (other requirement not known)
Needlegun (other requirement not known)
Tungsten Armour (With CONSTRUCTION 3) armour of various very dense metals, provide defence and a good heat sink
Army Attributes
Armour Tactics I (other requirement not known)
Buildings
Social Policies
Other
Gases I industrial based terraforming, raises the temperature of a region by one level, costs a m and v upkeep per year
Sunshade Orbiting construction to reduce insolation induced heat, built in the space region of a world and affects all ground regions
Shielding (see Computation)

MATHS 4
Ship Components
Crypto Module (See computation)
RNA processors (See biotech)
Optical Junctions (Other requirement not known)
Algorithmic Interlocks II you can take algorithmic interlocks a second time, to further reduce EW vulnerability at the cost of Init
Army Attributes
Espionage Corps Command option that uses talents to boost EW, stealth and detection
Algorithmic Interlocks II you can take algorithmic interlocks a second time, to further reduce EW vulnerability at the cost of Init
Data Handling Training for a better chance of stealing data via stealth missions (scales with maths tech), also reduces EW vulnerability
Buildings
Finance Centre - Provides additional e based on s, network power here and total trade net. Can only have one per society
Social Policies
Green Economy (See Biotech)
Corporate Economy unlocked
Other

SOCIAL 4
Ship Components
Missile Control Centre (other requirement not known)
Army Attributes
Diplomatic Corps command option that uses talented officers to improve pacification and police keeping abilities
Clauswitizian Tactics I (other requirement not known)
Sunzian Tactics I (other requirement not known)
Buildings
Arcologies (Also requires CONSTRUCTION 4)
Social Policies
Efficiency Values (with MATHS 3) Your population values effective utilisation of resources without ideology. Lack of waste is a virtue in and of itself, and top down direction is employed society wide (not necessarily from the state). Serious, somewhat pacifistic and non-expansionist. Broad base of economic benefits, especially to power production. It is difficult to stay in the efficiency mind-set for a long period, and the populations negative response to taking risks can be hindering.
Demarchic Society (other requirement not known)
Other
Networking I (See computation)

PROPULSION 4
Ship Components
Laser Fusion Drive (See ENERGY 4)
Refuelling Pipes (other requirement not known)
Burst Lances (other requirement not known)
Hardened Lances (other requirement not known)
Burst Interceptors (other requirement not known)
Army Attributes
Aerospace Tactics I (other requirement not known)
Buildings
Exotic Fusion Reactor (See ENERGY 4)
Social Policies
Other
Thin Atmosphere A terraforming action to reduce a thick atmosphere to habitable pressures whilst yielding a massive one time v profit. This and other atmosphere management terraforming actions refine as a single technology

Disenfrancised · Aug 6, 2012

Network Map Y0

Spoiler :

Trade Map Y0

Spoiler :

I AM AWARE THE SYSTEM CHARTS LACK PLANETS (aside from Abnab) AND OTHER BUGS, THEY WILL BE FIXED

System Chart: ALNITAH Y0

Spoiler :

System Chart: SPINWARDS Y0

Spoiler :

System Chart: HANDMAIDENS Y0

Spoiler :

System Chart: FOREST (PART1) Y0

Spoiler :

System Chart: FOREST (PART2) Y0

Spoiler :

Economy Display (PART 1) Y0

Spoiler :

Economy Display (PART 2) Y0

Spoiler :

Economy Display (PART 3) Y0

Spoiler :

Data Images Y0

Spoiler :

Modifiers Summary Images Y0 (will be on the datasheet in later years)

Spoiler :

SPREADSHEET FILES Y0
Economics
Army Designer
Ship Designer
'Techs' (A data sheet)

BATTLE CALC RELEASE VERSION

Disenfrancised · Aug 6, 2012

Spare 1

Disenfrancised · Aug 6, 2012

YOU MAY NOW MAEK PAOST

~~It will be a while before everything is uploaded and sorted mind you!~~

Kraznaya · Aug 6, 2012

But with an overrunning flood he will make an utter end of the place thereof, and darkness shall pursue his enemies.

Lord_Iggy · Aug 6, 2012

The Hank-Sober Consortium is open for business... as always.

Azale · Aug 6, 2012

The Euphorium is in a confused ecstasy, not knowing whether this a dream or reality.

Shadowbound · Aug 6, 2012

The white moon hangs sickle
above the bright morning sun
in the dull blue sky.

The Quasi Association has people everywhere.

Disenfrancised · Aug 6, 2012

Everything that should be up, should be up. Gaze on the sweetness of my new trade map.

Thlayli · Aug 6, 2012

"We are riddled with the corruption of the doctrine of we. Cleanse your mind of the tyranny first, and then the world, and then the stars."

-Elric Standard

alex994 · Aug 6, 2012

"The Burning can be forgiven but never forgotten. Justice delayed is justice denied."

The Csser'ian Confederacy.

Matt0088 · Aug 6, 2012

"Oh, Spanda! I perceived my own life's end, and I chose the path of self-destruction instead."

Zera Concensus.

Symphony D. · Aug 7, 2012

Superiority is Freedom.

Seon · Aug 7, 2012

We are your family now.

SYSNES2: On the Lathe of Suns

Beep Beep

Beep Beep

Beep Beep

Beep Beep

Beep Beep

Beep Beep

Beep Beep

Beep Beep

Beep Beep

Beep Beep

Princeps

Tsesk'ihe

Deity

Incorrugible

Beep Beep

Le Pétit Prince

Hail Divine Emperor!

Deity

Deity

Not An Evil Liar