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Author Topic: GalactiRace Core Thread | Turn 5. It's Laaate...  (Read 11747 times)

Blood_Librarian

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Re: GalactiRace Core Thread | Starting Up, Nothing Can Go Wrong
« Reply #15 on: August 03, 2018, 09:47:13 am »

that's metal
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if you want something wacky
Quote from: ChiefWaffles, MAR Discord
I continue to be puzzled by BL's attempts to make Aratam blatantly evil

evictedSaint

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[We]
« Reply #16 on: August 26, 2018, 03:17:15 pm »

[We]


Quote from: Anomalous Transmission Log Bravo-20.A
Transmission Detected
Interception Protocol Initiated
Transmission Captured
Decryption Sequence <REDACTED>
Attempting Decrypting Now
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..
...
....
Decryption Successful
Translation Sequence <REDACTED>
Attempting Translation Now
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Translation Partially Successful
Displaying Message On-Screen

Quote from: Intercepted Transmission 00.00.00.01

Survey Log 22.32.3409-A.A.1
Ship-Integrated Captain **&@(^!%%-0023.1
Survey Stealth Ship CSS 88A-2641 "Translucency"
Alpha System

CSS 88A-2641 "Translucency" transited into Alpha System on <Ambiguous - Star Date? Best Estimation: N/A> as per ordered and immediately began observation procedures.  Geoscopic, Radiological, and Ionic Postprocess Analysis revealed that Alpha System contained two planetary systems capable of sustaining Class-3 lifeforms.  These two planets - hereforth termed Alpha 1 and Alpha 3 <Note: Numerical naming scheme seems to correlate to sequential planetary placement from central star outward> - rank 0.2 and 0.05 on the 10-point %$$*#@ Habitability Ranking System, respectively.  Analysis indicates that habitability ranked at 1.5 and 6.5 respectively sometime within the past <Ambiguous - Time Measurement? Best Estimation: 114 Earth-Years>.  Indicators point towards heavy orbital nuclear bombardment, as evidenced by multiple large glowing regions of land on both planets.  Please refer to Analysis Report Alpha 22.32.3409-A.A.2 for complete Alpha System Analysis Data Set <Unavailable>.

Alpha 1 is the most curious of those in the system, largely due to the flourishing and relatively advanced lifeforms that have taken place as the dominate species despite the low habitability ranking and nuclear devastation.  The planet itself initially appears to be without atmosphere and scoured clean by intense solar radiation due to its close proximity to the sun, only a mere <Ambiguous - Orbital Period? Best Estimation: 120 Earth-Days>.  Further analysis reveals that massive canyons lining the planet contain breathable atmosphere in the lower levels, kept safe from solar scouring.  Though the upper plateaus are barren of all and any life, these canyons contain a rich and diverse biological ecosystem.  Primary among this ecosystem is the presence of massive colonies composed of large <Ambiguous - Distance? Best Estimation: 1 - 5 meters> insectoid creatures.

We've been able to identify several distinct variations among insectiods within a single colony.  Please refer to Analysis Report Alpha -1 22.32.3409-A.A.3 for complete Specimen Analysis <Unavailable>.  These colonies are entirely dedicated to their "Queen", the progenitor for each colony.  These Queens establish Queendoms in tunneled-out sections of canyon wall, forming shockingly complex and extensive systems of caverns, tunnels, and defenses, replete with production capabilities rivaling large-scale industries.  Power production in these deep, dark canyons relies heavily on nuclear power.  It is not uncommon for a small colony to support multitudes of fusion reactors to power their industrial pursuits, exceeding <Ambiguous - Power Output? Best Estimation: N/A> in even the smallest colonies.  This staggering power output is sustainable due to the large amounts of <Ambigous - Poisonous? Lethal?> heavy metals present in the planets crust, as well as a ready source of He3 in the upper atmospheres.  Evolutionary tracing and fossil analysis indicates that the insectoids were at one time scavengers, prey to a flight-capable species of predators that inhabited the upper reaches of the canyons.  Fossil records suggest the insectoids banded together and hunted the predator species to extinction <Ambiguous - Time Period? Best Estimation: 1680 Earth-Years> ago.  The ecosystem has changed drastically since then, resulting in the extinction of several <Ambiguous - Quantity? Best Estimation: 400+>  other species due to the ecological disruption.

These colonies are technologically inferior to our own capabilities by several magnitudes, but are able to support a small fleet of space-worthy starships in orbit over their planet.  We were able to witness a launch during our short observation in Alpha System.  It appears the insectiods build temporary rail systems on the flat, barren surface of the planet during the long night phase.  Due to the lack of atmospheric drag, the starship is able to ride these rails for great distances and build up enough velocity to obtain orbit.  These rails are disassembled and reassembled as the planet rotates, presumable to avoid unnecessary heat stress from the night/day cycle.

Close analysis and scans of these ships suggest a potential match to the nuclear devastation present on Alpha 3.  Decryption and analysis of insectiod records has proven difficult due to the alien nature of both their communications and computer architecture, but due to our stealth capabilities were were able to spend an extended period of time in-system intercepting and decrypting communications, as well as making un-seen intrusions into their archives.  The insectoid language relies heavily on telepathic communication, and to a lesser degree audio and pheromone cues for the "Lesser" castes of insectoids.  Translating this into purely text-based communications has proven to be <Ambiguous - Difficult? Laborious? Impossible?>, but we are able to recreate small portions of their communications.  Please refer to Archive Collection Report Alpha-1 22.32.3409-A.A.4 for a complete collection of intercepted communications and raw archives <Unavailable>.  Text surrounded by "[ ]" indicates partial or poorly-translated expressions.

The insectiod refers to its species as [We].  This does not appear to be a formal naming convention, but rather an amalgamation of the entire insectiod collective and is indicative of an extreme <Ambiguous - Colloquialism Detected.  Best approximation: "Us Versus Them Mentality">.  The "Higher" castes of [We] exhibit a mental link to the other members of its colony, and indeed even extending out to other members of its species.  The Higher castes are by far the most cognitively aware and intelligent members of the species, handling in large part the research, development, and other <Ambiguous - Creative?> aspects of their culture.  They seem to place a high value on this mental link, even asserting that the fact that other organisms do not exhibit such a telepathic link is indicative of an absence of their [sentience|will].  In the same way we do not find bacteria to be sentient or viruses to be truly alive, so does [We] assert that all other organisms are not truly [sentient|queen-willed] or meaningfully [alive|awake].  Indeed, the best comparison they seem to have between their own species and that of other organisms is a singular Drone - the bottom member of their caste system - cut off from its colony and the rest of its species.  This disregard for all other organisms represents a dangerous absence of morality, in which they compare the act of planet-wide genocide to the moral ambiguity of wiping out a pest infestation.

Analysis of their historical records reveals surprisingly little embellishment or unnecessary description.  Their historical records appears to be primarily for bringing new princesses and queens up to date on the history of their species, as well as facilitating a rapid understanding of their technological developments thusfar.  The records are concise and brutally simple, describing defeats and victories in equal capacity without bias or justification.  Until relatively recently [We] had not exhibited anything similar to a governmental body, or even anything passing for a code of laws.  Their word for "peace" is best approximated as "self" - [Self|We] is their description of a unified side not at war, limited exclusively to members of their own species.  Until the creation of their [Council] (a coalition of all queens in the species, ranked by seniority), this description of [Self|We] did not extend past their own colony!  Colonies simply existed alongside one another, subjected to sudden and brutal invasions from another as expansion became necessary.  The [invention] of the [Council] facilitated the first formal measure of planetary peace on Alpha 1, ever.  Aside from technological and strategic decisions, the [Council] also dictates the ascension of new queens, as well as adjudicating the ranking system that weighs the [voices] and allotted population size of each queen herself.  Princesses are selected to become new queens based on the merits of their technological and martial prowess; a highly selective process that sees fewer than 1% of princesses [ascended].  It's not uncommon for princesses to go "rogue" and attempt to become queens and establish a colony without being [anointed] by the [Council].  These [rebellions] are generally put down immediately and violently, although in extremely rare circumstances a rebellious queen may prove herself sufficiently for [mercy] and are welcomed into the [Council].  These rebellious queens are generally ranked similar to those who've earned their queendom through military prowess.

Further delving into their more recent historical records reveals that [We] had largely been confined to their own planet despite having interplanetary capabilities for several <Ambiguous - Time Measurement? Best Estimation: 114 Earth-Years>.  At some point in the recent past a species from Alpha 3 entered the orbit of Alpha 1 and attempted <Ambiguous - Colonization? Farming? Terraforming?>.  These interlopers were [destroyed|forgotten] nearly as soon as they were discovered, leading the residents of Alpha 3 to launch [warships] in an attempt to take over the planet in retaliation.  [We] unified and formed their [Council], repelled the invasion, used their unified production capabilities and mineral abundance to quickly build [warships] of their own, and waged a full-scale [war|extermination|cleansing].  During the course of this [war], both Alpha 1 and Alpha 3 were subjected to heavy nuclear bombardment that devastated large portions of both planets, degrading them both to <Ambiguous - Tomb World?> status.  [We] survived despite the conflict and ensuing destruction.  They have since begun pouring their production potential into their primitive space program, even discovering the secrets of Borehole technology.  Their intention seems to be expansion, extermination, and pre-emptive execution of any species that represents a threat to their species.

Post-Survey Recommendation
Initiate Contact: No
Continued Observation: Yes
« Last Edit: August 26, 2018, 03:27:22 pm by evictedSaint »
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NUKE9.13

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[We]
« Reply #17 on: August 26, 2018, 03:18:36 pm »

[We]

Hivers are an unusual species in many ways. One such way involves the relative intelligence of different members of a Colony. Queens and princesses are the most intelligent members of the species by far, with intellects considerably more advanced than, say, a human. Princes typically have a similar intelligence level compared to a human, although their minds are often specialised, through selective breeding, to suit whatever task they are assigned. In comparison, drones of all flavours are borderline non-sapient. They generally lack significant creativity, curiosity, or strong emotions. However, even the most skilled Queen can only micromanage so many drones, and so a degree of intelligence is required to enable independent operation. And despite the best efforts of the Queens, with intelligence comes sapience, and with sapience comes independent thought.
Squashing independent thought, then, is a major component of Hiver society. This is aided by biology, as all drones are connected to the psionic network, letting Queens detect discordance and apply their own psionic influence to smooth things out. However, since time immemorial it has been found that this is not enough, and therefore Hiver colonies have developed societal means of keeping the drones in place.

Religion, or rather, [religion], is one method. Drones are indoctrinated from birth with a simple philosophy that emphasizes the values of structure, harmony, and obedience, in a manner that humans might consider somewhat reminiscent of Confucianism. On top of that, Queens are literally deified; the [anointing] process is claimed to transform princesses from mundane Hivers into spiritually immortal beings of an infallible nature. Pre-[Council], Queens would frequently squabble over who was the superior divinity- not that they themselves believe the stuff they tell their drones, but they felt the need to reinforce their own authority, even at the expense of others. Following formation of the [Council], it was declared that all Queens (at least, all Queens approved and [anointed] by the [Council]) were divine beings, with their rank determined by seniority. Drones are even encouraged to respect the elder Queens of other Colonies, in order to bind society together more strongly- and to discourage younger Queens from defying their elders, as doing so risks causing conflict amongst their drones.

Part of the philosophy drones are taught states that drones can only find meaning through service to a Queen- indeed, that an independent drone is not actually a sapient being. [We] are sapient only through our connection to each other and [Our] Queens, the message goes. To rebel is not only to defy one's guiding philosophy, to go against a divine being, it is also to surrender what little sapience you have, and become no more than an animal. This is, in fact, true, to a degree, as drones utilise networked intelligence, sharing thoughts and information through psionics, and so to sever the connection to the psionic network will reduce the effective intelligence of a drone.

Dietary means are also used to keep drones sedated- sometimes literally. Drones are generally fed a nutrient-rich slurry that in modern times is produced in industrial vats, the chemical content carefully controlled. Drones engaged in mindless manual labour are fed a slurry that dulls their intelligence, and enhances their strength. Conversely, drones who are assigned more mentally taxing tasks (precision manufacturing, etc) have their intelligence temporarily enhanced- such drones are usually more closely monitored than others, and are cycled out to other duties (that do not involve the same feeding regime) frequently, to ensure they don't have enough time to use their increased intellect to start questioning the status quo. Drones with no assigned tasks (a rare occurrence, as typically excess drones will simply be recycled and new drones birthed when needed, but sometimes there is a temporary lull in activity which does not justify the effort of recycling/birthing) are kept in a suspended state through sedatives- a sort of hibernation (hivernation?). Combat drones are fed slurries full of stimulants that enhance their reactions, and dull their senses of pain and fear.

Princes can be the most problematic of castes. Drones are dull and relatively easy to control, princesses have the hope of one day being [anointed], but princes are both intelligent and aware of their essential lack of power. Their services are necessary, as overseers of drone activity, researchers, and of course for breeding, but the Queens are acutely aware that they can not be granted too much power, lest a spirit of republicanism infests them.
To a degree, the same [religion] that keeps the drones in line helps keep the princes placated. Princes are required to engage in rites of submission and humility, and failure to show the proper respect is grounds for [termination]. However, where drones haven't the mental capacity for deception, some princes are capable of putting on an appearance of pious contrition, whilst in the back of their minds harbouring resentment. These 'heretic princes' communicate with each other through coded messages, and have on occasion managed to organise themselves to the point where they were capable of launching somewhat successful uprisings- although all ultimately doomed to failure, as fundamentally drones are biologically programmed to follow Queens and princesses over princes, meaning a prince-run colony is quick to collapse, and easily reconquered by conformist colonies.

To counter the threat of heresy, princes are required to submit themselves to the attention of an inquisitor on a regular basis, a princess who psionically scours their mind for hints of wrongthink. Inquisitors also secretly 'tap in' to communication between princes, monitoring for signs of rebellion. Some princes are specially bred to be informers, less intellectually free than their peers (and so less useful to the Colony), posing as regular princes, ready to betray any heretic who contacts them.

Another method that reduces the risk of heresy is the aforementioned inbred specialisation that many princes are subject to. Rather than an all-purpose intelligence, their minds are tailored to suit their intended role- not only making them better workers, but also reducing the risk of rebellion, as they have less mental capacity to dedicate to questioning their lot in life. As an example, princes intended to lead infantry have an innate understanding of tactics, are excellent at making quick decisions, and are all-but fearless in the face of danger, but lack creativity and other abstract thinking skills- they would be all-but useless as researchers. In the case of princes serving as said researchers, it has been found that for optimal results, a creative and questioning mind is needed- unfortunately the very traits that also lead to heretical notions, meaning researchers are the most closely monitored class of prince, with the typical prince-to-princess ratio in labs being 8:1, as compared to that of an entire colony being closer to 20:1.

Princesses, as can be inferred, are quite rare. They are also valuable, as whilst Queens can control what manner of drones or princes they spawn, princesses happen more or less at random- at a rate of around 1 in 10000. It remains a mystery as to what triggers an embryonic Hiver to become a princess; the best theory is that it is a psionic trigger, though this only raises the further question of where the psionic trigger comes from. Regardless, this means that whilst rebellious princes may be disposed of with little concern, and drones recycled en-masse, princesses- even troublesome ones- are carefully conserved.
For their services are essential to the operation of a successful Colony, as a Queen's attention is limited, and especially in the modern era there are far too many things to take care of for one to manage them alone. Princesses oversee major construction projects, inspect factories, lead armies, and as previously mentioned keep princes and drones in line. Mentally, a princess is less capable than a Queen, but is still capable of handily micromanaging hundreds of drones at once, or tackling the most complex of challenges without being overwhelmed. They receive a comprehensive education, and each princess is, if not an expert in, at least familiar with every aspect of [We]'s collected knowledge.

Unlike princes, princesses basically never show any interest in overturning the rules of society. They are, after all, treated like... well... princesses, with access to all the luxuries, entertainment, and personal servants they could ever want. The only thing they desire is power, specifically in the form of [anointment] to Queendom. To this end, they strive to outdo each other in the hopes of being selected to found a new Colony, or even take over their current Colony when the old Queen dies. Pre-[Council], this competition would sometimes escalate to violence, with princesses engaging in open warfare against each other in order to get rid of a pesky rival, or simply to prove their skills. Since the formation of the [Council], this particular form of competition has been discouraged, with princesses encouraged to compete instead in other fields, such as science. However, the occasional assassination does still occur from time to time. 
On rare occasions, particularly ambitious princesses in the modern world will defy the [Council] and form a new Colony without permission. Such rebellions are serious, and often well-planned, with the rebel princess suddenly revealing a massive army of warrior drones she had been indoctrinating in secret, armed with weapons she may have been stockpiling for decades. Despite this, most rebellions are not successful. Some early successes may be won, but are not enough to defeat the combined might of [We]'s armies. However, every now and then, a princess's handling of her rebel army and new Colony is so skillful that the [Council] decides to retroactively approve her [anointment]. This, of course, serves to encourage future rebels, even if the chances of it happening are extremely slim. But this is by design; the [Council] knows that permanent peace would make [We] soft- putting down a rebellion is an excellent opportunity to test new weapons and train a new generation of warriors.

Queens, the highest caste of Hiver, are also the most intelligent. The spiritual and societal meaning of [anointment] aside, there is also a biological effect- a princess's body changes, as does her mind. Most notably, she will rapidly grow to a much larger size than before, to facilitate the spawning of thousands upon thousands of new Hivers. The organ that connects her to the psionic network will engorge greatly, letting her connect to far more Hivers at far greater distances. Her mental faculties will also increase, though not as much- not enough to micromanage all the Hivers she can be in contact with- no, that is what she has princes and princesses for. Her role is to oversee the whole, to monitor the psionic network, to provide the reassuring presence in the back of the mind that lets her subjects know she is there.
The intelligence level of a Queen is incomparable to that of lesser creatures. The smartest individual from any other species wouldn't come close to being able to oversee all the things she does on a daily basis, and would probably have a hard time beating her in other intellectual areas. It is fortunate, for the Hiver's enemies, that this monumental intelligence is almost solely dedicated to running her Colony.
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frostgiant

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Re: GalactiRace Core Thread | Starting Up, Nothing Can Go Wrong
« Reply #18 on: August 28, 2018, 12:03:16 pm »

Liir Biocollective


The Suul’kan came from the sky, Steam and poison heralding their descent upon the surface of Vaal'Lara with the massive metal carapace beasts that ferried them appearing like mountains hovering above the planet's surface.

Eggs rained from the sky, released from the mountain-sized creatures upon the ocean homes of the Liir dispensing smaller metal creatures, Demons, and Pure heat. This catastrophe from the sky left the Liir in a state of pure panic. The song that all liir shares with each other was nothing but pain and screams of despair.
Their homes boiled as though the great underwater heat vents had rained themselves from the sky, all the while Demons slaughtered the Liir that had fled and captured those that hid from the cataclysm, Nothing on Vaal’lara escaped from the grasp of the Suul’kan.
Those of a more aggressive bent among the Liir attempted to crush the Demons with the Songofmovementandforce, a desperate attempt To save their clutchmates and children from the Slaughter even as the current ran with blood and poison.  These Liir failed, the bodies of the creatures resisting the their brief amount of time it took them or another of their number to kill the Liir in question.

The liir were contained in dead stagnant water, kept habitable only by the slight current that ran through it. The poison in the water burned the Liir, and weakened them so even as the thought of causing their new Captors, Now, Owners, harm came to them they were left too weak to break them with the Songofmovementandforce and too mentally exhausted from the sheer sense of dread, despair Pain pain pain that had flooded the song of the Liir to truly struggle using that song, as abhorrent as using it as a weapon may have been..

The Liir were separated from each other, prodded and tortured as their captures took the Liir apart, in order to understand their new slaves in all ways.

The destruction of Vaal’lara Submerged your species in nothing but pain and despair for what has been lost.
The treatment of the remaining Liir in the aftermath of their species being conquered by the Suul’kan taught them what Anger/Hate/Wrath was.

______________________ 

The rule of the Suul’kan was a harsh one. To the Enemy, no life was actually Life, merely various states of biological automata that moved and lived according to their biological programming,  And only they counted as true LIFE. Whether the Suul’kan arrived at this Philosophy from some form of species-wide trauma, Religion or Philosophical pondering it mattered little to the millions owned and broken by Suul’kan population.

Any form of torture that they inflicted upon another being was no different from the act of breaking a rock to make a tool or bending a piece of metal for some momentary amusement.

As a telepathic Species it was harder for the suul’kan to break them to their rule then normal, solely because it was difficult to get across meaning and no sound thinking Suul’kan would allow a Liir inside their mind in order to for the bond required for communication, lest they find their mind break under the retribution of the Song of the Liir.

Eventual crude communication was established, after the deaths of half of the captured Liir. With communication possible, it was only a matter of time before the new species would break, and become tools of the Suul’kan, as some many species had before them. In the Enemies mind and that of their Sl’Ta’Mar (Roughly translating to those that cause pain in the name of breaking or simply Slave tamers), it was only a matter of time.

And seemingly it was so, Liir fulfilling their purpose for the suul’kan that they were trained for, All signs of their culture wiped away and the older generation dying off after ensuring that there were newborn liir to take their places once they passed.

The Liir were Pets, Toys, Assistants, Interrogation tools and research assistants for the Suul’kan. Their telepathic and telekinetic abilities making them extremely suited for the tasks and well as their pleasing looks (Not that way). Their use was similar to living Personal devices.

Generations passed under Suul’kan rule, No Signs of rebellion present as they fulfilled their purpose and life to the T after their initial training and indoctrination.

Under the Façade however, the Liir Lived on in will and culture, Even as the Song of the Liir was tinged with ever more Anger/Hate/Wrath from the generations born under their rule.
Their culture was passed on from the old to the new through the song, The only freedom available to them even as their submission was Unquestionable in the physical realm.
The song was the savior of the Liir, For the Suul’kan knew no species that had the ability and years of research had been unable to decipher the means, or at least, with the Liir subtly sabotaging the efforts at every turn.

Generations of slavedom, of torture and unimaginable cruelty. Any other species would have broken, becoming nothing more but Biological Automatons as the Suul’kan wanted, like so many before them, if not for the Song of the Liir. While the song was incapable of stretching between worlds, Enough Liir were used as assistants on various Suul’kun ships that they could act as carriers of knowledge, named the Ka’Del’ir within the song. (Conveyers of distant song)

Finally, the time came to pass, the watchful eyes of the Suul’kan turned, preoccupied with the two dozen species that had been conquered after the Liir, with no attention spared for the Apparently broken cetaceans beyond the individual in front of them.

Thus their work began, Minutes stolen inside Top-secret research facility to work on the project, Notes never Created in a physical, written form. All information stored within the Song of the Liir, among a million minds.
Slowly, it took shape even as the rest of the Liir prepared in different ways for the exodus to come.

A weapon of true horror, to even contemplate releasing it almost put a stop to the preparation as it took place, the horror a managing to overcome the Anger/Hate/Wrath that had been given birth so long ago and that had been fed more and more by every generation. Even, in their Wrath, they could not release this weapon.
Instead, it was a different note that pushed the Song of the Liir forward with its plan. Thoughts of the future and other species falling under the Suul’kans Yoke ensured that they had to release it, or else tens, Possible Hundreds of other species would suffer the Fate of the Liir. The boiling, the torture, the mountain raining Eggs from the sky down upon them.  It had to be done.

The Liir had the chance to Stop the Suul’kan Now, Something that no other species could say, known and very possible unknown. It had to be done, for the future. Even if Trillions in the present died.

The Virus was completed, A work of generations. A work of the finest technology in the most top-secret research labs of the Suul’kan. Only the strand weaving of the Liir could create an Abomination like this.

After a long argument, another feature was added to the virus.  Some claimed that it was unnecessary and they should Share the fate of the others, while others claimed that some life deserved to survive this, and there was nothing they could do for the other slave species.

At the last minute a change in the virus insured that 10% of the Liir would be immune.
____________________

The virus would infect its host, and incubate for almost a month, turning the host into a Factory for an invisible virus even as it incubated, present in every bit of their being, from the very air they breathed to their blood and the water they drank infecting anyone that was near the host.

Air born infection for the virus had a Range of kilometers, as the virus was carried by wind and refused to die. Water infected with the virus would remain infected for Centuries before the virus finally died from a lack of substance. A single host could infect a city by their lonesome in the month they spent incubating.

The spread of the virus through airborne vectors grew with the amount present in the air. A modern city, of millions of life forms, would have an airborne infection range of a whole planet.

Next, Applied through very careful and limited application of telepathic abilities that virus would trick its host, convincing them that they were perfectly healthy as well as those around them, leaving the combating of the virus to the healthy.

After 1 month of Incubation inside of a host body, the final stage was initiated.  Every cell in the host body Would go into overdrive at the same time, from the cells in the lungs to the cells in the brain, every single one would begin to pump out the virus at a speed that would normally be impossible, If it wasn’t for the virus boiling through the bodies reserves as fast as possible. A single host will fill the air with enough virus cells that it will almost become visible in the air, as a translucent film, or a trick of the light.


With the mental block in place, other hosts will quickly inhale this mist, triggering their incubation early. At the end of the final stage it is not uncommon for a City world to Have a slight rainbow colored film when observed from orbit, as every biological organism on the planet is transformed into more virus.

Some virus hosts do not undergo this process, instead of having a Strong, telepathy-induced desire to travel to an inhabited planet nearby, ensuring the spread of the virus.

When the atmosphere has been fully saturated by the virus, a chain reaction occurs.
The infected planet in question is quickly set aflame, at temperatures that even the virus cannot survive. The planet is a Ball of fire when observed from orbit.

A sun in miniature.

The fire reduces the planet to naught but rock with all life, including the virus, Burned away to ashes. A barren ball of ashen rock floating in space. Only orbital debris remains to signify the presence of the Suul’kan or any of their many slaves.
The virus was never named, for the Liir refused to do such, The virus Will never have a name to be referred by. It is only known to the Liir as The Horror or The Virus.


 After the virus was released, the 10% of Liir that were immune managed to swiftly escape between the time that the incubation had finished, but before the planet was reduced to naught but ashes. They took with them Ships and supplies to escape the fall that they had set in motion.

A portion of the escaping Liir fleet was tasked with ensuring that the Suul’kan truly died out, traveling to all recorded system and ensuring that the virus had done its task, any surviving orbital facilities, were quickly destroyed by the fleet who took on the name “Bela’no’Liir” (Meaning, watchers of the death the Liir have brought”

Much of the Suul'kan empire was made up of outposts and way stations, with only the core systems and the various slave planets making un the planet-bound territory held by the Suul'kan. Their war fleets were unmatched, and as such they had felt that only small outposts were even necessary to hold their territory. While the costs in Lives Were mind-numbingly large, Into the Trillions and perhaps beyond, the actual total of planets reduced to naught but ash by the virus was surprising low for the death knell of a Galaxy-wide superpower. The final total measuring in at just over a hundred arcology filled worlds.

The rest of the Liir returned to Vaal’Lara and resettled it, slowly transforming it to a state resembling the times before the Suul’Kan . even now the scars remain, however, with grand areas of land and ocean where life refuses to grow. The planet left with a blotchy brown, green and blue look from orbit.

The Ability to create the virus was lost, as the creators of the virus ensured they either died of it or Ended their own song soon after. All knowledge concerning it was removed from the Song of the Liir, so as not to taint it any longer. And the Facilities to create the virus were destroyed by the virus soon after it was released.

The Virus, So horrible the Liir refused to give it a name, was lost to the sand of time. And the Liir will ensure it, and any brethren of its, will remain that way for as long as the Song remains.


The virus was released 10,000 years ago, by Terran standard.
During those thousands of years, the Liir did their best to rebuild, both the ruined planet that they had returned to and their species.

During the Initial landing upon Vaal’lara it was argued whether the Liir Should discard technology and return to the way that they had lived before. However, before was hundreds of generation ago by this point, and the argument was created, of the possibility of a second Suul’Kan. At the very thought, The song was put into discord for three days, the very thought of another species deserving of the horror. The very thought almost caused more discord then had ever truly been present before in the Liir population.

The argument was made, to all of the Liir BioCollection, That the Suul’kan succeeded as long as they had because no species was capable of defeating them conventionally, with ships in the void of space and forces on the surface of planets.

The Liir Must not, The argument was made, Discard technology but prepare and ensure that if there is a second Suul’kan, that we can defeat them without the need of something like the horror ever.

As such the decision was made, The Liir Biocollective would not return to the ways of the old, and instead would forge forward on the quest for knowledge.

The Liir had lost must, both in their escape and in the subsequent rebuilding. While they swore not to revert back to the Liir of the past, They where almost at the same technology level by the Time they were settled on Vaal’lara. With only odd trinkets and rusty, breaking Ships the signs that remained of the technological prowess of the greatest strand weavers to walk the galaxy in a very long time.

With the bioprinters and the other scraps of technology they began to drag themselves up and out of the pit that their species had been in. 75,000 Liir Grew and flourished. The song was filled with new life, who had no known the pain of service to the Suul’kan, The song grew more light-hearted, Singing of happier times even as melancholy and depression and wrath grew ever more distant.

Eventually, after they had completed their task, wiping the galaxy clean of all signs of the virus and removing any chance of its survival, the Bela’no’Liir re-joined their brethren. 

The Bela’no’liir were changed by their task, as any being would be. They remained morose, their Song tainted by the death and blood that they had spilled and witnessed. It changed them and their song, The Bela’no’liir had known this as well and as such, they did something unprecedented, something truly insane.

They cut off their song from the rest of the Liir’s.

With the fear of infecting the song of the rest of the Liir's with the death and blood that stained their song, they cut themselves off from the rest of the liir. And dedicated themselves to learning the art of war, reasoning that if the their song is already so tainted, then they shall take war upon themselves and ensure that the rest of the Liir will not be tainted as such.

The rest of the Liir disagree, and the Split choirs remain a heated talking point to this day. The Liir were unwilling to allow the Bela’no’liir to shoulder all war for them, for many reasons in truth, but the Bela’no’liir remains some of the most elite Liir in the art of war to ever walk the surface of vaal'lara to this day and serve alongside the rest of the Liir military.


Many Liir of the older generations had problems with robotics, reminding them too much of the drones, the torture machines of the Suul’kun. Some of which were still being pulled up from the ocean seafloor at rare times, rusted beyond belief and completely out of power, degraded by the very same poison that the Suul’kun had dumped into the ocean during their invasion.

The newer generations of the liir had grown to be much more excepting of robotics, but the Specialty of the Liir is and would always remain biological creations, and that showed.


The Liir of Vaal’lara are firm believers that they have two duties to the galaxy as a whole, to recompense for the untold death that was initiated by the virus, and the pain they and many others felt at the hand of the suul’kan.

The first is the firm belief that the only reason that their empire, no, the Liir as a whole was allowed to survive the virus was so as to ensure that any many of Suul’kan empire that formed in the future had an opponent that would, and could, stand in the way of their cruelty and ambition.
In the present generations, this belief usually manifest as a form of an intense watch of all their neighbor empires, watching for any sign of a second Suul’kan Empire. This has led to the Liir Biocollective being very … twitchy about any signs that an empire could be attempted to take territory from them, as they take it as a sign of the second coming of the Suul’kan, even if cooler heads decided that that was really not true later. (*Cough Cough* How we managed to get embroiled in a three-way war)

The second Core belief of the Liir is that it is their duty to ensure that nothing like The Virus is ever created again. They feel this is their only true repentance, ensure that a repeat of that horror is impossible. If there are any signs of Such a plague, The liir Feel like it is their duty to do that same to it as The Virus. Consigning all Signs and memory of it to the Sands of time. All knowledge of how to create it is to be purged, all Facilities and reduced to nothing more than dust. The virus is exterminated with the creators of the virus Consigned to the same fate.

In the history of the Liir after resetting Vaal’lara, there are two Liir driven mad, that decided to create a virus and a plague.

These traitors were reduced to nothing more than a pair of labels, with all other sign of the traitors cut from the song.
The names of the greatest villains and traitors in Liir history. Tu’Ada and Gor'Adama

He who betrays all Liir.

He who follows in the footsteps of grand betrayal of all Liir.



We are the greatest monsters in the universe, becoming so to stop a lesser monster from becoming greater.

We are the ones who remember true evil, both in our actions and from the enemy.
We are the ones who will prevent another of such tragedy’s.

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evictedSaint

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Re: GalactiRace Core Thread | Starting Up, Nothing Can Go Wrong
« Reply #20 on: August 28, 2018, 03:18:17 pm »

Inb4 "Liir gained an 'Insult' pretext for war against Humanivers"? :P
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Re: GalactiRace Core Thread | Starting Up, Nothing Can Go Wrong
« Reply #21 on: August 28, 2018, 03:19:01 pm »

He's not on the human side, he's Hivers.
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Re: GalactiRace Core Thread | Starting Up, Nothing Can Go Wrong
« Reply #22 on: August 28, 2018, 03:19:46 pm »

Thanks bruh, fix'd :3
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Re: GalactiRace Core Thread | Starting Up, Nothing Can Go Wrong
« Reply #23 on: August 28, 2018, 03:28:08 pm »

Also, the Liir already said they consider that picture a declaration of war in the Discord.
And the Humans think we were the ones who destroyed their homeworld.
Everyone is ganging up on the poor Hivers D:
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Re: GalactiRace Core Thread | Starting Up, Nothing Can Go Wrong
« Reply #24 on: August 28, 2018, 03:29:13 pm »

Well, Hivers are pretty terrible if u ask me ;v
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Re: GalactiRace Core Thread | Starting Up, Nothing Can Go Wrong
« Reply #25 on: August 28, 2018, 04:10:25 pm »

You misspelled "different"

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Re: GalactiRace Core Thread | Starting Up, Nothing Can Go Wrong
« Reply #26 on: August 28, 2018, 09:18:35 pm »

Gaian Regime
The R&D Department

Lata's eyes narrowed as she turned her heads to get a better view of the creation before her.

The Gaian Regime R&D Complex. Located fairly off-the-grid (by Gaian) standards, and baring the obvious marks of several still-classified defensive technologies constantly on. She walked the ornate stone path, surrounded by fountains and statues dedicated to the Terran (and Gaian) innovative spirit, to the front door. Some of the statues have, of course, been toppled in the various riots surrounding the complex. A particular favorite of protestors was the statue of Rajendra Rao, which has been rebuilt or repaired way too many times at this point.
Lata swore she could see people peering at her through the many windows of the Complex, but regardless of whether it was her imagination or not she continued. She walked straight through the automatic front doors, by two suspiciously-still security guards completely clad in armor, and to the main front desk.

She tried to ignore the open borehole just sitting in a little glass container on top of the desk. Every now and again it would flutter as it expired and was re-generated. A small label on the bottom read CLASS-137 BOREHOLE.
"Excuse me," she politely spoke to the person in front of her.
No reply. The person's attention was being sucked in by a terminal hidden by the desk.
"EXCUSE ME," she said, in a louder but still arguably-polite tone.

Bits of popcorn flew out of the person's mouth, along with their earbuds. Lata heard something that suspiciously sounded like the music to Firefly coming out of the earbuds before they were quickly grabbed and shoved into some corner.
"Y-Yes? What is it?" questioned the fairly-startled man.
Lata sighed before speaking. "I'm here to speak with the lead researcher about the ethical testing and usage of boreholes."

The man stifled obvious laughter. His eyes darted over to look at the borehole decoration, and Lata could briefly see the cogs turning in his head as he stared at it. He picked it up and shoved it unceremoniously underneath the desk in a series of motions that should seriously not be used around boreholes.
"He's not here," he said in an unusually loud voice.

Lata took a step back.
"I thought he was supposed to be here a--"
She was interrupted by another man in a nearby connected hall walking, surrounded by an entourage of scientists. She could just make out the shiny RESEARCH DIRECTOR - BOREHOLES nametag on his clothing.
Lata feebly pointed at him. "But he's right th--"
"He's not here," interrupted the receptionist.
"I just saw hi--"
"He's currently meeting... uh..." the receptionist paused as he stared at his monitor before continuing, saying "the Gaian Council of Physics and Safe Science." He looked proud as he paused for a moment. "Not here. He's a busy man!"

The interloping Lata would have been somewhat satisfied with this answer, and almost turned away, before hearing something coming from the hall where she just saw the Research Director.
It was Firefly.

"He's not just watching Firefly, right?" she angerly interrogated the receptionist.
"He's doing important rese--I mean, attendi--meeting the Gaian Meeting of Safe Physics and Science. He's not watching Firefly. We don't watch Firefly here."

Lata stood still, stunned and just taking in the sheer audacity of the whole situation. Before she could compose her thoughts the receptionist stood up and ran to wherever the Research Director was, yelling "CRAIG! WAIT FOR ME! WE'RE WATCHING THE ONE WHERE JAYNE FINDS THAT TOWN FROM BEFORE RIGHT?!"

She really couldn't believe this. She should prooobably be doing something.
« Last Edit: August 28, 2018, 09:20:33 pm by Chiefwaffles »
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Re: GalactiRace Core Thread | Starting Up, Nothing Can Go Wrong
« Reply #27 on: August 28, 2018, 10:20:29 pm »

Gaian Regime
The Continents of Gaia

Telaraña
 
Telaraña is one of the continents of Gaia. Though what it is is not entirely analogous to anything on Earth, the closest equivalent is probably that of a jungle, seeing as the majority of the continent is covered in flora and thickly infested with fauna. Telaraña doesn’t have trees, however, nor does Gaia in general (with the exception of what was brought and planted by the expedition). Instead, the flora on Telaraña consists of a multitude of smaller, plant-like organisms (cell structure differs but they do perform photosynthesis) and then a truly remarkable macro-organism.
 
This macro-organism covers the majority of the continent (the north-eastern quarter isn’t dry but isn’t wet enough), and consists of a series of vine-like masses forming a canopy, joined at several points — the vines are as thick as a human being even in the area outside the core where it’s somewhat sparse, and capable of supporting itself. What makes the organism even more remarkable is that though it doesn’t have any sort of mind, its homeostatic capabilities are such that its vines shift and adjust themselves to keep the organism in prime position both for structural integrity and photosynthesis. Telaraña derives its name from this organism, as a Bolivian member of the original expedition commented that the canopy stretching overhead looked like a spiderweb.
 
There are a multitude of small outposts and drone data collection points throughout the “jungle” on Telaraña — though much moreso through the outer two thirds of it than the core, as the large presence of the vine organism leads to heat and moisture to a level extremely destructive to equipment and hard to live in. For those living in these outposts, the distant sounds of creaking and of the groan of moving plant-like mass are ever-present background noise, paired with the occasional darkening of the light levels as a vine moves to take in that sun.
 
The largest of these outposts, Grande Bleue (the vine mass is usually red but depending on the area its color can change, here it is blue), is still only a few hundred people — but for the typical Gaian research post, this is massive. It sits underneath a dome-like swell in the vine canopy, providing an excellently clear area for research work. Not only does more sunlight get through, but the height of the canopy ensures that more of the ground-area is clear and there’s ample room for data collection and living slash storage space... even if precautions need to be taken to avoid the vines that occasionally slip from the dome and later reinsert themselves from demolishing buildings on the ground. Furthermore, Grande Bleue is a hub for harvesting of industrially useful organics formed by millions of years of undisturbed decay of the local life — and aside from fossil fuels and materials for plastics, chemicals with fascinating properties (what’s recoloring the macro-organism, in fact) have been found here because Grande Bleue is the site of where a putative macro-organism of another type that was snuffed out by the vine mass — but which gave rise to a fascinating little ecosystem.
 
As the continent moves to the northeast, it cools down and becomes slightly dryer, and the vine organism becomes sparser and sparser as the climates it thrives in cease to dominate. Eventually, it gives way to plains, a mostly bare area of land dotted with some of Gaia’s flora, and then to grasslands — *actual* grasslands, of invasive Earth grasses brought by the expedition filling a niche not filled in Telaraña’s native ecosystem, which is a cause of significant and heated debate among the biologist community on Gaia. Eventually, it reaches the inhabited cape of this area, where crops and small villages dot what can actually be a countryside — Gaia’s population isn’t remotely enough to need a massive farmland, but it does need SOME, and the Telarañan plains carry Gaia’s only agricultural centers, which also provide industrial crops.
 
Eventually, one reaches the most populous settlement on Gaia outside of the continent where most of its residential areas sit: Point Choi, named affectionately after original expedition energy scientist Choi Do-yun by his colleagues after he declared “I’m stopping here, you fuckers couldn’t get me to go back into that hot, vine-infested hellhole for the rest of my life for a trillion fucking credits!” Point Choi is in an ideal position, because it’s the only large natural harbor on Telaraña that isn’t overgrown by the vine organism — and the research, agriculture, and fuel work that go on in Telaraña has created a surprising amount of shipping here, especially as Point Choi holds the continent’s primary airport/droneport as well. The temperate climate here is incredibly pleasant as well, and when given the chance to either remotely work via drone or to go into a hot, humid vine jungle... well, many expedition members made Choi Do-yun’s decision, and it’s only grown from there.
 
Point Choi has actually become so prominent that it provides an ongoing, firsthand example of the processes that led to the regionalization of the residential continent. Though the more bureaucratic side of the technocracy holds much more solid, metered control over outposts like Grande Bleue, Point Choi is large enough that commercial interests, relatively civilian scientific interests, and the interests of the community government and population themselves create a wildly conflicting political sphere, where one can usually bullshit their way into following the directives of whatever chain of command best works for them. It’s a process causing snarls, though it seems like the local and commercial interests are likely to win out in the end.
 
The Gaian Planetary Research Center is located several miles to the south of Point Choi (on the other end from most of the agricultural areas) — close enough for really dedicated protestors and scientists to take transport to and from the settlement when done work/throwing bricks. The reasons for this location vary: the GPRC needed to be somewhere where it could be adequately supplied and ideally not somewhere where they’d have to make exceptional logistical efforts to do so, but it also needed to be somewhere where a truly horrendous spacetime fuckup wouldn’t risk wiping out a frightening portion of Gaia’s already low population. The fact that it’s really really nice in that area of the continent’s grasslands helped get the scientists’ recommendation as well.

Iris-Hong
 
Iris-Hong (or just Iris, or just Hong - the Chinese and English explorers who first charted the continent got into a massive argument about what to actually name the place, and they just both stuck) is a remote but sizable continent on Gaia, far towards the south end of the planet — Gaia doesn’t really have a proper Antarctic continent, but Iris-Hong is about as close as it gets. It is a rocky and harsh continent, consisting mainly of hills, but with a wide and tall range of mountains curling from the west side towards the center and a violently jagged rift in the continent, which doesn’t traverse the whole of Iris-Hong at all, located in the southeast of the continent, but which leads to vast caverns and is powerfully magnetic.
 
Iris-Hong is a genuinely beautiful place — mountains are visible in the distance, clear, mighty masses of stone and ice looming over the scientists and adventurer traveling its rolling but harsh hills of stones and scant soil, exposed faces of rocks like granite glimmering in the starlight, visible for kilometers and kilometers in the clear air. Furthermore, the air is often alight with vivid auroras — but auroras more intricate, large, and many-colored than anything on Earth, dominating the night sky with complex shapes and colors. It’s from these gorgeous auroras that Iris-Hong gets its name(s), from Greek and Chinese mythological figures for rainbows respectively.
 
Of course, despite being incredibly beautiful, Iris-Hong is also remarkably, remarkably inhospitable. It’s bitingly cold even in the warmest of its times and places, and it’s also all kinds of dry — the cold means that streams and precipitation are rare, and it takes serious effort to get water, often from groundwater — in which case one still needs to be careful not to punch into the cavern layer under the surface. All of this means that it’s exceptionally difficult for the Regime to establish settlements here. The place where this is the most averted is the Kia Kaha Mountain Chain (named after the constant reassurements one Maori expedition explorer made to his fellows exploring the continent to the first time). The Kia Kaha Mountains, titanic through not very long, are absolutely chock full of ores and transplutonics, accounting for a large portion of Gaia’s production of these resources, but even here it’s difficult to get many people living there so mostly one has little drone posts with a few guys and a LOT of mining drones dotted over the mountains, with oversight that is about as strict as Regime oversight gets.
 
The rest of the continent isn’t anywhere near as tightly and carefully organized. Iris-Hong is big, for the most part it’s empty, and it’s sparsely populated, even by Gaian standards. This leads to a brand of nomadic scientists that travel the hills of Iris-Hong — Joyriders, scientists often in pairs or on their own, who come both for the beauty of Iris-Hong and the large amounts of very empty, very hardy space. The lifestyle of a Joyrider is as such: get a grant from the Regime, get told to do whatever you want as long as you get results, drive wildly around Iris-Hong’s rugged terrain with old and battered equipment, and run wildly destructive experiments in rocky valleys where no one will miss anything you accidentally or intentionally blow to smithereens. It is a very, very Gaian lifestyle.
 
As one approaches the southeast corner of Iris-Hong, they find that their electronic equipment becomes more and more unreliable and has more and more frequent errors. This is because they are approaching The Rift, the jagged line furrowed into the rocky floor of the continent by some cataclysmic event centuries before humankind ever even saw Gaia through a telescope. The Rift is situated upon a truly profound amount of naturally magnetic metal — and stronger magnets than are usually found on Earth. Not only does The Rift have a tendency to disable or even destroy electronics, but the effect it has on the geomagnetic field around it is enough to lead to the stunning, impossible auroras above Iris-Hong.
 
Situated right on the edge of the Rift is an impromptu little village, or perhaps more of a basecamp, Perch Town. Perch Town is pretty much only there for one reason: to provide an aid and rest point for the spelunkers that rappel down into the depths of the Rift. The Rift leads directly into a dizzying and complex underground tunnel system, which humans on Gaia know very little about; they seem to find more and more portions of cavern every week without end, new twists, and new turns. The caverns are incredibly dangerous as well: some caverns are vacuums just waiting to be broken into, some are flooded, a few contain magma flows, and some contain explosive gas that will detonate and shake the whole area at a spark, instantly incinerating the cavern’s occupants. (This wouldn’t stop most Gaians). The strong magnetic interference of the Rift also means that the caverns under Iris-Hong will destroy any electronics that aren’t very hardened and very expensive. (This does stop quite a few more Gaians.) Still, if there’s any people on Gaia that will go into mysterious, cast and deadly places with nothing but antiquated equipment, it’s the Joyriders, and the caverns under the Rift are usually full of some of Gaia’s bravest, most curious, and most reckless, trying to divine what secrets lie underground... and also usually trying to open up boreholes within the vacuum caverns.

Nautilus
 
Nautilus is the smallest of the four continents of Gaia in terms of land area, though it is not necessarily small... especially in terms of the space that it takes up. It lies to the northeast of the other continents, but isn’t too far away from the residential continent of Gaia, though sea conditions are different around Nautilus. While most of the water on Gaia is salt-water, much like Earth, for unknown reasons the water around Nautilus is actually fresh-water, and is a deep black abyss containing massive creatures. As for the continent itself, Nautilus consists of a moderately small central landmass dizzyingly criss-crossed by streams and straits, and a series of small islands radiating outwards from there.
 
The land of Nautilus is actually temperate, and indeed quite pleasant to be on, with a cool mist wafting from the waters... at least most of the time, because the utterly wild eddies of currents on Nautilus lead to sudden but temporary climate shifts and storm fronts that can often be devastating to those not prepared. When a storm’s not tearing through Nautilus, however, it is indeed ideal, on at least the land itself to live on. The instability of the climate is one reason that it wasn’t chosen for the residential purposes of Gaia — air transport can be made quite difficult by this, and the proofing required to make life within settlements relatively normal is expensive.
 
The other reason is that the continent is remarkably difficult to actually get anywhere in. As aforementioned, Nautilus consists of a central landmass, itself crisscrossed by streams large and small, many of them whitewater, and straits, and surrounded by a vast wealth of islands, to the point where it is extremely difficult to tell where continent ends and islands begin... and because of the wildness of the current flow through around Nautilus, and because of those whitewater streams and because of often-extreme tides, it’s extremely difficult to actually get through the islands onto the central landmass, which one will want to do as the central landmass has resources to an extent the islands do not, although small outposts are dotted along the islands.
 
Specifically, the resource at the center of Nautilus is energetics — deposits very similar to natural gas, halogens, etc, are found in surprising abundance deep within the landmass, merely waiting to be extracted. For these purposes, an outpost has been set up for around three and a half decades now (some time after landing) to use drones to extract the materials. This outpost does have a population of a few hundred people, dedicated to fine but reactive work drones aren’t reliable at, and to the administration of the outpost. The name of the outpost is Gazovyy Forpost Odin — literally just “Gas Outpost One” in Russian, but the result of the original outpost administrators (and their carefully cultivated successors) being rather nationalist and simply refusing to refer to the outpost in official documentation in anything but Russian. It’s a quirk only tolerated because the administrators of the outpost are some of the only administrators both skilled enough to coordinate mostly regular shipments of energetics via drone despite the continent’s turbulence and willing to mostly isolate themselves from the rest of the world by staying at Nautilus’ center. After all, for all of its skilled proportion, Gaia’s manpower is terribly low.
 
Nautilus is surrounded by deep, black ocean, the depths of which have not actually been anywhere close to fully explored; space is one thing, the abyssal depths are another entirely. Deep within these waters, gigantic creatures cavort and spin, masses of alien flesh with unknown biology and unknown behaviors which the Gaian Regime has marked of great interest, and which sees constant efforts of research — who WOULDN’T be interested in titanic sea beings, after all? Yet these research efforts go slowly, as the construction and design of vessels capable of gathering data on them continues — deep-sea research had been planned for a second wave of the expedition that never came, and the loss of Earth did result in the loss of some relevant technology. These creatures are where Nautilus’ name comes from; upon finding out that there was a continent surrounded by deep abyssal water, with giant creatures in the depths, one French explorer, Jules Souspont, looked back to the author that was both his namesake and his inspiration, found his work fitting, and named the continent after 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.
 
Leviathan’s Landing (American-named, by a man with a sense of flair, when the first scientific team landing there found a truly gargantuan but half-rotting corpse on the beach) is a small but busy outpost that is the base of operations for submarine exploration around Nautilus. It is an island at the north end of the continent, where the large creatures are more often sighted, and holds a truly excellent natural harbor, making it the best spot for naval operations in Nautilus. It is tightly controlled (like Gazovyy Forpost Odin is, naming bureaucratic snarl aside) by the Regime, making a contrast to Perch Town: while both are the bases for exploring deep, strange places, the submarine design and creation required for exploring the waters of Nautilus, as well as the fact that there isn’t anything like the Rift actively inhibiting Regime technology, mean that the Regime has both the ability to and need to directly control Leviathan’s Landing, making it a sleek and carefully metered operation, unlike the individual, thrill-seeking adventurers in Perch Town.

Rao
 
Rao is a continent of moderate size, but it is also the continent of perhaps the mildest terrain on all of Gaia — which is the reason that it is the continent that holds the large majority of Gaia’s population; 80% of the sparse human population on Gaia is clustered upon this continent, with 12% being on Telaraña, 5% on Nautilus, and 3% on Iris-Hong. As for Rao itself, it consists primarily of a rainy, temperate region, a large mountain chain (as a matter of fact, the planet’s largest) which separates the planet’s ecospheres, an arid would-be scrubland to the east of the mountains formed by its rain shadow, and to the south, where the climate is somewhat more stagnant, a hot and humid area. Rao is also by far the most prominent example of the regionalization that has taken place on Gaia, with de facto regional identities forming through the interplay of influence and politics.
 
Unlike Gaia’s other three continents, Rao was not named after a feature found on the continent. Instead, the name Rao is a tribute to the man who arguably saved humankind, who many of the original expedition members had great personal respect and sometimes (but not always) liking for, and who planted the very seeds for Gaians to become who they are now. Rajendra Rao, born in the Earth city of Khammam, was an astrophysicist of genius then beyond compare, and in his 30s he was the lead researcher on a project borne primarily (though far from entirely) on his own theories: the project that led to the first borehole ever created by humankind. Fifty years later, despite being quite elderly, Rajendra Rao was still an active participant in the borehole work necessary for creating the original expedition's interstellar capacities, if a remarkably reckless participant. Nonetheless, despite the fact that the man was the very first of the borehole-slinging, genius, space-time-bullying scientists that Gaia mostly consists of today, the expedition could only presume him dead with the loss of Earth. Yet, aware of the debt they owed him, even the more uptight members of what would become the Regime consented to naming a continent after him.
 
As with most of Gaia with the exception of relatively lifeless Iris-Hong, large beings dominate in Rao’s ecosystem, with large bush-like “plants” most common in both the western temperate and eastern arid areas, and small flora sparse enough it doesn’t cover the soil, which therefore only exists in the quantity it does thanks to a vibrant underground ecosystem. The southern part of the continent actually contains nodes of organisms similar to Telaraña’s vine macro-organism, but with the large herbivores that plod across Rao and feed upon them, they have not grown beyond building-size — which has led to a theory that the plate that makes up the western and southern parts of Rao broke off from Telaraña millions of years ago.
 
Rao’s biosphere, however, is actually an extremely touchy subject, a larger version of the debate that’s grown around the temperate portion of Telaraña — whether Gaia’s ecosphere should be made more hospitable to humankind or if it should be left as intact as it can be. The cat is out of the bag on this too, so to speak: the original expedition had samples of Earth plant and animal life for cross-testing and habitability testing, and many of these have been released unintentionally or even intentionally onto Rao in particular. The Gaian ecosystem not being much like Earth’s, there was a massive empty hole for this Earth life, and now Rao has an invasive species problem of massive proportions that some Gaians are trying desperately to cull and that some are encouraging along.
 
In the northern two thirds of Rao’s western, temperate, rainy region lies an area commonly referred to as “Regime land” despite the fact that technically the entire planet is, in fact, Regime land. What this actually means is that this area of Rao is relatively devoid of the regional quid-pro-quos, jockeying, and questionable levels of control that define the rest of the continent, on account of the fact that the Regime’s capital, Aphelion (the point where a body is farthest away from the sun in its orbit — despite current hardships, it represents that humans WILL one day come back to Earth, and won’t be stopped) is situated here. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the Regime maintains a strict iron fist here, given that town-level officials are quite important, but it means that the Regime has the easiest time getting things done here.
 
Aphelion itself is by far the largest city on Gaia, boasting somewhere in the vicinity of 200,000 people — a town on (pre-destruction) Earth, but by Gaian standards a teeming metropolis. It does take up a deceptively large amount of space, however, given that Gaian drones and construction techniques allow even far less populated areas to build up infrastructure. With somewhere as big as Aphelion, this means that the city has just about every kind of amenity that can be found on the planet, and additionally contains several large and important buildings, of course including the offices of the bureaucracies. Aphelion also holds places like the Earth Libraries and Museums, which contain a wealthy repository of pieces of culture taken or volunteered from the ship banks, personal computers, and lockers of original expedition members. The goal is and was for the people of Gaia to have something to remember Earth by — and while countless pieces of Earth’s heritage have been lost to the void, those that held them only presumable destroyed by whatever took down Earth. Nonetheless, Aphelion’s repositories have been an excellent fit for a very scientific and intellectual and... quirky populace, which has already taken these old media to heart.
 
Moving down to the hot and humid south, one enters “Khumaloland”, as it’s commonly referred to. No actual demarcation exists, as this area like all regions on Rao is simply a matter of de facto political alignments and so-to-speak “alliances”, but Khumaloland has a strong regional identity. Sibonalisa Khumalo was an administrator and higher-up aboard the expedition to Gaia, and when it became clear that the expedition would become the governors of humanity’s remainders, she acted to preserve values that she believed in, such as ethnic pride, caution in administration, and the radical position of “thinking twice before you play with exceedingly dangerous ideas before knowing what you’re doing”. She personally supervised much of the settling of southern Rao, and joined many of its officials together in deals, an arrangement which has now long survived her.
 
Khumaloland wasn’t actually named after her, but rather named by her, as for all of her talents she was undeniably an egotist, but her charisma and influence were so great that no-one particularly strongly wanted to say no. She’s been dead for decades now, and many of the people there have tired of the nickname, but it’s suck. Khumaloland is the most significant source of the professional but heavily distraught “sane” physicists on Gaia, and it sometimes exhibits political pressure to cut down on certain projects or to apply certain restrictions. This region of Rao is by far the most self-segregated, dotted with towns with notable ethnic communities, but despite this much of the region shares a surprising unity in their goals — and a bright side of this is that what invasive Earth specie shave been released here have been carefully managed, leaving Khumaloland with the cleanest environmental situation on Rao. Notably, though Khumaloland has, so far as this can actually be measured, more settlements overall than the Aphelion area, they are smaller in population, with Khumaloland’s biggest city, New Surabaya (named after an Earth Indonesian city and primarily Southeast Asian) sporting only a few thousand people, like Point Choi.
 
Finally, on the east side of the continent, where the rain shadow of the Sagan Mountains ensures a place similar in climate to some of Earth’s scrublands, lies the “Progress Sector”, the current name of an area with contentious political alliances which tends to reformulate itself every couple of decades as the people there decide another political paradigm would be more beneficial to them or would bring them closer to the bleeding edge of technology. The Progress Sector is, as their name implies, much the opposite of Khumaloland, with many of Gaia’s nuttiest scientists hailing from this area as the consensus from many of the people here — who figured that if they were willing to head out and stay in an alien planet’s desert and work the synthetics generators and the energetics deposits (smaller than Nautilus’, but what kept humanity through the first generation on Gaia), then they had better be willing to make the most of it... though many of the people here aren’t too keen on keeping stable institutions, or avoiding blowout lockdown policy arguments, occasionally necessitating higher Regime staff to pull rank and mediate.
 
As the eastern scrublands are in fact arid, the Progress Sector is the least populated of Rao’s three de facto regions, but as most of the population is set around streams and oases, it actually has its population located in a few urban centers of relative size, with no less than three cities matching New Surabaya’s size — the city of Outlook (a positive outlook, its citizens will have you know!), the city of Yukawa (named after the first Japanese Nobel laureate, Hideki Yukawa, a theoretical physicist), and Borehole City (or one of several variants like Althaqab depending on your language — though hardly segregated, the city does, though a rainbow of ethnicities, have a significant if non-majority Arabic population) which is, well... it may be named rather on-the-nose, but it’s the kind of thing the residents like, after all. The Progress Sector also has the hub of Gaia’s synthetics productions, with several arrays scattered through the more empty areas of land so one exploding wouldn’t destroy them all, each manned and carefully monitored by the higher-ups and by on-site technicians.
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TheFantasticMsFox

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Re: GalactiRace Core Thread | Starting Up, Nothing Can Go Wrong
« Reply #28 on: August 28, 2018, 11:02:19 pm »

Gaian Regime
Memoriam

Every first day of the Gaian year, a global holiday is observed: The Day of Light. On this day, Gaians focus not on science, engineering or even boreholes. They focus on what occurred to bring them to where they are, both alone and together. Simple candles in small, simple bowls are lit. They are placed in windows, floated down rivers and streams, flown in the air on paper balloons, even placed in some of the satellite installations. As these candles burn, Gaians gather together in groups, some as couples, families, or all the way to mass gatherings in park squares, numbering in the thousands. Together, they remember. Stories of the past are shared, individual tales or familial stories, but also the initial experiences passed down generation by generation of what it was like on the long path to Gaia. Together, Gaians remember the most important lessons they have learned as time goes on. And as one, they look out into the stars, gazing out to where Earth may still lay, and they Remember. On this day, Gaians bear their memories to the stars, and simply say just by standing there as one, that we will not let our spark be extinguished from this universe. That the Gaians will not go quietly into the darkest night, and when anyone comes to challenge us again, we will not let the light be extinguished.
« Last Edit: August 29, 2018, 04:35:50 pm by TheFantasticMrFox »
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andrea

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Re: GalactiRace Core Thread | Starting Up, Nothing Can Go Wrong
« Reply #29 on: August 29, 2018, 04:33:00 pm »

Gaian Regime
Childbearing and population growth on Gaia

The expedition fleet was one of the largest exploratory endeavours of humanity, with several thousand crew members. But while that is a significant size for a scientific team studying a planet and establishing an initial settlement, it is a whole other story when several thousands is all that is left of humankind.

Whatever destroyed Earth was still out there and a small crew would have no chances of fighting against it. In order to do that, it would be necessary to expand, create infrastructure, exploit the planet, and produce more bright minds to research new technologies for the sake of survival. The need to increase the population as rapidly as humanly possible has been present since the early days of Gaia.

An ambitious goal was set, to have each generation 10 times as large as the previous one. Initially, there was much rejoicing for the so-called Aphrodite project, but it took barely nine months before the colonists discovered that there is more to it than having sex all the time. Children need to be fed, children need to be cared for. Mothers need assistance during pregnancies. And then, they start to walk, and they need to be followed and educated. And during his or her active time, a colonist would have to do so for 10 children, conception to adulthood!  It soon became clear that this plan, now rechristened Hera initiative, would be one of the biggest efforts ever undertaken by humans and would tie a good percentage of the manpower of the colony.

A full quarter of the population works constantly for the task of raising children into the great minds of the new generations, and even that is only possible thanks to the widespread help of robotics, automation and quite a bit of applied technology. After the initial days, live pregnancy became fairly rare, with artificial wombs both publicly and privately owned being the rule: after all, a baby is too precious a thing to risk miscarriages and the mother needs to return to the very scarce work force as quickly as possible. While gestating, the embryos are taken care of by a host of specialized doctors, whose role is also to remove any serious genetic illness that could jeopardize the growth of the future children and ensure a proper growth and timely “pregnancy”.  Then, after entering our world they are mostly taken care of by the community: 20 children per couple (or 10 children per person, in case of single parents) is well beyond what the so-called nuclear family, especially in those busy times. While it would be tempting to just feed them automatically and let them grow with minimal involvement, human contact and interaction is emphasized as much as possible with the resources available, androids only used as last resort. It is of paramount importance to get out of the process well adjusted, brilliant, capable and driven citizens, not merely dumb bodies. While parents try to be involved in the lives of their children as much as possible in their free time, they are largely children of Gaia (or at least their local subset).
Schools are the next step, and the most important one. It is almost trivial to make great quantities of babies and while they are young enough to wander off they are easy enough to feed and keep safe. After that, you let them play in non-dangerous areas with cameras and some oversight. But education? Education is paramount. Each of those children has to be a future scientist, engineer, soldier, ruler. Excellence is the only option if we want our society to grow. At the lowest levels we have the incredible ratio of one omni disciplinary teacher every 50 students, making sure that they learn all the basics of science, math, history, geography, ancient media and Gaian society. Then, the ratio of teachers to students decreases and teachers become more focused in specific sectors in universities, where a single professor can teach a subject to several hundred young adults. At all stages, emphasis is set on the ability to work independently and with discipline, taking advantage of the available computer networks and the freely available and highly encouraged tests to self-educate, with the teacher serving mostly an advisory role and as an authority figure. Internships and social work are highly valued by society, being a way to relieve the pressure on the scarce adult population.
Finally, at the end of their education with a degree in hand and the energy of youth, a new generation can start working for the good of Gaia, lending their minds and bodies and preparing immediately to help growing a further generation, 10 times their number.

Childbearing in the capital and in the sparse settlements in the rest of the world has some striking differences. In the capital, a megalopolis of almost 200k inhabitants, the crowded environment means that centralized government facilities are most used: great hospitals for bearing children, vast schools, gardens, recreational and educational facilities of all kinds: the best for the future elite (and roughly a fifth of the population of the planet). This system is quite efficient in terms of manpower, but the involvement of adults with children ends up being more impersonal. All in all, it is not terribly different from what you could find on Earth, except in scale.
In the outlying areas however, the role of raising children falls to the community in a self-organized manner, typical of the small villages and communities of old. Midwives and nurses make a comeback, although without a distinction of gender. In the large countryside it is common to let children gather in some of the larger estates to play and explore together, and classes are held in a less regulated manner, with ad-hoc and personalized teaching more common. Less efficient, but the higher personal involvement has been noted to be beneficial in some ways, forming stronger bonds.

While the target has never been truly achieved due to scarcity of infrastructure or in more recent time a revival of personal parenting, the programme is widely considered a success. Starting from just roughly 5,000 citizens, we became 30,000, then 250,000, then in the middle of the third generation we stand at 900,000, on track to return to the numbers of Earth that was in just 3 or 4 more generations.
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