Science and Technology

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Peregrin
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Science and Technology

Post by Peregrin »

ARTOS POWER:

Artos power is the primary method of electricity generation on planets which possess atmospheres. The first civilization to use it is apparently the Nerakk, but it later passed it on to the Progenitor-Descendants and by extension the Hruka and the Veglyr. The Jardra, the Xril and the Haenoki, however, have at some point stopped using it due to either technological stagnation or in case of the Haenoki, necessity. However, it has over the last eighty years been used increasingly by also the Jardra and the Xril. The Mala'akim and the Faeries do not use it in their home universes, since the laws of physics there are different from those in this.

On each planet where Artos Powers is used, there are several giant tower-like facilities called Artos Transmitters.

There are two main types, Broadcasters and Vibrators.

Artos Broadcasters, often several kilometres in height, are formed around a giant Tesla Coil, and work by sending electricity in an exotic form (more on this later) to the planet's ionosphere and turning the planet into a gigantic Leyden jar, thusly providing the planet in question with an unlimited supply of electricity which is tapped into by the Artos Engines which also instantly re-convert it from exotic form back to an ordinary form. Artos Engines are found in the local equivalents of power plants, as well as some larger appliances (including motorized vehicles, seagoing vessels, construction tools and some weaponry) which have their own Artos Engines.

However, as the Artos Broadcasters are very vulnerable to both sieges and lightning storms, there is a second type known as Artos Vibrators.

An Artos Vibrator works by sending vibrations throughout the ground, which also can be tapped into by most Artos Engines, though some can only use Broadcast Artos Power or Vibratory Artos Power. Most cars and trucks on Artos-powered planets have an Artos Tank with an attached wire, which can be used to refuel the engine with endless vibratory Artos Power from anywhere in the vicinity of an Artos Vibrator. The largest Artos Vibrators can singlehandedly power entire planets.

Artos Vibrators are often considered superior, since they can be used on planets without atmospheres as long as the planet is solid due to relying on vibrations inside the planet itself rather than an electrified ionosphere. Whereever there are atmospheres however, Artos Broadcasters are also inevitable because they are a prerequisite for weather control systems.

Now, with conventional forms of electricity this would be fatal as Broadcasters would render planets uninhabitable through perpetual thunderstorms and lightning, wheras the Vibrators would cause freak seismic activity by interfering with tectonic plate drift. However, what has made the way Artos Power is usable possible is that both Broadcasters and Vibrators by transmitting instantly converting the power into a form unknown to us 21st century people, a form known as Dosvot which can only interfere with other matter once it has been converted back into a regular form electricity form by the Dosvot Convertor component of Artos Engines. This is why the different forms of Artos Power are often referred to as Broadcast Dosvot or Vibrating Dosvot.

It is thought that the firearms known as "Hammers" work in a similar way to Artos Engines, except that they tap into something different from electricity, perhaps something which exists in the parallel universe inhabited by the Faeries.
Last edited by Peregrin on Sun Nov 23, 2008 11:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Technology

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AREINAKKA FIELD


The Areinakka Field, named so after the Nerakk scientist who discovered it, is a cornerstone of physics in the far future of the Descendants. The Mala'akim know it as a Kabaiel Distortion after the one amongst them who first figured out how to generate one artificially. The Faeries' home dimension, however, is basically one huge Areinakka Field.

So, what is an Areinakka Field? It is a distortion in the space-time continuum which erupts and disappears sometimes spontaneously and randomly, sometimes in repeating patterns. Most Areinakka Fields last only a second or two, but some can persist for longer - the longest recorded one lasted several Iziruan months. They have been known to remain spatially static, but others continually expand or decrease in size until collapsing. It has been observed by some researchers that emerging Areinakka Fields on planets have been statistically tied to certain weather phenomena. The definite exception to the usual erratic nature of these fields is that people with psychic powers automatically create a somewhat unstable Areinakka Field around themselves. (the more powerful the psychic in question, the greater and more stable his/her Areinakka Field)

What happens in an Areinakka Field is basically that the principle of parsimony, also known as Occam's Razor, stops applying. As such, much technology of especially the Mala'akim is based upon artificially generated Areinakka Fields. It is Areinakka Fields first and foremost which have made interdimensional travel possible, though it requires an exceptionally stable and continuous Areinakka Field, and only the Mala'akim have succeeded in artificially generating fields stable with the required stability for allowing to exist in long enough time to open a dimensional portal. It has therefore been speculated that Areinakka Fields either are far more frequent and stable in the home dimension of the Mala'akim than in this one, or that a Kabaiel Distortion actually is genuinely different from an Areinakka Field. The Mala'akim themselves do not wish to answer this.
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Re: Technology

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NEGAMATTER:

Negative Matter, or Negamatter, should not be confused with Antimatter. It is instead a specific type of exotic matter possessing negative mass.

It is a truly strange form of matter, as it does neither obey Conservation of Energy nor Conservation of Momentum but nonetheless still manages to exist and can somehow be managed to be produced artificially, albeit expensively. As a result, both of these laws now have corollaries describing Negative Matter as an exception, as it is one of the few things in the universe to which these laws do not exist. It has therefore been speculated that Negative Matter actually is abundant in other parallel universes such as those of the Mala'akim or the Faeries. This is supported by the fact that the Mala'akim use negative matter in their technology to a far greater extent than any Descendant civilization.

Since negative matter also possesses negative inertial mass, a combined system of positive and negative matter will accelerate indefinitely without any additional input into the system.

The invention of ways of controlling negative matter has thusly been a godsend to space travel in that it has produced that fastest form of sublight travel yet known. As it is extremely expensive to use, there are very few civilian spaceships which use it, though faster warship types often have propulsion systems utilizing regulated negative matter. It is currently becoming increasingly common, and due to the rapid acceleration which negamatter-based propulsion enables, it allows some ships to regularly reach speeds of of 70% of c.

The most common use for negative matter, though, is in spaceship-to-spaceship missiles and unmanned probe vehicles. Especially its application in weapons has brought great change, as it is making spacefleets increasingly reliant upon ships which can snipe at enemy craft from the other end of the solar system with negamatter-powered missiles and ultra-fast cruisers which can attack with blinding speed.
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Re: Technology

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MAGNETIC NEUTRALIZERS

Though technically not propulsion systems on their own, Magnetic Neutralizer Fields are used by many atmospheric aircraft, spaceships with atmospheric capability and hovercraft to enhance their performance and maneuvering abilities.

A Magnetic Neutralizer basically functions through a plasma-filled accelerator ring going through the vehicle in which it is installed, with the "ring"'s shape more or less following that of the vehicle. It often surrounds the crew compartment in manned craft.

This accelerator ring contains mercury-based plasma pressurized at hundreds of thousands of atmospheres at a high temperature and it accelerated to fifty thousand RPM. The resulting superconductive rotating plasma disrupts the gravity disruption. Technically this does not count as true antigravity technology since it does not provide a repulsive force. Instead, it disrupts the planet's gravity fields upon the mass and reduces all mass surrounded by the accelerator ring to 11%, which tremendously enhances the vehicle's atmospheric performance.

Of course, military vehicles with Magnetic Neutralizer Fields need to be very heavily armoured as the craft in question would be doomed if a projectile managed to breach the armouring around the actual accelerator ring and release the plasma. For this reason, it is used mostly for reconnaissance and fast attack vehicles, but some larger battle hovertanks also incorporate Magnetic Neutralizers.

Civilian applications of Magnetic Neutralizers are limited to public transportation vehicles, as these devices are far too expensive for private persons to obtain, with the exception of the richest Hruka nobles.
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Re: Technology

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ELECTROMAGNETIC SAILING

Though negamatter is arguably the best sublight propulsion drive in terms of acceleration, it is extremely expensive and has therefore not managed to replace the dominant sublight space propulsion systems.

However, a different recent technology may go on to do that. It can best be described as "electromagnetic drifting" or "electromagnetic sailing". The latter term is a bit misleading (whereas the former is a bit too vague for its own good), but in the current version of the English language it is really the best description of what happens.

No actual sails, or anything resembling them, are used. Instead, at different places in a symmetric layout throughout the ship are placed electromagnetism-manipulating devices, known as "hooks". The hooks can be programmed to attract themselves to the magnetic field of whatever is the current destination of the ship in question.

The hooks function by enhancing the selected celestial body's magnetic field's effect upon the ship. However, they are not the only part of the system required for electromagnetic sailing. Also incorporated in EM-sailer ships are devices which can weaken (though not completely neutralize) the magnetic fields of all other celestial bodies than the one to which the ship is "hooked". This has in effect made shielding (as commonly understood) possible, though only against selected assailants and only those who use electromagnetically based weaponry. (for those who are curious, this electromagnetical neutralization is carried out using technology completely different from the magnetic neutralizers commonly found on atmospheric aircraft)

The neutralization and the hooking are usually carried out independently of each other in order to avoid accidents and other issues related to maximum control over the voyage. Both neutralization and hooking can be done with various "strength" levels for similar purposes.

All ships with electromagnetic sailing capability also have other types of sublight propulsion, both for backup and for more delicate maneuvering.
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Re: Technology

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TELEMETRE DISKS

Though the idea might come across as tyrannic to many 21st century humans (and initially silly to some Xril), the Telemetre Disks are commonly used throughout the Descendant Confederacy for a great variety of information gathering purposes ranging from opinion surveys over linguistic translation to more... clandestine things, which is why some people rightly fear them. In fact, in some Descendant nations they are either restricted to government usage or (in the Thzaxian Exodite Autonomy) banned outright.

In practice, they are also the closest thing to psychic robots there have been manufactured yes. Okay, okay, that sounds very weird... it even seemed so when they were initially introduced.

The idea between the telemetre disks go like this: At some point, it was discovered by the Progenitor-Descendants that neurological activity in a creature of Terrene-derived physiology emits certain vibrations away from the creature. Many research programs to create machines which could register, record and decode these vibrations were commissioned and eventually, these mind-reader machines became so compacted that it was possible to fit one into a small drone aircraft.

And thus was born the Telemetre Disk, or the Empath Spy-Drone. It breaks down language barriers. It gleans into the highest of secrets without anyone noticing. It drastically reduces the need for talk and direct interpersonal communication in general.

Since many people and organizations consider such a drone a nuisance by its very nature, a variety of countermeasures (some of which, again, are illegal or regulated in some parts of the galaxy) towards telemetre discs have been invented and allowed to proliferate.

One thing is for certain - elsewhere than the Thzaxian Exodite Autonomy, the Telemetre Disks have come to stay.
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SHIELDING TECHNOLOGY

Shield technology, the idea of machinery which can be used by vehicles to repel physical attacks, has long been a dream of engineers.

Yet, shields as commonly thought of by the 20th century homo sapiens, as in the form of electromagnetic forcefields which weaken or repel attacks, are still an absolute rarity in most of known space.

However, attempts to make things with similar uses have been made and successfully for a long time. The oldest and most used form is laserproof armour which to this day is found on most spaceships. Laserproof armour is a sandwich of different metallic alloys and other materials which have the effect of dispersing or absorbing intense light. This is the source of the sometimes misleading name "laserproofing" as it makes the vehicle armoured with this type of armour less vulnerable to attacks from lasers.

Laserproofing, however, makes very little difference against other weapons such as neutron beams, negamatter missiles, Hammers and mass drivers, except that the weapon in this instance has more to punch to. As laserproof armour technology was perfected and made more effective, space warfare became more and more reliant upon especially neutron beam guns. There has also been experiments in making artificial materials resistant towards neutron beam weapons, but the only ones who appear to have succeeded in that are the Mala'akim if their ships do not instead rely on aforementioned electromagnetic forcefields for protection.

It is therefore not unknown what makes the Mala'aka warships so resilient against non-kinetic weapons, be it specific forcefields or an example of "Hammerproof" armour. However, recent data released by the Emissaries of the Nerakk have suggest that it either is the latter. If its the former, then the unusual vulnerability of Mala'akim warships against kinetic weapons could be a function of the laws of physics in the home universe of the Mala'akim being different.

The Nerakk, presumably several centuries after they left the Cradle System, managed to develop actual electromagnetic forcefield shield systems, though they have been reluctant to sell such technology to even their old friends, the Hruka. Neither do they inform what the operating principles behind this is, a stance is commonly seen as a prime example of typical Nerakk paranoia. From battle experience, however, it appears that the shielding devices of Nerakk warships sit dormant for most of the time and whenever the ships' defensive AIs predict an attack from a certain direction, that corner of the ship's forcefield generator immediately generates an electromagnetic distortion blocking or slowing down the attack in question. As opposed to the however the Mala'akim protect their ships, it actually appears that the Nerakk shields are most successful in stopping kinetic attacks, though they have also proven effective in weakening strikes from Hammers.

There are currently experiments throughout the entire Descendant Confederacy to produce a device capable of generating such a protective electromagnetic forcefield. Most, but not of all these experiments, involve modifying Magnetic Neutralizers or otherwise using the same underlying mechanisms as a basis.
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Re: Technology

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ASTEROID SLINGS:

The Asteroid Sling is perhaps the most common "planet-killer" weapon, though it is usually used as support artillery against very large spacecraft, and only then rarely.

An Asteroid Sling is basically a mass driver so big that it uses asteroids, or fragments of asteroids, as ammunition. Some are mounted upon huge battleships, others as defense emplacement upon great space stations but most serve as the central component of warships which essentially are portable Asteroid Slings. This type are the biggest, since those serving as armament upon battleships and space stations are only capable of launching the smallest asteroids.

However, the sheer amount of energy needed to accelerate an asteroid to hypersonic speeds still puts a definite upper limit upon the potential calibres of Asteroid Slings in addition to requiring most Mobile Asteroid Sling vehicles to have enormous power generation systems. Some Asteroid Slings of the railgun variety are even capable of adjusting the calibre by changing the distance between the rails.

Asteroid Slings are still very rare weapons since most harvested asteroids are used for extracting minerals for use elsewhere. A few of the larger asteroids harvested, though, are sometimes purchased by the nearest governments for being broken down into ammunition for Asteroid Slings.

Due to the high resource consumption more than any moral troubles, Asteroid Slings are mainly deterrents as well as displays of engineering genius on the part of their constructors. They are still more frequently used than, say, Vortex Arbalests, for the greatest, most unstoppable battleships can be instantly smashed to debris by few other long-range weapons.
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HAMMERS:

The firearms known as "Hammers" appear to have been developed independently by the Nerakk, the Mala'akim and the Faeries, though some faeries have claimed that they created the first Hammers and the Mala'akim and Nerakk - along with other, now extinct civilizations such as the Ncha and the Caespsiano - then learned the technology of Hammer-making from the faeries. A few Hammers have also found their ways into the hands of the Descendants, many of which were given in the past to the Hruka by their then-allies, the Nerakk. The Jardra and the Xril, due to their isolation, however, have only learned of Hammers throughout the last century.

They are called Hammers because of their shape, which can described as vaguely similar to a cross between a hammer and a crossbow. The "hammer head", regardless of its size, contains the machinery which projects and formulates the lightning-like beam of a Hammer.

The lightning beams which the Hammers project have their origin in an energy similar, but not identical to Dosvot energy. It is, however, strangely enough not possible to manufacture a primitive Hammer by modifying an Artos engine. The Hammer uses the exotic energy, referred to as "Thunder Juice" colloquially by the Hruka, in question, and processes it into a regulated, guided beam similar to a lightning bolt. The exact mechanism behind the Hammers is little understood by even the Haenoki and the Veglyr, but some Hruka military technicians have a rudimentary knowledge of the maintenance of a Hammer.

Hammers come in different sizes and types, ranging from small pistols to the enormous Hammer-Cannons mounted upon Nerakk and Mala'ak warships. All hammers have variable yields, at the lower power levels they can in fact be used as sculpting tools. At higher settings, even the smaller Hammers can cause massive amounts of damage and split open tanks with their lighting beams. Hammer-equipped Nerakk troops have sometimes demolished entire cities from afar, and few sights are more feared than that of a Kerub wielding two Hammers at once, sending several gigajoules of fiery destruction in two directions from the sky, borne aloft upon its vast wings. Not few of the Hruka are convinced that the tales of Dragons (thought to be originated with the Progenitors) actually are interpretations of rogue Hammer-wielding Kerubim.
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Re: Technology

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THE MERCURY RAY PROJECTOR

Best described as a hybrid between a strategic particle beam gun and a rapid-fire mass driver, the Mercury Ray Projectors are amongst the most spectacular artillery weapons.

A Mercury Ray Projector works by accelerating small drops of mercury to a stream of relativistic bullets in a vacuum. The majority of the apparent barrel of a surface-level Mercury Ray Projector is actually an attached vacuum generator which creates a vacuum ahead of the beam.

Needless to say, individual Mercury Ray Projectors are huge. Those not used as weaponry upon spaceships (which have no use for vacuum generators) are used either on immobile strategic defense emplacements or on humongous self-propelled artillery units.

Mercury Ray Projector units on surface often work in symbiosis with a high-altitude drone aircraft which serves as the Mercury Ray Projector's seeing-eye, pinpointing targets several hundred miles away for the projector unit itself. Surface-level Mercury Ray Projectors have the main purposes of shooting down enemy spaceships in orbit, but could theoretically also be used, for that matter, to destroy enemy fortifications and naval ships far away. Nonetheless, due to the rarity of planetary engagements and the fact that these often happen on planets incapable of supporting the Artos Power networks necessary to maintain a Mercury Ray Projector, these are very rare.

Recently, however, more and more military spaceships have been fitted with Mercury Ray Projectors, since some engineers argue that the Mercury Ray Projectors have certain advantages over traditional mass drivers.
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OSCILLATOR WARHEADS:

A peculiar alternative to explosive warheads, oscillator warheads are capable of doing great damage to spaceships and ground emplacements.

An oscillator warhead's central mechanism goes like this: Shortly before impact, a variety of electromagnetic clamp-spikes protude from the Oscillator Warhead to fasten the warhead to the target surface.

When this has happened, the warhead drills into the surface of the target and starts oscillating at an extremely high frequency. If left unnoticed at unsupervised spots for a specific amount of time dependent on the frequency of the oscillator warhead in question, a single oscillator warhead can split a cruiser in half.

This, of course, has led to warships having intricate countermeasures towards oscillator warheads, including small drones which are released shortly after a torpedo impact in order to find and neutralize oscillator warheads. In turn, this has lead to the development of smarter target-seeking oscillator warheads programmed to embed themselves in hardly detectible places, as well as missiles which in addition to oscillator warheads release spaceborne gun drones to defend the oscillator warheads.
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SONIC CANNONS:

Sonic Cannons come in a variety of shapes and sizes and are as strange in concept as they are deadly to people and other living things.

At first, they do not look like firearms, since they instead are composed of a framework of compressed-air whistles. These whistles then send out sound waves at extreme frequencies, causing living things in range to become nauseous and terminally ill for hours as all organs inside them vibrate.

Depending on the frequency, Sonic Cannons can be used to either immobilize infantry or kill them outright.

As efficient as they are, they do not come without their disadvantages.

Firstly, those sonic guns who use ultra-low frequency sounds are too dangerous to be operated by organic beings since the noise cannot be directed, a problem solved by equipping these only to AI-controlled (or remote-controlled) vehicles or gundrones which operate solely together with other gundrones or AI/remote-control vehicles. Ultrasonic weapons are therefore more common since they can be directed - however, they have shorter ranges and often lower power yields than ultra-low-frequency sonic guns.

The second disadvantage, however, is that all Sonic Cannons' main efficiency is against living personnel, not against gundrones and other robotic troops. (in fact, the development of sonic cannons were a major catalyst for the proliferation of gundrones)

The third disadvantage of the sonic cannon is one which only covers the ultra-low-frequency varieties, namely that due to the unfocused nature of the charges, they are by their nature overkill.

Strangely, though, the infrasonic weapons have found their niche because of what would else be disadvantages. Super-heavy Infrasonic Gundrones are often dropped from special aircraft deep into enemy territory along with other gundrones for support. Against forces without sufficient countermeasures, Infrasonic Superheavy Gundrones can deliver a true death strike.


As "crowd control" weapons and for trench warfare with living things on both sides, there are few weapon types of greater efficiency than sonic weapons - be they ultrasonic or infrasonic.
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VORTEX ARBALEST

As fearsome as an extraordinarily large and high-powered Hammer is, in sheer destructiveness it pales in comparison to the Vortex Arbalest, a weapon mounted upon some Mala'akim military vehicles, mostly their space battleships-

Even more so than the Hammers, and like most other Mala'akim weapons, the exact operating mechanisms of the Vortex Arbalest are unknown to the Descendants. The Faeries have as far failed in their attempts to procure a Vortex Arbalest or its ammunition, not only because of their lack of interest in obtaining one but also because of the amount of security with which the Mala'akim guard their Vortex Arbalests.

In appearance, a Vortex Arbalest looks a lot like a gigantic medieval crossbow of a highly stylized design, made of a strange metal with a surface not unlike copper or bronze. What makes it so unusual and feared are the harpoon-sized projectiles it fires. The apparently nega-matter projectiles are equipped with warheads which upon impact create a small black hole which collapses a set period of time afterwards. It appears that there are different varieties of Vortex Bolts, as this ammunition is called, since those few survivors which remain from Vortex Arbalest attacks report widely different intervals between impact and the sudden collapse of the black hole.

However, even those Vortex Bolts whose created Black Holes last for less than a second can easily do away with entire fleets and depopulate worlds, often knocking them out of orbit and deforming them into gigantic asteroids in the process or sometimes consuming the planet in question wholesale.

Some people believe that there are Vortex Bolts which creates perpetually existing black holes indistinguishable from those in this universe, and that some of the smaller black holes may be remnants from past Mala'akim invasions. It has also been speculated by experts that Vortex Bolts work by pulling immense amounts of matter from the corresponding location in the home universe of the Mala'akim into the spot where the bolt detonates, and that the Vortex Bolt thusly is a transdimensional weapon. However, until either the Mala'akim explain the mechanism behind the Vortex Arbalest and its bolts or the Faeries or perhaps even the Nerakk procure a more or less intact specimen, the Vortex Arbalest will remain a mystery as well as a nightmare.

The Vortex Arbalests are weapons which are used very rarely, often as a last resort when every other method has failed. This is not just because of the probable immense costs of manufacturing Vortex Bolts, but also because of how devastating a malfunctioning or otherwise misfired Vortex Bolt can prove to the Mala'aka side itself.

The exceptions to the Mala'akim's usual hesitation towards using the Vortex Arbalest are legendary, though. The personal flagship of Camael once dropped in alone into the Shaarau system and fired a single Vortex Bolt at the local Veglyr Cosmic Fleet Base, taking out hundreds of Veglyr Sworddancers and a few space stations and an entire gas giant and its moons in the process. Camael shortly after, in a typical demonstration of the eccentricity of the Mala'akim, delivered a strange monologue equal parts justification and apology, explaining the whole attack as an attempt to make the Descendants think about their place of universe and consider what makes life worth living.
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THE INTERDIMENSIONAL EUGENICS PROJECT

Unrelated to what produced the designer retrovirus responsible for the psychic powers ubiquitious among the Veglyr, the Interdimensional Eugenics Project (best possible literal translation of its name) was founded almost immediately after Descendant science had begun studying the Fairies. The IEP was founded by Gekon Gerig, a Veglyr who was convinced that not only was the Faeries' seemingly impossible abilities (eg. flipping in and out of different dimensions at will) adapted traits, but ones that can be engineered into lifeforms from his own universe.

In short, the purpose of the Interdimensional Eugenics Project is to literally create gods. Fortunately for Mr. Gerig, however, science not only confirmed the existence of souls long before his birth but also started analyzing and explaining the hows and whys of souls' structure through disciplines that today would be called metabiology and psychotronics. Since Gerig had a literal spiritual genome project's work to peruse when he begun, he knew at least some of the exact details of what sort of people he wanted to create: The relationship between a person's physical and metaphysical bodies, the influence of external stimuli and environmental factors upon the soul's inner workings and last but not least some ground for speculation about how the souls of Faeries work.

Since then, the IEP has not only gotten the benefits of funding from several governments but also many newer discoveries about the metaphysiology of the Faeries. It has still not come even close to creating a transdimensional person, partly because the IEP's research has found that the specifics of an individual psyker's abilities are nowhere as predominantly hereditary as hitherto thought - in this regard it bears worthy of mention that the translation "Interdimensional Eugenics" is a bit of misnomer since the basic units of metaphysical inheritance are only tenuously related to genes... and when it is, it makes so little sense within a purely material-biology oriented mindset that metabiology quickly had to start from scratch pretty much as soon as they took off, which was a pretty slow process already considering how much experimentation and theorizing was needed to establish some sort of common ground between the two.

However, the IEP's aims look nowhere as far-fetched as they used to: It has not only produced the most powerful psykers in the Cosmic Fleet and Cosmic Host's employ, but by more or less accident done lots of important discoveries within fields that are actually rather tangetically related at best to harnessing the fringes of science to create physical gods. Would you, for instance, believe that one-time Grand Master Tevydd Buruoc revolutionized the way fruit juice is made in the Vega system... as part of his metabiological research?

Today, the IEP has filials and research facilities throughout the entire Descendant Confederacy - though most are centered around the inner systems of the Veglyr Cosmic Fleet Protectorate, in close range of the Magaesyr Station - a settlement Gerig built in orbit around the planet Yunsalri in the Vega system to serve as the IEP's headquarters. It employs not only Veglyr, Jardra and Xril but also a few Hruka. In fact, the only civilian Hruka living outsider the Cradle System are those working at IEP facilities because one Hruka religion has very similar aims as the IEP. On a related note, the religion originating among the Jardra known as the Oknathar Academy has gotten quite a boost as the Project's findings have often validated Okhanatar theology. Also, even before then many of the Jardra involved with the IEP happened to be Oknathar.

Magaesyr Station and a few other IEP facilities have become cities of their own, if small ones. They are home to several generations of psykers conceived, raised and often living there. Quite a number, and not just those in government employ, find likelihoods elsewhere, though. Magaesyr in particular seems to be forming a distinct culture of his own, having become a meeting place for some of the greatest psykers of the Confederacy - and in a few cases, permanent dwelling since they today constitute most members of the Circle of Light. The Circle of Light is the IEP's creatively-titled board of directors; as Gekon Gerig was a bit of an eccentric, he decided to organize the IEP in a pseudo-archaic way that initially made the whole thing come across as a bit cultish and pseudo-scientific. It does probably not come as a surprise, then, that the IEP was not taken seriously by metabiologists as a whole until the Project's activities yielded some genuine breakthroughts in the field.

Interestingly enough, Magaesyr's status as nexus for powerful psykers interested in pushing the envelope of psychic powers' theory and practice seems to be leading to the settlement developing a distinct culture of its own. Magaesyr's extremely idiosyncratic architecture, for example, is designed to stimulate the development and potency of paranormal abilities.

Of course, the IEP's very existence divides the public quite a lot as it has been difficult to keep a low profile ever as its institutions spread across more systems and Magaesyr Station drew more traffic. From the beginning, the Cosmic Fleet's leaders worried that if Gekon Gerig did not intend the IEP as a way to create a government ruled over by god-like psykers it would perhaps be hijacked to such purposes after his death, which is another reason for its official affliation. Some have different concers about the IEP: They just question whether it's ethically sound to artificially attempt creating super-psykers from before their birth - partly out of existential concerns about free will and such, partly because experimental metabioengineering gone wrong often results in things that are (to understate things mildly) more than a little nasty.

The Faeries themselves, of course, do not interfere in the doings of the IEP and - perhaps not so strangely - maintain an official policy of curious neutrality towards the whole thing. Some wags see this as a sign of awareness upon their part that the IEP will most likely fail in its purpose to create people who can at will bend reality and walk between dimensions. What it has not failed in, though, is to make several breakthroughs in the study and applications of several scientific disciplines - not just metabiology and psychotronics.
Where the Xhatrr Dominion parts with most states ever to exist is... well, how a very high likelyhood that the people in power know what they are doing is ensured - or, at least, that is what is supposed to result. Whereas the typical government, be it elected or not, consults think tanks and independent experts, in the Xhatrr Dominion the think tanks are the lawmakers and the assembly.

The Xhatrr Dominion's equivalent of universities hold all the political power, with the most revered and respectable professors being the equivalent secretaries of their respective fields. For example, the task of changing society's overall "framework" is given to psychologists and sociologists, the ministry of culture is run exclusively by art historians, literary critics and their ilk, economists and ecologists are in charge of managing every single detail of the economy - and so on.

Given the need for different sciences to communicate with each other for the sake of gathering data, however, the experts are not that segregated into each other's particular departments of government. The equivalent of the parlament contains basically every single Xhatrr Dominion citizen with a degree the rough equivalent of a doctorate. For this reason, the recently erected New Palace of Stewardship on Xhatrr has its own space port and network of express courier boats operating throughout the Xhatrr Dominion with maximum priority to ensure the communication between the nation's ruling technocrats. It might also be worth mentioning here that most tenured Xril academics are linked by the Neurotelepathic Network to their fields of expertise's respective AIs at the institutes of higher learning. These AIs absorb the knowledge of many generations of scientists, which in turn are passed on to each acolyte of these learned machines.

It goes without saying that their research so important to the future well-being of the Xhatrr Dominion is highly dependant on contact with other societies, and as such the Xhatrr Dominion's respective embassies in nations like the Independent Society of Vrlurn (the second biggest political entity of Xril), the Veglyr Cosmic Fleet's huge protectorate, the Post-National Empire of Greater Avarnam and the other many Jardra states not to mention the Haenoki Clanfleets and even such isolationist countries as the Hruka Oligarchy and the Nerakk Enclave make an inordinate amount of intrusion into the statistics of their host countries - as well as frequent anthropological expeditions to study the societies in which they are stationed. Though this admittedly is meant to benefit mainly the people of the Xhatrr Dominion, it at least inexorably teaches the other Descendant species (and the Nerakk) much about what a people the Xril are. The other (and less technocratic) Xril states such as the Independent Society of Vrlurn, however, get more entertainment than education from this.
"You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you." - Heraclitus
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