NationStates Jolt Archive


The Seven Spin Clans Factbook

Seven Spin Clans
18-03-2006, 02:36
Name: The Seven Spin Clans
Short Names: Spinners, The Clans, Clans

Planets:
Abbith (Homeword, now deserted)
Pax II (New homeworld)
Pax V
Pax VII
New Abbith

Leadership: Semi-Hive Oligarchy
The First Spinners (The leaders)
Sotha Sil (So-tha Sill)
Sul Sulipund
Sheogorath (Shyo-Go-Ra'ath)
Hermaeus Mora (Hworm-EYE-Oos Moi-Rah)
Mehrunes Dagon (Meh-Rhunes Dagon)
Boethiah (Bow-Eh-Thai-Uh)
Mephala (Mei-Fall-Ah)
Molag Bal (Mole-Agg Ba'al)

Species:
Spinners/First Spinners
Myr
Ixi
Niss

Species Details:
(Italics indicate historical text, which is semi-IC)
First Spinners-
The First Spinners are, essentially, massive computers. They are for the most part composed of analog components made of brass and similar metals. They are basically the same in general appearance, large mechanical boxes with spinning gears and so forth. A few digital components have gradually been incorporated for the sake of convinience, such as optical sensors and manipulator arms. Due to their bulk, spinners do not move much on their own although they are capable of a shuffling walk at about 2 miles per hour max on special surfaces which wont collapse when a hundred ton computer walks over it.
The First Spinners are essentially the government of the Seven Spin Clans, they can instantly contact each other over vast distances via a sort of mechanical telepathy. It has often been speculated that the First Spinners may not even BE mechanical in nature, but beings of energy which maintain the metallic shells of the computers either out of choice or habit, having long ago 'ascended' to a higher plane of being.
Regardless of their physical state, the First Spinners are regarded as near-gods by the rest of the Seven Spin Clans. They lead the government and are capable of managing most everything that doesnt require hands-on work, although they often delegate this to others.
The First Spinners are, quite possibly, older than this Universe. Various components of their frames and inner workings have very odd properties and seem to change from time to time, a few dont have a 'core' of any kind at all, that can be detected that is.
Questions as to their origins yield little, their earliest memories are of Abbith and fighting with both other Spinners and unknown beings for which they have no names, before that there is only a disjointed scattering of images and undeveloped feelings, this has led to speculation that the First Spinners have memories of their 'test runs', when whoever constructed them first activated them.
The history of Abbith is somewhat more clear, the Spinners and 'Others' were left, as far as can be determined, by the Builders. Being little more than animals, they proceded to kill each other in order to reduce competition. Since machines do not die natural deaths and the First Spinners are capable of self-repair, reproduction was not an issue.
The combat, had it been by organics, would have terrified any sane humanoid. Machines grappled until one broke, or a joint failed and left an opening. To hear such combat would have been terrible by itself, the shreiking of tourtured metal, the hiss of steam and hydraulics as two machines (in many cases several stories tall, think AT-AT here) strove in very real combat to the death, where, at the end, the victor would tear its enemies central core out and break it open, the equivalent to a human ripping annother humans head off and smashing it open on a rock. The winner would then procede to take its oponent apart and incorporate what it felt were the best parts of its enemy, then scatter the rest or melt it down for use as raw material for self-repair.
After many years of this fighting, where the great machines gradually build up their size (they think they started at a size of roughly one square foot and built from there), the Eight discovered diplomacy and figured that a whole world should have more than enough for each of them to have their own seperate corner. After this, things get blurry to all but Sotha Sil, who reports that he was not directly involved in the 'purge'. Sotha Sil states that while each of the others went out to find and destroy as many of the Others and Spinners as they could, Sotha Sil set his mind to other things and began building smaller versions of himself to do the work for him.
They proved quite effective as many of the Spinners had not realized that by making themselves so huge, they could not counter the threat of even one small Spinner. The Others were nearly gone by now, either from the poison exhaust of the Spinners (it is thought that the Others were organic) or by the Spinners themselves.
When the 'purge' was finnaly ended, Sotha Sil called his creations together, for he meant to re-absorb them to himself, but found that when he attempted to seize them, they would flee. After several experiments, he concluded that he had repeated the work of the Builders, and created a new kind of Spinner.
With this realization, great trouble came upon the mind of Sotha Sil. There were many options before him, and the world was now much more complicated. These small Spinners were competition, perhaps, or helpers. It seemed he had some control over them. Regardless, the other seven would seek to destroy them as they gave Sotha Sil an advantage.
(Continued under the Spinners)

Spinners-
Spinners do not maintain a 'standard form', they constantly seek to improve themselves with whatever materials present themselves, thus, no two spinners are the same. They do tend to follow a humanoid theme, a head, torse, two arms, two legs, etc., but a large minority enjoy the benifits of, say, treads and eighteen arms.
A long running fad (if you can call something thats been going on for several thosand years a fad) is to incorporate analog components into the body in some useful role, usualy these are fairly small items such as clocks or other non-essential items which wont cause the Spinner in question to shut down should it malfunction.
Spinners make up roughly one quarter of the population, if each Ixi is counted as one being and not on the basis of number of bodies.
The Spinners came into being shortly before the 'purge' ended, created, as told, by Sotha Sil as a weapon against the non-aligned Spinners of Abbith. Now, with the war over, Sotha Sil was wondering what to do with his creations, they were clearly intelligent, but the other Spinners would not suffer them to live, they gave Sotha Sil an advantage over the rest that threatened the tenative pact established by the Spinners.
It was generaly agreed by the others, though, that if Sotha Sil would share his new creation, it could grealy benifit all of the Spinners of the alliance, servants would be a big plus and would reduce annoying trips for various metals needed for repairs.
And so, after quite some time, civilization gradually sprang up. The Spinners developed a unique personality, similar to their creators. They adapted and changed, although they, at least, attemped to keep their frames within a certain size. The largest Spinner on record was ten feet tall and weighed eight tons, and self-terminated two years after activation due to a combination of mental defects and sever physical problems caused by overstressed hydraulics buggering up his innards.
Anyway, Spinner civilization was a fair parallel of Human history after the fall of the Roman Empire, they began in something of a Dark Age, with little or no understanding of technology. They could build more Spinners in the same way that humans can make more humans (but cant, for instance, build a functioning whelk from spare parts lying around). Eventually they figured the basic processess of themselves out, avoiding for the most part the human tendacy to beleive that a diety will fix it for you. When you can walk up to your diety and be told to bugger off because theyre busy, it kind of discourages you from that line of thinking.
Various ages came and went, one or two minor wars occured, and a few scientists blew themselves up when they detonated the first nuclear weapon, which was intended as an aphrodesiac. Dont ask.
The nuclear age was an interesting one for the machines, there were several experiments with nuclear-powered bodies, these did not function well as the Spinners brain (or hard drive, if you like) suffered from major glitches when exposed to radiation. The first major breakthrough (after the explosion) was an engine powered by this new energy.
The idea of a 'rocket' for traveling to space did not occur to the Spinners outside of their science fiction. The idea was too innefecient for them. Using tons of rocket fuel to move a few hundred pounds of equipment off the planet? Why? We can wait.
In the time between the development of a workable fusion engine (which was lifted into space by rockets, but only because there was no other alternative except the giant slingshot which would have cirlced the world twice and used up at least twice the rubber supply of Abbith and its neighboring six planets.) Spinner scientists developed various powerful telescopes and communication devices, quickly discovering that they were not alone in the galaxy, or even in the system. They received a strong signal, unmistakeably artificial, from the second planet, a 'mere' two planets away from them.

(OOC:
Wheee, upated.
And before anybody feels the need to point it out:
Yes, I stole some names/places from the Cthulu Mythos
Yes, I stole some names from the Elder Scrolls Series
Yes, the Myr are from Magic: The Gathering
Yes, I know the Great Old Ones r0x0r j00r b0x0rz
Yes, I know that some of this is not technically possible, but I dont care
Yes, Cthulu is awsome and I wish I had a squid head and commanded unholy legions.)
Seven Spin Clans
18-03-2006, 15:49
O_o