The Ctan
30-01-2008, 18:22
The Vardine were a race that had fallen from the galactic stage. Not through the ravages or war, plague, ‘ascension’ of simple ennui, but rather, they had fallen from that stage because they had simply no interest in reproducing. This seemed strange to most, but it was because of rampant, runaway infatuation with their capabilities as a high-level technology-savvy species, in effect, they had become so enamoured of the toys they were able to create that they had simply stopped being interested in the physical world.
They weren’t particularly missed, or known, because, as beings that dwelt in the furnace heat of a world whose seas were of molten sulphides, and whose inheritance was dictated by fluorocarbons. To the conventional humanoids of most nations, simply touching a Vardine would be intolerable, and to enter their environments unprotected, certain, tormentful, death, to the Vardine, these same creatures were strange and exotic, but perishing, deathly, cold.
The homeworld of the Vardine, Lhrel-ine, was allowed, over thirty seven millennia, to simply decay into ruins; though this process was stopped by the low-order machines that had not joined their culture as a whole and were simply tasked with maintaining these cities in a fit state for habitation.
Totally inhuman in form, the Vardine were nonetheless mentally, not dissimilar to the necrontyr, but even further in the same directions. The Vardine, as a whole, found it quite satisfying to play together in meaningless pursuit, simply enjoying the company of their own kind, for decades.
As such, when they were contacted by the necrontyr, they were not terribly interested, as a whole, in galactic affairs. A few however, were interested in other matters. Of the twenty seven thousand three hundred and nineteen Vardine who still lived, there were some fifteen who were interested in a more meaningful cooperation than the low-level trade interaction the rest had established with these explorers.
They had other ideas. And upon the surface of Lherel-ine, they claimed for themselves – the economics of the matter were alien, and of little matter, given the post-scarcity productive capabilities of the Vardine – one of the older cities of the world, Anak.
It was a long task, and not one even they were up to on their own; they had help from a faction called the Venturers, to alter the environment of Anak to a more ‘conventional’ one. At first, they materialised a dome-like cover between Anak and Lherel-ine’s atmosphere, and changed the atmosphere inside, to one of oxygen under one atmosphere of pressure, and nitrogen. Then there was the matter of changing the ground rock around, insulated by the same dome, continuing in a sphere, this done, they set about changing the rocks and the soils and planting gardens of human-appropriate plants supplied by their conspirators, and seeding the city with the latest generations of Vardine molecular synthesisers, strange materials that produced whatever was asked of them in a sticky bath of black material.
Then, the architecture needed to be changed, for the Vardine had little concept of privacy, and environments they found reassuringly intimate were to humans, they learnt, almost intolerably transparent. The bronze-framed and structurally astounding buildings of the Vardine were altered so that many of their walls were colourful to the narrow bands of radiation that the majority of the galactic population used to see, from ultraviolet to infrared. Furniture, again, to C’tan patterns, was produced, and the synthesizers altered to produce almost anything that had ever been devised by human civilisation, excluding weapons of mass destruction, or weapons, and sapient beings.
Indoor light was adjusted too, from the burning intolerability of Vardine light, to the mellow, tepidness of human light.
Anak was next seeded with 2²¹ compact monitoring and policing units, each eminently expendable, but nonetheless, dangerous, equipped with weapons systems designed to subdue organic life, for a time. These were to essentially be a police system, and their legal code was simple enough – where they patrolled, and there were regions where they did not – they would stop any violence they saw committed that seemed likely to cause permanent injury or distress to the subject of that violence, That was quite simply all that they did. In their standard programming, without the intervention of their creators, they would then simply follow the perpetrator to ensure that the crime would not be repeated.
Then, the whole ten-kilometre wide structure, dome and all was moved, taken into orbit and towed from Lherel-ine to a world of desolate, wind-swept rock, where life had never existed, and set in a deep crater excavated by a fusion bomb of considerable power.
It seemed pointless, a wasted effort, for thought almost every comfort had been provided, from gardens to waterfalls to high city towers and places of work, but the Vardine who had conceived of it, with their necrontyr conspirators, had another phase of their plan in mind.
Between them, they devised an energy-intensive, but practical means, of extending parts of the city throughout space, a way of creating hidden entrances, in some places where it was needed, to the city. These places were invariably chosen by the C’tan to link to places of desperate oppression and poverty. The transition was jarring, and uncomfortable, but if one were to pass through the otherwise invisible routes, always positioned to be found, in time. They would take people, but not weapons, above a certain limit, and it was almost a matter of chance where they would appear; the places the necrontyr agents not only deemed appropriate, but could go and leave such a thing. The routes to it were not easily found, and were most often temporary, existing for weeks, their time to expiry noted publicly upon the Anak side, but if one were to learn of it from internets and similar distributed media, one would soon find a route to reach the city.
If one were to enter the city, one would emerge at the top of the miles-high towers at the centre of the city, below, an (initially) uninhabited city in perfect condition, above the daytime vista of an alien binary system, and at night, the brilliance of the galactic core.
The point of the new city of Anak was to see what it would get, what people would do in such a heavily policed but deniable place. It was intentionally difficult to determine who had contrived the place, and when its non-sapient control systems were interrogated on almost anything of its systems, in any language one cared to name, it would only say that it had been constructed (by Those Who Constructed This Place) to provide to any who needed or wanted it, what its new name described. It called itself the City of Sanctuary.
OOC: Yeah. It’s a plot device. I’m curious to see if this sparks anyone’s imagination, to see what criminals or innocents might find (or have laid for them) such a place. It’s open to almost anyone, MT, FT, PMT, Fantasy… You name it. Only real ground-rules are, you can’t publicly take over the city (well, you could, but you couldn’t enforce it, the doorways will shut down before allowing any significant military presence from a foreign nation in) and you can’t blow it up. You can certainly try and pursue fugitives there, if you so wish, but the local systems may take exception to law enforcement people plying their trade in Sanctuary.
Nope, I’m not calling these doorways being on anyone’s territories. You can have one if you want to OOC, otherwise, they’re not there.
They weren’t particularly missed, or known, because, as beings that dwelt in the furnace heat of a world whose seas were of molten sulphides, and whose inheritance was dictated by fluorocarbons. To the conventional humanoids of most nations, simply touching a Vardine would be intolerable, and to enter their environments unprotected, certain, tormentful, death, to the Vardine, these same creatures were strange and exotic, but perishing, deathly, cold.
The homeworld of the Vardine, Lhrel-ine, was allowed, over thirty seven millennia, to simply decay into ruins; though this process was stopped by the low-order machines that had not joined their culture as a whole and were simply tasked with maintaining these cities in a fit state for habitation.
Totally inhuman in form, the Vardine were nonetheless mentally, not dissimilar to the necrontyr, but even further in the same directions. The Vardine, as a whole, found it quite satisfying to play together in meaningless pursuit, simply enjoying the company of their own kind, for decades.
As such, when they were contacted by the necrontyr, they were not terribly interested, as a whole, in galactic affairs. A few however, were interested in other matters. Of the twenty seven thousand three hundred and nineteen Vardine who still lived, there were some fifteen who were interested in a more meaningful cooperation than the low-level trade interaction the rest had established with these explorers.
They had other ideas. And upon the surface of Lherel-ine, they claimed for themselves – the economics of the matter were alien, and of little matter, given the post-scarcity productive capabilities of the Vardine – one of the older cities of the world, Anak.
It was a long task, and not one even they were up to on their own; they had help from a faction called the Venturers, to alter the environment of Anak to a more ‘conventional’ one. At first, they materialised a dome-like cover between Anak and Lherel-ine’s atmosphere, and changed the atmosphere inside, to one of oxygen under one atmosphere of pressure, and nitrogen. Then there was the matter of changing the ground rock around, insulated by the same dome, continuing in a sphere, this done, they set about changing the rocks and the soils and planting gardens of human-appropriate plants supplied by their conspirators, and seeding the city with the latest generations of Vardine molecular synthesisers, strange materials that produced whatever was asked of them in a sticky bath of black material.
Then, the architecture needed to be changed, for the Vardine had little concept of privacy, and environments they found reassuringly intimate were to humans, they learnt, almost intolerably transparent. The bronze-framed and structurally astounding buildings of the Vardine were altered so that many of their walls were colourful to the narrow bands of radiation that the majority of the galactic population used to see, from ultraviolet to infrared. Furniture, again, to C’tan patterns, was produced, and the synthesizers altered to produce almost anything that had ever been devised by human civilisation, excluding weapons of mass destruction, or weapons, and sapient beings.
Indoor light was adjusted too, from the burning intolerability of Vardine light, to the mellow, tepidness of human light.
Anak was next seeded with 2²¹ compact monitoring and policing units, each eminently expendable, but nonetheless, dangerous, equipped with weapons systems designed to subdue organic life, for a time. These were to essentially be a police system, and their legal code was simple enough – where they patrolled, and there were regions where they did not – they would stop any violence they saw committed that seemed likely to cause permanent injury or distress to the subject of that violence, That was quite simply all that they did. In their standard programming, without the intervention of their creators, they would then simply follow the perpetrator to ensure that the crime would not be repeated.
Then, the whole ten-kilometre wide structure, dome and all was moved, taken into orbit and towed from Lherel-ine to a world of desolate, wind-swept rock, where life had never existed, and set in a deep crater excavated by a fusion bomb of considerable power.
It seemed pointless, a wasted effort, for thought almost every comfort had been provided, from gardens to waterfalls to high city towers and places of work, but the Vardine who had conceived of it, with their necrontyr conspirators, had another phase of their plan in mind.
Between them, they devised an energy-intensive, but practical means, of extending parts of the city throughout space, a way of creating hidden entrances, in some places where it was needed, to the city. These places were invariably chosen by the C’tan to link to places of desperate oppression and poverty. The transition was jarring, and uncomfortable, but if one were to pass through the otherwise invisible routes, always positioned to be found, in time. They would take people, but not weapons, above a certain limit, and it was almost a matter of chance where they would appear; the places the necrontyr agents not only deemed appropriate, but could go and leave such a thing. The routes to it were not easily found, and were most often temporary, existing for weeks, their time to expiry noted publicly upon the Anak side, but if one were to learn of it from internets and similar distributed media, one would soon find a route to reach the city.
If one were to enter the city, one would emerge at the top of the miles-high towers at the centre of the city, below, an (initially) uninhabited city in perfect condition, above the daytime vista of an alien binary system, and at night, the brilliance of the galactic core.
The point of the new city of Anak was to see what it would get, what people would do in such a heavily policed but deniable place. It was intentionally difficult to determine who had contrived the place, and when its non-sapient control systems were interrogated on almost anything of its systems, in any language one cared to name, it would only say that it had been constructed (by Those Who Constructed This Place) to provide to any who needed or wanted it, what its new name described. It called itself the City of Sanctuary.
OOC: Yeah. It’s a plot device. I’m curious to see if this sparks anyone’s imagination, to see what criminals or innocents might find (or have laid for them) such a place. It’s open to almost anyone, MT, FT, PMT, Fantasy… You name it. Only real ground-rules are, you can’t publicly take over the city (well, you could, but you couldn’t enforce it, the doorways will shut down before allowing any significant military presence from a foreign nation in) and you can’t blow it up. You can certainly try and pursue fugitives there, if you so wish, but the local systems may take exception to law enforcement people plying their trade in Sanctuary.
Nope, I’m not calling these doorways being on anyone’s territories. You can have one if you want to OOC, otherwise, they’re not there.