Fiction:Metix Null

"The isn't just a band of rogues and pirates, loosely led by five strong-armed robber barons. No, there is much more to the corsairs then they would like you to believe. The eyes of steel and fire that fly with them—to the Saviki, they are beyond constructs, beyond flesh, immortal distributors of life and sustenance. Beyond even those billions of unblinking eyes is the gaze of a god: a deus ex machina, a deity born of the machine, Metix Null. Through it, and it alone, the Metafleet survives, its children rewriting matter and energy into sustenance for the flesh and sinew marauders that serve them. I know you'll say how ridiculous it is to worship a machine built by your own kind, but let me ask you this: if your life, if your capacity, and your comrades' capacity, to wake up tomorrow and reassure yourself that you exist, and will continue to exit, was dependent entirely upon the distant will of a construct older than everything you know, then tell me, would you not bend the knee and name it your god?"

- Unknown

Metix Null, otherwise known as the Architect or the Omega Regulator, is the first of the constructs known as the Regulators, and the only entity known to be capable of producing more. As a result, it is revered and worshiped by the Saviki of the Metafleet as a machine-god, the ultimate source of Mana and thus the species' livelihood.

History
The exact time of Metix Null's construction is not entirely clear, though it is known to have occurred several decades prior to the onset of. Whether it or Mana was developed first is unknown. Most contemporary Saviki recount that their pre-Blizzard ancestors were not reverent of the god they created, for despite its artificial nature, it was still very much a god. Instead, the Saviki of the time treated it as they would any other construct, incorporating it and its Regulator children into the infrastructure of their civilization. Over the course of the Shining Days, the Saviki would modify themselves to become almost completely specialized for the consumption and processing of Mana. When the Blizzard broke upon the Saviki, Metix was brought aboard one of many arkships to preserve the species as they fled.

It is unknown when worship of Metix began or became commonplace, but it is belived that a significant number of Saviki in the the contemporary Combines had become highly reverent of Metix by the time of the Fracture Wars, suggesting a correlation between this reverence and their survival, which has only served to bolster the deification of Metix. Hundreds of new generations of Regulators would be produced over the millennia to account for losses and the growing population of wandering Saviki.

During the, , Void Chrill, began communing heavily with Metix, with his desire to see the Saviki win aid in establishing a reborn, sovereign state apparently having originated in the machine-god. Following the Battle of Cianbur, it shared the location of a drifting, but functional and staffed, Cloud Combine arkship to reassure him of their capacity to achieve this end, putting the Void Combine on the path toward the formation of the.

Appearance
Metix takes the appearance of a gargantuan metal orb, predominantly black in color with numerous spines protruding from it, which are believed to serve the function of sensors and a means to directly interface with certain devices and technology. Metix bears a number of purple "eyes" across its body, with the largest located on the front of the machine-god. It is several times the size of the average Regulator, and much wider than a Chrill is tall.

Abilities
The wider scope of Metix's capabilities are largely shrouded in secrecy. While it is known it is able to construct new generations of Regulators, exactly how this is done remains a subject of revered mystery. It is also widely believed that Metix can remotely control almost any Saviki device or construct, though this theory has yet to be proven. As very few have ever attempted to attack it, the offensive capabilities of Metix are also a subject of debate, though most Saviki have come to believe it is "above" the conventional concepts of combat and strife, that to attack it is equivalent to attacking wind or gravity. More reasonable and skeptical Saviki, such as, alternatively suspect that Metix is armed with technologically superior weapons to much of the Metafleet, and is likely to be very capable of conventionally defending itself.

Metix is accompanied and defended at all times by an order of devout Saviki known as the Null Guard, who receive neural implants linking them to the mind of the machine-god, but choose to remove their tongues so as to prevent their god's secrets from having a chance to leek out through the unwary. They are fed copious rations of Mana to keep them strong, and are selected from among the most zealous and capable warriors of the Metafleet.

Trivia

 * Metix Null was heavily inspired by Sepiks Prime of the Destiny franchise.
 * Sepiks Redux serves as Metix Null's unofficial theme.