User:The Collective Mind/Prototypes

BIDONITE ESOTERICA

History
Bidonites had known space travel was possible ever since an alien energy weapon leveled the city of Nys during the Ergul Crisis. When the success of Ilba's extraterrestrial colony on Baranis became apparent, a new age of imperialism occurred as every major nation in the world tried to set up colonies of their own, seeking land to tap and territory to claim. The New Frontier was open.

Over the course of two centuries, as Bidonites spread across the stars, their many nations grew increasingly powerful -- and increasingly greedy. Four thousand worlds were not enough for their needs. For every planet that they settled and developed, they desired two more. The factories demanded raw materials; the population needed food and water and shelter. Trade deepened alliances. Tariffs deepened rivalries. Hostilities grew. Not even the Iceworlder Wars, their first armed conflict with an alien race, could convince the nations to work together forever. Existing divisions along political and cultural lines began to widen further, and one by one, three great powers took shape.

The first was the Aaksar Coalition of Nations, a powerful cooperative established to strengthen its member economies, share information freely, and provide for a common defense. Its initial signatories were Orbaz, the Five Cities, Dauvat, Urd, and Niksos.

The second was the Northeastern Union, formed in response to the worrying economic and military power of the ACN. Its initial signatories were Ilba, Kukarot, Siyne, and Larais. It proclaimed, in no uncertain terms, that it would not tolerate any interference from the ACN in the affairs of its constituent nations.

The third was the Organization of Allied States, formed when a number of neutral parties banded together for mutual protection from the brewing ACN/NU conflict. The smallest and overall weakest of the three, the OAS nonetheless held undeniable economic power in the form of its rich spice geysers and control of certain important trade routes. Its initial signatories were Aargona, Nuvorid, Ayrel, Immare, and the Ergul Islands.

Decades passed and tensions grew. Minor slights, once forgiven, now infuriated. Reports of troop movements along the border led to a buildup in kind. Suspicion, resentment, posturing, fear. The three Alliances were a powder keg waiting to explode. All it took was a spark: an Ilban embargo on Niksos ores, spurred by alleged trade fraud. The validity of the claim did not matter, only the excuse it provided. In 2384, the ACN formally declared war on the NU.

The War of Alliances
The War of Alliances raged for fifteen violent years. New technology meant new weapons and new ways to wage war. It meant new words, too: coilgun and thermal lance and proxy warfare, nuclear ramjet and cobalt bomb and gamma inducer. It was, generally speaking, a bad time for everyone involved. When the OAS was inevitably drawn in, it bore the brunt of the conflict, crushed between the gargantuan military complexes of the ACN and the NU. As the Organization lost world after world, it grew desperate for some way to even the odds. Perhaps a machine-killer, to remotely disable automated weaponry? A lethal pathogen, to be seeded in barracks and water sources? It even pillaged the ruins of long-vanished alien civilizations, in the hopes of digging up and reverse-engineering their technology.

In the year 2396, a detachment from the OAS 7th Fleet responded to a distress signal on the edge of explored space. Its source was a team from the Artifact Appropriation Committee, conducting excavations on a moon made lifeless by orbital bombardment twenty millennia ago.

After making the jump to hyperspace, all contact with the detachment was lost. The missing ships made headlines back in OAS space for a few months, but there were more pressing issues at hand. The disappearances were put down to catastrophic hyperdrive failures. The logistics of war ground on.

In 2397, the exhausted OAS formally surrendered and withdrew all forces from all fronts.

In 2398, the conflict between the ACN and the NU reached its highest point.

In 2399, the missing ships returned to OAS space.

The Biomachine Plague
Three small warships, led by one of medium tonnage. They did not respond to any hails or inquiries. Each broadcast openly and on all frequencies a bizarre signal unlike anything ever recorded. All ships and orbitals that received the signal stopped responding and began broadcasting it. Planetside installations reported glitches in their electronics: data corruption, AI and decision matrices behaving oddly. Then they, too, ceased to respond.

The buzzing cacophony silenced planet after planet. Word could not spread faster than the infection, traveling as they did along the same networks, but it could at least travel along different routes. A handful of ships escaped by luck to warn the rest of the OAS. The Organization gathered what remained of its military to respond, instituting quarantines across threatened space: no outbound transmissions, interplanetary movement forbidden. The 3rd and 5th Fleets mobilized to investigate, hastily shielded against unauthorized communications.

They did not return.

In their place came a garbled message, thankfully uncorrupted by the infection. A plea for reinforcements, or perhaps a desperate warning. A record of what they found in infected territory. The forces mobilized against them. Cities become nests. OAS ships, their frames split to accommodate new biomechanical growths, fused together and remolded with flesh and metal. Inside them -- nothing living, or alive as Bidonites knew the word. Their crews not gone, but repurposed. And always, surrounding, enveloping: the signal.



The fleet named them Biomachines.

The OAS sent more ships to reinforce the borders. It had precious little left to defend themselves with, and the terms of its surrender forbade them from making more until the war's end. It pleaded for aid from the ACN, the NU. Neither took it seriously. They were fighting a war across a hundred star systems. Why should they care about a provincial matter outside both of their territories?

So it was that the OAS was left to fend for itself when the Biomachine assault came.

The Collapse
PRIORITY 1 MESSAGE

TO: Administrator Shuvar Aldwyn

SUBJECT: Status report (34-7)

ENCODING: sixmoonseven

Administrator, the situation is changing too quickly for a detailed report, but I can tell you it gets worse every minute.

The quarantines are not holding. 354 confirmed infections in Mussen Province this cycle. The hospitals are overflowing. There is blood in the streets. Even the most destructive nanomedicine treatments are ineffective. The plague seems to be suborning the machines, like it does with any technology capable of wireless input. Nevertheless I will not carry out your Ustik Act. The loyalty of the people cannot be questioned but even patriots will balk at being lined up to be shot. My only comfort is that the infected die quickly.

Ha, "die." We are still burning the bodies as ordered, of course. I am being insubordinate, not stupid.

On the electronic side of things, the infection managed to break into another of the so-called "secure" channels. If I am to perform the Ustik Act perhaps it will be on the Censorship Office. Infohazard Containment took appropriate measures, but I am told it will be another cycle until we know the extent of the damage. I told Containment to just destroy everything that received the signal; we will be safer that way. Everybody who might have heard it has been quarantined already.

Increasingly I am starting to believe that no channel is safe from the electronic demon, that no channel has ever been safe, and that it is simply playing with us. We know it is intelligent from what happened at Roeva (gods rest their souls!). Perhaps it is sentient, too. Yet cutting off all outside communication is unthinkable.

No Biomachine sightings yet, thank the gods for that little blessing. But we both know that is only a matter of time. Someone will die in a gutter or a ditch somewhere and will not be found until the infection reshapes them. Or a fleet arrives disguised as our own ships. Then it is all over, except for the screaming and the dying.

The news from outside is bad, too. All the news is bad these days. The ACN seems to have lost its mind; they are fighting each other like they have forgotten us. Everybody blames everybody else for the infection. Stars are going silent, one after another, or worse broadcasting that damn signal for everyone to hear. The OAS seems to have ceased existing entirely.

On the home front, Dauvat Imperium weapons satellites bombarded Orbaz cities on Ty-18. No explanations yet; Orbaz demands blood. Civil war has erupted in the Five Cities Federation. Kukarot's High Officials have vanished, and Biomachines are pouring over their borders into Larais.

Everything is spinning off the rails. Nevertheless we endure.

Your servant Eimur e Rassult

Interregnum
Historians debate why nine worlds survived when over four thousand others did not, but how is not a mystery. Sixteen years after the Biomachines began their campaign of extermination, their signal and plague suddenly became inert, and all known Biomachine assets withdrew from the galaxy.

Thirty uneasy years passed before the first of the four "petty empires" tentatively reached out into space once more: the First Eastern Empire, ruled by Sovereign Aavak Marat Tul of the NU. As the years passed without infection by the plague or detection by the Biomachine scourge, Sovereign Tul sent her fleets out on exploratory missions. Traveling in groups of two or three, a Bidonite armada took to the stars once more, cautiously probing for any sign of their destroyers. They found nothing. Nothing but hundreds upon hundreds of devastated Bidonite worlds.

The Sovereign grew more confident. Following old star charts, her ships surveyed world after world, finding nothing but destruction. That is, until one particular expedition, by pure luck, detected a familiar signal in the same system -- a fellow Bidonite fleet! The discovery of another fleet led to first contact with the Second Eastern Empire, led by First Minister Methumet Byiroche, formerly of the UCN. She had evidently had the same idea as Tul, and had dispatched ships to search for surviving traces of Bidonite civilization. Byiroche had only one world to her name, but she commanded a significant number of spacecraft. After she formally allied herself with Tul, casting aside all previous affiliations, their combined fleet began to comb the stars with greater intensity than before.

Over the course of twelve years, Tul and Byiroche rediscovered and established communications with all four petty empires, and by this point had also begun recolonization efforts to reclaim the ruined Bidonite worlds.

Unification
The UCN was gone. The NU was gone. The OAS was completely gone. The weakness of the great Alliances was clear: the simple fact of their being alliances in the first place.

With roughly 99.7% of the galactic Bidonite population exterminated, the four empresses recognized that their pre-existing divisions and rivalries no longer held any significance. Indeed, those divisions had been one of the greatest contributors to the Collapse. Even the closest allies could be turned on each other -- all it took was the right provocation.

The new Bidonite civilization, therefore, would have no room for alliances. It would need to be a single nation, uniting the entire species under one banner. Every part working together and fighting together for the good of the whole.

In the year 2423, the four empresses met on their ruined but rebuilding homeworld. Tul, Byiroche, Arinost, and Lu Gral. They spoke to a crowd of millions. Their words were recorded and relayed to billions more on other worlds, and trillions more would watch them in the future.

Lu Gral spoke of survival. Bidonite civilization as they knew it was gone. The Biomachines had made it their mission to eradicate their entire species. And they had come close; perilously close. But, against all odds, the Bidonites had survived.

Arinost spoke of hope. Much had been destroyed, but still much remained. Were they not rebuilding? Were they not expanding? The Collapse would always be remembered as the darkest time in their collective history. But now they were past it. Now they were free to take control of their destiny once again.

Byiroche spoke of cooperation. The great powers of before were strong, but they had fallen. They had fallen because they had been divided, and division led to dissolution. The Bidonite race must not repeat the mistakes of the past; this time, every Bidonite must stand together, regardless of culture or affiliation.

Tul spoke of beginnings. The long night had passed, and light gathered on the horizon. They had survived the catastrophe. Together, they would rise from its ashes, stronger than ever before. Never again would they fall.

The United Bidonite Empire was founded.

Expansion
The newly christened Tetrarchs immediately began work strengthening the Empire. Resources were traded, personnel exchanged, eggs gifted and received. Colony ships were churned out in force. New armies were trained. The Imperial Legions were founded, staffed by ex-ACN and NU veterans. Ruins of old colonies were cleaned up; what could be saved was repaired, what could not was recycled.



Six hundred years later after its founding, in the year 2802, the Bidonite Empire holds 2,400 systems, is in the process of reclaiming two hundred more, and is colonizing worlds never before touched by the civilization. The Imperial Legions have grown into the greatest standing military in Bidonite history. New innovations and technology have brought whole new weapons and tactics to the table. The Bidonite civilization is rising once more.

Enemy Dossier
IDENTIFIED THREATS TO THE UNITED BIDONITE EMPIRE

What follows is a partial list of alien species that pose a threat to Imperial reconstruction.

BALZER
Codename STEEL PLOW.

A species of disunited raiders and pirates who nonetheless have threatened Imperial interests in multiple star systems thanks to surprising technological ability, physical prowess, and sheer numbers.

Balzers are a cyclopean, sturdy race believed to have evolved in high-gravity conditions. They do not have a united civilization; rather, the Balzer race exists in a constant state of internecine strife, rallying around powerful warlords and fighting over territory and supplies. This anarchy is unsustainable -- the competition drains Balzer resources faster than they can produce them. To maintain their strength, Balzer pirate fleets raid planets and other astronomical objects, strip-mining them as quickly as possible and seizing every natural resource they can get ahold of before moving on (lest a rival fleet interrupt their operations).

While Balzers are stereotyped as crude and primitive compared to the Bidonite Empire (which is generally true), some of their technology is actually superior to the Empire's. Their massive drilling machines are capable of dismantling asteroids and mining ore seams dry in mere hours, and their equally gigantic mass fabricators use nanoassemblers to convert raw materials into finished products on the spot and just as quickly.

NECROX
"Their civilization cannot have developed naturally. There should be countercultures, internal variations. In point of fact there should be more than just one culture in the first place. No outside forces act or have acted on them, like they do with the Assembly. Like the Collapse did with us. And yet, their... conviction, to the Progress. Their devotion. Mark my words, something is very wrong with the Necrox."

- Dr. Bironak Aaban Mesimar

THE GALACTIC COMMONWEALTH OF PROGRESS AND ENLIGHTENMENT, codename GREEN ARM. A technologically advanced meritocracy dedicated to the philosophy of "Progress", or the ideal of accelerated societal and scientific advancement unbound by any code of ethics or conduct. Governed and populated by the Necrox, a species of great biological curiosity.

The Commonwealth is not a united force. It is divided into several dozen "societies", all in direct competition with each other -- it is believed that this accelerates Progress. Still, every one of those societies serves a central government that oversees and regulates all aspects of Commonwealth infrastructure, communication, standardization, squabbles between societies, etc.

The societies that have most frequently come into conflict with the Empire are the Steel Claws, the Life Gardeners, and the Technocrati. As luck would have it, these three societies are among the largest and most powerful within the Commonwealth.

NARI
The NARI KNIGHTS

Initially mistaken by Imperial surveyors for a pre-gunpowder/iron age civilization native to the planet Ehlna, the vaguely batlike Nari only received comprehensive attention from the Empire upon the discovery of immense anti-spacecraft artillery emplacements hidden in the Ehlna Spine mountain range a handful of kilometers from their monastery-fortress.

Closer examination of Nari technology revealed that their ubiquitous plate mail was in fact incredibly advanced powered armor, and their anachronistic swords were sheathed in crackling power fields capable of shearing through solid titanium with little effort. Imperial Intelligence theorizes that Nari personal defense technology has far outstripped Nari firearms technology, forcing them to regress to close combat as their primary means of warfare. Scavenged Nari armor plating has been shown to withstand coilgun rounds, particle beams, and high explosives with minimal damage, and could only be breached reliably using tank guns and dedicated anti-tank weaponry.

The Empire knows very little about the greater Nari civilization. All four known Nari colonies are extremely distant from each other, and consist solely of a single well-defended monastery-fortress and surrounding villages, with no other holdings. Each monastery is either placed on land holy to the Nari and/or protects a relic that the Nari consider holy. No large Nari population centers are known to exist, nor other Nari nations besides the monastery-builders. Nari spacecraft, civilian or otherwise, appear to be very few in number.

Characteristic Nari isolation and insularity prevents meaningful Bidonite diplomacy. As per Imperial regulations regarding neutral alien-held planets, settlement on Nari worlds is strictly forbidden. For the time being, the Empire is content to leave the Nari alone.

ICEWORLDER
"They're a very honest people in their own way. Very open and upfront about how much they want to murder you. I can respect that."

- Colonel Vahar Myral Dun

THE ICEWORLDER ALLIANCE, codename IRRITABLE REACH.

The Iceworlder Alliance is a military alliance of seven Iceworlder nations. Belligerent, heavily militarized, and intensely xenophobic, the Iceworlders respect no political boundaries and operate according to their own ruthless directives.

Iceworlders are a hulking ammonia-based species that thrives in subzero environments, and must rely on armored environmental suits to survive outside those conditions. They bear a vague resemblance to crustaceans. The Empire is long familiar with the Iceworlder Alliance, having been in conflict with the race since pre-Collapse days. While the Alliance gave Imperial space a wide berth during and after the chaos of the Collapse (not wanting to invite destruction upon themselves), rapid Bidonite expansion has caused them to resume hostilities with a vengeance. However, their own expansion over the past three centuries has brought them into direct conflict with the Necrox, and the ensuing war has done much to reduce the amount of pressure either nation can bring to bear on the Bidonites.

ARRAY
Codename DEEP HOME.

A highly advanced "machine species" (under debate, possibly silicon-based life?) operating under a single guiding intelligence. Despite the Legions fighting a long-term campaign against them in the Orga star system, very little is known about their full capabilities.

In seven months of pitched combat involving all elements of the Imperial Legions save the Navy, no upper limit was ever observed for the strength and number of Array forces. While initial contact contained the Array around their hyperspace portal of origin on Orga-4, the Bidonite Empire possessed no means to close the rift, and its slow but constant expansion meant the continuous stream of machines emerging from it only grew larger.

By the second month, the Empire had lost control of the portal. By the fourth month, the portal was large enough to allow Array spacecraft through. By the sixth month, Array forces controlled most of the system. Bidonite forces retreated on the seventh month, leaving behind an Interdictor-class stealth vessel to observe Array activities.

Array forces were observed to begin systematically dismantling every planet in the system, using the resources to build a layered megastructure around the star. While the sum total of resources provided by the system proved insufficient for the completion of the megastructure, Array forces continued to build, possibly porting materials in from another location. Upon completion of the megastructure, Array forces were observed to open a gigantic hyperspace portal that subsumed it, with the remaining machines returning through their portal of origin. Both portals closed shortly thereafter. No trace of the Array, or indeed the entire star system, was left behind. No further contact with the Array has been reported.

MARAKK
Codename BELLIGERENT RED. Originally a rank-expunged dabidon born on Furosh, a planet conquered by the Empire. The self-styled "General" Marakk, seeking to overturn Imperial rule, gathered an army of malcontents, terrorists, and rebels and began a bloody uprising on Furosh that cost millions of Bidonite lives and billions of sporebucks of infrastructure damage. While the rebellion was crushed following deployment of the Royal Guard, Marakk himself managed to escape despite grievous injury. Necrox involvement was suspected but unconfirmed.

Years later, Marakk returned at the head of a mercenary army, known simply as Marakk's Army. The General and his Army, operating from a ramshackle yet formidable fleet of spacecraft, struck repeatedly at Imperial supply lines and delayed shipments of food and materiel to the front lines of the Bidonite-Necrox conflict. Among other effects, his actions are believed to have led directly to defeats in the Corbus and Datarat systems. The 114th Combined Fleet was mobilized in response to Marakk's attacks.

While the 114th dealt the mercenary general a crippling blow with the destruction of his asteroid bases in the Parigon system, Marakk once more evaded the killing stroke, with the Necrox Commonwealth openly and violently revealing their involvement by engaging the Combined Fleet long enough for him to escape with what remained of his army. Since then, General Marakk has been reported working openly with Commonwealth Claims Control against Imperial forces, though he and his army appear to have taken independent mercenary contracts on occasion.

ASSEMBLY
"The Assembly is the most thoroughly joyless society I have ever had the dubious pleasure of studying."

- Oraxes Merl, Necrox Commonwealth (Biotic Catalogue)

Codename IRON AXIS.

Assembly was discovered approximately a century into the Second Founding, a civilization that made its home in the debris disks of star systems rather than planetary bodies. Discovering that Assembly territory intersected Bidonite territory and planned Bidonite expansions at many points, and finding that Assembly had little interest in their planets, the Empire was quick to exchange languages and diplomats with them and eventually struck a mutually beneficial alliance.

Assembly is notable for three things.

First are its exceptionally large spacecraft. Being a spaceborne civilization, whatever part of its population that does not make its home in asteroid habitats is instead carried in gargantuan asymmetrical "ironclads", serving at once as colony ships, factories, and fortresses.

Second is its channel network, a portal system operating according to principles unknown to Bidonite science capable of transferring ships across space at speeds faster than any known hyperspace drive. Part of the terms of Assembly's alliance with the Empire is leasing the use of the channels to the Empire, allowing the Imperial Armada unprecedented mobility within joint Empire-Assembly space.

Third is its society. Assembly is single-minded to the extreme, being utterly devoted to industrialism and acquisition of resources. This unnatural monoculture is enforced by the cabal of artificial intelligences that rule Assembly, where people are built to serve machines rather than the other way around.

While the Empire has no plans to betray their alliance, the Bidonites are nonetheless wary of how so much Assembly territory intersects their own. The amount of space they share has only grown since the authentication of the alliance.

Notable Imperial Assets
DEAREST AND GLORIFIED SOLDIERS OF THE LEGIONS

What follows is a partial list of Imperial Legions assets that have, in some way, achieved renown in the Empire.

IIBARAZ
A world famous for being one of the eight "petty empires" in the post-Collapse era of the Empire, especially for having fought and successfully held back a Biomachine incursion until their disappearance from the galaxy. Famous for producing soldiers of particularly high quality and notably devoid of the unflappable cheerfulness endemic to most other regiments.

Instead, Iibaraz is notable for its lack of cheer. Its soldiers are grim and relentless, taking Bidonite tenacity to a whole new level. They gather overwhelming force, steamroll enemy positions with a massive mechanized push, rapidly fortify the captured area, and repeat. Very little can deter them -- positions held by Iibaraz soldiers must be killed to the last Bidonite before they are ever relinquished.

STRENGTH OF WING
A legendary Imperial battlecruiser with a long and celebrated history. Flagship of the entire Imperial Armada, currently captained by Admiral Sorel Obir Set.

The Strength of Wing was constructed shortly before the Collapse, having originally made a name for itself in the Second Iceworlder Wars, where it, operating alone, destroyed three Iceworlder ships of comparable tonnage while protecting an evacuee convoy.

After the Collapse, the Strength of Wing was one of those ships of the Armada that went dark to evade detection and destruction. With its entire crew in cryosleep and all but the most important systems shut down, it drifted in deep space for twenty-seven years.

Rediscovery came about after the Second Founding, when, through sheer luck, the Strength of Wing 's automated systems detected the the distress signal of an Imperial expeditionary fleet. Once revived, the Strength of Wing proceeded to fight and help win one of the first battles of the Balzer War, its sudden appearance earning it even greater fame.

The Strength of Wing became one of the figureheads of the resurrected United Bidonite Empire -- like the Empire itself, a symbol of the past returned to the present. With the Imperial Armada still budding and weak, the immense firepower the ancient battlecruiser could provide was greatly appreciated. It went on to fight several key battles against the Balzer pirates, eventually turning the tide of the war over the water world Oocalis by destroying two Balzer motherships, the loss of which greatly demoralized the enemy.

Since then, the Strength of Wing has remained one of the Empire's key assets as it grew in size in strength. Its heroic reputation only grew with every battle it fought -- and though it didn't always come out victorious, battle damage was always an excellent reason to refurbish the aging ship with all the most cutting edge technology the Imperial Armory can manufacture.

ROYAL GUARD
The Imperial Royal Guard is the personal army of the High Sovereigns, used to protect them and their rightful authority. While the Guard is largely considered ceremonial, it sees little action only because there has been little internal strife within the Empire lately. The role of the Royal Guard is to put down uprisings and rebellions -- internal threats -- whereas the Imperial Army fights external threats. Nevertheless, the Royal Guard tends to wield the latest weaponry and wear the most advanced armor, earning them the nickname "gold haulers" (rough translation) from other elements of the Legions.

AMBASSADOR BETIK KYN MORAT
A polyglot aadamez ambassador who first made a name for herself by talking down the rebellious Sovereign Tovar Mamoz, her efforts in settling territory claim disputes between the Empire and the alien Mavra led to the discovery of her ability to learn other languages with astonishing speed. Since then, Ambassador Morat has become a mainstay of Imperial-Alien diplomacy. Her talent is a form of savant syndrome; she was born with a Bidonite neurodevelopmental disorder similar to autism in humans. At current count, she is fluent in 12 languages and conversant in 24 more.