User:The Collective Mind/Prototypes

!!ALERT!!
PRIORITY RED MESSAGE

FROM: Prime Analyst (11:18): Travat Petrushov, Asken [Legions: Intelligence/Alien]

TO: Sector 11 Intelligence Director: Anaya Kiril, Toboloi [Legions: Intelligence/Alien]

SUBJECT: IRON AXIS threat capacity review

TAGS: IRON AXIS, threat level, allies...

MESSAGE BEGINS.

Sir Kiril, I fear we have severely underestimated the threat capacity of IRON AXIS.

Earlier today (cycle 05-12), reconnaissance fleet T490-11:18 clandestinely entered IRON AXIS space outside Sector 11 to observe Channel operations and IRON AXIS activities in and around system AY/1787. AY/1787 was believed to be a major IRON AXIS population center based on intercepted comms traffic and hyperspace activity (attached: AY/1787, Stellar Activity, 599 03-01).

It appears that most of what we know about IRON AXIS is built on faulty evidence.

The asteroid habitats within joint Imperial-IRON AXIS space seem to be no more than a manned perimeter, a buffer zone for potential threats. What the recon fleet discovered was an actual IRON AXIS city. Look at this:

This is AY/1787:08, the smallest of the eight planets in the system. All of them were like this. This represents an astral engineering capacity millennia beyond our capabilities. They're taking the whole planet apart.

Attached is a full report on IRON AXIS activities and construction within the AY/1787 system. To summarize: From the scale of this project, the sheer amount of resources involved, and the fact that no Monitors are present, we must assume that the AY/1787 project is not unusual for IRON AXIS. It may even be routine. Espionage Officer (11:18) Kol is organizing another reconnaissance operation to probe deeper into IRON AXIS space to confirm. Target stars are UY/2410, UD/0122, and AY/4415.
 * AY/1787 is covered by an incomplete stellar shell, made up of an estimated 72576 solar collection satellites.
 * Extensive celestial demolition in progress; AY/1787:03 estimated to be fully dismantled within 4 years.
 * No fewer than five Channel nodes present. Channel activity 864% greater than previously estimated average.
 * Orbital habitats:
 * 3 confirmed Class 4 (metropolis+), 1 unconfirmed
 * 33 confirmed Class 3 (metropolis-scale), 58 unconfirmed.
 * 70 confirmed Class 2 (city-scale), 119 unconfirmed.
 * 284 confirmed Class 1 (colony-scale), 537 unconfirmed.
 * 8 new IRON AXIS starship types, apparently specialized for planet-dismantling/megastructure-construction purposes.
 * No Monitors detected.

Based on the findings of T490-11:18, I humbly submit that IRON AXIS should be reclassified to Threat Level 2. I await your response, Sir Kiril.

Prime Analyst Asken Travat Petrushov

MESSAGE ENDS.

GLORY TO THE EMPIRE - LONG LIVE THE TETRARCHS

Quotes
"Want to know how they think? Take your desk and draw a line from one end to the other. And everything in the way of that line, you take your knife and you saw at it until it's not in the way any more."

- Ambassador Traskya Polemitya Travat, United Bidonite Empire

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

- Oraxes Merl, Necrox Commonwealth (Biotic Catalogue)

"One of my friends heard from a Motivator that the Monitors get weirder the deeper inside you go. Things like the corridors changing when you aren't looking, weird sounds, rooms that don't make sense... he heard the pipes and the wires start looking like writing, when you get far enough."

"They're not so much a civilization as a corporation, and not so much a corporation as a cult."

"Don't be fooled by all the gears and pistons - Motive builds for function, not aesthetics. Their tech's at least as advanced as anything you've got. Probably more."

- Analyst Shuykim Auv, Imperial Intelligence

Organization
Motive's civilian organization bears little resemblance to any conventional system of government, and instead appears to be a vastly expanded corporate hierarchy. Motive is generally considered to be an oligarchic federation, though a few political theorists maintain that it should also be classified as a theocracy.

The Monitors are at the top of the pyramid. All authority within Motive is ultimately derived from them. They lodge production orders, authorize projects, and generally control everything that goes on within Motive, including all matters of interstellar governance. It is the Motivator's job to carry out the orders they issue. Their intellect is incalculable; their wisdom, unquestionable. To doubt them is to invite misrule.

Intrastellar government, meanwhile, is all handled by the Motivators. Motive's basic unit of government is the Junction -- a colonized star system. Every Junction is a node in Motive's galactic wormhole network, a partially self-governing state with its own administrative hierarchy, jurisdiction, and general autonomy, though the Monitors still hold absolute power over them.

Junctions are divided into a variable number of sectors, analogous to a federated state in a less obsessive government, and each sector in turn has its own sub-sectors. This is done purely for ease of organization; all sectors are identical in every respect save quantity and positioning. Each has its own production centers, worker habitats, starports, administrative hierarchies, etc.

Overall Junction governance is undertaken by a Junction Administrator, the highest non-Monitor authority within Motive. A Junction Sub-Administrator is assigned to every sector within a Junction, maintaining the various functions of each.

As for those functions...

Five divisions: A separate military command structure exists in parallel with the civilian hierarchy, and is roughly as convoluted.
 * Director of Operations: resource efficiency, quality control, international relations
 * Operations Managers: establish production quotas, organizational efficiency, diplomatic affairs
 * Chief Workforce Officer: employment control, labor tasking, discipline
 * Compliance Officers: ensure all industrial processes and products comply with Motive regulations
 * Director of Production: quota enforcement, project management, scientific innovation
 * Chief Science Officer: oversees scientific projects and laboratories
 * Project Managers: oversee project performance, ensure production quotas are reached
 * Director of Logistics: resource movement and acquisition
 * Chief Distribution Officer: manage resource distribution across Motive factories, habitats, etc.
 * Survey Officers: locate and log resource nodes for future exploitation
 * Chief Development Officer: authorization and management of resourcing operations
 * Director of Infrastructure: construction and expansion
 * Senior Construction Managers: oversee construction of new Junction structures
 * Chief Infrastructure Officer: oversee maintenance and repair of Junction structures
 * Director of Labor
 * Chief Population Officer: population production, genetic documentation
 * Chief Provisioning Officer: food/water supply, medication, tools of all sorts
 * Civilian Affairs Administrator: housing assignment, complaints handling, transportation, etc.

Motive is technically a meritocracy, in that competency determines one's advancement. However, promotion is not a reward, and frequently occurs because the person ahead of you proved inadequate and was subsequently removed. As one's authority grows, so do the consequences of failure. The Monitors do not tolerate failure.

Military
"What they lack in precision, they make up for in blanket devastation."

Motive doesn't care much for war. Other civilizations throw themselves into battle full of patriotism and cheer and defiance. Not Motive. Motive fights offhandedly, without enthusiasm, like it's a tedious process no different from construction or assembly work. War is simply one of many obstacles to overcome in its grand plan, and like every other obstacle it encounters, Motive has developed a wide range of tools for taking it apart.

Sound-bombs
Noise is Motive's most infamous and most commonly employed weapon. Motive has discovered a particular sound, a particular noise, that has exceptionally deleterious effects on almost all carbon-based lifeforms. Its infrasonic vibrations cause severe internal bleeding and widespread organ failures, not least of which in the brain -- the noise destroys the mind as well as the body. Those who have heard it and survived describe it as arrhythmic cacophony.

Motive has learned how to harness the noise into its so-called "sound-bombs". Exactly how the bomb functions is a closely guarded secret, and the bomb tends to destroy itself over the course of its short operation. Regardless, the sound-bomb (which varies in size from "hand grenade" to "starship missile") is able to generate the noise across a period of several seconds, killing or incapacitating everyone within its effective radius. Motive is not immune to the effects of its own bombs.

The noise can only be generated physically -- no recording, regardless of fidelity, provokes the effects of the original. Captured sound-bombs refuse to activate outside of Motive hands. Necrox scientists believe there is a psychic component involved in the bomb's operation; given that Motivators appear to be uniformly non-psychic or even anti-psychic, how this can be possible remains a mystery.

The purpose of the sound-bomb is threefold. First, it serves as an effective area denial weapon with no obvious effective range; a sensible enemy quickly learns to detour very far around an active bomb. Second, it is a weapon of terror, demoralizing enemy combatants; there is a special sort of horror in a weapon designed to destroy the mind, leaving an empty shell behind. Third, it serves to drain enemy resources, forcing them to expend time and effort caring for brain-damaged or vegetative soldiers.

As sound is very difficult to protect oneself against, the sound-bomb makes for a truly dangerous weapon. There are downsides, however.
 * 1) First, the bomb takes a precious handful of seconds to activate, allowing sufficiently agile people a brief window of time to destroy it before it begins full operation.
 * 2) Second, the effects of the bomb drop off sharply with distance, having an effective range with a much shorter radius than conventional explosives -- where someone would suffer shrapnel wounds or blast injuries, here they will only suffer nausea and debilitation.
 * 3) Third, as sound travels through vibration, atmospheric density plays a large role in the bomb's effectiveness. The thinner the atmosphere, the shorter the bomb's range; in space, the bomb is entirely useless unless it physically impacts another ship.
 * 4) Fourth, the bomb is useless against robots and non-carbon-based life. Motive has other ways to deal with those.

Ion pulse cannon
Motive's trump card and the source of the Monitors' reputation as fleet-killers, the ion pulse cannon is an ion weapon of incredible size. Like other ion weapons, it fires a burst of ionized particles capable of disrupting ship systems and shutting down electronics, much like an EMP weapon. Unlike other ion weapons, the ion pulse cannon fires in a single, massive, omnidirectional pulse, unleashing an expanding sphere of charged particles to envelop every ship within range. No amount of maneuvering in realspace can evade the blast, unless one flies directly away from the pulse fast enough to escape it. The weapon leaves ships of all sizes dead in space, vulnerable to the missile barrage that inevitably follows.

Fortunately for prospective enemies, the ion pulse cannon is only mounted on Monitor-class vessels, which also appear to be the only Motive ships capable of withstanding the blast -- the weapon is truly indiscriminate. It is also possible to "dodge" the pulse by jumping into hyperspace before the wave arrives and re-emerging behind it, though attempting such a short-range jump has its own inherent hazards. The main weakness of the ion pulse cannon, however, is the simple fact that its omnidirectional nature means the particles constituting its discharge spread out over a distance, rendering it increasingly less effective as range increases.

Hyperspace mines
The hyperspace mine is a mainstay of Motive's defensive technology. Its construction is extremely simple, amounting to little more than an anti-capital-ship antimatter charge mounted to a hyperspace drive. Their operation is equally simple: when the mine detects a hyperdrive signature that does not match Motive frequencies, it activates its own hyperdrive and propels itself directly towards the offending ship like a guided missile.

This simplicity has its drawbacks. While the mines are hard to spoof and harder to spot, they are also very easy to detect once activated, and can just as easily be destroyed at a safe distance by point defenses. They are, however, seeded by the millions throughout Motive space, and any hostile force trying to move through that space will be facing a near-endless stream of mines hurtling towards them, each one of which is capable of leveling mountains. And mixed in with the explosives are a certain number of mines primed only with electromagnetic chaff, designed to burst and fill detection systems with a haze of false readings.

Motive's hyperspace mines are very much a "fire and forget" weapon. Besides being self-guided, they can also remain dormant for an indefinite length of time in the best manner of land mines everywhere. Should Motive desire to bring a foreign ship into its territory, its warships are capable of remotely (and temporarily) neutralizing the mines in its path of travel. Enterprising vanguards attempt to copy the "disarm" signal at their own peril -- more authentication is required than a simple broadcast.

Strategy
Being an entirely spaceborne civilization, Motive does not usually waste effort trying to conquer enemy planets. It prefers to level enemy installations from a safe distance in orbit before descending to perform their usual planet-cracking business.

Should Motive be forced into a ground war, however, it prefers a strategy of "total fortification": making any territory it claims impenetrable behind an ever-expanding wall of bunkers, fortresses, artillery, and gun turrets. Normally, such a strategy would require an exorbitant amount of resources and an unparalleled organizational ability. Since Motive has an exorbitant amount of resources and the organizational ability to boot, it works out. To Motive, "overdoing" is just regular doing.

This also applies to the offensive. Its preferred response to a given threat is to apply industrial quantities of firepower to it until the threat ceases to threaten, along with everything else in a fifty-kilometer radius. Motive likes to be sure of things. Classification:
 * 1) Combat/Logistical
 * 2) Light/Medium/Heavy
 * Artillery ship: Medium Artillery Vessel / CMA - artillery
 * CLD Fire Interdictor Mobile Fortification
 * Logistics ship: Medium Freighter Vessel / LMF - freighter
 * Cruiser: Medium Combat Vessel / CMW - warship
 * Patrol frigate: Light Patrol Vessel / CLP - patrol
 * Escort: Light Escort Vessel / CLE - escort
 * Battlecruiser: Heavy Combat Vessel / CHW
 * Carrier: Heavy Fleet Vessel / CHC
 * Bomber, interceptor: Tactical Bombardment Craft, Tactical Interceptor Craft
 * CMW-TMPR-3.04.11085: Medium Combat Vessel 11085 of Triumphator 3rd Fleet, 4th Division
 * Interstellar Transit Channel gate
 * Interstellar Transit Channel gate

"Convergent empathic analysis is unanimous on this point: there is nothing artificial about their intelligence. All that smoke and metal encases something wholly unnatural. What this means for the rest of Motive, I can't begin to imagine."

"If they've landed on your planet -- if they've been landed longer than a month -- it's already too late. They've dug in, and the only way to dig them out involves leaving behind a burn scar the size of a continent."

History
The exact history of Motive is a mystery, thanks to Motive's habit of revising internal records to suit its purposes. The most reliable accounts place its foundation somewhere between 800 and 1000 years ago, with the construction of the first Monitor. However, the Monitor's very construction indicates that Motive existed in some form before that date. This raises the question: did the Monitors co-opt Motive's leadership, or did the intelligence within the Monitors simply inhabit a newer, more physical form?

Either way, under the guidance of the Monitors, Motive flourished. It claimed star after star, spreading like an interstellar virus, breaking open asteroids and strip-mining every planet and moon it landed on. Technology improved. Mining operations slowly gave way to full-blown planetary deconstruction, and habitat ships were replaced by megastructures. Motive built the first of its Channel gates. As the Channel network grew, so did the Terminals. And as the Terminals spread, so arose new Monitors to guide Motive's development.