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

Prime Solar Republic
The Prime Solar Rebellion is the name for a series of conflicts in the Trans-Western Territory between Motive and rebellious elements of the Prime Solar Republic. Following years of increasing Motive influence within the economy and politics of the Prime Solar Republic to the detriment of civil rights and freedoms, multiple rebel cells began to form within the Republic, all with the ultimate goal of expelling Motive interests from Republic space. These cells were highly variable in size and social class, ranging from secret partisan movements to renegade military formations. After a time, they became collectively known as the Solar Resistance.

These rebellions both slowed and accelerated the process of assimilation. On one hand, Motive experienced setbacks as the Solar Resistance broke supply lines and bombed vital installations. On the other, Motive suffered no significant losses outside of its interests in Republic space, and furthermore began instating martial law across broad regions of space to "ensure the peace and security of Republic citizens", supplanting Republic governance entirely.

As Motive consolidated its control of the Republic, the Solar Resistance similarly began to centralize as the various rebel cells united, adopting that collective moniker as their own. With their various assets pooled together and with popular support from the people of the Republic, the Resistance escalated the conflict to open warfare.

1
Andres!

Far-flung outpost of the Prime Solar Republic. City of brick and stone and glass, built with muscle and pioneer spirit beneath a red sun, on the edge of a brown dry plain. Its people: plain, rustic, honest.

Andres has new tenants now.

They brought concrete, steel, smoke, noise. The low buildings of Andres (built low and tough to withstand tornadoes and dust storms) are dwarfed and humbled by their new neighbors: ugly gray compounds and complexes, monolithic and sprawling, edged with foglights and razor wire. Tall spikes pierce the sky, vent greasy fumes into the air. Nature is adjourned. These new structures stand immobile, heedless of wind and weather. Quiet Andres now rattles with the sound of machines and brutal industry -- the song of Motive.

Descend into the smog-shrouded streets, down between the high gray tenements and apartments onto ash-stained pavement. Dawn is approaching, a lightening in the smoky sky. A new day begins. Loudspeakers chime, awakening people from their beds: time for work.

2
Kar Zeil slams his back into the wall, panting. The barrel of his blaster pistol is glowing cherry red with heat but he doesn't have a spare to replace it with. This is not going to plan.

The plan: infiltrate Andres. Create a loud, flashy distraction. Plant bombs in Motive's factories and production lines while their forces are all rushing the other way. Cripple their industry in the Dryden region, clearing a way for a major Resistance push.

Their successes: infiltrated Andres without incident.

Then some Motive patrol had caught the distraction team in the middle of wiring that chimney up. No way to pass it off as an accident. They'd made a big bang all right, but hours too early -- and now, alert to insurgents in their midst, Motive has flooded the whole city with troops. The sheer bad luck of it all makes Kar seethe.

"Take mine," says Beck. He hefts a stolen Motive rifle. Kar drops his pistol -- heat degradation would steal most of its potency, and he doesn't have the means to cool it -- and takes the proffered weapon gratefully. The gun's workings are complex (Motive loves complexity) but he's used enemy weapons before. He cycles its firing mechanism and takes stock of his forces.

Right now, it's just him, Beck, and Trenn. Every man of them carries a demo charge, but unless they can link up with other Resistance fighters along the way (not likely, given the fight raging all over the city) they'll have to reach Target 2 by themselves. Not good odds. But the Resistance needs this break, and Kar refuses to fail it.

A platoon of gas-masked Motive soldiers tromps past the alley they're sheltering in, all boot-stomps and rattling gear. Kar waits for them to pass, then darts across the street. Beck and Trenn follow.

"We're close," says Kar. "Hear that?"

A slow clunk, clunk, clunk above the din of combat, interspersed with mechanical whirring. Target 2 is a facility that manufactures payload-less artillery shells, to be armed elsewhere, and the clunking is the noise of shells being loaded onto racks by heavy lifting arms.

They run towards the noise, passing intersections and alleyways. A squad of Motive troops pops around a corner and Kar shoots on instinct, flinging one bewildered Crewman backwards in a spray of armor shards and sending the rest scurrying back for cover. Kar and his team dart into a side street as the other Crewman return fire. No point in shooting back -- they can't beat Motive in a open fight, on its own turf. Speed is of the essence.

The walls of the narrow street are a blur. The noise is getting louder. Kar can hear other notes in its rhythm now, following their own individual beats. A kliklikliklik and a buzzzzz and a ''stomp - stomp - stomp. ''Engine-song, he's heard it described. The song of Motive. In fact, that stomping sound seems to be getting louder faster than the others --

Kar and his team burst out of the street and into a concrete courtyard. At the same moment, golden sunlight breaks through the oppressive cloud cover behind them, illuminating the brutal industrial mass of Target 2 --

-- and framing the towering tripod scout walker patrolling it with a stomp - stomp - stomp.

The walker halts. Atop the three pillars of its legs a cylindrical head rotates towards them, its searchlight pinning them in horrified place, its autocannons leveling downwards towards them. Even blinded by the searchlight Kar reckons he can see the Crewmen operating the thing behind the narrow viewslit on its head, see the shells loading into the barrels of its cannons that, for the moment, take up his entire world and doesn't this planet have a red sun --

Something person-sized, sun-bright and golden, smashes into the scout walker's head and obliterates it in a brilliant magnesium flash. Kar shields his eyes just in time (fragments of metal bounce off his head and elbow), and when he looks up, he sees that armored cockpit transformed into a shattered, scorched shell like a broken wineglass. And he sees that glowing person-shape perched atop it, and sees the whole broken contraption (knocked off-balance by the blow) slowly topple to the ground with a metallic groan. When it hits, it hits with a colossal crash, throwing up a cloud of dust and soot.

Kar rushes into it, but all thoughts of Target 2 are forgotten. The light was so beautiful. He needs to see it again, almost physically needs it.

A gust of wind blows the dust aside. And kneeling atop the ruin of the fallen scout walker is a woman.

She is radiant, beautiful. She glows with inner light. Wisps of it rise from her limbs like tiny solar prominences. Gossamer insectoid wings twice as long as she is tall trail from her back, her waist, drifting weightlessly around her. She stares at her own hands as if awed by her own power.

Kar stumbles and sinks to his knees. Behind him, Beck and Trenn do the same, each similarly enraptured. None of them are suspicious enough or resistant enough to wonder how natural their reactions are.

Slowly, she looks up at them. Her eyes are white on white. Slowly, joyously, she smiles.

"Are you with the Resistance?" she asks.

Kar stands. Her attention on him feels like warmth and light. "Y-yes, ma'am," he stammers, then almost chokes with embarrassment at how childish he sounds in front of her.

"You're here to free us."

Not trusting his voice, Kar nods.

"I have... power, now. I can help you fight them. But I need to know how." Her wings flare outwards like fans. Her smile turns fierce. "Tell me what to do."

Kar suddenly remembers he has a mission to accomplish, and he smiles too. His heart lifts with rare hope. The mission has just become a lot more possible.

3
VL: I'm not casting doubt on what she's accomplished. I'm just saying.

MO: And I say it doesn't matter. She hates Motive; she fights for us; good enough for me.

VL: And? Who is she? Where did she come from? When Ascensions happen there are galactic consequences. And for that matter, how did she Ascend? As far as I know there are only three ways for that to happen, and none of them are plausible here.

ND: You wouldn't be talking like this if you'd seen her. With your own eyes, not the picts and recordings.

VL: That is exactly my point.

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.

image - codename - function - range - effectiveness

TORCH CASTER heavy fusion cannon

TORCH SLINGER ship-to-ship fusion cannon

TORCH SPITTER point defense fusion cannon

TREBUCHET relativistic weapon system

Mark 38 torpedo launcher

Mark 52 missile pod Classification:
 * 1) Combat/Logistical
 * 2) Light/Medium/Heavy
 * 3) * Bomber, interceptor: Tactical Bombardment Craft, Tactical Interceptor Craft
 * 4) CMW-TMPR-3.04.11085: Medium Combat Vessel 11085 of Triumphator 3rd Fleet, 4th Division
 * 5) Interstellar Transit Channel gate
 * 6) ship of the wall: Tactical Force Application Vessel: TFA-V
 * 7) escort: Picket/Defense Interdiction Vessel: P/DI-V
 * 8) carrier: Space Superiority Projection Vessel: SSP-V
 * 9) troop carrier: Ground Force Transportation Vessel: GFT-V
 * 10) hyperspace drill: Hyperspace Obstruction Clearance Vessel: HOC-V
 * 11) logistics: Theatre Logistical Support Vessel: TLS-V
 * 12) Long Range Arsenal Vessel: LRA-V

SPint noetic analysis
Summary: Monitors are non-synthetic, non-biotic intelligent systems. Monitors exist as autarkic concepts (emanated from a central conceptual realm) embedded in a material substrate allowing it to interact with the 3D realspace brane as a physical entity. Monitors possess a subtle impositional influence on reality that may increase in potency as the number of Monitors rises.

Body: Each Monitor is a pataphor emergent from an underlying conceptual realm. We will refer to this conceptual realm as Origin. We posit that Origin is synonymous with the Motive concept of Progress.

Monitors cannot exist in this brane without a substrate. This substrate must itself be an expression of Origin, constructed specifically to provide a Monitor with inhabitance. Damaging this substrate does not damage the Monitor; rather, damage to the substrate damages the Monitor's ability to inhabit it. This represents a contest of concepts: an argument. Rendering the Monitor's expression non-viable represents a refutation of the Monitor, banishing it to Origin.

Conversely, it may be possible that any victories a Monitor achieves will render that individual Monitor more difficult to banish.

In addition, we posit that, as the number of extant Monitors within this brane increases, the more difficult those Monitors will be to refute. Concurrently, as the number of other expressions of Origin within this brane increases (inclusive of both Monitors and Terminals), the level of semiotic leverage the Monitors possess also increases until they become able to effect direct ontomorphic influence on reality.

This threshold may have already been reached: see IMPOSE WILL. Assuming this case is true, consequently, as the number of extant Monitors within this brane increases, we posit that the scale and severity of Monitor ontomorphic capability will increase proportionally. This may ultimately represent an existential threat to baseline reality.

The history of the relationship between Origin, Monitors, and Motive remains uncertain.

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.