Vehicle:Monitor

Motive is nothing without hierarchy, and at the tip of the pyramid are the Monitors. It's only fitting that a civilization like Motive should have leaders equally cold and ruthless, but the Monitors are truly something else. Unlike other AI rulers, they don't bother to make even a pretense of benevolence or humanity. They are the Monitors. They are Motive's heart, its brain, its soul, its god, and Motive is the instrument of their will.

Governance


The Monitors' leviathan scale is imposing on its own, but a twenty-kilometer starship is still, ultimately, just a starship. Their true signifance lies in the minds beneath those metal shells.

The Monitors control Motive -- to say they "govern" or "lead" it would be to misunderstand the nature of their relationship. Motive is an extension of their will in much the same way your arm is an extension of your brain. When the Monitors give an order, Motive is incapable of refusing or resisting. Not even the most authoritarian civilizations hold such absolute power over their subjects.

Every Monitor has a home Terminal, from which it takes its name. The Concord Monitor, for example, is the patron Monitor of Concord Terminal. This Terminal is responsible for its overall maintenance: refueling, repairing, rearming, and, if ever necessary, rebuilding. Monitors are hard to destroy, but it can be done.

Logistical
Aside from their command of Motive, the Monitors also play a key role in logistics: namely, the transport of high-value cargo and personnel from Terminal to Terminal. The Monitors are constantly on the move. Their paths are regular but circuitous; each Monitor follows its own unique route, only deviating should current events call for their direct physical presence elsewhere. These routes always begin and end with their home Terminals.

A bulk freighter whose movements are predictable and predetermined would normally be a tempting target for would-be attackers, but Monitors have unmatched security in the form of being colossal dreadnoughts with a reputation for requiring dedicated fleet actions to bring down.

Military
The Monitors are some of the greatest weapons Motive can bring to bear. Their presence on the battlefield represents a major shift in power: a single Monitor is a force multiplier capable of immediately overwhelming an unprepared and unexpecting enemy. This is for the following reasons: Fortunately, Monitors are infrequently fielded. Unfortunately, when they are, it generally coincides with an operation of strategic significance, such as smashing through a major defensive line or seizing a crucial enemy position.
 * 1) Firepower. Monitors are (only incidentally) built to duel entire fleets -- alone -- and win.
 * 2) Psychology. The presence of a Monitor will rally Motive forces out of simultaneous awe and terror, inspiring them to fight harder. The thought of failing a Monitor to its face induces a nervous breakdown in many Motive crewmen.
 * 3) Tactics. The arrival of a Monitor coincides with it taking command of all Motive forces within the operational theater, with a corresponding increase in efficiency, force awareness/coordination, and overall effectiveness.

Specifications
All Monitors are unique. Compared to its peers, each one has its own subtle differences in design and layout. All, however, drink deep from the well of Motive technology. These are far, far more complex machines than regular Motive starships -- while the specifics of their construction are naturally classified at the highest levels, they are known to involve spatial manipulation, basement universes (either for computation or for space), and ultra-strong exotic materials of the same sort used to construct Junctions.

Design
Monitors are microcosms -- Terminals in miniature. Each one is a self-sufficient flying city. In particular:
 * Onboard factories: Monitors host expansive production lines that can be configured to churn out anything from consumer goods to smaller starships, and all Motive starships are small compared to Monitors. Given enough time and resources, a single Monitor can birth a fleet.
 * Obstetrics: A significant fraction of Monitor crews are grown aboard them, using the same technology found in Junction hatcheries. Monitor-born crewmen often spend their whole lives within one.
 * Self-modification: One of their more curious aspects. Monitors have limited self-modification capability, transforming their internal and external surfaces in minutes or seconds in response to current exigencies. A Monitor that needs to go somewhere fast might unfold new engines from somewhere within; a Monitor that plans to lead a planetary assault might generate vast new hangar bays or extrude orbital bombardment cannons. Only crewmen know where these new bits come from and how they affect their internal layout -- Motive doesn't have programmable matter, and boarding parties have a habit of mysteriously vanishing.
 * Self-repair: An extension of their self-modification abilities. Among other things, Monitors have been known to retract damaged hull sections into themselves and slide fresh new plates of armor into the gap. This is one of the reasons they're so hard to destroy.
 * Resilience: Monitors are infamously resilient. Highly decentralized, capable of reshaping themselves to accommodate damage, Monitors cannot be destroyed by a single knockout blow barring truly catastrophic events like being blindsided by a rogue planet (once, memorably). The Labolas Monitor was reported to have been reduced to 40% hull integrity on one occasion, yet continued to fight. Some contend that this should be impossible. They make a very good point.

Offensive Systems
A Monitor is a floating fortess. Each one mounts a fleet's worth of fusion cannons, torpedo tubes, and point defenses. With its internal foundries churning out ammunition and its self-repair functions replacing damaged subsystems, a Monitor can keep the pressure on an enemy force indefinitely.

Besides these conventional Motive armaments, however, Monitors are known to possess certain weapons systems unique to them. Monitors may carry some, all, or none of these devices.

Vehicle:Monitor/Weapon1|IMPOSE STILLNESS Vehicle:Monitor/Weapon2|IMPOSE SUBMISSION Vehicle:Monitor/Weapon3|IMPOSE CONTROL Vehicle:Monitor/Weapon4|IMPOSE WILL

Defensive Systems
The Monitors embody Motive's naval tactics. Their manifold defensive systems are designed to neutralize the most potent weapons other militaries can bring to bear, dragging them into a drawn-out battle of attrition well-suited to Motive strengths. In addition, Monitors possess more and stranger countermeasures than normal Motive warships.


 * dual layered shielding
 * AWACS -- "screaming"
 * particulate cloud
 * boarder defenses
 * spatiotemporal countermeasures -- resisting hyperspace interdiction & imposing interdiction of its own
 * causality enforcement module -- defense against metric weapons

Known Monitors
At least 108 Monitors are known to exist. Most estimates place their total numbers at around 150, with the absolute upper limit being 300. However, not all of the confirmed 108 have been identified by name; Motive's general secrecy ensures that nobody's exactly certain about which Terminals have Monitors. Terminals known to have one include:
 * Abigor
 * Archway
 * Banks
 * Concord
 * Cruciform
 * Dolor
 * Heritage
 * Keyport
 * Palatine
 * Phalanx
 * Orius
 * Rook Nebula
 * Sterling
 * Triumphator
 * Labolas

Quotes
"Convergent empathic analysis is unanimous: the Archway Monitor that Motive built in 3312 is existentially the same Archway Monitor we destroyed in 3283. Continuity was confirmed. New body, same old mind. Incidentally, two of my sensitives had strokes when they tried reading too deeply. Something is very wrong about these Monitors of theirs, and I don't care to speculate what."

- Axato Tokray, Necrox Commonwealth (Biotic Catalog)

"All further noetic study of Monitor cognition is forbidden. This is a BRAINSTAIN ALERT."

- Biotic Catalog memo

"BE AWARE INTELLIGENCE NOT ARTIFICIAL MONITORS NOT MACHINES BEWARE"

- Last lines of distress call from PSS Glory, Battle of Rook Nebula. Context unknown.