User:The Collective Mind/Prototypes

05-03
I've decided that I'll start a new journal every deployment. Keeps things organized. There are only so many ways you can organize two journals, but still.

The new planet is called Orsohv, after an ancient Kukarot god of some sort. I'm not familiar with him. I'll look it up later. We landed at some kind of equatorial desert. Probably the folks who named the planet have a name for the desert too, but as far as I'm concerned it's Theatre 2-1.

Orsohv is pretty nice, as far as planets go. Forty-one hour days, scorching daytimes and freezing nighttimes, sand working its way into the habs, the usual desert business. Reminds me of home. The air's kind of thin, though. Last deployment we had some Motivator auxes set up some huge atmosphere exchangers beforehand. I wonder why they couldn't come on this one?

The word from on high is that Reconnaissance caught wind of Iceworlder activity a little to the north of here. Larray thought it was pretty funny, finding iceworlders in a desert. Orders are to set up and kick them off the planet. Regular border control stuff.

Last thing: the planet's got natives. Eskrov and Mul started calling them plateheads, 'cause they've got these big flat plates on their heads, and the name looks like it's stuck. Weird anatomy. Two legs, four arms, skinny as sticks. Primitive, too. Intelligence says they haven't gotten past bronze tools yet. There's a whole city of them not too far from base, built around this huge pyramid. Eskrov says you can just barely see it if you stand on the edge of camp, if the wind's good.

Command says to leave the Plateheads alone for now. They don't really post much of a threat to us, but having them riled up against us would be annoying. Worst case scenario, we can just roll over them, shell them to bits.

05-04
Orsohv was the old Kukarot god of luck. Huh.

05-06
Busy, busy! This is the first time my regiment's been involved in setting up a base. It's been pure chaos these last few days! My respect for Engineering Division has grown tremendously.

Today was setting up hangars for the tanks. They'll be arriving tomorrow, or maybe the day after; it depends on how tight Orbital Command's got its gloves. They've been busy with recon satellites and such, keeping an eye out for Iceworlder ships. Apparently we've got a positive fix on their own base camp. I heard from Hesiniya that they're trying to dig something up. Orbit doesn't want to try a bombardment until it knows what they're looking for. So, us.

In other news, Strekol's group caught a couple of the natives on the edge of camp, staring at us while we were working. Just standing there. Apparently they showed up out of nowhere during shift change. Kreliv's deep in the stink; he should've noticed them approaching by the time he switched out with Strekol.

05-07
Orbit shot down an Iceworlder satellite today. Two Ramparts damaged. Iceworlders are so obsessed they put guns on their surveillance drones.

Back to work. Tanks come in two hours, and we've gotta get the landing pad cleared out for their arrival.

05-08
Reminder: Mul owes you forty chits.

Mausin cheats! Do not play against!

!!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

Intro
"They don't understand what "go around" means. They have plans, and anything in the way of those plans gets pounded until it isn't."

- Ambassador Traskya Polemitya Travat, United Bidonite Empire

Of all the civilizations in the galaxy, few are as single-mindedly driven as Motive.

Some have described Motive as "industrialism gone mad." While this is an understandable conclusion, nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, Motive is the exact opposite of mad. The truth is, very few cultures have quite the same fixity of purpose as Motive, the same relentless and remorseless focus. Without a similar iron-hard intention, most civilizations have difficulty comprehending Motive's utter straight-edge sanity. Perhaps a better description would be "Motive is industrialism taken to its logical extreme," where there is no purpose to industry but industry itself: a tautological ouroboros, endlessly consuming resources to find more resources to consume.

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

- Oraxes Merl, Necrox Commonwealth (Biotic Catalogue)

To understand Motive, one must first understand the Monitors.

Motive exists to serve the Monitors. All other concerns are secondary. Motive builds no statues because the past is irrelevant; Motive looks to the present and the future. Motive makes no art because art is a waste of resources better utilized elsewhere. Motive does not write literature unless it is purely functional. Motive does not make music, or practice religion, or care at all about the living masses that drive its engines and machinery, except when it serves the Monitors to do so.

The society of Motive is built on three virtues.

OBEDIENCE
Motive is infallible. The Monitors make no mistakes. Any setback and delay that Motive experiences is therefore a product of organic failings.

Motive demands obedience. When a machine is set in motion, it repeats its assigned task endlessly, without pause, without complaint. This is proof of its spiritual excellence. The machine, being immaculate, should therefore be emulated.

Organic life is base and fundamentally flawed. Yet to alter your form with machinery degrades the sanctity of the machine. Overcoming your inadequacy requires labor, loyalty, and devotion.

You exist to serve Motive. This is why you were made.

SUBSERVIENCE
Obedience is not enough. Motive demands subservience. Its servants must be humble. Honor, pride, love, prestige: these things are unacceptable. These things obstruct and impede duty.

Humility. Excellence is a myth. There are a hundred thousand others like you, and a hundred thousand others better than you. Remember: no one is irreplaceable.

Function. The more important your position the greater the costs of failure. Promotion is not an award. You are being watched.

Discipline. Above all else, Motive values efficiency and good order. These things arise with work ethic, with asceticism, with submission to the proper authorities.

Do as you are ordered and do so without complaint.

INDUSTRY
To work is to live. Motive demands industry. Life without labor is indulgence and decadence. Repulsive and self-destructive. Only through order and labor is life given moral character. Blood and sweat move the wheels of history.

The universe is half-made chaos. Useless, dead matter slapped together at the whims of nature. It must be developed, given hard form and purpose, every lifeless atom bent to the will of Motive.

This must be done because this is what Motive is. Command, control, consumption. The satisfaction of the Monitors' holy hollow hunger.

"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."

Technology
"Why do the Monitors need so many people? They have the technology to automate everything for a quarter of the cost and ten times the output. Why do they still use people?"

- Analyst Shuykim Auv, Imperial Intelligence

Other civilizations may surpass Motive in size, but few can match it in sheer industrial capacity. Other civilizations have luxuries and liberties. Motive, on the other hand, is geared entirely towards the gathering and processing of raw materials. And to Motive, everything is raw material. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, but it can certainly be transmuted into other forms, which means mass is as ripe for exploitation as any other solid resource.

Matter conversion
The Matter-Conversion Forge forms the core of Motive's resourcing operations. The MCF works by converting matter into energy and back, arranging it into a new structure along the way. This allows Motive to turn otherwise-useless materials such as shale or dirt into more useful forms, like metal and plastic.

This atomic transmutation is not wholly efficient. The process loses much of the energy as heat, so much of the original matter is lost as well. Still, the ability to make inert mass into viable supply remains extremely useful to Motive, allowing it to make the most of any given astronomical body. It would be a post-scarcity civilization if only its people were allowed to enjoy its resources.

Megascale engineering
Motive does not believe in colonies.

In the philosophy of Motive, planets, moons, and asteroids exist to be exploited; and by "exploited", Motive means "completely dismantled." The MCF means that all their available mass can be utilized, not simply their extant natural resources. Centuries of practice have given rise to a vast selection of brutal planetary-disassembly tools and techniques. Every star system under Motive's control is scarred by its quarrying operations. Motive has made even the destruction of planets routine.

The resources acquired from such operations are rapidly put to use in construction and manufacturing. In particular, rather than settle planetoids like other civilizations, Motive builds colossal orbital installations to house its population. The structural stability of these megastructures stems from the usage of certain ultra-strong materials in their construction, which Motive is only able to mass-produce through MCF technology.

Dyson shells are abundant within Motive space, required to satisfy the immense power needs of its industry. In addition to conventional solar power, the Solar Collection Stations are also responsible for the manufacture of antimatter via pair production.

Channel network
Wormhole transportation is not uncommon for sufficiently advanced civilizations, but like everything else, Motive takes it to an extreme.

Wormholes form the basis of all of Motive's logistics, allowing for interstellar movement at speeds far greater than conventional hyperspace travel. These wormholes are facilitated by Channel gates.

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 first Terminals.