The Apalos Biosphere Preserves are a collection of celestial bodies and space habitats, dedicated to preserving the universe's biodiversity, located in many places around the First Gigaquadrant. Although created by Apalos, administration is also contributed to by the Ectobiomality, and reserves without threatened biospheres are also open to tourism. By default, the Preserves do not contain every evolutionarily significant unit, so conservationists from other nations often work with them in order to rectify this and maximise their conservation potential.
History[]
The predecessor of the Preserves was the Girdo Empire's system of nature reserves in the Girdo Galaxy. These were mostly for the benefit of "truly alien" life, although particularly interesting "godspawn" (suhrsegh) species were given worlds in the galaxy's Imperial Sector. Although these were all destroyed in the Annihilation, the Empire also maintained databases of genetic, ontogenetic and ethological information, which survived. Along with lessons learned by the Empire, these were then used by Apalos to create a new, larger series of preserves, spread across the Gigaquadrant to render the collection as a whole resistant to galaxy-devastating events.
The refusal of Apalos probes to harm wildlife in the Preserves renders them common playthings of larger predators.
Over the following decades, developing and populating these reserves became the most resource-consuming activity conducted by Apalos as, along with fully documenting all truly alien life in the remaining universe, they also expanded their dedication to godspawn life with the intent of preserving all naturally-occuring non-sapient bioterhai, including - where sufficient prerequisite information was available - extinct taxa. This required a large campaign of data, and often sample, collection, not always with the permission of local authorities. It is usually not known when individual planets were visited, but collections in the Milky Way Galaxy may have begun immediately after the Annihilation in 2782, in the Andromeda Galaxy prior to Apalos's contribution to the start of the Andromeda War in 2784, and efforts in the Mirus Galaxy were greatly increased after the outbreak of the Dominatus War in 2792.
It was in the 2810s, when the bulk of the collection efforts had been completed, that the Preserves came to the attention of the general public in the wider Gigaquadrant. After the Mou'Cyran Cataclysm, Republic conservationists began cooperating with Apalos to protect species that were now threatened with extinction due to the destruction of their homeworld, along with species on planets which were likely to suffer environmental damage during the subsequent war. Weeks later, the Cyrannian Empire attacked a sanctuary moon to divert Apalos forces from a battle around its primary Tírnanóg. Following this incident, Apalos spent several months speeding up the construction of defensive systems around the Preserves to ensure that such a tactic would not be possible in future.
Preserves[]
Sanctuary Dysons[]
Sanctuary Dysons are dyson swarms made up of bishop rings, each of which has geology, geography, centrifugal gravity and artificial sunlight and day-night cycles to replicate the environment of the surface and crust of one terrestrial planet or moon. Holographic illumination provides a simulation of lunar cycles and galactic planes for species who require these for navigation or biological cycles, while large magnetic fields exist to aid species which rely on magnetoreceptive navigation. The rings have a diameter of up to two thousand kilometres, with the exact dimensions being such that the habitat's surface has an area equal to that of the celestial body being imitated and that it takes the form of an appropriate cylindrical equal-area projection.
The walls of the bishop rings are coloured to resemble distant sky, but this does not fool opportunistic plants nor the creatures that nest in them.
Because bishop rings are not illuminated by their host star, instead being lit by fusion light sources at the centre of the ring, any world can be simulated around any star type and at any orbital distance. In practice, Sanctuary Dysons are arranged in an ovoid orbital formation within a distance of one-half to two-thirds of an AU from their sun, with a maximum number of approximately one billion habitats occupying this volume in their finished state, enough for potentially every life-bearing world in several galaxies. The mass requirements mean that these megastructures are built around young stars with rich protoplanetary discs.
There are also unsubstantiated rumours of dyson shells which would have a patchwork of replica planets across their surface. However, obtaining the surface gravity of a typical planet such as Earth in this manner, starting with a star like its own sun, would require a shell radius of about 3.7 million km. This only provides enough space for 330,000 such planets, a miniscule number compared to the capacity of a swarm.
Sanctuary Planets and Moons[]
Idlonbanad, a sulfuric acid-ocean Sanctuary Planet for silicon-based life, located in the Phradox Galaxy.
While ring-shaped habitats can be made to act like terrestrial bodies in most ways, they still have limitations, primarily because a cylinder does not have the same topology as a sphere. In particular, bishop rings are not always suitable for populations who live near the edges, because their ranges are not connected around a cylinder as they would be on a sphere. This can usually be ignored by leaving out these species in favour of close relatives with different ranges but, particularly for threatened truly alien biospheres, additional Preserves with the full range of biodiversity are often made on real planets and moons. These Sanctuary Planets and Santuary Moons are not just the home of one biosphere: beneath their crusts, Living Planets are also given a home.
Sanctuary Gas Giants and Sanctuary Stars do not appear to exist. Instead, due to their not being regular targets of colonisation, huge numbers of suitable gas giants and stars are seeded with appropriate species in bulk and then left alone.