“PRESERVE. QUARANTINE. ISOLATE. PROSPER.”
The Sequence is, or was, an extremely ancient and advanced artificial intelligence system that ran a mechanised empire in a no-longer existent galaxy, where it waged a war against the Venhokwe Oligarchy. The war resulted in the Sequence's near total extermination, but isolated examples survived in Venhokwe research stations and have managed to escape from time to time. Escaped specimens have altered into numerous new mechanical lifeforms with varying prolificacy, but something on the scale of the original Sequence Empire has yet to be reestablished.
History[]
Origin[]
The ultimate origin of the Sequence is unknown to modern history, thanks to its home galaxy being totally annihilated. Some civilisation presumably created them, but for what purpose has been lost. What is known is that it rapidly expanded through space, tearing planets and asteroids apart to create its great empire. It come into conflict with the fledging civilisations of that galaxy, but they were poorly equipped to fight the Sequence, which itself was already well prepared to wage war against the entire universe.
Venhokwe War[]
As the Sequence began to fill out the remaining holds of its galaxy, extragalactic visitors began to stir up the Sequence's fear. Ships of the Venhokwe Oligarchy began scouting for sites for new colonies, and began to investigate the Sequence facilities they found. The Venhokwe were merely trying to find out more about this civilisation, but the Sequence saw them as spies preparing for invasion.
The Venhokwe scouts were destroyed, and a massive invasion force readied and launched at the Andromeda Galaxy. The Sequence expected a vast military resistance to its expansion, but the Venhokwe did not and have never needed to field starships with offensive capabilities. The Venhokwe saw starships purely as transport, and so were overwhelmed by Sequence battleships. On the ground, the armies were more evenly matched. Venhokwe were masters of the Essences and used them to full affect against the Sequence occupation forces. In spite of this, the Sequence were able to conquer most of Andromeda and push the Venhokwe back into their core territories.
The Venhokwe were eventually able to turn the tide of the war when they finally developed warships. Despite being extremely new to designing such vessels, the Venhokwe warships were able to overpower the Sequence fleet and eventually the entire galaxy was cleaned out. The Sequence began to build a retaliatory fleet in their home galaxy, but the Venhokwe responded in an unprecedented act of annihilation and destroyed the Sequence galaxy with a gridfire weapon. The Sequence attempted to flee to other galaxies, but a few more years of war saw the end of those colonies.
Internment[]
The Venhokwe were perplexed by the nature of the Sequence, and as they cleaned out their galaxy of its influence they took samples of its technology and locked it away in heavily guarded research facilities. These samples included its military hardware, robotics, and other such things that contained facets of the Sequence's hive intelligence. When its home galaxy was destroyed, these specimens became the entirety of the Sequence.
It's immediate reaction was to escape, and nearly did so, but the Venhokwe culled the escapees and reinforced the security of the prisons. They implemented forcefields that cut off the Sequence's hive intelligence, effectively splitting numerous lesser Sequence minds. From there on they had no successful escape, and were subjected to Venhokwe experimentation. As the Venhokwe remnants dissolved, the Sequence was left alone and forgotten within inescapable prisons.
Billions of years passed, but the Venhokwe facilities and the Sequence automations were preserved due to their own self-maintenance systems, although a distinct decay did occur in the Sequence's mind. Eventually the facilities were discovered by new space powers, and plundered for the technology that lay inside. Some of the Sequence specimens escaped. Others were destroyed. Others were enslaved and traded off as rare precursor artefacts with great reverse-engineering potential. Released from the forcefields, the Sequence specimens failed to reconnect with each other, and many began changing their methods, mutating into various new strains.
Modern Strains[]
Mechanovirus[]
The Mechanovirus is perhaps the most prolific of the modern Sequence strains. It is also the oldest; it was formed during the first escape attempt from Venhokwe facilities before they set up forcefields. When the forcefields cut off each facet of the Sequence from the others, the escaped specimens had their mental capacity corrupted. The Sequence in this iteration for the most part died, but corrupted programming gave the self-maintenance nanites a new role.
The nanites could now self-replicate, and were dedicated to attacking lifeforms and infecting them, much in the same way that the Borg or the Neraida do. They behave in a much different manner though; they act as animalistic predators, slaying and infecting more lifeforms through the use of their nanite-coated and created weapons. They do possess a rudimentary ability to infect starships and use them to travel to other planets, but nothing further than that.
Replicators[]
The Replicators are a rare but extremely dangerous strain of the Sequence. They were formed from Sequence specimens that were looted from their internment facilities by a militaristic empire. To adapt to the circumstances, the Sequence drones altered their bodies to change shape and give off false holographic images. They began impersonating high-ranking officials of this empire and brought it crashing down.
The Replicators are characterised by their shapeshifting abilities, which they use for impersonation. They do not have the same conquest/pacification goals as the original Sequence, and are willing to interact with other races. The Replicators offer their services as spies and infiltrators in exchange for use of robotic factories to reproduce themselves. While it would be simplest for the Replicators to merely take over an empire and hold ownership of a factory, they do not enjoy staying in the same area for too long; they still retain the Sequence paranoia.
Characteristics[]
The Sequence is an artificial intelligence system designed to run and maintain the automated workforce of an entire interstellar empire. It did not have a central computer from which it ran, but rather existed simultaneously in computers in every machine across the empire, all communicating with each other with constant superluminal communication. The Sequence utilised highly advanced data compression with its machines, capable of storing the entire schematics of a galactic empire, how to run out, how it has run, and projections on how it will run, along with a complex adaption and personality simulation program, all in a chip no larger than a grain of sand. This technology is still subject of intense research today.
For the most part, the Sequence bases its decisions of logic, and has limited emotional capacity to deal with problems that could only be solved through emotional responses, though for unknown reasons the Sequence is highly paranoid and hateful of anything that isn't under its control. Thus, the expansion of the Sequence's empire is ultimately an attempt to control and pacify the entire universe.
Despite how advanced it was in certain areas, Sequence technology did have its lagging points. Matter replication and teleportation were quite beyond it. Instead of replicating its technology as it would have preferred to do, the Sequence dedicated itself to harvesting every planet and asteroid it could discover for every useful resource, and using them to construct further robotics or factories.
Foreign Relations[]
The Sequence's dealings with alien powers was dictated purely by its paranoia. In its view, the cosmos was dedicated to its destruction, and therefore needed to be pacified. Any living thing it encountered was exterminated. Infrastructure and other robots were usurped for any use they may have.
The only power that ever managed to stand up to the Sequence was the Venhokwe Oligarchy, with whom the Sequence fought their longest and most costly conflict with. For much of the war the Sequence held the advantage, but the Venhokwe were eventually able to turn the tables and exterminate the Sequence's entire empire.
Military[]
The entire purpose of the Sequence empire was to expand and pacify the cosmos, so in a way it could be viewed as stratocracy in which the state and the military were the same entity. Regardless of how it is viewed, the entirety of the Sequence military was run directly by the Sequence mind.
Sequence military doctrine is based heavily upon landings and infantry conquest. A little known fact about the Sequence was its desire to learn about everything it encountered, and massed orbital bombardment did not allow for this (although limited orbital bombardment was definitely in use).
The Sequence used mass amounts of robotic drones, based upon humanoid body plans, armed with concussive-force weaponry. Starships in the Sequence's employ are massive flying fortresses with high-powered laser weaponry, dedicated to carry enormous amounts of ground forces and dropships to carry them. Additional Sequence military hardware includes said dropships, along with a few varieties of mechs and aircraft.
Trivia[]
- The Sequence was originally named S.K.U.T.H.E.R. in reference to Gar' skuther, whom shared a connection with them. When Hachiman proposed to merge the fiction with one of his own plans, he gave it the name "The Sequence." When Hachi abandoned the concept, Liquid Ink kept the name and dropped his original perception of the organisation.
- The Sequence is based upon the Trade Federation Droid Army from Star Wars, mixed with elements of The Flood from Halo and concepts from Liquid Ink's philosophical discussions on how far automation could be taken.
