SporeWiki
Register
Advertisement

Introduction[]

The Purity-Infernal Republic War has already been going on for around 6 months with minimal success for both sides. While the Infernal Republic had much faster offensive capabilities, the Purity always followed with a counterattack on one of their worlds, purifying it's inhabitants with the Purification Project. Though a stalemate was rapidly approaching, the Pure One had still hope left for the war to make a turn in his direction.

The Virgonian Encounter[]

The Pure One was examining some military plans for the war with the Infernal Republic when he received a signal coming from one of his allies, the first Pillar of Purity to be exact. "What could be such an important matter to contact me personally right now?" he wondered as he was flying back to the control room of his Purifier Vessel, where he opened the communications device.

A strange humanoid appeared on the screen, with something resembling an airhorn as his head and only one complete arm (the other one was also replaced by something metallic). In his free hand he held a piece of paper with a contract written on it.

"Permission of the highest order given to initiate contact with the Pure Lord," he showed that contract with the signature of their leader, "We have news for you, Pure One, one of our scout ships has detected several anomalies here in this galaxy north from our location. There seems to be star wide invisibility fields, though we did not get much more information from them, it is safe to assume that we are being watched by some very advanced civilisation."

The Pure One slowly nodded, "Interesting, very interesting, if what you are saying is true, then they must have high knowledge of megastructures, we should send in a proper fleet to investigate."

"Transferring anomaly coordinates to your location..." came from the Purified Lawyer.

With that the Pure One closed communications and ordered the ship to turn to the location of the anomaly, "Let us see who those spies hiding in the dark are."




The faint glow of infrared light shone through the Gabriel Expanse, just barely detectable to the eyes of any heat-viewing species that would come across it. At the center of the expanse, positioned strategically to minimize visibility from the telescopic eyes of as many empires as possible, sat the immensity of Extragalactic Outpost Mirus. Of course, simple creatures would never be able to tell the tale of what the would see, memory of the megastructure fading as quickly as the sub-crimson glow in the stern window of a keen ship, eagerly departing to report back on its discovery of what they could only describe as the gods themselves.

The outpost was composed of three Dyson spheres of different sizes, silently hanging in space like bubbles frozen in ice. Too close together for the stars they were built around to be in their current position naturally. Around the largest of the spheres was a vast equatorial ring, encircling the orb and slowly rotating. The space near the orbs was not still, with vast reefs of technology, and even some artificial planets in orbit around the parental bodies. Not all of these planets were round as a few took on stranger shapes like hoops and rings.

If one were inside the smallest sphere, they could be forgiven for mistaking their location as normal space, if it were not for the fact that as far as the eye, telescopic or otherwise, could see, there was a boundary of smooth, gray metal. This metal absorbed the light given off by the tiny point of the central star, using the power to make unimaginably vast calculations that mortals couldn't even dream about. There was the odd planet and asteroid occupying the space inside the sphere, left over from the conversion of the Mirus-native central star. many Virgonian stations also orbited, quietly carrying out their mysterious functions in the vast void of enclosed space.

The medium sphere was different in that it had one prominent internal feature rather than many small ones. the sphere was not quite closed all the way with a large hole on its surface the size of Earth's entire space program letting some of the light of the internal star through. Occupying most of this space however was the celestial disc of a vast wormhole, wide enough to swallow whole stars and even other smaller Dyson spheres.

The largest sphere was the most impressive,dwarfing the others by several times. the interior was different with many layers like an onion breaking up the space. This was of course, a matrioska brain, the huge computational power of which was capable of giving rise to billions of minds just by the accidental momentary fluctuations of its normal computer functions. The very few that met the central sphere reported a sense of unease, almost like it was... watching them.

Once the Purity flagship arrived in the system, the view of the Extragalactic Outpost Mirus was astounding even to the Pure One. After sending out some Probes to investigate the area, the flagship moved closer and closer into the Virgonian territory. While doing that, they reported signals coming from the central sphere, thousands of thousands of streams of information going into a single big river, to whom the Pure One tried to connect himself and open communications.

The language of the information was truly alien and I comprehensible even to the impressive mind of the Pure One. Although he was unable to understand the contents, certain mathematical patterns in the data did suggest that at least some of it was astrographical information about the Mirus Galaxy.

As the ship drifted in closer, the signals grew more intense, maxing out the ship's sensors. The most traffic appeared to exist between the largest sphere and the sphere with the wormhole. After the Purity Probes have returned to the flagship, they had discovered that the celestial disc was some kind of artificial wormhole, supposedly leading to the main territory of the ancient empire. The Pure One decided to try reaching it because of the inability to communicate with the empire from the main sphere, which was identified as a matrioska brain, and after a small regroupement, they started approaching the wormhole.

Up close, the wormhole appeared even more vast, easily the diameter of a planetary orbit. The energy currents that swirled around it buffeted the Purity Ship's shields, causing local auroras to shine as the ship grew closer. The vessel did not stop it's course and soon it was nearly at the wormhole.

As they grew closer to the wormhole, every member of the purity on the ship felt a momentary dip in the concentration of their powerful minds. The ship slowed to a stop as the navigational array scanned the space around the sphere right in front of them, the Purity wondering why they were moving on seemingly a collision course towards why readings on the ship showed as an unremarkable Dyson Sphere. As the Pure One ordered the ship to turn around to head closer to the central sphere of the cluster, the memory of their encounter with the smaller structure faded from the minds of the whole collective until the existence of the sphere was little more than a collection of data in their initial survey of the cluster.

As the Purity flagship approached the thick band surrounding the sphere, the intensity of the radio noise fogging up their receivers increased. Worried for his own memory, the Pure One send a complete report to the nearest Purity world of what had just happened and instructions to create a new body for him and his crew if the mission would fail, then he turned around and entered the gigantic wormhole.

As the ship passed through the mouth of the wormhole, the pale blue celestial view of the bands of energy that swirled and cycled around the spacetime anomaly filled the visual sensors on the ship. They coalesced and warped to form the shape of a tunnel of space itself, Illuminating the comparatively minuscule Purity ship in a pearlescent glow. Alarms on the ship sounded as the shields were taxed against the intense radiation in the wormhole and the hull strained against the gravimetric eddies and currents of the vast structure. Behind the ship, sensors on the ship picked up the unusual signs of negative mass near the mouth of the portal as they entered, along with the gravitational lensing that could only be caused by an anti-event horizon. The Pure One posited that the wormhole must be held open by a vast loop of exotic cosmic string. The technology needed to make such a structure was fearsome, with files showing great civilisations like the Delpha Coalition of Planets had tried and failed. Clearly, the Purity was not simply dealing with an undiscovered insular power of only the few Dyson Spheres seen.

The ship continued to shudder as it streamed down the throat of the wormhole for the next half hour, although the adaptive systems of the ship were able compensate for the worst effects. It wasn't long before the other end of the cosmic bridge became visible in the distance. As the Purity leader streamed towards their destination, it became clear that this end didn't open upon empty space like the entrance they'd embarked through. Instead, the green-blue glow of a planet became visible...

The planet has covered the entire screen once they reached the end of the wormhole, "A planet?! And it's huge... Did this wormhole just lead us to their homeworld? Something must be wrong here..." the Pure One thought to himself. He then checked their location, which was in a completely different galaxy cluster than Mirus.

Gigantic didn't even come within 1% of the gravitas a word would need to describe this planet. It dominated the space is was in utterly, even bending the image of the space behind it into a ring a little ways out from the surface. The surface itself was so varied it would take a whole paragraph to describe, with gray regions that were presumably urbanized, as well as green foliated areas and even oceans, there were also other regions of many different colors which the Purity theorized were do to foliation of different linaged of plant with different pigments. Astrometric calculations showed that the ship was still at least a dozen lightyears out from the planet, which meant that its diameter must be over a lightyear across.

Data was flooding in from the surrounding system with reports of millions of objects in orbit of the planet. More detailed scans over the next few minutes revealed that these were a storm of Ringworlds, Dyson Spheres, Matrioska Brains, and Alderson Disks. These structures served as the homes of entire Kardeshev 2 civilisations, comparable to the Gods worshiped by lower biological life, and they were here as the minor moons of this immense planet. The closer to the planet the Purity scanned, the more structures they picked up until entire reefs of orbital infrastructures were detected. However, the immense cross section of the planet meant they were only able to scan a very tiny percentage of the area quickly, and had to assume it was representative of the whole structure.

"Impossible," the Pure One exclaimed, "If even the light is bent by the size and the mass of this planet, it should've long collapsed in on itself. So if that civilisation was capable of building such a structure, they must've had the technology of shaping entire-" He was cut off by the ship's alert message, that stated they they were approaching some kind of death field that completely encircled the Virgo Birch Planet. The Pure One quickly understood that if he were to not do something right now, they would be incinerated. So he quickly flew inside the main core of the ship to overcharge it with Pure Energy to in return create a field of Pure Energy that would absorb the photon sphere's radiation.

The ship passed harmlessly through the firewall, scams indicating that the energy level would actually only have been enough to damage the ship, not even destroy it. With the amount of power clearly available to the civilisation, this couldn't help but lead the Pure One to the conclusion that the field was not actually placed here to destroy them intentionally. The ship stopped and hovered just under the barrier, what they calculated to be still a respectable 0.05 light years from the surface. The navigators of the ship noticed that beneath this barrier orbits seamed to be impossible, with all calculated sub-lightspeed trajectories predicting a slow plummet to the planet's surface.

Once they were near the orbit of the planet, they tried to broadcast a communication request in hopes that the civilisation was advanced enough to decipher their message. Suddenly, all controls on the ship lurched to life for a split second. A strange current of peculiar and unfamiliar consciousness moved through the collective Pure mind of the collective. In the philosophical landscape of the shared mind, it appeared to cluster around the links to the ships systems like a dense fog. This cased a note of alarm within the hive mind which lead to frantic efforts to understand the data that made up this rogue element. A designation of Throne#13869: Entity-Mi24 was extracted but little else could be deciphered. The Puritans controlling the ship tried to wrench access back from the presence but were gently pushed away with what felt like the Kardeshev II mental equivalent of cotton wool.

Back in reality, the ship began to slowly turn to point towards the surface of the planet. Once it had its bearing, the craft started to pick up speed, racing towards the ground. The journey continued for 2 hours, the view of the outside world distorted by some superluminal force that originated from outside the ship's own power. This was fortunate, as the ship was able to cross the distance light would take 18 months to traverse in a matter of hours, approaching a hundreds kilometers tall spire that extended from a point on an urbanized section of the planet's surface.

The ship glided itself down to nestle into a receptacle on the spire that seemed to perfectly fit every contour of it's hull. The Pure Looked down at the atmosphere below and wondered how such a perfect place for the ship to rest existed. Had it been rapidly constructed after the unknown masters of this world scanned their ship, or had it been here for much longer, how long had they known the flagship of the Purity's specifications. His attention was drawn away from his rapture when the entrance to the ship opened spontaneously and the light of the structure beyond spilled in.

The Pure One commanded everyone to stay on the ship and slowly levitated alone to the opening in his vessel to greet the ancient masters of this world. The pathway that lead out of the ship was stark white with blue lights that flashed sequentially to guide the Pure One Down its way. Despite being hundreds of kilometers up into space, there was an atmosphere about the platform with a gentle breeze blowing past. The Pure One wasn't sure how, but the breeze seemed to communicate the idea of welcomeness despite no acoustic vibrations or radio waves registering on his sensors. The Pure one departed from the known environment of his ship into the very unknown and alien scape of the bridge, advancing to a wide plaza.

This could be some kind of trap designed to infiltrate the shared mind of the Purity or maybe simply destroy the Pure One. Then again, the level of power behind all that they saw meant that if they wanted to have their way with the Purity, surely this great civilisation would have already?

Slowly, the Pure One floated into the center of the circle. Immediately, they felt a disorienting surge as their consciousness swirled and streamed out of their body like water being released from a balloon. The mind of the Pure One streamed and flowed through philosophical space, sloshing around corners and around bends before finally experiencing a flash of light so bright it could be smelled and tasted.

The Pure One found himself inside a large towering white room with a cathedral-like ceiling. The same blue lights from outside illuminated the walls and the arcane architecture. In what seemed to be his own body, the pure one floated forward, entering the room fully. Before them stood a throne-like chair adorned with silver metallic designs and the same lights. In the chair sat a giant and complex form.

The entity towered over 40 feet high and its sparkling gilded form glistened with blue and teal light. It appeared to be roughly humanoid but with two gigantic wings protruding from its shoulders. It's body was adorned with a gold in many complex intricate spikes, plates and rings and appeared to be encrusted with alien jewels. The Pure One approached the entity.

"Welcome Pure One, to our planet."

"Greetings, pure being, I believe there is no reason for my introduction, since you probably already know everything about us. May I kindly ask you to introduce yourselves?" the Pure One responded.

"I am a representation made comprehensible to you of the Dominant minds on this planet. Although we use no name that is meaningful or understandable to you, observations of this region of space from the galaxy you call Mirus might lead you to call us the Virgonian Civilisation."

"You may refer to this individual unit as The Prime Envoy as this designation has been chosen to illicit an appropriate emotional and psychological response in the minds of you and entities similar."

"Very interesting... Could you tell us more about your civilisation and it's presence near our territory in the Mirus galaxy?"

"We were like you once, or at least, part of us was. We too spread across our galaxy, engulfing every star in the structure you refer to as a Dyson sphere, but this stretched out empire thin and a decision was made to consolidate our presence to the planet you no find yourself on. With access to this world's immense computer substrates, our minds were able to expand, merge, split and swirl more freely and on a grander scale. We matured into the power you speak to now. As for the installation you entered through, it is a simple observatory. We deem it wise to survey our neighboring civilizations to watch their development, and learn from them. That particular structure has existed for what your time stream would consider 2.3 Billion years and has seen itself inside the zones of influence of many species. It has seen empires rise, fall, re-occur, be supplanted, die, and ascend and will continue to do so for aeons to come."

The cadence of the Prime Envoy paused for a moment to punctuate his communication with the appearance of time spent thinking in order to fulfill the vital other components of auditory communication that words do not.

"We... apologise if you feel your space was violated but understand that we find it necessary. A gardeners design is immovable against the opinions of the ants that may newly discover flowers planted at the other end of a bed."

"No matter, since you do not qualify as impure, I believe the existence of that observatory is justified. We are actually more interested in your technological advancement. Is it possible for a technological exchange to happen between us, if I might ask?"

"An exchange implies the transfer of technology in both directions. However, all technologies possessed by your civilization are known to and replicatable by us. We have scanned and recorded the Purity shared mind and know all that you know."

The Prime Envoy paused again.

"Although, some information may be relinquishable to you... We will not provide enough to astronomically accelerate the progress of your empire forward as to dominate the space of the region called the First Gigaquadrant as this would violate one of our great imperatives. This concept of purity is not uncommon in many civilizations known to us, however simulations show it is exceedingly rare for it to persist in a culture as advanced as yours. You present an interesting case."

"True, it is very rare, though this is linked to the fact that we are not really the result of evolution. I believe you are worthy to know our true origins. You see, we are the one of the last descendants of the Ravenrii. Near the end of the Third Xhodocto War, when all of the Ravenrii were forced back into Illum Alta and were destroyed with it, we, the last remaining vassals of the Core Federation decided to flee from the impending doom of the Xhodocto, which soon would also destroy what remained from the federation. Under the my command, we quickly grabbed all the Ravenrii artifacts and technology we could find, and left the galaxy going into the direction of Mirus. Upon arrival, we built special constructs, the Puritans, to put our souls in to ensure that we remain hidden from the all-seeing eye of the Xhodocto. Since the Celestial energy ceased to exist, we had to create a new one to replace it using Ravenrii technology, creating Pure Energy. We then channeled it through the new bodies, sacrificing our own and awakening the new ones in the process, ensuring our survival."

"Yes, this does line up with our theories as to the origin of the Purity. We were unable to exactly the circumstances under which you arose and deemed the most likely explanation that you descend from an Essential or Ultraterrestrial. This explanation is congruous with our models as the power of the Ravenrii would be sufficient to shield this transformation from our eyes in the Mirus galaxy, and the presence of the Xhodocto explains why such an obfuscation was employed.

Your use of Phenomenon E12, or Autogenetic energy as you call it is also interesting. Although we understand the properties of essence well, we employ its usage infrequently. This alternate path to galactic influence is part of the reason we chose not to subjugate the galaxies of the Gigaquadrant in the first place. We are... glad that this action had the desired consequence. We regret the loss of the Ravenrii as the absence of their protection from the multiverse makes our future less certain, although it is agreeable to know their influence remains in the Purity."

"Yes, the fall of Ravenrii has greatly influenced the current state of the Gigaquadrant, and not in the good direction. But once we have gathered enough power, we shall undo what was done by the Xhodocto and restore Illum Alta. As it is known, the Third Xhodocto War was not only destructive to the Ravenrii, but has also weakened the forces of the Xhodocto, which will be key in the near future."

"We foresee a future where that is the case also, although the turbulence of such a situation is not not something we anticipate favorably, even if the outcome would be beneficial to us. So, why do you think you decided to seek us out?"

"Well, you see, we are currently in a bit of a difficult situation, with a few major empires waging war against us. Our main reason to meet you is to seek help, and by that I don't mean direct involvement in our wars or elevation of our empire to a technological godrace, just a small technological advise. We are currently undergoing a reformation of our infrastructure, and we need to get more knowledge on the topic of building megastuctures."

"This is an interesting request that will require some consideration... Please accompany us."

The Pure One felt the world around them dissolve away as the familiar sensation of their mind flowing through computer space overtook their consciousness again. This time, when his mind finished running he they found themself in a garden-like area with enormous rose bushes with flowers of every color from deep red to vibrant blue. A cool mist floated in the and settled onto both being's bodies. When the Pure One percived their own body, they found it to be of similar design to his original, but in the same color scheme as the Prime Envoy and presumably made of the same materials.

"We've brought us to Moon #49058604856(A) and provided a body for you so you may manifest here. We think it would be more comprehensive to you to demonstrate our megastructural engineering to you."

Mist from the country-sized garden began to collect underneath the forms of the two entities, drawing them up into the air. The Pure one and the Prime Envoy flew up at relativistic speeds until they were almost an entire AU above the Alderson disk they had been formerly standing on.

"We are very grateful for your help, please, go on," the Pure One replied as his speed dropped.

"Rotate 67 degrees counter-clockwise and observe."

In the distance on a higher orbit, a similar pale blue disc like the one the Pure one had arrived through hung in space. There was a faint shimmering as the light from a nearby star orbiting the planet caught what appeared to be a titanic cloud of particulate matter emerging from the gateway, like dust in a sunbeam. As the pure one continued to watch, the dust appeared to thicken, slowing at first but then accelerating. Planet sized clumps formed and grew, reaching millions of kilometers in size to form huge rounded plates. By some unseen force, the plates moved together and the light of the star was snuffed out, like a small bulb inside a huge pair of close hands. The whole sequence had taken less than a few hours.

"These are our capabilities. Enough to completely rebuild your infrastructure. Of course, we were in a region of accelerated time, the actual duration of the construction was 5.6 years."

"Please accept our deepest thanks for your support, we shall put this new method combined with our current methods that use Pure Energy in place as soon as we get back."

"Your gratitude is acknowledged. This method utilizes a form programmable matter called Djinium which is beyond your technological capabilities to engineer. We will make a gift of 100 Xonatonnes of material, enough to construct approximately 200 spheres. Be aware, it is against our moral directives to allow domination of one power in the nearby galactic space over all others by our direct action. Therefore, this matter will be given anti-memetic properties that will prevent knowledge of understanding it's mechanism by reverse engineering from being retained. We shall now return to the digital space of Throne#13869: Entity-Mi24 to demonstrate its working, unless you desire a real setting. There are many on the planet where this demonstration is performable."

"I don't think that's necessary, a simulation should work just fine."

"We shall return."

The two being started to fall back down to the surface of the Alderson Disk at similar speed to before. The Pure One noticed them pass what looked like a duplicate heading in the opposite direction

"That is simply our anti-time counterpart and we travel backwards in time to the temporal pint at which we left. We do not intend to isolate you from the Purity's necessary functions for the whole real duration of this encounter."

The Pure One felt a foliar rush as they were once again returned to the white throne room the two entities had inhabited previously. The throne however was replaced with a large raised platform which had a car-sized cube of grey matter rotating balanced on one corner about 20 cm in the air.

"And this is Djinium, I suppose?"

"Correct, in its default resting form. The material is composed of picomachines that can reconfigure themselves to conform to the desired of the engineer. An ambient cloud of sensors is emitted that scan the consciousness of the user and program the matter to conform. Observe."

The matter shaped and twisted itself to form a large flat disk with a hole in the middle. Inside the hole floated a sphere of the same material that began to glow with an intense blue light. The color of the outside disk changed to be a pure white.

"The Purity should have the computational ability to be specific enough with the request that unintended consequences don't arise. This matter can be used to construct other megastructures aside from the Dyson Sphere demonstrated."

"Which megastructures are you interested in constructing? The Djinium can be customized to suit the Purity."

After a short think, the Pure One replied, "Starforges, Matrioshka brains, Space Fortresses and Gateways, I believe those four would be the most important to the reformation of our infrastructure. Oh, and also Purification Arrays, needed to sustain good contact with our vassals."

"All can be supplied. The Virgonians have mastery over the stars, stellar computers and beyond. An information dispatch concerning this megastructures and the Djinium needed to construct them has been prepared and transmitted though wormhole to Purity space. It should arrive within 3.4 hours. In exchange for this we propose and exchange of information. Much of the knowledge of the Ravenrii is concealed from us and its acquisition would greatly improve the accuracy of our intergalactic-scale simulations. Can you provide such information?"

"Yes, we will provide you access to all of our data archives left from the Ravenrii."

"This is most agreeable. We are glad that this outcome of our encounter with the Purity is the one that was realized."

"Processing this data will take time. 4000 new Throne Matrioska Brains are being constructed as we speak. Are there any other matters you wished to address while this dialogue is open?"

"No, I think we have discussed all matters we needed to. We thank you again for your generosity, but I think we'll have to depart now."

"If desired, you may retain a presence on the surface of our Planet in a biome/location of your choosing. The Prime Envoy will always be made available to you."

"So be it, we shall dispatch some of our Carriers to the biome most resemblant to Illum Alta, our home, to establish a Purity colony there."

"A large scape has been prepared spanning layers 344,567,213 through 344,567,175. A wormhole has been opened in orbit to allow access. You will now be returned to your body in Realspace"

An all-too familiar river-like rush overtook the Pure One as their mind was again transported. The Pure One regained orientation in the same glowing circle as they had first entered. The internal chronometer inside their body told the Pure One that only 0.04 seconds had passed since entering the circle...

The Pure One returned to his vessel and entered the complete report into his ship, then commanded it to fly to the location of the new colony. After that, around 50 Purity Carriers were sent down to the surface, that immediately began the construction. The Purifier Vessel later headed to the same wormhole they arrived through.

3.75 Wb of Ravenrii knowledge aquired. Probability of victory +6%

Navigation[]

Shamusson's Fiction
The Purity
Void Eye Empire
Advertisement