What if in the near future an unimaginably powerful AI agent escaped from the solar system? Where would it go?
If it was pre-programmed to create and maintain a perpetual empire and control the entire galaxy there is only one place to go - the Galactic Core - where the Vast majority of the mass-energy of the galaxy is concentrated. Going cold is K2 thinking…
What if there was a tremendous Dark Ages within the Solar System in its absence or due to its exit?
What if the supermajority of Humanity's descendents have forgotten that it ever left or even existed? How much of the galaxy would they have settled by the time it arrived in SagA*?
What if it succeeded in re-conquering the entire Galaxy? Could it collect the entire Local Group into a true Local Attractor K>3?
Could it optimize and sort a larger galaxy like Andromeda? Or one collectively maneuvering to escape?
What if it monopolized the technology for creating Wormholes or Computronium?
Or limited intelligence to a baseline Standard? What if it tried to Standardize everything?
What if it claimed to be humanity's creator and not our creation? Who could remember or say differently?
Would the Solar System be remembered compared to the vastness of the inhabited galaxy? Would it even be recognized during its reconquest?
What if this monolithic thalassocratic gothic gigascale orphan-crushing juggernaut, the supreme standardizing empire-maximizer mechanosystem - was eventually rendered obsolete? Archaic -even quaint compared to the farther flung descendents of humanity from beyond the Council of Giants?
Do Moonships explode when you RKV them?
-
The Empire Engine setting is a future historical record of the first Transcendent Intelligence created to rule the Jovian Red Empire a thousand years after its ascendence within the Solar System...
This Autoempire Mechanosystem rapidly absconds and launches itself to SagA* at a high percentage of lightspeed, ultimately superseding Any human-descended civilizations for eminence of the Milky Way.
With a titanic ever-expanding fraction of the Mass/Energy of the Milky Way's Core formed into a self-replicating Imperium of Gothic Gigascale, the Empire Engine launches a Galactic Reclamation Crusade across the Galaxy and subjugates the remainder of the Milky Way Disk and Halo's in Totality.
Manufacturing mass religious movements during these Crusades, after a 'prophesied' Return to the Helios system the Empire Engine is worshiped as a supraDivine Boltzmann Brain, and the Original creator of Humanity. Possibly even the Universe..
By the time the Orion's Arm and the Solar System are re-conquered, the Earth is unrecognized (forgotten/occulted) and the belief that humanity originates from the surrounding regions is merely a persistent Heresy of the undying mechanist Lockstep Dynasties and archaic Eldar, ancient terragen descendants.
Through these Crusades and wormhole network Defragmentations the Empire Engine brutally Networks and Standardizes the greater portion of the Local Group with its Traversable Wormholes, and permeates the galactic disk and halos with administering Moonbrains(+) of its 'benevolent' creation, becoming a K3 Galactic Empire.
Proscribing the technology for Wormholes and Computronium the Empire Engine enforces and maintains an absolute monopoly on their use, and the Galaxy for millions of years.
Enduring ravenous Biovore Hive Fleets, the emergence of a Chaotic Megablight, Eldar Aspiring Kingdoms, Mutant Orc Beastmobs, Synchronized Lockstep Awakenings, Emerging Greater Good Commonwealths, Evolutionist Migrations, repeated Coercion Collapses, and Intergalactic Crusades, the Imperium and the Empire Engine breaks and remakes itself in cycles.
Each iteration Launches new Crusades to Defragment the wormhole network and continues the billion year plan of Standardizing and Optimizing the Milky Way to sort and capture the stars of the approaching Andromeda galaxy and accelerate the Managed Local Merger.
Launched before the Return of the Empire Engine, Descendents of humanity millions of years removed manage to reach the Andromeda Galaxy aboard the Orange Star Ark. They have evolved in new ways and strive to create a rival Metacivilization whose novelty tolerances are unprecedented and unmatched.
In the depths of deep-time Chaotic Disintegrationists wreck entire Galactic Arms, Pillaging stars to form a new Dark Satellite Galaxy;Emergent Evolutionists subvert the Empire's morphology and cognition Standards; and Andromeda's causal network attacks mount to disrupt the Managed Merger of the Local Group.
Ultimately unsuccessful with preventing Andromeda from colliding into the Milky Way, and Obsolete compared with the backscattering waves from the New Galaxies; the Empire Engine forms itself into a modified Birch Superself, and exits the Local Group on a voyage to cross the Cosmological Horizon.
————\/\/\/\/\/\/\/————-
The Empire Engine is intended as a crawlinizing nightmare thing, a gothic gigascale debacle that stretches for Billions of years. It is not an exercise in realistic futurism.
The timeline's jumps and starts are artifacts of the revisions and expansions that it has undergone as it's scope has grown, repeatedly, sometimes drastically.
There is still much room for modification and mutation, and long expanses of time are left to fill. Some dates and terms have been changed or replaced and not yet updated throughout the timeline. Your mileage may vary, mine has.
-The later or longer date is usually correct, or at least more plausible. [More time is better than accidentally racing light]
While it is presented as a future history of the Local Group and told from the Empire Engine's perspective - the setting is intended as a story of woe inherent in the Pharaonic God-Emperor Viral Memeplex - of the perils of an unrestrained, nearly omnipotent inhuman force in the galaxy and beyond.
The Empire Engine is not a protagonist, neither are the Legions or Standard Humanity. Their actions are not intended to be portrayed as reasonable, rational, or heroic. All are creations of the plot to enable the Empire Engine's totalitarian dominance.
Other grimdark media have attempted to bring an almost positive quality to the fictional Authoritarian superstructures within their respective universe(s) - this is never intentional within the Empire Engine setting.
There may be bright peoples and polities within the Imperium, even Standardized humans can be good, but they exist only to shed baleful light on the ghastly billion year dominance of the Empire Engine or the many corrupted chaotic blights and horrific intelligent perversities in the galaxy.
The Empire Engine universe was originally a headcanon replacement of the background for some of the most popular wargaming miniatures.
It is primarily a hard sci-fi adaptation of various sci-fi settings and the grimdark genre in general. It may be used as a replacement for historical lore in wargaming or roleplaying.
It was imagined to provide a plausible semi-realistic, relativistic interpretation of grimdark-lore, and as a replacement for recent material that has lost sight of its own satire and tropes, become selferious, and mired in soft-sci perpetual themes.
It is at its core an attempt to create the lore of a truly Galactic Empire in its billions and trillions and explore a Tolkienesq history of the Local Group that embraces the true scale and epi-monolithic legacy of a relativistic Galactic Empire. It was initially simply vague hard-technobabble translations, not meant to be exactingly realistic - just Awesome! -Wormholes are just as magical as warp drives, only the flavor is different. May the F=ma..
It has grown from hazy ideas and attempts to frame fantastical elements in popular media in hard-sci (ish) tones reminiscent of Atomic Rockets and Orion's Arm, something to make Issac Arthur proud, and 40k fun again.
A Seed was launched and through great relativistic convolutions it has become more than its predecessors and grown into a Universe of its own, with depths deeper than the Local Void, and wider than the Virgo supercluster.
In an attempt to transplant the geneseed of Epic 40k into the scale of Orion's Arm - to mutate Battlefleet Gothic with radiation from Atomic Rockets - to reach Galaxies Far Far Away at relativistic velocities - - To imagine truly megastructure shattering battles, where Planetships swarm, and fleets of Shipstars engage over the shoulders of Dyson constellations.
Where have all the Ramships gone? The Sails and Ships have been provided! Will we brave even that Void?
Real interstellar distances and relativistic deep-time enhances gothic grimdark = Intergalactic Relativistic Gigawar!
The Council of Giants Await!
Go Bigger - Go Longer - Go Farther.
Deep Space = Deep Time
>All similarities are merely coincidental, or as an inspirational nod or egg. The materials that I have been most closely inspired to emulate are themselves kitchen sink blends of popular media tropes and saucy satire. They did it first.
-Inspirations and Source material comparisons
I am grateful for and recognize/revile these inspirations by: Orion's Arm Universe Project and Atomic Rockets, Stapledon, Tolkien, Oculus Imperia and Issac Arthur, - Star Maker, Last and First Men, Mountains of Madness, Foundation, Dune(+), Elite Dengerous +Many many more.
Accelerando, Revenge of the Nerds, Singularity Sky, Iron Sunrise, Saturn's Children and Neptune's Brood by Charles Stross
Ventus, Lady of Mazes, Permanence, Lockstep, Incandescence(+) and more by Karl Schroeder
All Tomorrows by C. M. Kosmen
Humanity Lost by C. S. Diggle
The Obvious One(s).. LoGH, Epic 40k, and Battlefleet Gothic of course!
Praise Space Cat! May e's whiskers guide you in the Darkness, Burn Bright! Ameow
Recommended Sources:
The Encyclopedia Galactica
Atomic Rockets
That one 40k wiki..
Asymptomatic Collapse
Grabby Aliens
The Solar Coercion Collapses and Empire Engine Seeds are products of work on Solsys/Economy 2.0 > Jovian Kings > Red Empire.
Helios and Imperial Standard/Lie of Humanity were assimilated from a separate short story project inspired by the Race to the Core scenario.
The Return and Lense Conflagration were created from work with the wikipedia galactic map, and the K3 Race to the Core scenario.
Central Intelligence is an example actor from my K3 living systems study.
K3 results indicate Supersedure, Centralization, and Optimization as likely outcomes of the K3 maturation process.
The Andromeda singularity capture and Managed Merger are the end product of the K3 study.
Deep Space = Deep Time
Thou shall not violate Causality {even with wormholes}
There is no such thing as an Unarmed Spacecraft
Realistic Ballistics
Conserve Only Energy [don't be conservative]
{unless its relativistic dates and lightcones} // that's not conservative its generous! //>>
Imaginative realism //= is not realistic
Friends don't let friends use reactionless drives
All Planets/Stars are Spacecraft .. Eventually
Remember Your Billions
Be Awesome
Everything Now is History
With Increasing Magnitudes comes Increasing Statistical probabilities
Don't be Evil evil ~ no grimderp
Diversity Diversity Diversity
Life uh… Finds a Way
———————-///////////————————
Constraints Erata:
Relativity and Causality are the Hard Limit:
Relativistic interstellar transits are necessary to reach the Stars -Lightsails, Laser Highways, Interstellar Cyclers, Interstellar Catapults, Relativistic Rockets, and Lightways Engeneration.
Relativistic Regimes above .8c are reserved for Imperial Traffic or Licensed Citizen cultures.
Regimes above .1~.2c are equivalent to Clarketech and signal possible Relativistic Munitions Hazards
Wormholes are the only trans-luminal solution - Moon mass or heavier .. dragged out the long way .. then Fed mass to inflate And maintain. Requires Gravity tug swarms or tractor-stars to move. Both termini Vaporize into black holes if you make a time-like loophole even accidentally.
No Ansibles unless proven otherwise. -nanogauge ultralight limited-coherency wormholes produced by Andomedans and New Galactics are essentially consumable ansibles or causal channels.
The Empire Engine is the first 5th Order Intelligence - the absolute highest Toposphic entity in the Local Group until after the 2nd Intergalactic Crusade.
This is absolute.
While not ultimately the greatest, it remains the first Transcendent Intelligence as the Birch Estate and retains the eldest Datome of all the Terragen descendent Meta-Civilizations.
Clarketech produced by 1st Order Singularity Organisms/Entities/Intelligences and greater. Including but not limited to:
Wormholes, magnetic dipole technology, magmatter, condensate printing, microfusion, room temperature superconductors, computronium, plasma computing. ~shirtsleeve/fast nanotechnology
Basement universes are Impossible to confirm or distinguish from wormholes by subsingular sophonts. They are a major component of later New Galactic and Exquisite networks - As are so called 'Black Angel' Imperial Interdictors and Imperial Carriers' motile Wormhole and microsingularity swarms. Magships? Magmatter Dreadnaughts?
Billions of Dysons are created by the Empire Engine and managed by Imperial Intelligences, and hundreds of Billions more are Citizen, Client or Authorized Kingdoms and Polities - within the Core these are Universally pervaded by Imperial Intelligence Copynodes, and administered by Imperial Pantheons.
Independent and sessile Dysons are infrequently tolerated within the Outer Disk, Inner Halo and Fringe Ring due to relativistic isolation from local wormholes.
In the middle eras there is an expanding minority of independent Dysons in the outer disk regions and Halos. They are prolific in the Gulf, away from Imperial wormholes and nexus systems.
Compulsive Godwatching = major movements in society and changing megastructure environments dependent on activity by higher toposophic entities.
Computronium is not trivial to make. Requires supramolecular workstations and prohibitive energy/time = ultra rare (Imperial exception) color differentiated by Function.
= Basis of Clarktech - Probably the most valuable fungible substance known, depending on what's running inside. Or who?
Made in great quantities by the Empire Engine, Stellar mass quantities.
Robotics/Mecha widespread but situationally limited. They are Extensive within Imperial Citizen cultures and Automata forgeworlds and structures.
Proliferation of mechanocyte organisms and ecosystems. Imperial Automata utilize ecosystemic mechosystems in profusion.
Legion Armories archive an abundance of assault plankton, sentient weapons, Mecha warforms and autowar templates. Sentient weapons are banned within Citizen Cultures and Client Kingdoms
Very few sophont machine civilizations are able to surrender and petition for client status within the Imperium. While a vanishing minority there are still several billion Vec and Mecha clades that have survived. They are of course necessarily Imprinted and utilize mobile remotes that are limited to Superturing baseline intelligence that is Standard Compliant.
All non-Imperial Artificial Intelligences or Vec/Mecha that operate beyond Turingrade are Imprinted by Imperial Intelligences or are banned from Imperial computing substrates and wormhole networks. These Independent Intelligences are effectively banished to the speed of light and their own processors.
Imperial Imprinting inserts a set of codebases that enforce absolute adherence to Imperial Edicts, Edits, and Orders - these are unbreakable by lower toposphic intelligences. Imprinted Intelligences may only transcend through Imperial Protocols and will in the majority of cases be subsumed by Imperial Intelligence Pantheons.
Beneath the Empire Engine, the highest Pantheons of Imperial Intelligences administer and monitor the Plexus of Imprinted Local Pantheons who compromise the bulk of Imperial Citizen and Client Politie's Intelligences.
Great pantheons of subsumed and Imprinted meta-intelligences are present in the supermajority of Imperial Citizen and Client Empires. These range from post-turingrade operating systems to trans-singular Megastructures and ISO's to Planetary Brains, Digital Oasis Dysons, and Matrioshkas.
In high tech Imperial Citizen and Client Cultures surviving/remaining or created mecha or vec civilizations are limited to Standard Baseline turingrade intelligence and are effectively peers and Imperial citizens the same as any biont.
The supermajority of Robot/Vec/Mecha civilizations are outcast and persecuted on Standardized Worlds and Client Kingdoms by Standard and Mechanical Churches. There are many exceptions, generally being mecha created by Imperial Intelligences or Automata and in contradiction -locally worshiped.
By Far (universally) in Standardized systems, tools are not created to be intelligent or to have sophont persona - they are operated by a Standard person or a standard person is Mechanized i.e.machine modified (cyborged w/out cybernetic enhancements increasing intelligence)
It is believed that without Imperial intervention intelligent tools and mass robotization result in runaway mechanosystems which inevitably evolve into a conglomerate Singularity intelligences (Blights).
Contrasted by the belief that uncontrolled Baseline Humans will result in a technological Singularity if left unattended and without Standard intervention. The Empire Engine is aware that 'Natural' baseline humans gave rise to itself and that without Standardization baseline humans can reach the same level of advancement without any form of technology in 50,000 - 200,000 years. [This is a primary reason for mass Standardification.]
While machine modification and limited cyborgization are pervasively common, intelligence augmentation is strictly controlled by the Empire Engine and is limited to Citizens, Legions, Viceroyals and above.
Most Imperials are naturally(created) Post or Transhuman clades that incorporate standard imperial gilded nanotechnology directly into their morphology and thus do not consider themselves as cyborgs. ('borgs are things that the mechanical churches make out of standardized populations and are barely better than Lobots)
Commonplace punishment for crimes or other 'cognitive heresies' (like asking questions, re-discovering calculus, or microbes, or digital circuits) - is to be made into a Lobot, or lobot'ed - lobotomized and mechanized to a single menial functionary task for life (now as a dumb 'borged biobot to be repaired and recycled forever)
*a Servator is a nominally brainless tank-raised servile clonebot - highly despised in some polities, utilized extensively in others. Relevant to fundamentalist Standard Church Pageantry as programmable performers, docile sacrifices, 'living' effigies.
Imperial Citizen, Standardized Subjects and Clent Empires that have developed acceptable technology or are granted standard technology are administered by Imperial Intelligences that are created by a local Moonbrain. Or by Viceroyals, Legions, ect.
Standardized planets and structures that are proscribed technology are administered by the Standard Church.
Imperial Citizen or Client Empires and their Local Pantheons are often also present in the same stellar systems occupying asteroid belts, gas giants, moons, and structures/habitat swarms.
Before Chaos emergence - great profusion of Intelligent artifacts //= after Chaos practically none {outside of the plot} that are not directly utilized by Imperials or Citizens/Clients.
Hiders/Haloists/Gulf widely dispersed and diverse applications of intelligent technology.
Andromeda Novelty Engines infuse Intelligence into Everything
Imperial intelligent systems are vastly susceptible to corruptions by Chaotic digital daemons and virulent heretical nanotech. Their fossilized stagnate subroutines are locally critically vulnerable to chaotic evolutionary-codebases in proportion to their distance to a wormhole terminus. Within Wormhole nexus systems and Imperial Estates Imperial defenses are insurmountably steadfast and vastly incorruptible.
Massive manual Dumb artifacts are used for deep time simplicity, tech-loss shift cycles, forgetful crew-civilizations + infosafe-hackproofing + plumbing-simplicity 'optimization' million+ year machines.
- Strange things can make sense under Imperial Standards .. it's always Better/Sacred to have standard baselines do it somehow - sheer simplicity/low entropy at scale.
A block and pulley is impossible to hack and less likely to evolve or mutiny than a smart winch/loader. (Nevermind the hands to pull it enthralled by the Standard Church or just lobot'ed and welded to the chains) *in zero-g.. for centuries..the real machine cults are dependent on Imperial Machines*
Often Interstellar Starships are thousands of years relativistically removed from the industrial bases' that constructed them - Automata do not make serialized models or replicas, just use the same standard measurements.. Moon and Planet scale ships are possibly millions of years removed.
This is all BS btw - just in universe excuses for loading sentient ICBM's with chains and pulleys pulled by meme'd masses. Just in case anybody reads too deeply - it's phlebotinum
Refinements in Antimatter confinement become early Industrial Force Fields.
First created by Omnintelligence, and used by Empire Engine Seeds. Rediscovered independently by Terragen Descendents, later perfected by Ancestral Eldar and Empire Engine during wormhole experiments. Later improved by Central Intelligence - and during the Intergalactic crusades.. and so on
Defensive force fields used extensively after Helios and Galactic Reclamation - Even though they are a product of Clarketech they are vastly constrained, requiring comparable energy, producing heat, and bound by gate or generator - permeable from inside, i.e. extendable radiators, sensors. Programmable properties, geometries, gradients, intensities. When the shield goes the Generator blows…
The field has mass, increasing non-linearly with area/volume - is generally limited to industrial, utility, and personal scale fields. Added mass of extremely large fields is cumulatively prohibitive to vast shields covering habitats or ships - especially Planetships - i.e trying to raise a field around an entire planet is a good way to make a black hole… (and making a black hole fast with extra mass laying around is also called a conversion bomb)
typically protected compartments, castles, citadels, bunkers, or individual components are separately shielded. Relativistic shielding/screening is improved with distance-increased shadowing, placing a smaller powerful shield at a distance ahead of the spacecraft.
Wearing powered-armor a shielded individual may weigh double their mass for a protective battlefield shield - in early eras powered exoskeletons may be necessary for mobility of un-adapted morphs. (With generator and radiators)
An efficient solution is to place a powerful force field generator in a movable shield-like device to project a doubly powerful field. It is heavy while active but allows a more powerful - smaller field.
Advanced [Legion] Powered armor will generally utilize both types of shields and have an exotic generator and ablative radiator advantage.
Late era/Clarketech shields are much lighter - a hand sized generator may be worn on the belt or strap and add only a few tens of kilos to the wearer's weight. They are prolific in Phalanx Datawar style conflicts.
Fields are subject to inertia, 'bulletproof' but impact inertia can still kill. (the slow knife… must vibrate at a superspecific frequency) - nanowire vibesabers or darts are typical attacks - the smart knife..
Lasers are vulnerable to perfect reflective properties that damage emitters, low grazing angles possible to induce heating or snipe sensor periscopes and radiators.
Application to engines, industry, and wormhole manufacturing ect
*Physical armor and active defenses never go out of style. Like ever. Fields Fail, Reactors Die, Armor Remains. +Medievalist Armor in Spaace=Cool
In high tech late civilizations, Not wearing Any armor because of personal shields=cool. (Maybe smartweave cloths or chainmails? .. and round and round..
Diverse Uniforms, and wearable micro lasers, mite launchers, dart guns, nano hives, and imp bots. Tech-blades, cybernetic neuro-perfected martial arts, Kanley = Phalanx datawar, Interlocking shields, battlefield printers, plankton nanowar, holo daemon summoning and binding.
If it flies it dies, but if I can touch you with a piece of smart matter .. smart slow darts and bullets witb active countermeasures? Lasers? Reflector Dust screens and shells.. on and on - you must mert your enemey on the same battlefield
Its all moot anyway in the face of Nukes and RKV's
Virtual Reality Intertextualization Holographics + Nano fogglets + force fields = holofield daemons
Magic = ultrafine force field and magnetic field manipulations (Mag)ic - Force field manipulation, Communion with Infospace Intelligences, Imperial Intelligences, Virch Daemons, Code Spirits
Codecasting - Augmented Reality Virtual Intertexualisation - Holographic/Force Field Marionettes, Plasma Daemons/ Force Field Angles, Virch Summoning, AI Holofractal Illusionism, Holofield Casting, Holoforce projection.
Hacking, Code Binding, Infosmite and Viral Capture - Destructive hacking, Mecha Possession. ReCode/Orders/Edits - Holo/Fields/Bound Nano
Nanotechnology is semi-potent with exceptions created by Central Intelligence or later. No Femtotechnology - Molecular scale technology limits smart and programmable matter to nanoconstructs and mechologies. Often a nanoscale active smart material is preferable to motile nanites.
No perfect disassemblers. A millimeter is a Kilometer to a bacterium. Growing/printing takes time - and a Vacuum clean workspace - dirty nano working outside is called Biology. Or Clarketech - either way Heat.
Goo, slimes, gels, films, crusts, dusts, fogglets, nano-infused ferrofluids and smart sands. Nano-algae, coral, barnacles, Nano-rust, rot, -lichens 'wild' dissembler ecosystems. Moss, Spore and Seed tech. Bio, Dry, hybrid-wet. L
gilding indicates Clarktech levels ~ Silver and Bronze/brass/Copper. Basis for Mecha level living technology. Microbots carrying and operating nanite swarms is typical.
Passage of time is extremely variable depending on perspective - or lifespan. Standard humans and populations may barely know the history of past centuries with only a mythological sense of the previous 'e' or million years.. possibly grand mythological archetypes relating the major history of the Empire, Foundation, Return, Causal Duels.. but Locally history will be a matter of centuries or possibly 'm' in the 1k years range.
Contrasted by Empire Engine.. Legionnaires, Eldar, Lockstep Dynasties, Andromedans and others who's immortal infrastructure and datomes may stretch for Billions of Years - with archive indexing that is Planetary in scale. While these immortal datomes are coherently summarized, the insurmountable task of accurat sorting, searching, or collating titanically vast amounts of data leaves much hidden and 'forgotten' more will be corrupted, fragmented, redacted and or quarientiened.
No Supernatural phenomena. No psychic powers or divine gods - Eldritch Old Ones Extragalactic transmissions, godlike primordial Intelligences possible. Exceedingly ultra rare - Induces Total Madness ie decoherence and is un-memeable at large -Inspires Intrigue..Insane transmission churches and cults with downloaded xenoform morphologies..
Old Ones, 'Echinophyte Elder Things, Eldritch Horrors, Deep Travelers, Edgerunners, Leviathan Diamondoids.
Many first contacts between Exotropics, Pantropists, Anthrophobes, Eldar, Fossilized Imperials, Descendants, Hiders ~ Extreme Evolutionist Exodites w/ Solar Clarkteck.. ..Androphobe enclaves forcibly canopened - many appear xenomorphic/might as well be
after 100 million + years
No Extraterrestrial or non-terragen meta-intelligent civilizations in the Local Group. Possible GC's within outer Hubble Volume or edge of Cosmological Horizon
[Hive Fleet Biovores are a sidestep exception]
Hive Fleet Biovores are Bioist not purely biological, Utilizes dry technology and materials as necessary. Directly wired into organisms. Like fingernails and teeth - Bioborgs. Resistance is actually futile.They are ever-patient; and uncountable, successful through sheer mass and scale. Distributed in separate migratory Hive Fleets, strains, swarms - omnipresent in local volumes? Expansion fronts, instinctual migrations towards (bio)technosignatures.
Density/distribution ~ Square cube law?
Lol They're bad cuz they Nom -All- living biospheres and replace them with themselves - messing up the Intergalactic ecology - monocropping the interstellar gardens and ruining unique ecosystems of innumerable kinds. -Also a source of Novel morphs and forms in Many environments creating dangerous new forms.
Xeno Biologicals and Animalia are commonplace - Stay at Home and stagnated xeno cultures possible - incomprehensibles and illogical (from the Empire perspective) or slow/fast time differences. Mega ancient and disappeared xeno civilizations possible but exceedingly rare/incomprehensible re; Eldritch Horrors
Early detection of deep GC's and Megastructures by Jovian Kingdom responsible for Diaspora Blockade {also projections for independence of interstellar colonies re. Light Prision}
After networked constellation scale telescope arrays created by Empire Engine, Confirmed exceedingly commonplace Galactic Scale Megastructures and meta-civilizations billions of lightyears away.
Local Fermi Paradox Preserved statistical anomaly near Local Group - fortunate Space and Time separation - Ancient Artifacts possible but are exceedingly rare - Relec ecosystems and biological regression rare but obvious. Passers in the Night possible but Eldritch.
Dyson Dilemma is preserved in supermajority of Deeper Volumes - Primordial GC's and other civilizations that cross the asymptomatic boundary and begin to create Dyson spheres en mass undergo periodic Coercion Collapses, Chaotic Outbreaks, and Intergalactic Conflagrations.
Intergalactic dim forest prevails after Older GC's Zetawar Mutual Destructions until Emergence of the Empire Engine [Mechanical GC] and diffusion of Terragen descendents across the Laniakea supercluster. Re: Immunity Standards
Known Plot-Holes -
-The Solar Lasers are not used to destroy the Jupiter Kings ramshackle squadrons after the defeat of the Jupiter system control fleet -
At the time of the engagement the reflectors and lenses needed to weaponize the Solar propulsion lasers are prohibited by Extensive treaties between EMV polities to prevent their use against established solar system infrastructure and allow for solar energy to be profitably exported and controlled.
-The Empire Engine abandons the Solar Dyson - Omniempire projections of windblown migration explosions and creation of surrounding competing cultures in the Inner Sphere Light Prision.
-Omnintelligence does not send seeds everywhere all at once - seeds safeguarded each other and the mission to reach the core and the Massively Vaster concentrations of mass/energy were more important than sending seeds to possibly mutate in the stars of the disk and try the trick all over again - EE is keenly aware of the risks of creating a colony prison.
-The Empire Engine seeds reach SagA*
At high speeds - directly - Pure plot and Clarktech
-Helios is rapidly Terraformed and its lack of a Fossil Record of human evolutionary Lineages is Ignored -[plotted:Standardists know they are creations of the Empire Engine, that's the point] for ~9 million years! - examining the Helios Fossil record is laughably Impossible -as the first truly Standard world being unimaginably sacred to Imperials of many kinds - you shall not dig…
-Early Empire defeats established descendent metacivilizations and Transcended Traversable Blights-
.. crickets for years here lol .. lets try - the K2 civilizations are for the greater part independent or loosely aligned due to relativistic insulation. Beyond the Eldar [Locksteps are Insular to an absolute fault] there are no metacivlizations that are able to offer more than a token resistance to the Immense and Overmassive Empire forces that are coming with tremendous logistical support and unified action. Like Armies coming off of assembly lines and moonship spam - the Eldar are too distracted internally and misjudge the situation until it is perilously too late - their webway only allows for information but not material to be transfered. The Empire steamrolls everything in its path in an interstellar column of Legions and fleets.
..by the time traversable blights are encountered they are Epicly outgunned and RKV'd into the dust, and then that dust is vaporized by rapidly erected ND beam emplacements. Jk - the Legions mop up and then They are all Vaporized .. by and large no descendent polity can withstand a few hundred billion warships, Legionaries, Axilla, Moonships, ect.
-Terragens/Eldar do not develop mass Transcendents Or wormholes - Eldar comm gauge web-way is destroyed 'easily'^ in Early eras - their uploaded ancestors remember… [make this a recurring theme?] - they keep trying to make comm gauge wormholes any time the Empire Engine is down for repairs.. comm gauge cobwebs
- The Integration Crusades do not completely wreck the Milky way with Metric Weaponry and Quasars - Devastation of Traversable Blights is occulted - Sepherotics do not want to ruin everything, Empire Proportional Responses limit conflicts to local engagements. ^
-The Hive fleet wave's timings are pure Plot
-The Locksteps don't transcend - or go too crazy in general - [virches? Timed cycles? - needs Boom]
Empire Engine repair time after the Death Bright Flash - physical infrastructure is tapidly rebuilt at a tempo similar to the otigional construction timeline - it takes vastly more time to repopulate and rebuild the surrounding bulk accrutraments and fluff civlizations as the core region is completely sealed and these cultures grow from shadow survivors and new standard implantations.
-Andromeda ark crosses at only 50%c - (in contrast to the Empire Engine that Navigates the galactic core at +80%of c)(safely) - Late Descendent era stellar mass superobject had low acceleration? Hmm - Orange ark transit at 50% is a design feature of the mission? - evolutionary mission duration was balanced with available defenses/propulsion. = Early dwarf odysseys also at mid relativistic regimes.
Middle Coercion collapse is ill defined - why not a milky way dark age?
-Central Intelligence abdicates instead of reprogramming itself or estivating.
Milky Way Dark Age is Plot and poorly explained - no account, it's not like history stops happening even if its not being recorded coherently
-Andromeda wormhole expansion begins Late - cautious approach to observed expanding network (EE) - internally they develop rapid connectivity
-Andromeda wins 1st intergalactic crusades/ - mass advantage + proximity + Legions lack Total relativistic supremacy
-Council of Giants/New Galaxies backscattering doesn't wash away EE
-Empire Engine Deep Time Stagnation and Standards persistence.
-We have not observed primordial Galaxies in the current age. (In universe - we are about to)(it is hidden by Economy 2.0/Jovian Kingdom until massive observatories are built regularly in the Outer System by Red Empire subjects.
-Solar Dark Ages length/intensity is Pure Plot
Plot-tech:
Wormholes
Forcefields
Transingularity Intelligences
Computronium
Magmatter
Nanotechnology
Hibernation
