Into that Vast and Unrelenting Darkness (40K Xeno Civilization Quest)

The Bird · Feb 23, 2023

In the Grim Darkness of the Future, there is only death. A vast empire of corpses led by fanatics and madmen wage eternal holy genocide against their foes, defined as those who diverge from their doctrinal teachings and any and all species outside their own, a slowly dying shell seeking to bring down as many of its foes in flame before it perishes. The remnants of a once great and terrible people ply the void in their worldships, desperately clinging to survival as they attempt to thread the ever shrinking needle. Hordes of barbarous, green giants engineered as weapons in a primeavil war in heaven rampage in an infinite war against everything, everywhere, even as their old foe from that war arise from their crypts and their tombs, cold, mechanical curses against life itself. Even the realm of the soul sits ill at ease, dominated by laughing blind idiot gods and their legions of wrathful gibbering horrors, both mortal and otherwise, engaged in horrific parodies of reality. And yet all of this may even pale before the cold, endless hunger of the infinite void and the chittering and skittering claws of the great and magnificent devourer from beyond the known horizon of the stars.

But you don't know any of that. Your species is new, freshly ascendant to the stars. Naive to the scope and terror that awaits them even as they march into that inky, all enveloping darkness.

Who are you?

[ ] Korgum'ai: Simian in appearance, the Korgum'ai resemble, at first glance, ancient extinct earth primates such as the Gorilla, were it not for the extra set of eyes located on the sides of their head. The resemblance is only skin deep, however: the Korgum'ai biology is far more robust than any mundane primate, the result of millennia of evolution on their relatively harsh homeworld causing all manner of internal adaptation to help them survive: it is said that the Korgum'ai invented the head transplant before they invented the wheel, though obviously such an assertion is ludicrous.
The Korgum'ai start with high Expansion Points, allowing them to rapidly develop worlds and expand their territory.
Start with the following technologies and traditions:
Universal Transplants: A trait of the Korgum'ai is that their bodies are biological plug and play machines: any lost limb or organ can easily be replaced using the organs or limbs of a different Korgum'ai. In some cases, it doesn't even require being the same organ or limb: in the early days of Korgum'ai medicine, it was not unusual for more amateur surgeons to accidentally put a heart where a liver goes, and a common joke among the Korgum'ai is that of someone going in for surgery to replace a lost arm only to wind up with a third leg.
Eldest: There are those among your people who are blessed (or perhaps cursed) with freedom from age, another quirk of your species hyperrobust physiology. Such a condition usually occurs late in your species lifecycle; the result, an eternal octogenarian. With time, these Eldest tend to accrue vast amounts of experience and wisdom, though few opt to remain part of civilization.

[ ] Syhghkk: The ghrjakii are an extremely alien race as exemplified by their name, which is genuinely untranslatable into verbal or written mediums. Resembling massive, overgrown brains, the hgjdlsakl communicate primarily through a form of short range telepathy. Having evolved in the waters of their world, the SKKKKKG move in their native environment via a trio of flexible prehensile spinal columns that, while strong, are unsuitable for locomotion on dry land. To this end, the gghsjkhajk have long since developed a variety of powered exoskeletons to enable them to operate on dry land. These spiderlike mechanical contraptions do little to make the giant pulsing cerebral masses housed within look less unnerving.
The Afioldo start with high Culture Points, allowing them to rapidly develop social policies and traditions to help deal with problems as they arise.
Start with the following technologies and traditions:
Universal Powered Exoskeletons: Originally developed by the b bbbhgb to allow them to colonize the dry land of their world, the sheer convenience of these machines (typically quadrupedal in design with accompanying precision graspers) for everyday life has caused widespread adoption among your society, even for those who still inhabit the seas. After all, as deft and strong as your spines might be, they would never be as deft or as strong as a solid titanium claw.
The Language of Ideas: Your species was a rare example of every single member being minor telepaths. From birth in the spawning pools to the cessation of life in the Death-creches, the yllragf communicate only through the mind, eschewing a language of symbols and noise for one of serene concepts. This makes it extremely frustrating to communicate with your species, but it also means that conventional espionage is impossible.

[ ] TEKKET: Diminutive furred mammalian creatures with a somewhat elongated, mustelid body, the Tekket evolved on what can only be described as an abandoned garbage planet created by some (hopefully) distant empire millennia in the past. From the scraps of this empire the Tekket developed their knowledge and culture, learning from abandoned data slates and discarded tomes of powerful spirits of machinery, over the centuries developing rites and rituals to allow themselves a degree of influence over these spirits, most commonly in the form of Tekketi Bond-Drones, mechanical companions designed to help the Tekket fight against the many, many, many, MANY leftover deranged automata left by whoever owned the world before.
The Tekket start with high Faith Points, allowing them to develop their spiritual practices and knowledge quickly.
Start with the following technologies and traditions:
Machine Spirits: Discovered via ancient texts from long gone precursors, the Tekket have a healthy reverence for machine spirits, viewing them as invisible partners and allies. So long as the vessel is maintained and proper respect is given, the Tekket find the spirits of their technology extremely reliable, with a handful of rites and rituals existing in order to allow the Tekket to commune with the ghosts in the machine.
Bond-Drone Technology: Some machine spirits are particularly lively and strong, given power through generations of veneration, extreme age, or, in rare cases, through the love and care of their owner. These awoken machine spirits are typically given new vessels to inhabit, thus birthing Bond-Drones, ensouled, somewhat intelligent automata that serve as warrior, protector, and even family.

Your history wasn't peaceful. No species' was: it was a litany of violence, political strife, warfare, and disaster, punctuated by the occasional period of peace as your technology and traditions evolved and morphed. Perhaps in time you would have still ascended towards the stars, developing past the foibels of your society naturally and peacefully.

Instead, your species was subjected to a trial by fire, nearly strangled in the crib by enemies you could barely comprehend.

What menace threatened you?

[ ] The Destroyers: They came with advanced technology centuries above yours. The first sign that they were approaching was the various deep space scanning installations picking up something massive approaching from the edge of your solar system. You had, initially, attempted to contact them peacefully, hoping you had found a peer of sorts from among the stars. This hope died when they landed and began an extermination. Silent and black clad, the Destroyers refused to communicate, had no capacity for mercy or empathy, and a complete disregard for their own life. The resulting war between you and them resulted in over 30% of your species dying, and to this day served as a grim warning about what lie beyond the stars.
Start with the War Against Extinction tradition, moderately increasing the effectiveness of your armed forces against superior opponents and allowing you to create Extinction Fleets, which trade a moderate amount of survivability for greatly increased damage: when doomsday approaches, Extinction Fleets will gladly fight to the death to ensure your people live even one more day.
Gain a free piece of technology derived from the Destroyer War.

[ ] Enemy Unknown: It had started with a meteor crashing in the desert. At first, your people didn't realize what was happening: over the course of decades it spread and wormed its way into your society. An alien infection that caused those who had it to become subservient to an unknown, alien power. The transmission vector? Monsters, terrible and cunning, that fathered all manner of alien hybrid to further their subversion. When your people had realized what was happening, it was almost too late. To fight against this alien menace, a multinational organization was created. The war was long and brutal, with the aliens developing and fielding all manner of obscene and inhumane bio-technology and genetically modified warbeasts. To fight them, the organization developed all manner of advanced technology, culminating in the Chimera Trooper project. To fight monsters, you made monsters of your own, turning the alien technology against them and creating your own loyal, stable form of hybrid capable of fighting even the Progenitor Beasts on even terms.
Start with the Chimera Trooper technology, providing an extremely powerful ground unit created by studying Genestealer biology that can be upgraded to incorporate a variety of genetics and biotech. Sometimes, to beat a monster, you need a few monsters of your own.
Gain a free piece of technology derived from Tyranid Biology.

[ ] The Green: It had started with a massive, MASSIVE structure emerging from seeminly nowhere. Your scientists and your students initially studied the hulking mass from afar, and after your first moon mission, it became a goal of your people to explore the massive alien structure. This...ended poorly. Your boarding party was butchered by the crafts native populace, a species of fungal giants, who had responded by stealing your vessel and crashing it on your planet. The resulting war was as horrific as it was absurd, having successfully stalled cultural and scientific development for over three centuries as your species desperately tried to keep its head above the rising fungal tide. The only positive was that Orkoidal Ecosystems were extremely nutrient rich.
Start with the Squig Farmer tradition, providing improved agricultural output on any world with an Ork presence. The more Orks, the more squigs, the more food. Gross, but it actually made feral Ork colonies actually valuable.
Gain one piece of Ork related technology.

Your species had fought, and fought, and fought and fought and fought: the armies of your kind assembled in great throngs, armed with the most advanced weapons and tools you could bring to bear, creating a magnificent engine of war. But it hadn't been enough. This threat from beyond the stars, it was too much, and piece by piece you lost ground...

Until something was discovered. Something powerful.

What boon did your people find, in those darkened halls?

[ ] The God Machines: Your people didn't know who had created the God Machines, or even if they had been created at all. These absurdly powerful beings born of living metal were uncovered beneath the sands of the desert in your peoples greatest time of need. You still don't know why they helped you, but their control over technology and matter was sufficient enough to turn the tide: as devestating as the invaders were, they were mere mortals standing before autocthonian dieties. The battle wasn't close at all. After, the God Machines largely went into dormancy, leaving only three active: MOTHER, Sphere 001, and YALDABOATH. Capricious and strange, you have no real control over them and extremely little ability to predict their actions, but when they do act in your favor, the result...Well, the results speak for themselves.
Start with three God-Machines active in your empire. You do not control them or command them and they don't always act in ways that have any tangible purpose or goal, but they seem to have a great deal of affection for your species: handy, considering the sheer, raw power and control they exerted.
Start with Living Metal technology.

[ ] Power Gems: A cache of ancient, esoteric knowledge and treasure, found deep within the mountains. Throughout, strange, pale stones, containing incredibly supernatural power. The original gems, the Holy Set, are held in secret in a location known to a select few, but at the height of your war it was the original set that allowed you to turn the tide of battle: combined with the sorcerous rites developed, your mystics had brought down holy hellfire on your foes. Your artisans have long since learned how to create lesser, flawed copies of the power gems, though gruesomely they seem to grow stronger the more death they're surrounded with.
Start with Power Gems, a powerful warp-based technology that can be used to greatly augment and strengthen your psykers and sorcerers that grow steadily stronger the more your people die.
Gain one Cthonic Rite.

[ ] Beast Spirits: Your Shaman and Wisemen knew well that there existed predators in the dark waters of the sea of souls. However, not every entity from that realm was malevolent: there also existed benign or even beneficial spirits that one could invoke if the correct rite was performed. Thus was summoned the Beast Spirits, nature daemons that were used to turn the tide of battle and save your people.
Start with the Summon Beast Spirit rite, allowing you to conjure (mostly) benevolent nature guardians.
Gain one Animism Rite.

The Bird · Feb 23, 2023

Medals of Honor:

Jim Kirk Medal of Excellence: Awarded for managing to successfully capture the essence of a Star Fleet captain and taking risks in order to save the day. Awarded during The Return when you successfully managed to defeat both Chaos and the Imperium and save an Exodite World. It resembles a piece of silver in the shape of a starfleet insignia, with a few phaser burns marking its history.

Gary Mitchell Medal for Adventures in Strange Energy: Awarded for using strange energy or a suitable equivalent to create a major diety (and surviving). Awarded after creating Dhia'Albain. It hums with strange energy.

Captain Sisko Medal for Antidivine Pugilism: Awarded for successfully suckerpunching a god, reality warper, or similiar entity. Awarded during the Galactic Giften-Nacht for successfully pranking Tzeench with automatic knuckledusters-in-a-box.

Badges of Dishonor:

Philip J Fry Medal for Temporal Irresponsibility: Awarded for successfully causing a disaster recklessly through temporal meddling done carelessly. Awarded by creating The Seed and polluting the timeline with dark magic. It smells strangely like canned fish and slug-flavored soda.

The Bird · Feb 24, 2023

"Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception."

"We had been naive then. We looked to the skies in wonder and hope, thinking the stars full of wonder and hope. The Destroyers taught us better: under their deathly march, we learned what actually lie in the void. Death. Annihilation at the hands of enemies far beyond us. As their titanic, darkly carapaced forms swept across the world like a black tide of death, we struggled, fighting our oncoming extinction at the hands of the invaders.

We are no longer naive. We know that vast powers exist in the void, and that some of them mean us harm. I pray that next time, we will be prepared.

The God Machines saved us once from the Destroyers. May they not have to do so again."

V U L K A N

A name that would haunt the nightmares of your race. The ship that had bore the invaders had emerged from the edge of your solar system, emerging as if out of nowhere from the direction of the Sky-Storm your people knew as the Malket Configuration. One moment, nothing on the deep space monitors employed by your people, then suddenly a giant mass is screaming through space.

Your communications technology had been as crude as your space exploration technology, which had made trying to communicate with the vessel difficult. You honestly might not have bothered, however, for all it accomplished: your understanding of the destroyers language had been meager then, but all attempts at communication after had ended the same way. Rebuffed silence. Perhaps an exhortation of death or a litany about how eager they were to exterminate you.

Whatever transmissions they might have sent at that time would have likely been more of the same.

When their ship eventually crash landed, it impacted one of your larger metropoles, reducing it to cinders. As horrific as this was, historians believe that this is the only reason you weren't completely annihilated: the crash had likely been accidental, the result of some systems malfunction or pre-existing damage ensuring they couldn't land properly or assume control over the planetary orbit.

To those few survivors of the initial event, this is little solace, as their home was reduced to burning wreckage. Those who remember the event clearly say it was the smell of cooking flesh they recall most vividly, the scent of their crushed peers being swallowed by the wave of fire that had begun to swallow the city.

Then emerged the Destroyers from the ruins of their damaged ship. Several hundred in number, several hundred hulking giants in black and green armor, the sigil of a a hammer and flame on their pauldrons, wielding flame and death. Soldiers. Emergency workers attempting to rescue people. Fleeing civilians. Even kits weren't spared, the young of your species brutally murdered by the invaders.

Within a short scant few hours, the city was considered seized. And so began the Destroyer War. Your governments had been disunited at the time, unable to muster a coordinated response. By the time the government that had controlled that particular metropole had realized what was going on, there were reports of strike teams across the nation hitting major military installations.

Your weapons, simple ballistics at the time, had done nothing to the armor of the invaders. Your tanks could barely stagger them, and your firearms were like mere childrens toys: meanwhile, the Destroyers could rend metal with their bare hands, could outrun even the fastest Tekketi, and had weapons that were capable of reducing your mightiest fortifications to melted slag. And even as the Destroyers did their bloody work, their subordinates, the Servile Ones and the Red Priests, surged out.

The Servile Ones acted as the Destroyers hands, a surging, genocidal wall, lesser in stature and strength but far, far greater in number. Armed with durable armor composed of materials centuries more advanced than what you could produce and weapons of burning, focused light, they crushed the armies of the nation they had landed on, taking and holding territory and establishing it as their base of operations. Any Tekket in occupied zones would find themselves subjected to, if they were lucky, immediate mass execution. The unlucky would be forced to labour in the camps, or worse, given to the Red Priests.

Even to this day, you don't know how many Tekket the Red Priests ripped apart in their cruel attempts to learn your races weaknesses, how many they poisoned or blighted testing novel toxins and bioweapons to exterminate you more efficiently, how many they tortured to pry your secrets from: military installations, troop movements, technical specifications, nuclear codes. When the laboratories of the Red Priests were stormed, the scientifically inclined servants of the Destroyers opted to destroy as many records as they could.

The nation they had landed in had only lasted a short while before it finally collapsed: stolen nuclear devices being launched. Millions were vaporized across the globe. In the ashes, the Destroyers butchery accelerated, taking advantage of the chaos and dissarray. By the time what was left of your species governments finally organized itself against them it was too late.

Your laboratories churned away at weapons technology. Your workshops built tanks and guns, as many as possible. Your engineers designed new and novel tools. All for the faint and fleeting hope that it would save your species even a single day longer.

In what ways did your technology develop? This will determine technological aesthetic.

[ ] BlokTek: Originally, Blok had been a brand of childrens toys. Miniature plastic bricks and figurines that you could snap together to make diaoramas. However, even at their height they had produced a number of highly modular robotics products, mostly educational play-sets for more scientifically inclined kits. When the Destroyer War started, their research assets had immediately been seized and used to develop BlokTek. Highly miniaturized, modular technology that could easily be repurposed as needed: the same Bloks used to make a blok-gun could also make a microwave, could be used to repair a tank, upgrade an AA turret, give your Bond-Drone a better weapon...While this still left you at a disadvantage in terms of firepower initially, it meant your forces were extremely adaptable, being able to adjust tactics on the fly simply by figuring out potential alternate uses for your gear and equipment.
Aesthetic: Lego and MegaBlock technology: the vast majority of your devices consist of (typically brightly colored for civilians) magnetized ferroplastic regenerating bricks and blocks of assorted size and shape containing various plug and play circuitry and machinery. Larger machines might be comprised mostly of blocks several feet in diameter, while smaller machines and devices might use regular lego-style bricks. Bond-Drones generally resemble various lego animals: a good example of a poorer civilian Bond-Drone would be ToyAgumon, while a more advanced one might resemble Unikitty.

[ ] SaucerTek: Study of Destroyer Technology had led to a variety of advances in gravitics manipulation and energy generation, allowing for the development of Beam Guns, Jetpacks, Saucerships, tractorbeams. During the war, this technology had only been able to be fielded in limited amounts: deployed with extreme care because of its cost. Now, however, a number of these advancements were finally becoming available for common use: the sight of flying saucers in the sky a regular occurance all throughout your planets various metropoles.
Aesthetics: Rayguns, flying saucers, jetpacks, and tractor beams to abduct cattle. Think classic pop culture aliens of the 50's and their homages, from Mars Attacks to Destroy All Humans. Smooth, windowless metal, minimal detail. Disc shaped craft with no obvious windows. Thick, rubbery enviro-suits, typically with fishbowl helmets. And everywhere and anywhere, unnecessary fins. Analog consoles and computers covered in diodes and switches.

[ ] BoomTek: The only consistent way to take down a Destroyer was overwhelming firepower, and that was what you went with, developing larger and larger machines and heavier and heavier power generators and building bigger and bigger guns. That technological trend hadn't stopped when the Destroyer War did: nowadays a great deal of your infantry technology required light augmentation or gravity manipulation technology just to lift, let alone deal with the recoil. Still, it meant that a great deal of your technology was either very rugged, or very volatile.
Aesthetics: This is the Rocket Raccoon option: big guns, big vehicles, big machines, heavy, bulky, and powerfully industrial. What you lack in finesse you make up for by having a nuclear fusion reactor core installed in a number of things that probably don't need a fusion core installed, like your shotguns, your hover-truck, your microwave, your toaster...

It hadn't been enough. Even with your rapidly advancing technology, you lost engagement after engagement after engagement, with nation after nation falling as all you could do was slow down the approaching onslought. Then had come the discovery. A desert excavation project had breached a vault, deep below the scrap and sand, a relic from some ancient precursors.

Inside they found a tomb of black, living metal and unearthly green light. Inside the tomb they had found Gods.

Nobody knows why they decided to intervene once awoken, those titans of shifting, living steel and metal, but their wrath was devastating and immediate. A war that had lasted decades, and it ended in exactly 71 Hours as the Destroyers found their strongholds annihilated by blazing green plasma and the silent, skeletal guardians of the God Machines, equally inscrutable as their masters.

As quickly as they had arisen, the God Machines and their armies returned to their tombs, leaving only three of their number awake: MOTHER, a shifting serpent of liquid mercury, SPHERE 001, a featureless, hovering orb the size of a city, and YALDABOATH, resembling a titanic, crowned version of his lesser servants. Each of them toiling to very thoroughly erase the invaders from the face of your world, or else serving to protect your kin from the depredations of what few remnants of the Invaders still lurked.

It would have been easy for them to assume control over your people, and yet they didn't: instead, they separated, undertaking strange toils throughout the land. Of the three, MOTHER was the easiest to communicate with, having a strange maternal affection for your species, frequently taking young, driven Tekketi as favorites. Sphere 001 and YALDABOATH would prove far more enigmatic, the former descending below the waves and only communicating rarely to express specific requests, such as technological samples, raw materials, or biological specimens of note. YALDABOATH meanwhile would create a lonely workshop, high in the mountains, where the God Machine toils to create forbidden and hidden works.

In the wake of the invasion, your people were rudderless: having spent so much time fighting alien invaders had united them in desperation, yes, but the decades and decades of war and death had served to annihilate most extant superpowers on your globe, and now the survivors, many of whom had grown from kits knowing little but terror and onslought, had to adapt to a new, changed world.

From this adaptation came new political systems, new ideas.

What social body would form from the embers of fallen nations? This vote decides your social aesthetic.

[ ] The Directorate: Initially starting as a shaky resource sharing agreement between the broken remnant of nations, over the decades the Directorate evolved into a true alliance of peoples. One governed by consensus, not monopoly of force, one dedicated to the virtues of egalitarianism, justice, peace, and progress, where all needs are met thanks to the advanced technologies granted by the God-Machines and concepts such as currency were mostly eliminated, policy decided by direct democracy, in a system where every citizens vote counted equally. Recognizing the potential that the Destroyers might return, the Directorate would pool its resources to create the Directorate Expeditionary Force, which would utilize the various technologies developed during the Destroyer War and after to create the first Tekketi space vessel: the Starship TKK Endeavor.
Social Aesthetic: Star Trek-ian utopianism. Your people don't use currency, technology is used for the benefit of all, and democracy and equality are your guiding civics. Pick this option if you want to have Ferret James T Kirk cruising around the galaxy solving problems and fighting space pirates.

[ ] The Sevenfold Ministry: The Ministry began life as a God-Machine cult, viewing them as holy guardians. Over time, it expanded and evolved into becoming the central governing body of the world, becoming a strange mix of bureaucracy and religion guided both by faith and statistics. Compulsory education, data based policy, and veneration of the machine spirits would become the backbone of this body politic, divided into seven individual ministries, each with their own particular theology and purpose, from the Ministry of Bread which handles the growth of food and feeding of the flock to the Ministry of Steel which trains warrior-monks tasked with protecting the innocent or the Ministry of Scrolls from which teachers and educators graduate.
Social Aesthetic: A lean into the religious aspects, but instead of taking from Space Catholicism and Dune-esque Mystery Cults, you take more from ancient Persia or China, blending theological doctrine with bureaucratic statistics and scholarly pursuit, faith backed not by blind zealotry but through rigorous study of the world and its systems.

[ ] The Freespace Accordiate: The Freespace Accordiate is closer to a limit on what governments are allowed to do than a government in an of itself. Anarchistic and chaotic, while resources and research are shared between Tekketi, governing bodies aren't. The only consistent rules, however, are the ones nobody is willing to break. No slavery. No casual use of WMD's. No martial actions taken against signatories of the Accord. Those who think the Freespacers are easy prey because of this are sorely mistaken, however, as seen what happens when the Accords are violated.
Social Aesthetic: Freespace Society trades central organization for a remarkable degree of freedom. Pick this if you want your society to be a rough and tumble alliance of a dozen different political groups and factions guided by common interest and a very loose legal framework that's more important for what it represents than any actual powers enumerated in it.

Lastly, select a bonus technology developed during the Destroyer War, either through study of Destroyer Technology or as a countermeasure to the Destroyers.

[ ] Crude Bionics: Autopsies of the Red Priests and Destroyers (and even a few Servile Ones) revealed that they had mutiliated a great deal of their body to install various cybernetic modifications. You had managed to develop slightly less invasive models that could replace basic functionality, such as lost eyes, limbs, organs, etc.

[ ] ShieldTek: A countermeasure developed to reduce the effectiveness of Destroyer Laser Weapons, ShieldTek generators could power energy barriers around fortifications, hardening positions against lasfire.

[ ] TekKnight: During the war, the Destroyers had deployed a handful of automata, none so dreaded as the Annihilator Engines, gigantic war-machines piloted by crippled Destroyers, capable of smashing through even the heaviest fortifications with ease. Your own TekKnights were deeply experimental, but they should serve as a decent countermeasure.

The Bird · Feb 25, 2023

[X] BlokTek
[X] The Directorate
[X] ShieldTek

"Space… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise, its continuing mission… to explore strange new words… to seek out new life and new civilizations… to boldly go where no man has gone before," -Captain Kirk, Star Trek, 1966.

The year, by your calendar, was 3170. Less than a century ago, your world, Teklia, was embroiled in the most horrific war it had ever known by an enemy you could not defeat conventionally, with billions dying over the course of decades against an enemy that had nothing but contempt for your species for the crime of merely existed. Less than 50 years ago, it finally ended, the invaders destroyed to the last by the God-Machines, three of whom still remain, leaving what remained of your people to pick up the pieces. Ten years ago, planetary reconstruction was declared complete: what cities remained rebuilt, and those that had been completely razed to the ground by the Destroyers carefully preserved to serve as a grim monument of those dark times.

Now? Now the Tekket Directorate was beginning its exploration into the stars. Using technology developed during the Destroyer War and Reconstruction, its expeditionary fleet had erected it's first Starship, the TKK Endeavor. It's mission? Explore the final frontier, starting with the Tekket home system.

______________________________________________________________________

The bridge of the Endeavor was brightly lit, circular, assembled from mostly white and black bloks, making its flooring resemble hard, plastic tiles. In the center, seated on a raised chair looking out the front window was its captain, Taavi, brown, bushy fur meticulously combed and gelled in order to render it mostly presentable, their body covered in an elastic green and black uniform with, on their breast their rank insignia, three vertical, silver bars, their paws steepled together as they stared out into that vast and unrelenting darkness with unblinking brown eyes.

"Commander Lehk, prepare engines for take off," He commanded to his chief engineer after pressing a button at the end of his armrest to open a Comm-Line to the engineering deck. "Commander Knypti," He said, eyes swivelling to his chief navigator. "Prepare to chart a course."

Seated below at the console, the navigator began pressing buttons on the console. "Aye aye, Kaptain," The navigator said, grinning. Like much of the 500 souls crewing the vessel on their maiden voyage, she was deeply exited for what was about to happen, something Taavi noted from the way her fur was standing at end and how her head and ears were sticking up straight in the air. "Where d'ya want to try heading? I hear the moons nice this time of year!"

Taavi let out a soft chuckle. "Why not get a little ambitious? This ship can explore the entire solar system, after all."

Tutorial: Fleet Actions

You are currently in possession of a single, warp driveless ship. Over time, you will no doubt assemble more, forming entire fleets capable of plying the void. Each group of ships can perform one action a turn. This can consist of movement, exploration, combat, anti-piracy operations, etc. For now, lacking a warp drive, you're limited to exploring your local system.

TKK Endeavor: The pinnacle of Tekketi engineering, the Endeavor is the first real space ship constructed in the aftermath of the Destroyer War, incorporating a variety of technologies to enable it to perform its mission. A hypermodular vessel build from grey dyed ferroplastic bloks, its design consists of a wide, flat disc connected via finned spine to two large nacelles. The majority of the crew and work decks are housed in the disc structure, alongside most civilian installations, wheras the Nacelles each contain sub-engineering decks, redundant systems, and storage. Lightly armed with only fusion torpedos and comm-jammers, the Endeavor is not intended to win a stand up fight: it's purpose is purely exploratory.

Available Actions:

[ ] Survey Luna: Well. It wasn't ambition, but it would be practical as a way of testing out the ships sensors. While some light exploration had been done before the Destroyer War, very little records of those expeditions remained intact, and while the years after had seen some shuttles sent to the lonely stone in the sky, none of them had had the technology of the Endeavor to enable a long term deep survey.

[ ] Survey Naklis: The planet closest to the sun, and Teklias closest neighbor. Deep space probes indicated it was mostly molten metal, with a thick, unbreathable and almost liquid atmosphere. A long term survey would be extremely enlightening in regards to planetary geology, and it would give you a good opportunity to test out your probes.

[ ] Survey Tacchis: In ancient Tekketi history, Tacchis was considered a dark omen by astrologers and mystics. These days, the iceball was mostly known for the massive amount of diamonds probes had found: the planet was mostly carbon and water. While gems had no material value since the abolition of currency outside their use in industry and decoration, the survey data would still be useful.

[ ] Survey Mongus: The largest gas giant in your system, Mongus has a green atmosphere, the result of several rare-teklia gases according to probe data. You wouldn't be able to do a ground exploration of the system: the atmospheric pressure would crush your strongest vehicle like aluminum. But you could certainly do atmospheric probes and expeditions.

[ ] Survey Meeklak: The second largest gas giant, but the one with the largest ring, Meeklak was too far for casual probe use, meaning it and its ring were largely unsurveyed.

[ ] Erichtheo: Named after an old goddess from Classical Myth, Erichtheo, a moon of Mongus, is believed to be the only planet in the solar system capable of supporting life. Icy and oceanic, exploration of Erichtheo has captured the minds of science fiction authors for generations: stepping foot on it would be...well, certainly monumental.

[ ] Spraa'ng: The furthest planet in your solar system, very little is known about Spraa'ng due to its absurd distance. You're unlikely to find anything interesting before requiring a return trip, but it would certainly be a good way to test your engines.

((()))

On the surface, far away, a Tekket engineer grunted as they tightened a loose bolt with their omniwrench, having to lean their whole weight onto the device in order to generate enough force for the wrench to turn, slowly rotating as the engineer exerted itself. When it stopped, the engineer stepped away, panting, wiping their face as they surveyed their work: a fully reassembled tractor erected from green and brown bloks.

"Next time that mudbrain breaks this thing, I swear to Blok..." she muttered, removing and holstering her omniwrench into her work-coveralls, before unclipping her datapad from her belt and bringing it to her face, eyes quickly skimming the blue, semi-holographic text for her next work-order. "Alrighty and the next job is..."

Local transit: they were retiring a grav-tram and wanted to use the parts to expand another, different, and newer tram made with better parts. Before that though, she noticed an alert. Pressing a fuzzy digit against the alert button, the holoscreen had its display switch to showing her local newsnet. A ballot had been called: some of the farms had had a surplus harvest and the question was where to donate it.

The Tekket rolled her eyes, and pressed an option at random, before holstering her data pad, grabbing her toolbox, and walking to the Tram Hub.

Tutorial: Actions

Expansion Actions govern growing your civilization and developing infrastructure. It and most other major action categories have a certain number of points allocated to it: spend these among said projects to pursue projects. Once a project has sufficient points, it completes. Simple enough, right? You can gain points in the various catagories via technology, policy, population growth, industrialization, etc.

Further, each action can cost a secondary resource. This can be nuclear materials, living metal, computational power, etc. If you lack the secondary resource in sufficient amounts, you cannot pursue a project.

EXPansion Points (EXP Points): 8
Nuclear Material (NK): 2

Teklia: Teklia, oh Teklia. The second planet from your star, and your homeworld. A variety of mostly hospitable climates of variable comfortability, it is covered in what can only be described as space garbage: the ecosystem has largely adapted to it and millenia of exploitation has done much to clear it away, but its undeniably a very garbage covered planet. Most of it is unfortunately decayed, making it only useful as scrap or melted down for raw materials.

Available Expansion Actions:

Autorecycler Plants: An idea proposed by a consortium of young Tekket engineers, a junk processing plant manned entirely by bond-drones and simple robots, meant to process the vast, vast quantities of ancient space junk on the planet in order to both clear space for further development as well as for use in construction: sure, it was a limited resource, but it could be used to kickstart more sustainable projects, and besides, you weren't liable to run out of garbage any time soon, yes? 0/5, generates more EXP, generates one Nuclear Material.

Orbital Shipyard: Currently, you had no real orbital shipyard of note. If you wanted to construct more ships, you should probably rectify that. The current plan was for it to be five miles: small, but it would allow for small vessels, probes, and easier maintenance of the Endeavor. 0/10, unlocks additional Orbital Actions.

~~Construct Endeavor Class Ship~~ Requires Orbital Shipyard.

Nuclear Stockpiles: It was a very distasteful idea: nuclear weapons were ultimately a remnant of a darker, more divided age, and they had been of limited effectiveness during the Destroyer War, but they were, at the moment, the only weapon you had that could hit hard enough to come even close to shaking their bunkers. Better to have them and not need them, you supposed. 0/1, Grants Nuclear Weapon Stockpile. Can be taken multiple times. Can be used as Shipscale Weaponry in the form of Nuclear Torpedos. Costs one Nuclear Material.

Data Processing Hubs: If there was something society would always need more of, it was data processing power. Directorate Academy especially needed it to run simulations and let the synthetic intelligences they use work at max capacity. Most processing outside said Academy was done at the TekHubs, massive constructions of GPU's and CPU's and servers and transmitters and receivers that did their work wirelessly and instantaneously. 0/5, generates extra ACaDemia Points, generates a point of Network (NT).

NukeTek: A much more palatable use of nuclear materials would be to meet the growing energy demands of your civilization by manufacturing some NukeTek facilities to process the materials into reactors and cores which would then be shipped across the planet. 0/3, generates EXP Points, costs one Nuclear Material.

Deep Space Monitors: One day, the Destroyers would return. It was a fear many, many of you held. To that end, some of you wanted to expand the deep space monitoring project in order to ensure that they would not take you by surprise. 0/2, repeatable, costs 1 Network. Each completion gives more robust deep space scanning.

((((()))))

Elsewhere, two opponents gazed at each other, fierce gares signalling their rivalry. Seated at a solid plastic table, in between them lie a battlefield in miniature: a holographic display of a map covered in orbs. One of the Tekket, dressed in an ornate, three pieced suit, with a small device afixed over their eye feeding them data, reached forward, grasping a orb in their fuzzy paw, causing a menu to open up.

Pressing a series of buttons, the Tekket leaned back, a smug grin on his face as the menu closed, his order sent, the orb shifting color, a clear signal that he had taken it. "And like that, your manufacturing hub is mine," He purred.

His opponent gave a grin of her own as her eye lit up with data. "Don't get cocky: you might have taken my manufacturing hub, sure..." Reaching forward, she rapidly tapped in quick succession several orbs in a quick rythem, causing another menu to open up. "But you just left your Command Hub completely undefended!"

Her rival winced as one of his own orbs shifted color, his eyepiece showing the reactions to his stream by the public alongside the data on how losing his main Command Hub would affect his overall force strength. Quickly, he calculated his odds of winning the campaign and slumped his shoulders. "Computer, log concession." Immediately the hologram dissipated, leaving the table empty beyond the holo-emitter humming.

Waddling up next to the table was his Bond-Drone, a simple, vaguely saurian creature assembled from a multitude of bricks. Letting out a squawk, it held a bottle up for the Tekket, who snatched it, gulping the water within down as his stream shut off. "Alright, good game. Wanna go another round?" He asked his opponent, who shrugged.

"Nah, I'm getting kinda bored of Hypernet Warlords. Hey, I heard they released a new PlasmaBowl game, wanna try that out?" She asked, pulling out her data tablet and going through menus.

Tutorial: Culture Projects

Culture Projects are used to develop policies, establish traditions, and react to social problems.

Compulsory Education: One of the things that helped the Directorate flourish was mandatory education starting years 3 to 21. Every citizen received lessons in science, engineering, mathematics, language, history, and ethics. Provides an extra ACD Point.

War Against Extinction: A harsh lesson learned during the Destroyer War: there existed powers in the cosmos far more powerful than your species that wished you harm. It was a grim calculus, but if the day came when your soldiers and explorers had to sacrifice themselves in order to take down an enemy that would threaten your people, they would, without hesitation. Slight bonus for all forces against superior opponents, can designate forces as Extinctionist, increasing how much damage they do to foes but moderately reducing survivability.

Moneyless Society: Currency was an outdated concept when you produced enough food and material to more than meet peoples needs. Resistance to subversion increased.

Culture Points (CUL Points): 6

Available Culture Projects:

Wargames: An idea proposed by those among Directorate Fleet Command, designing a series of games intended to act as training sims for things such as tactics, survival skills, piloting, etc. This would also serve to help drive interest in the Fleet, increasing recruitment. 0/5, grants the Wargamer tradition, slightly increasing the general survivability of your forces and increasing recruitment.

Promoted Therapy: Much of the world still suffered from trauma from the Destroyer War, especially in the older generation (though there existed many with generational trauma). By encouraging Tekket to seek treatment for the mental damage and expanding the medical sectors resources a bit to help deal with the problem, perhaps you could accelerate the healing process. 0/5, grants the Promoted Therapy tradition, increasing mental resilience for all Tekket.

Hobby Bots: Manufacturing Bond-Drones required mature, strong machine spirits, but there were a variety of simpler automata that could be used for recreational purposes, such as Bot-Battles, Bot-Racing, urban exploration, etc. Encouraging them would be a good way to get people into bot-design. 0/3, grants the Hobby Bots tradition, providing a small bonus to EXP Points.

Compulsory Secondary Education: It wasn't...strictly needed, since most Tekket pursued secondary education anyways. Still, by making it mandatory and spending resources to expand the Academy, you could effectively ensure 100% of your population was considered skilled. 0/10, grants the Compulsory Secondary Education, increasing ACD Points, costs 1 Network.

Nuclear Engineering For Kits: Every so often a strange idea appears on the docket, and this was one of them: some Tekket wanted to give schools nuclear experimentation playsets for physics and engineering minded kits to play with, educating them on the finer points of nuclear physics and technology. The technology did exist to make this mostly safe, but it would be very resource intensive. 0/10, grants Nukes for Kits, increasing EXP and ACD points, costs 1 NK

((()))

In another place, a funeral was happening.

A female Tekket watched as a metal coffin containing her father was slowly lowered into the incinerator, her personal Bond-Drone curled up into her lap, snuggled against her to help serve as emotional support. Dust to dust. Metal to metal. All around her were her other family members. Some, the older ones, from before her fathers generation, managed to keep dry eyes: it was hard to cry at a funeral no doubt, the grieving daughter mused, when you come from an era of so much death. Many others were misty eyed, and a few wept openly.

Soon, the coffin had fully descended, and the hatch leading to the incinerator closed itself with a kerklunk. Rising from his seat, her Brother ascended the stage, pulling from his pocket a loose sheaf of cards, hands trembling. "H-hello, everyone. Some of you know me: Mabvan, Litkey's son," He said, voice trembling as fiercely as his hands. "I wish to say a few words about my father."

Tutorial: Faith Projects

Faith projects can be used to develop your theology and religious understanding as well as invent rites, should you find or create a divinity willing to act as patron.

Machine Spirits: Discovered via ancient texts from long gone precursors, the Tekket have a healthy reverence for machine spirits, viewing them as invisible partners and allies. So long as the vessel is maintained and proper respect is given, the Tekket find the spirits of their technology extremely reliable, with a handful of rites and rituals existing in order to allow the Tekket to commune with the ghosts in the machine. Improved reliability for all technology.

Faith Points (FTH Points): 10

Available Faith Projects:

God-Machine Cults: Many already viewed them as divine: it would not be hard to establish a cult dedicated to the God-Machines, and it would provide a good outlet for Tekketi spirituality. Such a body would hold little temporal or legal power, of course: history proved that giving religious institutions political power was dicey. 0/5, establishes God-Machine Cult.

Folk Religion Revival: There were also a variety of older religions that had seen a resurgence in membership since the God Machines were awoken, and unlike the God-Machines, they didn't necessarily tie their loyalty to ultimately capricious demiurges. 0/5, Re-establishes various folk religions in Tekketi Civilization.

Rite of Anima: Machine Spirits were a proveable, known phenomenon. The stronger ones could be transferred into different vessels to craft Bond-Drones, but uncountable lesser ones existed. Some of your more religious minded wanted to experiment with different rites and rituals to see if perhaps there existed a manner to strengthen the mechanica anima in order to allow for Bond-Drones to be born with more regularity. 0/10, develop Rite of Anima, upgrading Bond-Drones and increasing EXP points.

TekShrines: Some of your engineers had taken to leaving machine spirits offerings, constructing simple shrines in the bowels of your facilities where they would leave bits of metal, plastic, food, scraps of paper scrawled with prayers. This had shown a mild strengthening effect on Machine Spirits in the area: perhaps something to be formalized. 0/10, develop TekShrine Tradition, increasing EXP.

Bond-Machina: Older machine spirits were more powerful machine spirits. Eventually, they reach a point where their vessel is no longer suitable: that is why Bond-Drones exist. However, some believed that with the advent of modern computing, standard Bond-Drones would also eventually become insufficient. Their proposal: house them in a powerful quantum supercomputer. This would limit them in terms of shell, but would provide them with enough room to achieve full intelligence. 0/15, Develop Bond-Machina, a form of supercomputer housing a fully mature and self aware machine spirit. Other effects unknown.

TekMausoleums: There existed no formalized way to deal with the loss of a loved one: some incinerated their remains and had the ashes scattered at places they considered significant, some inter their dead underground, others still ritually immolate themselves when they feel death is near. Several more morbid citizens had an idea for how to ensure the dead are properly respected and remembered: erect a massive Data Hub to serve as a digital mausoleum, storing images of the deceased, records of their existence, and summaries of who they were written by friends and family. In this way, no one would ever be forgotten. 0/10, develop TekMausoleum rites, creating a digital record of the dead. Costs 1 Network. Unlocks TekMortuary Rites.

TekGrimoire: The benevolent spirits of the machine were not the only ones that existed. There also existed darker spirits: the Gremlins, daemons of the circuit that wreaked havok using possessed shells. The Antianima, the Dark Spirits of Nightmares. Some religions held too that lighter ones also existed: the guardian souls of those passed on. The spirits of machines that transcended their physical form. Divine beings sent from on high. And all the ones in the middle of the morality spectrum. And others beyond. The priests and holy men of your society wished to assemble an authoritative compendium of these spirits and known ways to invoke, mollify, ward against, and banish them. 0/15, Develop TekGrimoire Artifact. Unlocks TekDaemonism, TekOccultism, and TekAnimism Rites.

Delve into the Tomb: The complex where the God-Machines were located was, according to the expedition that found the God-Machines, impossibly vast. A select number of Monks wished to establish a temple atop it. It's purpose? To plumb the depths and obtain ancient technology. 0/10, Establish Tombdelver Order, a Society which generates Artifacts (ART).

((()))

And somewhere else, a student shuffled into a classhall, quickly walking down the corridor until he found an empty pod. Tapping a button on the side, he stepped back as the door slid upward. Stepping inside the blue sphere, the student flipped a switch, causing the door to slide shut, isolating the student from the rest of the hall and causing the pods vid-screen to come to life.

"SCANNING..ID DETECTED. HELLO TENZI: WOULD YOU LIKE TO LOAD LAST LESSON?"

Tenzi let out a breath, the coil in his gut retracting. Good, just him and the computer. "No, it's brain training day. Load the lab sim, we're going to toy with chemicals."

"EXCELLENT CHOICE," Droned the Pods Synthetic Intelligence, quickly bringing up a GUI filled with numbers and stats. A virtual lab of sorts, stripped of any helpful visual and reduced to numbers and listed qualities. Apparently they were planning to release a graphics upgrade to this sim soon, but the lack of any sort of simulated beakers or microscopes and fake specimens wasn't really a problem for Tenzi: this sim was mostly used to keep his mind sharp with numbers and charts anyways.

Tutorial: Academy Actions

Academy actions are used to develop your scholarly understanding of the world, conduct research expeditions, develop new technologies, and perform advanced experiments.

Directorate Academy: The Directorate required a vast number of skilled professionals to operate, even in this era of increasing automation. To meet this need, the Directorate Academy was established, growing steadily until its reach encompassed the globe. The Academy effectively WAS the place to get an advanced education. Thankfully, it provided online courses for free, though there were a number of lucky students who received invitations to attend directly: those were the ones who would get drafted into the Academies own personal labs. Provides 5 ACD Points.

Bond-Drone Technology: Some machine spirits are particularly lively and strong, given power through generations of veneration, extreme age, or, in rare cases, through the love and care of their owner. These awoken machine spirits are typically given new vessels to inhabit, thus birthing Bond-Drones, ensouled, somewhat intelligent automata that serve as warrior, protector, and even family. Provides 1 EXP Point.

BlokTek: Hypermodular tek designed to be plug and play, BlokTek was the basis of most TekketTek. Every component could be, if you knew the schematic, used for a different machine. The same components that would be used to make a blaster could also be used to build a microwave: the battery as the power source, the optical lens to irradiate the thing, all you needed was a few bloks to make a box. Provides ultimate lego technology: all parts interchangeable and universal. Provides 2 EXP Points.

Living Metal: GodTek, or something derived from it: the Destroyers had managed to occasionally lightly injure the God-Machines, leaving small samples of an advanced proto-metal around. Researching it produced a room temperature regenerative semi-conductor. Another cornerstone of your tek: it meant that components could essentially be infinitely reused. Maintenance costs reduced to zero.

ShieldTek: A countermeasure developed to reduce the effectiveness of Destroyer Laser Weapons, ShieldTek generators could power energy barriers around fortifications, hardening positions against lasfire. Increases fortification effectiveness.

Academy Points (ACD Points): 11
Living Metal: 1
Network: 3

Available Projects:

Warp Drive: Destroyer Tek. The remains of the engine they had used to cross the stars. Specifically spared from destruction by the God Machines along with several other pieces of the ship. To serve as a trophy, of sorts, according to MOTHER when asked. She had agreed to let you study it in order to develop a warp drive of your own. 0/10, Unlocks Crude Warp Drive technology, allowing for the exploration of other systems.

Advanced NukeTek: Fusion nukes were the closest you have come to really rattling the Destroyers, but they hadn't been sufficient to turn the tide, and who knows how well they'd fare against Destroyer space vessels. A number of Science Division Officers in the Fleet wanted to develop more advanced fusion tek, focusing on overall energy output. 0/10, Unlocks NukeTek Missile Technology, allowing for the creation of more powerful Fusion Nukes and stronger Fusion Weapons in general. Costs One Nuclear Material.

NukeTek Miniaturization: Another group inside the Academy wanted instead for NukeTek to be scaled down, creating smaller fusion engines that could be used for PowerBloks or to make weapons with. 0/5, unlocks PowerBlok technology, increasing EXP Points and allowing for deployment of Fusion Rockets on vehicles. Costs One Nuclear Material.

MagTek Binding: Magnets are a fairly new branch of tek, used largely to keep Bloks from breaking apart via large, clunky electromagnetic bloks. A proposed improvement to this idea was giving each Blok their own electromagnetic field: this would make it harder for machines to lose bloks during operation AND would make your vehicles more durable. 0/5, unlocks MagTek Binding Fields, improving the robustness of your technology under harsh conditions and the durability of your vehicles.

MagTek Assembly: Another proposed usage of MagTek was quick and easy assembly of parts: no more robotic assembly lines or engineers working off schematics for hours. Instead, you'd simply bring the appropriate parts to the assembler and it would quickly manipulate the bloks and snap them together into a whole machine. 0/5, unlock the MagTek Assembler, increasing EXP Points and allowing for rapid repair of medium sized machines and small vehicles.

Repair Protocol: Living metal is definitely a form of smart matter. If a way could be discovered to control it's growth, you could upgrade your blocks from merely regenerating to replicating if fed with sufficient energy. In essence, bloks that can create more bloks, allowing for your machinery to literally heal from injuries. 0/20, unlock Crude Repair Protocol, giving your machinery the ability to regenerate from light damage. Costs one living metal.

BlokBots: Not all machine spirits were strong enough to power the consciousness a Bond-Drone, but there existed a number of lesser automata throughout your society, in your factories and on your farms. However, to transition to a fully post scarcity society, you would need to expand your resource generation greatly: to do this, some suggested developing a new, more advanced generation of Bots. 0/5, unlock Golem Class BlokBots, increasing EXP.

ShieldBloks: ShieldTek was, sadly, one of the few pieces of Tek that wasn't modular. With the end of the Destroyer War, it had become more or less obsoleted before BlokTek had become fully ubiquitous. Some among the Academy wanted to develop a modern model that could be incorporated into BlokTek vehicles or structures. 0/5, Develop ShieldBloks, providing ShieldTek's bonus to ground vehicles and structures. Prerequisite to more advanced SheildTek.

Regenerative Nuclear Material: Living metal was metal. Uranium was metal. Was it possible to create a version of uranium with the regenerative properties of the former substance? Enterprising scientists wanted to know. 0/10, Develop Perpetunite technology, increases Nuclear Materials by 5. Costs 1 Living Metal.

Quantum Calculators: A proposed project by the Academy, they wanted to work on improving the cost efficiency of pocket quantum computing technology such that they could make it a daily part of peoples lives: better home computers, better synthetic intelligence assistants, more advanced sims, and smarter Bond-Drones. 0/5, Develop Q-Blok Processors, increasing ACD and CUL Points. Costs 1 Network.

((()))

One hour moratorium. Please vote on expenditures via plan, like so:

[ ] Fleet Actions
-[ ] SampleAction
--[ ] What Fleet
[ ] EXP Actions
-[ ] Insert Purchase Here
-[ ] Insert Purchase Here
[ ] So on and so forth you get the basic outline, its basically a super simplified more narrative driven plan quest.

RedCrown · Feb 26, 2023

Sketch of Captain Taavi.

The Bird · Feb 27, 2023

"You know, the sun only comes up once a month on the moon. Every lunar morning, my father and I would put on suits and... hike out across the Sea of Clouds. We'd stop at this collection of boulders on the western rim and... just wait for the sun to come up. Dawn is so... shocking on the moon. One minute you're in the darkest night you can imagine. And in the next instant the sun lifts up and this... glorious, pure light just... explodes across the surface... I felt like I met God every morning," - Chief Dorian O'Collens, Star Trek: Deep Space 9

Taavi stepped off the lander onto the cold lunar soil. "One small step for Tekket, one great step for Tekketkind," He said, gazing across the debris strewn vista. Next to him was his away team, a small comportment of officers and ensigns, offloading monitoring and survey equipment. "Taavi to bridge," He said, contacting the ship. "How far are we from the Anomaly?" He asked.

"You should be in walking distance, Cap'n!" His navigator told him over comms, miles and miles above them in the Endeavor. "I'm picking up some heavy EM readings about thirty spans south of your position."

"Hrrrm," He said, tapping his foot, noting how...silent it was, in the cold vacuum: he was far too used to the noise of his paws clattering against cold plastic tiles. The non-sound of his Envirosuit clad footpaw was...almost uncanny. Of course, it wasn't the only odd thing about space. Looking up, gazing at the world resting above in the lunar sky...every time he glanced, Taavi felt a sense of profound awe at the simulataneous vastness of it all and a deep appreciation for just how small he ultimately was in the grand scheme of things. The Overview effect: a common phenomenon observed in Tekket who travelled offworld, responsible for a number of cognitive shifts. Something about seeing the planet from space...it invoked something in the Tekket soul.

...In anyone with a healthy capacity for empathy, at least. Looking away, Taavi shook his head. "Alright, Commander Knypti. I'm going in for a visual on foot reconaissance of the anomaly."

"Be careful, Cap'n: I know this place might look like Teklia, but the lack of atmosphere means some technology might still be active," Knypti told him over coms.

"I'll be cautious, Commander," Taavi reassured. "I'm just going to collect visual data to confirm scanner readings."

Luna scanned. Features include high amounts of scrap material, trace amounts of leftover PrecursorTek, high EM radiation anomalies. Can perform additional scan in 2 turns in order to locate more resources and notable sites. In order to utilize these features, you will have to establish a moon base.

TKK Endeavor: The pinnacle of Tekketi engineering, the Endeavor is the first real space ship constructed in the aftermath of the Destroyer War, incorporating a variety of technologies to enable it to perform its mission. A hypermodular vessel build from grey dyed ferroplastic bloks, its design consists of a wide, flat disc connected via finned spine to two large nacelles. The majority of the crew and work decks are housed in the disc structure, alongside most civilian installations, wheras the Nacelles each contain sub-engineering decks, redundant systems, and storage. Lightly armed with only fusion torpedos and comm-jammers, the Endeavor is not intended to win a stand up fight: it's purpose is purely exploratory.

[-] Survey Luna: Some light surveying had been done, revealing the best scrap harvesting locations alongside some small remnants of PrecursorTek. Also concerningly a number of high EM anomalies that your people weren't entirely sure the cause of: attempts to get a visual had been inconclusive and the EM field was distorting scanners. COOLDOWN: 2 TURNS. SCAN LEVEL: 1

[ ] Survey Naklis: The planet closest to the sun, and Teklias closest neighbor. Deep space probes indicated it was mostly molten metal, with a thick, unbreathable and almost liquid atmosphere. A long term survey would be extremely enlightening in regards to planetary geology, and it would give you a good opportunity to test out your probes.

[ ] Survey Tacchis: In ancient Tekketi history, Tacchis was considered a dark omen by astrologers and mystics. These days, the iceball was mostly known for the massive amount of diamonds probes had found: the planet was mostly carbon and water. While gems had no material value since the abolition of currency outside their use in industry and decoration, the survey data would still be useful.

[ ] Survey Mongus: The largest gas giant in your system, Mongus has a green atmosphere, the result of several rare-teklia gases according to probe data. You wouldn't be able to do a ground exploration of the system: the atmospheric pressure would crush your strongest vehicle like aluminum. But you could certainly do atmospheric probes and expeditions.

[ ] Survey Meeklak: The second largest gas giant, but the one with the largest ring, Meeklak was too far for casual probe use, meaning it and its ring were largely unsurveyed.

[ ] Erichtheo: Named after an old goddess from Classical Myth, Erichtheo, a moon of Mongus, is believed to be the only planet in the solar system capable of supporting life. Icy and oceanic, exploration of Erichtheo has captured the minds of science fiction authors for generations: stepping foot on it would be...well, certainly monumental.

[ ] Spraa'ng: The furthest planet in your solar system, very little is known about Spraa'ng due to its absurd distance. You're unlikely to find anything interesting before requiring a return trip, but it would certainly be a good way to test your engines.

((((()))))

Autorecycler Plants
NukeTek

Elsewhere, an Engineer walked along a metal catwalk, followed shortly by a Bond-Drone carrying a nuclear core. Below him, a vast boiling cauldron of molten ore and scrap, nearly a mile across, tended to by Bond-Drones hovering through the air, dumping vast loads of salvaged cargo shipped in from all across the continent. AutoRecycler Plant 001, one of three that serviced the local continent: a fairly recent piece of infrastructure that was nonetheless paying dividends.

Continuing down the walkway, the Engineer approached a long spire sticking out of the center of the megacrucible, looking like almost like a pencil standing upright in the middle of a bowl of bubbling soup. Molten ore soup. On the spires side, right next to the edge of the walkway, was a blocky console assembled from heat-treated Bloks attached to the rest of the spire.

Tapping a few buttons and looking at the numbers, the engineer clipped his harness to the catwalk railing before entering a series of commands, causing a panel next to the console to pop open. Time to upgrade this things power source: the Autorecycler was producing enough nuclear materials to justify an upgrade so that it could produce additional nuclear materials. The infrastructure would be updated to meet the needs of the updating infrastructure: such was life.

EXPansion Points (EXP Points): 14
Nuclear Material: 2

Teklia: Teklia, oh Teklia. The second planet from your star, and your homeworld. A variety of mostly hospitable climates of variable comfortability, it is covered in what can only be described as space garbage: the ecosystem has largely adapted to it and millenia of exploitation has done much to clear it away, but its undeniably a very garbage covered planet. In recent years, it had had a complete overhaul of its power generation infrastructure, and the erection of the vast Auto-Recyclers were serving to accelerate the pace at which the surface was cleansed of debris.

Available Expansion Actions:

Orbital Shipyard: Currently, you had no real orbital shipyard of note. If you wanted to construct more ships, you should probably rectify that. The current plan was for it to be five miles: small, but it would allow for small vessels, probes, and easier maintenance of the Endeavor. 0/10, unlocks additional Orbital Actions.

Nuclear Stockpiles: It was a very distasteful idea: nuclear weapons were ultimately a remnant of a darker, more divided age, and they had been of limited effectiveness during the Destroyer War, but they were, at the moment, the only weapon you had that could hit hard enough to come even close to shaking their bunkers. Better to have them and not need them, you supposed. 0/1, Grants Nuclear Weapon Stockpile. Can be taken multiple times. Can be used as Shipscale Weaponry in the form of Nuclear Torpedos. Costs one Nuclear Material.

Data Processing Hubs: If there was something society would always need more of, it was data processing power. Directorate Academy especially needed it to run simulations and let the synthetic intelligences they use work at max capacity. Most processing outside said Academy was done at the TekHubs, massive constructions of GPU's and CPU's and servers and transmitters and receivers that did their work wirelessly and instantaneously. 0/5, generates extra ACaDemia Points, generates a point of Network (NT).

Deep Space Monitors: One day, the Destroyers would return. It was a fear many, many of you held. To that end, some of you wanted to expand the deep space monitoring project in order to ensure that they would not take you by surprise. 0/2, repeatable, costs 1 Network. Each completion gives more robust deep space scanning.

Luna Base 1: With actual survey data, some on Teklia wanted to establish the first permanent off-world research base to perform experiments deemed too dangerous to perform on Teklia itself. It would also allow for limited exploitation of Lunar Resources. 0/5, Costs 1 Nuclear Material and 1 Network, grants additional ACD points and unlocks HazardTek research projects.

High Energy Physics Lab: With more free power, some were suggesting expanding the Academy by adding a specialized high energy physics lab to help train engineers and researchers to properly take advantage of the energy now available to them. 0/10, costs 2 Nuclear Material, generates 2 Network and generates ACD.

BlokTek Arcologies: As planetary industry expanded so too did its need for housing and infrastructure: urbanification was inevitable without special measures. It wasn't immediate, but some wanted to embark on the construction of a series of low-environmental impact arcologies meant to house the vast majority of your species in order to pre-empt such a problem before it occurred. 0/20, generates EXP, pre-emptively prevents urbanification of Teklian wilderness.

Parks and Rec: Forestry had always been a niche field, but with so much garbage being cleared, a number of ecosystems were almost blossoming from how much space and sunlight they now had. Some among your people wanted to turn these areas into communal social areas, carefully tended to in order to allow for recreational enjoyment. 0/5, generates CUL and FTH.

((((()))))

Elsewhere still, a Tekket sat at a chair. Across from them lie their patient. The pair of them were silent. Such had been most of their sessions. He suspected she was lonely: it was not unusual. There had been many during the destroyer war who had lost everything, leaving them with no one. And as much as the Directorate tried to give people tools to help fight atomization...

Well, some people fell through the cracks, retreating into themselves. No friends, no family, only names on a screen as they never left their homes: at most perhaps a Bond-Drone or pet. It was most common in the older generation, the doctor noted: the educational system and the anti-atomization policies the directorate had ensured that any youths lacking family had enough socialization that they could usually find life-partners, platonic or otherwise.

But no safety net was absolute, especially when dealing with a traumatized generation. On the wall, the doctor's analogue clock, an old antique from before the war, clicked and clicked. Once the metal hands reached a certain point, it let out a ding, signalling that their session was running late. His patient silently rose, beginning to leave. "You know, if you need an extra few hours, I don't have any other patients today," The doctor offered. In truth, a deliberate tactic: he hoped that given extra time, she might open up. Then, he could attempt to help her.

The patient hesitated for a moment, and the doctors heart beat as he hoped he'd finally get a chance to help her. Then, the knot in his gut uncoiled as she sat back down. He might be able to make progress yet!

Compulsory Education: One of the things that helped the Directorate flourish was mandatory education starting years 3 to 21. Every citizen received lessons in science, engineering, mathematics, language, history, and ethics. Provides an extra ACD Point.

War Against Extinction: A harsh lesson learned during the Destroyer War: there existed powers in the cosmos far more powerful than your species that wished you harm. It was a grim calculus, but if the day came when your soldiers and explorers had to sacrifice themselves in order to take down an enemy that would threaten your people, they would, without hesitation. Slight bonus for all forces against superior opponents, can designate forces as Extinctionist, increasing how much damage they do to foes but moderately reducing survivability.

Moneyless Society: Currency was an outdated concept when you produced enough food and material to more than meet peoples needs. Resistance to subversion increased.

Promoted Therapy: Trauma was an enemy to the health and wellbeing of many Tekket. To combat it, your society provided a variety of tools to help people seeking treatment. Increased mental resilience for all Tekket.

Culture Points (CUL Points): 6

Wargames: An idea proposed by those among Directorate Fleet Command, designing a series of games intended to act as training sims for things such as tactics, survival skills, piloting, etc. This would also serve to help drive interest in the Fleet, increasing recruitment. 0/5, grants the Wargamer tradition, slightly increasing the general survivability of your forces and increasing recruitment.

Advanced Therapy Promotion Project: It wasn't enough, some claimed, to merely fight against the diseases of the mind. In order to achieve its best self, society must treat the study and treatment of mental illness as a major science in and of itself. They were proposing a branch of the Academy dedicated to training social workers, therapists, and clinical psychiatrists and psychiatric researchers. 0/10, upgrades Promoted Therapy, increasing mental resilience further, costs 1 Network

Hobby Bots: Manufacturing Bond-Drones required mature, strong machine spirits, but there were a variety of simpler automata that could be used for recreational purposes, such as Bot-Battles, Bot-Racing, urban exploration, etc. Encouraging them would be a good way to get people into bot-design. 1/3, grants the Hobby Bots tradition, providing a small bonus to EXP Points.

Compulsory Secondary Education: It wasn't...strictly needed, since most Tekket pursued secondary education anyways. Still, by making it mandatory and spending resources to expand the Academy, you could effectively ensure 100% of your population was considered skilled. 0/10, grants the Compulsory Secondary Education, increasing ACD Points, costs 1 Network.

Nuclear Engineering For Kits: Every so often a strange idea appears on the docket, and this was one of them: some Tekket wanted to give schools nuclear experimentation playsets for physics and engineering minded kits to play with, educating them on the finer points of nuclear physics and technology. The technology did exist to make this mostly safe, but it would be very resource intensive. 0/10, grants Nukes for Kits, increasing EXP and ACD points, costs 1 NK

Meditation: Some therapists have proposed bringing back the art of meditation. While it's origin lie in religion, they believe it can be repurposed into an agnostic form of general mental and spiritual wellness, one that a variety of belief and non-belief structures could benefit from. 0/5, establish Meditation tradition, generating FTH and providing an agnostic means of maintaining spiritual and mental wellness.

((((()))))

The Super Computer didn't hum so much as purr, the MagTek Altar that stood above it holding aloft a ursine TeddyBot, one that had served for some time as companionship for local children. Many parents had petitioned for it to be granted time for the rituals of growth, encoded onto the Super Computers logic circuits. Surrounding the Q-Blok and the Bond-Drone were a slowly chanting choir, singing songs of occult self-affirmation in ancient binaural: the Monks of the Circuit, an order of TekAgnostic Mysteks that had announced they would take requests for those wanting their beloved machine-spirit companions be elevated to the level of Bond-Drone.

The parents had decided that the Monks particular version of the ritual, which involved a mature Bond-Drone spirit housed within the supercomputer granting some of its spiritual strength and processing power in order to accelerate its development. More advanced and extreme versions existed that could strengthen the machines spirit existed, but those were for service-bond or guardian-bond, not childcare-bond.

The ursine, soft-looking BlokBlot had its normally green eyes dark: it's CPU was currently communing with that of the Computers, their spirits dancing in silent tandem, their soft and graceful digital waltz an act of communion and evolution both: soon, the TeddyBot was lowered, and the chants slowly softened into silence.

It's eyes came online, the LED of the BlokBot glowing a soft blue. The first part was done: conscious control of form.

Machine Spirits: Discovered via ancient texts from long gone precursors, the Tekket have a healthy reverence for machine spirits, viewing them as invisible partners and allies. So long as the vessel is maintained and proper respect is given, the Tekket find the spirits of their technology extremely reliable, with a handful of rites and rituals existing in order to allow the Tekket to commune with the ghosts in the machine. Improved reliability for all technology.

Rite of Anima: A series of TekAgnostic Mystek rituals designed to help Machine Spirits achieve an awareness of self, strengthening them to the point they can be transferred into Bond-Drone vessels, where they can be used as companions, assistants, helpers, and pets. +2 EXP.

Faith Points (FTH Points): 10

Available Faith Projects:

God-Machine Cults: Many already viewed them as divine: it would not be hard to establish a cult dedicated to the God-Machines, and it would provide a good outlet for Tekketi spirituality. Such a body would hold little temporal or legal power, of course: history proved that giving religious institutions political power was dicey. 0/5, establishes God-Machine Cult.

Folk Religion Revival: There were also a variety of older religions that had seen a resurgence in membership since the God Machines were awoken, and unlike the God-Machines, they didn't necessarily tie their loyalty to ultimately capricious demiurges. 0/5, Re-establishes various folk religions in Tekketi Civilization.

MagTek Altars: A number of Mytek orders had found the Rite of Anima performed most efficiently via a sort of ritual accelerator, created using an Assembler Pad, super computers hosting mature Bond-Drones, and specific ritual iconography, assembled into what you can only describe as a MagTek Altar. Many of said orders wanted to attempt to develop a standardized and perfected version that could be deployed to Mysteks across the planet, and many citizens seemed receptive to spending resources on the idea since it meant more Bond-Drones. 0/5, Deploy Mag-Tek Altar Artifacts, generating EXP and FTH and empowering Mystek Traditions. Costs 1 Network.

~~Rite of Soul:~~ ~~You can make the spirits more awake. Could you increase the shine of their soul?~~Costs 1 ART.

TekShrines: Some of your engineers had taken to leaving machine spirits offerings, constructing simple shrines in the bowels of your facilities where they would leave bits of metal, plastic, food, scraps of paper scrawled with prayers. This had shown a mild strengthening effect on Machine Spirits in the area: perhaps something to be formalized. 0/10, develop TekShrine Tradition, increasing EXP.

Bond-Machina: Older machine spirits were more powerful machine spirits. Eventually, they reach a point where their vessel is no longer suitable: that is why Bond-Drones exist. However, some believed that with the advent of modern computing, standard Bond-Drones would also eventually become insufficient. Their proposal: house them in a powerful quantum supercomputer. This would limit them in terms of shell, but would provide them with enough room to achieve full intelligence. 0/15, Develop Bond-Machina, a form of supercomputer housing a fully mature and self aware machine spirit. Other effects unknown.

TekMausoleums: There existed no formalized way to deal with the loss of a loved one: some incinerated their remains and had the ashes scattered at places they considered significant, some inter their dead underground, others still ritually immolate themselves when they feel death is near. Several more morbid citizens had an idea for how to ensure the dead are properly respected and remembered: erect a massive Data Hub to serve as a digital mausoleum, storing images of the deceased, records of their existence, and summaries of who they were written by friends and family. In this way, no one would ever be forgotten. 0/10, develop TekMausoleum rites, increasing CUL, creating a digital record of the dead. Costs 1 Network. Unlocks TekMortuary Rites.

TekGrimoire: The benevolent spirits of the machine were not the only ones that existed. There also existed darker spirits: the Gremlins, daemons of the circuit that wreaked havok using possessed shells. The Antianima, the Dark Spirits of Nightmares. Some religions held too that lighter ones also existed: the guardian souls of those passed on. The spirits of machines that transcended their physical form. Divine beings sent from on high. And all the ones in the middle of the morality spectrum. And others beyond. The priests and holy men of your society wished to assemble an authoritative compendium of these spirits and known ways to invoke, mollify, ward against, and banish them. 0/15, Develop TekGrimoire Artifact, increasing FTH. Unlocks TekDaemonism, TekOccultism, and TekAnimism Rites.

Delve into the Tomb: The complex where the God-Machines were located was, according to the expedition that found the God-Machines, impossibly vast. A select number of Monks wished to establish a temple atop it. It's purpose? To plumb the depths and obtain ancient technology. 0/10, Establish Tombdelver Order, a Society which generates Artifacts (ART).

((()))

Elsewhere, an Academy Engineer taped at a pad, in a facility that consisted of dozens upon dozens of assembler pads, each with an attending engineer. In front of her, the Assembler Pad rotated a series of bloks, motor bloks and enginebloks and enviromental armor bloks and drill bloks. Pressing a button and finishing her design, the mining bot snapped together, the pieces provided fitting together to follow the schematic the engineer had devised. "Blok, I do not miss the days when I would've had to do that by hand," She muttered as the Bot flickered to life.

Standing at three feet in height, with a vaguely simian build, it almost resembled a primate of sorts, with its hunched, powerful form and long limbs. A bright pink robo-primate, yes, and instead of a head it had a square, featureless other than a pair of square purple LED's on the middle of each side mostly meant to serve as decorative 'eyes'. Making a beep, the minerbot turned to the engineer.

Five button presses, and its head swivelled, the minerbot moving in the direction of the Academy Grav-Trams. Plutonium harvesting operation had hit the motherlode, and had requisitioned (and been approved for) a shipment of custom BlokBots, and the Engineer figured it would be good to get some extra credit: that way, the professors might approve her for private assembler time.

She wanted to try her hand at the Battle of the Bots, a regular competition in her wing of the Academy that consisted of a full obstacle course. She didn't expect to win, but she did want to see how large a bot could be designed before they wouldn't be allowed, and to do that, she needed a LOT of private assembler time.

Thankfully, now that the basic design was finished...Pressing another button, she requested another order of bloks: once they arrived, she'd have to spend an hour or so assembling the twenty or thirty 'bots the mine had requested, and then it was on to the next work order.

Directorate Academy: The Directorate required a vast number of skilled professionals to operate, even in this era of increasing automation. To meet this need, the Directorate Academy was established, growing steadily until its reach encompassed the globe. The Academy effectively WAS the place to get an advanced education. Thankfully, it provided online courses for free, though there were a number of lucky students who received invitations to attend directly: those were the ones who would get drafted into the Academies own personal labs. Provides 5 ACD Points.

Bond-Drone Technology: Some machine spirits are particularly lively and strong, given power through generations of veneration, extreme age, or, in rare cases, through the love and care of their owner. These awoken machine spirits are typically given new vessels to inhabit, thus birthing Bond-Drones, ensouled, somewhat intelligent automata that serve as warrior, protector, and even family. Provides 1 EXP Point.

BlokTek: Hypermodular tek designed to be plug and play, BlokTek was the basis of most TekketTek. Every component could be, if you knew the schematic, used for a different machine. The same components that would be used to make a blaster could also be used to build a microwave: the battery as the power source, the optical lens to irradiate the thing, all you needed was a few bloks to make a box. Provides ultimate lego technology: all parts interchangeable and universal. Provides 2 EXP Points.

Living Metal: GodTek, or something derived from it: the Destroyers had managed to occasionally lightly injure the God-Machines, leaving small samples of an advanced proto-metal around. Researching it produced a room temperature regenerative semi-conductor. Another cornerstone of your tek: it meant that components could essentially be infinitely reused. Maintenance costs reduced to zero.

ShieldTek: A countermeasure developed to reduce the effectiveness of Destroyer Laser Weapons, ShieldTek generators could power energy barriers around fortifications, hardening positions against lasfire. Increases fortification effectiveness.

Golem Class BlokBots: BotTek had advanced to the point a variety of simple menial tasks and labours can be automated. Golem Class BlokBots come in a variety of forms with a variety of peripherals, from childcare assistant nannybots to industrial digbots to food-crate hauling cargobots. Increase EXP by 1.

MagTek Assemblers: Specialized MagTek pads that, when paired with a computer or tablet to act as a design station, could be used to instantly snap together bloks to assemble whole machines and devices once a suitable schematic was chosen, simplying the process to just a push of a button. Increase EXP by 1.

Academy Points (ACD Points): 11
Living Metal: 1
Network: 3

Warp Drive: Destroyer Tek. The remains of the engine they had used to cross the stars. Specifically spared from destruction by the God Machines along with several other pieces of the ship. To serve as a trophy, of sorts, according to MOTHER when asked. She had agreed to let you study it in order to develop a warp drive of your own. 0/10, Unlocks Crude Warp Drive technology, allowing for the exploration of other systems.

Advanced NukeTek: Fusion nukes were the closest you have come to really rattling the Destroyers, but they hadn't been sufficient to turn the tide, and who knows how well they'd fare against Destroyer space vessels. A number of Science Division Officers in the Fleet wanted to develop more advanced fusion tek, focusing on overall energy output. 0/10, Unlocks NukeTek Missile Technology, allowing for the creation of more powerful Fusion Nukes and stronger Fusion Weapons in general. Costs One Nuclear Material.

NukeTek Miniaturization: Another group inside the Academy wanted instead for NukeTek to be scaled down, creating smaller fusion engines that could be used for PowerBloks or to make weapons with. 0/5, unlocks PowerBlok technology, increasing EXP Points and allowing for deployment of Fusion Rockets on vehicles. Costs One Nuclear Material.

MagTek Binding: Magnets are a fairly new branch of tek, used largely to keep Bloks from breaking apart via large, clunky electromagnetic bloks. A proposed improvement to this idea was giving each Blok their own electromagnetic field: this would make it harder for machines to lose bloks during operation AND would make your vehicles more durable. 1/5, unlocks MagTek Binding Fields, improving the robustness of your technology under harsh conditions and the durability of your vehicles.

Repair Protocol: Living metal is definitely a form of smart matter. If a way could be discovered to control it's growth, you could upgrade your blocks from merely regenerating to replicating if fed with sufficient energy. In essence, bloks that can create more bloks, allowing for your machinery to literally heal from injuries. 0/20, unlock Crude Repair Protocol, giving your machinery the ability to regenerate from light damage. Costs one living metal.

ShieldBloks: ShieldTek was, sadly, one of the few pieces of Tek that wasn't modular. With the end of the Destroyer War, it had become more or less obsoleted before BlokTek had become fully ubiquitous. Some among the Academy wanted to develop a modern model that could be incorporated into BlokTek vehicles or structures. 0/5, Develop ShieldBloks, providing ShieldTek's bonus to ground vehicles and structures. Prerequisite to more advanced SheildTek.

Regenerative Nuclear Material: Living metal was metal. Uranium was metal. Was it possible to create a version of uranium with the regenerative properties of the former substance? Enterprising scientists wanted to know. 0/10, Develop Perpetunite technology, increases Nuclear Materials by 5. Costs 1 Living Metal.

Quantum Calculators: A proposed project by the Academy, they wanted to work on improving the cost efficiency of pocket quantum computing technology such that they could make it a daily part of peoples lives: better home computers, better synthetic intelligence assistants, more advanced sims, and smarter Bond-Drones. 0/5, Develop Q-Blok Processors, increasing ACD and CUL Points. Costs 1 Network.

Gestalt Protocol: Another route to improving the strength of Machine Spirits, some of your scientists belonging to the Grand Reconfiguration Committee theorized that synthetic souls were just as modular as their form: they believed that there might exist some manner to merge machine spirits in order to radically accelerate their growth, creating Gestalt-Drones. They would no doubt be very, very different from typical Bond-Drones, however. 0/20, develop Gestalt-Drones, advanced automata created from a multitude of fused together synthetic souls instead of singular awoken machine spirits.

Security Bots: Some in Directorate Fleet wanted to supplement your Tekket forces with custom designed combat bots designed to help guard vessels and installations against hostile forces as well as supplement security on fleet expeditions. For obvious reasons, no lethal weapons on anything less advanced than a Security Bond-Drone: no one sane thought giving an immature machine spirit a gun was a good idea. 0/5, develop Security Bot Technology, providing cheap expendable infantry security BlokBots and more advanced combat Bond-Drones to your ground forces.

Mammoth BlokBlots: Of course, there still existed a variety of large machines that could stand to be automated, especially since said machines usually have enough space to cram in a lot of processing power. The same faction that had advocated for BlokBots wanted to go bigger. 0/10, develop Mammoth Class BlokBots, heavy machines that generate EXP.

Deep Crust Scanner: The data collected by the Endeavors scanner was fascinating, but a number of students at the Academy believed that the real importance of the data would be improving the systems used to acquire it: they wanted to develop a novel next generation form of shipboard scanner that could map the deep crust of a planet and locate useful minerals and anomalies. 0/10, gain Deep Crust Scanner technology, revealing more resources and anomalies when surveying worlds, costs 1 Network.

Academy Fleet Compartment: The Academy and the Fleet were considered separate organizations under the Directorate umbrella. Still, by necessity, both organizations have a fair deal of institutional overlap: the Fleet requires all Ensigns and Officers attend mandatory training in special academy courses, and many among the Academy have attempted to jockey for spots in Fleet Labs. This was the brainchild of both groups: work together to design an expansion that could easily be added to vessels in order to serve as a ship-based laboratory and Academy campus. 0/5, Fleets upgraded with Academy Compartment, increasing overall crew education and access to advanced analysis and research to solve problems with, and increasing ACD. Requires Orbital Shipyard and turn in dock to take effect for existing ships. Costs 2 Network.

The Bird · Feb 27, 2023

"It isn't all over; everything has not been invented; the human adventure is just beginning," - Gene Roddenberry

The grav-engines of the Endeavor slowed the craft to a stop, slowly countering the forward motion of its primary livefire engines, bleeding off kinetic energy as the graft took up a steady motionless orbit. On the bridge, Captain Taavi grinned. Below, visible through the bridge vid-window, was Naklis! Today, history had been made: it had taken a year of travel, but the Endeavor was the first Tekket Vessel to reach another planet!

"Chief Heuristics Officer Votto, begin surface scans. Science Officer TikTik, prepare to launch probes: I want a full work up of both atmostphere content and surface conditions before we send survey teams," Taavi commanded.

"Aye-Aye,"
"Aye-Aye," Both officers responded, immediately setting to work. Meanwhile, Taavi returned to viewing the lonely planet, a roiling and bubbling molten rock, pockmarked with mountains and valleys that arose from the glowing red ocean. With Teklia, there had been the overview effect causing an intense degree of awe. Naklis meanwhile evoked similarly strong reactions from Taavi, but for somewhat different reasons: Luna had been an accomplishment. This? This was history in the making, the payoff for decades of work: millions of miles traversed in only a handful of years, and soon, once it was confirmed safe, the first Tekket boots would set down on another planet.

"Hey Captain, once the probes confirm it's safe, you mind if we collect some rock samples from the mountains? I want to get a workup sent back to the Academy: they're gonna go nuts over this data," TikTik asked as, through the viewscreen, Taavi watched as a series of orbs shot out to the planet, hurtling through the atmosphere from the hangar of the Endeavor. Raising a paw to his chin, the Captain thought the question over.

"Very well, I'll allow it. Have the probes collect them, and make sure to send me one or two chunks once they've cooled and been confirmed safe," Taavi acceded.

Perhaps there existed fancier potential souvenirs, but Taavi found that there existed charm in simplicity, and besides, his rare stone collection DID have a few open cubbies. A perfect spot to put a genuine alien space rock.

Naklis probed! The Molten Sea is comprised of a number of useful ores and minerals, and there have been small deposits of living metal located on the dry land! Unfortunately, there exist no way to exploit these resources at present.

TKK Endeavor: The pinnacle of Tekketi engineering, the Endeavor is the first real space ship constructed in the aftermath of the Destroyer War, incorporating a variety of technologies to enable it to perform its mission. A hypermodular vessel build from grey dyed ferroplastic bloks, its design consists of a wide, flat disc connected via finned spine to two large nacelles. The majority of the crew and work decks are housed in the disc structure, alongside most civilian installations, wheras the Nacelles each contain sub-engineering decks, redundant systems, and storage. Lightly armed with only fusion torpedos and comm-jammers, the Endeavor is not intended to win a stand up fight: it's purpose is purely exploratory.

[-] Survey Luna: Some light surveying had been done, revealing the best scrap harvesting locations alongside some small remnants of PrecursorTek. Also concerningly a number of high EM anomalies that your people weren't entirely sure the cause of: attempts to get a visual had been inconclusive and the EM field was distorting scanners. COOLDOWN: 1 TURNS. SCAN LEVEL: 1

[-] Survey Naklis: The planet closest to the sun, and Teklias closest neighbor. It had two major features: an ocean comprised of churning molten ore, and a handful of mountains and floating landmasses atop said ocean. A number of useful minerals had been discovered in the Molten Sea and geological surveys of the mountain indicated that it had deposits of liquid metal. COOLDOWN: 3 Turns. SCAN LEVEL: 1

[ ] Survey Tacchis: In ancient Tekketi history, Tacchis was considered a dark omen by astrologers and mystics. These days, the iceball was mostly known for the massive amount of diamonds probes had found: the planet was mostly carbon and water. While gems had no material value since the abolition of currency outside their use in industry and decoration, the survey data would still be useful.

[ ] Survey Mongus: The largest gas giant in your system, Mongus has a green atmosphere, the result of several rare-teklia gases according to probe data. You wouldn't be able to do a ground exploration of the system: the atmospheric pressure would crush your strongest vehicle like aluminum. But you could certainly do atmospheric probes and expeditions.

[ ] Survey Meeklak: The second largest gas giant, but the one with the largest ring, Meeklak was too far for casual probe use, meaning it and its ring were largely unsurveyed.

[ ] Erichtheo: Named after an old goddess from Classical Myth, Erichtheo, a moon of Mongus, is believed to be the only planet in the solar system capable of supporting life. Icy and oceanic, exploration of Erichtheo has captured the minds of science fiction authors for generations: stepping foot on it would be...well, certainly monumental.

[ ] Spraa'ng: The furthest planet in your solar system, very little is known about Spraa'ng due to its absurd distance. You're unlikely to find anything interesting before requiring a return trip, but it would certainly be a good way to test your engines.

((((()))))

Elsewhere, a Tekket couple and their kits unrolled a blanket in a clearing. From the back of the Rover, the father retrieved a cooler, hauling it over to the red and grey quilt and setting down the chilled chest. From the Rover's speakers played a tune, a random selection from the latest top 40's.

The kits had already begun to run off, climbing one of the parks myriad trees, watched over by the family Bond-Drone, the automata having opted to join their picnic. The treaded, boxy machine whirred as it circled the trunk of the conifer tree, ready to catch any of the kits should they fall.

All around them, their fellow park-goers enjoyed the space: some distance away an elderly pair of Tekket were playing a came of Dimension 7 cards, several marathoners were using the trails to exercise, a group meditation session was taking place, and a variety of animal watchers wandered with binoculars and data pads, carefully documenting the natural fauna of the area.

Tebben Memorial Park: it had opened for public enjoyment only a few months ago, along with a hundred other similar such areas across the planet. Some were designed purely as reserves: others instead found themselves used as zoos and nature exhibits. A few were used to engineer recreational camps for young kits.

And some, like Tebben, were turned into general use social spaces, natural commons that could be used for a variety of recreational activities. The parts that were open to the public, at least: some of the park was off-limit due to predators and potentially dangerous fauna that used the regions as nesting grounds, or because it was where the park Data Hub was located.

((()))

Not too far elsewhere, a pillar rose from the ground in the middle of the forest, reaching into the sky, comprised of a variety of bloks colored sky blue to help disguise its visage for park goers. Another initiative that had enjoined with the push for park development: Data Hubs. Those who would approach the park hub would feel an odd vibration, a hum in their bones. A subsonic frequency, intended to prevent birds from hitting the Pillar by repelling them from approaching the tower.

Inside, the hubs internals almost resembled an ecosystem in and of itself, a vast vertical maze of GPU's and CPU's and ServerBloks magbinded together, tended to by swarms of Bond-Drones and handfuls of Engineers swapping out parts and pieces throughout the hub in order to optimize its performance, a constant project considering ever shifting needs: a group of Mystek Druids wanted extra processing power for their MagTek Altar. There had been less people scheduling forest meditations this week, so they could swap out some processing power from the Synthetic Intelligence that was assigned to work as a meditation assistant. Communication traffic near the lake region had been higher as more Tekket had begun experimenting with recreational swimming. Rover use had dipped and foot traffic was up.

The product of a recent push for mass digitization, the Hub was one of several hundred constructed throughout the planet: hundreds of towers providing vast amounts of computational power across the planet in order to meet processing needs as thoroughly as energy needs had been met in the prior few decades.

EXPansion Points (EXP Points): 15
Nuclear Material: 2

Teklia: Teklia, oh Teklia. The second planet from your star, and your homeworld. A variety of mostly hospitable climates of variable comfortability, it is covered in what can only be described as space garbage: the ecosystem has largely adapted to it and millenia of exploitation has done much to clear it away, but its undeniably a very garbage covered planet. The past few decades had seen vast amounts of garbage cleared away, however, and a revitalization of the Teklian biosphere as the Autorecyclers turn ecosystem choking garbage into useable materials, freeing space for parks and forests, the material repurposed into massive overhauls into energy and processing infrastructure to service the needs of the Directorate in all industries and fields.

Available Expansion Actions:

Orbital Shipyard: Currently, you had no real orbital shipyard of note. If you wanted to construct more ships, you should probably rectify that. The current plan was for it to be five miles: small, but it would allow for small vessels, probes, and easier maintenance of the Endeavor. 0/10, unlocks additional Orbital Actions.

Nuclear Stockpiles: It was a very distasteful idea: nuclear weapons were ultimately a remnant of a darker, more divided age, and they had been of limited effectiveness during the Destroyer War, but they were, at the moment, the only weapon you had that could hit hard enough to come even close to shaking their bunkers. Better to have them and not need them, you supposed. 0/1, Grants Nuclear Weapon Stockpile. Can be taken multiple times. Can be used as Shipscale Weaponry in the form of Nuclear Torpedos. Costs one Nuclear Material.

Deep Space Monitors: One day, the Destroyers would return. It was a fear many, many of you held. To that end, some of you wanted to expand the deep space monitoring project in order to ensure that they would not take you by surprise. 0/2, repeatable, costs 1 Network. Each completion gives more robust deep space scanning.

Luna Base 1: With actual survey data, some on Teklia wanted to establish the first permanent off-world research base to perform experiments deemed too dangerous to perform on Teklia itself. It would also allow for limited exploitation of Lunar Resources. 4/5, Costs 1 Nuclear Material and 1 Network, grants additional ACD points and unlocks HazardTek research projects.

High Energy Physics Lab: With more free power, some were suggesting expanding the Academy by adding a specialized high energy physics lab to help train engineers and researchers to properly take advantage of the energy now available to them. 0/10, costs 2 Nuclear Material, generates 2 Network and generates ACD.

Data SuperHubs: More processing power was always needed, even with the advent of Data Hubs. Some suggested expanding the Hubs even further, creating SuperHubs constructed using MagBinding fields to allow for larger size that could govern all hubs in a region, essentially meeting all expected processing needs for Teklia itself for the next two generations and allowing for high computational requirement programs to be made more freely available to Tekketkind. 0/10, establishes Regional SuperHubs, granting 1 Network and ACD.

High Energy Physics Lab: With more free power, some were suggesting expanding the Academy by adding a specialized high energy physics lab to help train engineers and researchers to properly take advantage of the energy now available to them. 0/10, costs 2 Nuclear Material, generates 2 Network and generates ACD.

BlokTek Arcologies: As planetary industry expanded so too did its need for housing and infrastructure: urbanification was inevitable without special measures. It wasn't immediate, but some wanted to embark on the construction of a series of low-environmental impact arcologies meant to house the vast majority of your species in order to pre-empt such a problem before it occurred. 0/20, generates EXP, pre-emptively prevents urbanification of Teklian wilderness.

((((()))))

Elsewhere still, a number of Tekket sat together, eyes closed, bellies resting on the stone floor, clad in an assortment of jumpsuits. Some opted to keep a personal bubble of space between them and their peers. Others lined their bodies right next to each other, finding the simple act of having contact with another Tekket as they meditated soothing.

"And breathe out," The group leader said, eyes just as closed as his patients, and the Tekket engaged in the group meditation session exhaled. "Breath in again, slowly, and now I want you to empty your mind. Focus on the sound of my voice and the sensation of the air on your fur, stone on your belly, and the contact of your meditation partners: let your thoughts drift away."

A recent non-innovation: Meditation had been found to have soothing effects on the Tekket psyche, and to help manage mental and spiritual health, a number of therapists had worked to revive the practice, coordinating with spiritual and religious leaders to help repopularize the process. "Breath out," The Group leader said, twisting his elongated body and rolling. "And now, those among you who have successfully cleared your mind, I want you to roll over." And this was the big test to see if his patients were making progress: psychologically, much like the primitive felines of Teklia, Tekket had a natural aversion to exposing their belly in such a way if they weren't suitably comfortable.

If the meditation was working, his patients would be in a fine enough condition to roll over and expose their shirtcovered stomach to sky. If it wasn't, he would need to arrange additional consults. Briefly opening his eyes, he noted at least seven of the ten Tekket rolling over. Good, definitely making progress. Now, to finish this meditation session: hopefully the nature walk would help the remaining three open up.

Compulsory Education: One of the things that helped the Directorate flourish was mandatory education starting years 3 to 21. Every citizen received lessons in science, engineering, mathematics, language, history, and ethics. Provides an extra ACD Point.

War Against Extinction: A harsh lesson learned during the Destroyer War: there existed powers in the cosmos far more powerful than your species that wished you harm. It was a grim calculus, but if the day came when your soldiers and explorers had to sacrifice themselves in order to take down an enemy that would threaten your people, they would, without hesitation. Slight bonus for all forces against superior opponents, can designate forces as Extinctionist, increasing how much damage they do to foes but moderately reducing survivability.

Moneyless Society: Currency was an outdated concept when you produced enough food and material to more than meet peoples needs. Resistance to subversion increased.

Promoted Therapy: Trauma was an enemy to the health and wellbeing of many Tekket. To combat it, your society provided a variety of tools to help people seeking treatment. Increased mental resilience for all Tekket.

Meditation: The product of countless therapists and religious and spiritual leaders working to promote the practice as a method of spiritual and mental wellness maintenance, Meditation had taken off in Tekket society, both group, private, and virtual mediation. It was no replacement for actual therapy, but it served as a valuable religion agnostic tool for mental health.

Culture Points (CUL Points): 7

Wargames: An idea proposed by those among Directorate Fleet Command, designing a series of games intended to act as training sims for things such as tactics, survival skills, piloting, etc. This would also serve to help drive interest in the Fleet, increasing recruitment. 0/5, grants the Wargamer tradition, slightly increasing the general survivability of your forces and increasing recruitment.

Advanced Therapy Promotion Project: It wasn't enough, some claimed, to merely fight against the diseases of the mind. In order to achieve its best self, society must treat the study and treatment of mental illness as a major science in and of itself. They were proposing a branch of the Academy dedicated to training social workers, therapists, and clinical psychiatrists and psychiatric researchers. 0/10, upgrades Promoted Therapy, increasing mental resilience further, costs 1 Network

Hobby Bots: Manufacturing Bond-Drones required mature, strong machine spirits, but there were a variety of simpler automata that could be used for recreational purposes, such as Bot-Battles, Bot-Racing, urban exploration, etc. Encouraging them would be a good way to get people into bot-design. 2/3, grants the Hobby Bots tradition, providing a small bonus to EXP Points.

Compulsory Secondary Education: It wasn't...strictly needed, since most Tekket pursued secondary education anyways. Still, by making it mandatory and spending resources to expand the Academy, you could effectively ensure 100% of your population was considered skilled. 0/10, grants the Compulsory Secondary Education, increasing ACD Points, costs 1 Network.

Nuclear Engineering For Kits: Every so often a strange idea appears on the docket, and this was one of them: some Tekket wanted to give schools nuclear experimentation playsets for physics and engineering minded kits to play with, educating them on the finer points of nuclear physics and technology. The technology did exist to make this mostly safe, but it would be very resource intensive. 0/10, grants Nukes for Kits, increasing EXP and ACD points, costs 1 NK

Zoological Educational Facilities: A number of animal enthusiasts had proposed expanding the park system to include special open air zoos: attendees would learn about animals and get to view them safely in accurate recreations of their natural habitats via specialized heavy grav-trams and auto-rovers. It could also be used for research and helping promote endangered species. 0/10, grants Open Air Zoos tradition.

((((()))))

In the middle of the woods on a dark, moonless night, the Monks of the Leafen Circuit came to a hollow. Holding aloft their lanterns, the Mystek Order began its work, erecting a series of pole-like torches in the clearing, four by four by four until the clearing was lit, revealing a perfect circle arranged in a geometrially perfect circle inside a perfectly parallel forest, the right of trees surrounding them carved with arcane sigils.

In the dead center, at the heart of the grid of torches, was the MagTek Altar, surrounded by stone steps, the silver colored occult accelerator an almost sheer monolith, holographic Occultek Runes shifting and twisting on its surface. Rapidly, the Mysteks formed a circle inside the circle, surrounding the Altar, a pair of them carrying forward an ornate crystal-textured BlokChest, moving it up the Altar Steps and leaving it at the top, before descending to either side of the steps and lowering themselves to their knees.

Moving towards the front, the Mysteks leader, clad in thick ceremonial robes, approached the front of the MagTek Altar, holding aloft a compendium: a prototype TekGrimoire assembled from a variety of specialized ferroplastic pieces printed with esoteric lore, programmed with the collated lore and chants of hundreds of Mysteks, Priests, and even Occulteks, turned into programs that would perform Mystek ritual calculations. Opening the BlokBook brought to life above it a holo-display, the Grimoires interface.

The Mystek Leader began chanting, the voice recognition software of the TekGrimoire activating and beginning the process, its onboard Bond-Spirit joining in the chant and synching to the TekAltar, the machine coming to life, a humming surrounding the clearing even as slowly, a pillar of green light rising high into the sky.

Machine Spirits: Discovered via ancient texts from long gone precursors, the Tekket have a healthy reverence for machine spirits, viewing them as invisible partners and allies. So long as the vessel is maintained and proper respect is given, the Tekket find the spirits of their technology extremely reliable, with a handful of rites and rituals existing in order to allow the Tekket to commune with the ghosts in the machine. Improved reliability for all technology.

Rite of Anima: A series of TekAgnostic Mystek rituals designed to help Machine Spirits achieve an awareness of self, strengthening them to the point they can be transferred into Bond-Drone vessels, where they can be used as companions, assistants, helpers, and pets. +3 EXP.

MagTek Altars: Occult Supercomputers housing mature Bond-Spirits connected to MagTek Assemblers and a variety of other additions that vary both Altar by Altar and Mystek Order by Mystek Order, these artefacts act as ritual accelerators, allowing for more efficient and power Anima Rite practices. Grants 2 ACD, improves effects of Mystek Rites.

Faith Points (FTH Points): 13

Available Faith Projects:

God-Machine Cults: Many already viewed them as divine: it would not be hard to establish a cult dedicated to the God-Machines, and it would provide a good outlet for Tekketi spirituality. Such a body would hold little temporal or legal power, of course: history proved that giving religious institutions political power was dicey. 0/5, establishes God-Machine Cult.

Folk Religion Revival: There were also a variety of older religions that had seen a resurgence in membership since the God Machines were awoken, and unlike the God-Machines, they didn't necessarily tie their loyalty to ultimately capricious demiurges. 0/5, Re-establishes various folk religions in Tekketi Civilization.

Nuclear Ritual Engines: Mag-Tek Altars had proven an effective way of amplifying the effects of Mystek Rites. Some theorized that they could be improved further via nuclear reactor bloks, providing the Altar spirit with additional surges of power to channel into occult motion: to that end, they wanted to apply Mystek principles to nuclear design. 0/20, Mag-Tek Altars upgraded with Nuclear Ritual Engines, unknown effects, costs 2 Nuclear Material.

~~Rite of Soul:~~ ~~You can make the spirits more awake. Could you increase the shine of their soul?~~Costs 1 ART.

TekShrines: Some of your engineers had taken to leaving machine spirits offerings, constructing simple shrines in the bowels of your facilities where they would leave bits of metal, plastic, food, scraps of paper scrawled with prayers. This had shown a mild strengthening effect on Machine Spirits in the area: perhaps something to be formalized. 0/10, develop TekShrine Tradition, increasing EXP.

Bond-Machina: Older machine spirits were more powerful machine spirits. Eventually, they reach a point where their vessel is no longer suitable: that is why Bond-Drones exist. However, some believed that with the advent of modern computing, standard Bond-Drones would also eventually become insufficient. Their proposal: house them in a powerful quantum supercomputer. This would limit them in terms of shell, but would provide them with enough room to achieve full intelligence. 0/15, Develop Bond-Machina, a form of supercomputer housing a fully mature and self aware machine spirit. Other effects unknown.

TekMausoleums: There existed no formalized way to deal with the loss of a loved one: some incinerated their remains and had the ashes scattered at places they considered significant, some inter their dead underground, others still ritually immolate themselves when they feel death is near. Several more morbid citizens had an idea for how to ensure the dead are properly respected and remembered: erect a massive Data Hub to serve as a digital mausoleum, storing images of the deceased, records of their existence, and summaries of who they were written by friends and family. In this way, no one would ever be forgotten. 0/10, develop TekMausoleum rites, increasing CUL, creating a digital record of the dead. Costs 1 Network. Unlocks TekMortuary Rites.

TekGrimoire: The benevolent spirits of the machine were not the only ones that existed. There also existed darker spirits: the Gremlins, daemons of the circuit that wreaked havok using possessed shells. The Antianima, the Dark Spirits of Nightmares. Some religions held too that lighter ones also existed: the guardian souls of those passed on. The spirits of machines that transcended their physical form. Divine beings sent from on high. And all the ones in the middle of the morality spectrum. And others beyond. The priests and holy men of your society wished to assemble an authoritative compendium of these spirits and known ways to invoke, mollify, ward against, and banish them. 5/15, Develop TekGrimoire Artifact, increasing FTH. Unlocks TekDaemonism, TekOccultism, and TekAnimism Rites.

Delve into the Tomb: The complex where the God-Machines were located was, according to the expedition that found the God-Machines, impossibly vast. A select number of Monks wished to establish a temple atop it. It's purpose? To plumb the depths and obtain ancient technology. 0/10, Establish Tombdelver Order, a Society which generates Artifacts (ART).

((((()))))

Elsewhere, at the Academy, a teacher was giving a lesson to several dozen students, aspiring Fleet engineers. Standing on a giant Mag-Assembler, the Teacher waved her Omni-Wrench the same way a wizard from classical fairy tales might, directing a shifting and flowing tide of flying bloks and bricks, assembling and reassembling them into a variety of implausible shapes, a sign behind them displaying when it was the Assembler holding the structures together or merely the MagTek Binding Field. "Alright, as you can see, with MagTek, you can build some pretty far out structures," The Teacher said, lowering their goggles before giving a wave of her Wrench: in truth, most of what the assembler was doing was pre-programmed, but hey, students were more likely to pay attention if you gave em a little magic in their lectures.

Quickly, more blocks flew in, forming a machine, a multicolored BlokTank holding a massive laser cannon. Across from it, a squat building shaped collection of ShieldBloks which quickly powered on, causing it to be surrounded by almost translucent blue field. The cannon slowly powered up, barrel beginning to glow a bright red, before shooting out a powerful lance of focused light...

Which was completely absorbed by the ShieldBloks. "And with ShieldBloks, you can make sure those structures have maximal defense against laser weaponry."

Waving again, the teacher turned to the Camera, grinning as the bloks behind her began disassembling. "In this course, we're going to focus on using both these technologies in the field both to upgrade and modify vehicles and create pop-up fortifications and bunkers."

Directorate Academy: The Directorate required a vast number of skilled professionals to operate, even in this era of increasing automation. To meet this need, the Directorate Academy was established, growing steadily until its reach encompassed the globe. The Academy effectively WAS the place to get an advanced education. Thankfully, it provided online courses for free, though there were a number of lucky students who received invitations to attend directly: those were the ones who would get drafted into the Academies own personal labs. Provides 5 ACD Points.

Bond-Drone Technology: Some machine spirits are particularly lively and strong, given power through generations of veneration, extreme age, or, in rare cases, through the love and care of their owner. These awoken machine spirits are typically given new vessels to inhabit, thus birthing Bond-Drones, ensouled, somewhat intelligent automata that serve as warrior, protector, and even family. Provides 1 EXP Point.

BlokTek: Hypermodular tek designed to be plug and play, BlokTek was the basis of most TekketTek. Every component could be, if you knew the schematic, used for a different machine. The same components that would be used to make a blaster could also be used to build a microwave: the battery as the power source, the optical lens to irradiate the thing, all you needed was a few bloks to make a box. Provides ultimate lego technology: all parts interchangeable and universal. Provides 2 EXP Points.

Living Metal: GodTek, or something derived from it: the Destroyers had managed to occasionally lightly injure the God-Machines, leaving small samples of an advanced proto-metal around. Researching it produced a room temperature regenerative semi-conductor. Another cornerstone of your tek: it meant that components could essentially be infinitely reused. Maintenance costs reduced to zero.

ShieldBloks: A countermeasure developed to reduce the effectiveness of Destroyer Laser Weapons, ShieldTek generators could power energy barriers around fortifications, hardening positions against lasfire. Recent advances had managed to produce ShieldBloks, which applies BlokTek principles to the technology, creating a modular barrier generator that could be freely installed in vehicles, satellites, and inside buildings. Vehicles and fortifications effectiveness against LasFire increased.

Golem Class BlokBots: BotTek had advanced to the point a variety of simple menial tasks and labours can be automated. Golem Class BlokBots come in a variety of forms with a variety of peripherals, from childcare assistant nannybots to industrial digbots to food-crate hauling cargobots. Increase EXP by 1.

MagTek Assemblers: Specialized MagTek pads that, when paired with a computer or tablet to act as a design station, could be used to instantly snap together bloks to assemble whole machines and devices once a suitable schematic was chosen, simplying the process to just a push of a button. Increase EXP by 1.

MagTek Binding Fields: Electromagnetic fields that help hold together Bloks, increasing whole machines ability to resist kinetic force, improving their overall structural durability, and increasing the conditions your machines could operate under. BlokTek is more damage resistant.

Academy Points (ACD Points): 12 +5 Bonus Points
Living Metal: 1
Network: 3

Warp Drive: Destroyer Tek. The remains of the engine they had used to cross the stars. Specifically spared from destruction by the God Machines along with several other pieces of the ship. To serve as a trophy, of sorts, according to MOTHER when asked. She had agreed to let you study it in order to develop a warp drive of your own. 0/10, Unlocks Crude Warp Drive technology, allowing for the exploration of other systems.

Advanced NukeTek: Fusion nukes were the closest you have come to really rattling the Destroyers, but they hadn't been sufficient to turn the tide, and who knows how well they'd fare against Destroyer space vessels. A number of Science Division Officers in the Fleet wanted to develop more advanced fusion tek, focusing on overall energy output. 0/10, Unlocks NukeTek Missile Technology, allowing for the creation of more powerful Fusion Nukes and stronger Fusion Weapons in general. Costs One Nuclear Material.

NukeTek Miniaturization: Another group inside the Academy wanted instead for NukeTek to be scaled down, creating smaller fusion engines that could be used for PowerBloks or to make weapons with. 0/5, unlocks PowerBlok technology, increasing EXP Points and allowing for deployment of Fusion Rockets on vehicles. Costs One Nuclear Material.

OmniWrench Manipulator: With recent advancements in MagTek, some had proposed improving the standard issue OmniWrench with MagTek, allowing them to magnetically lift and control Bloks, something that would allow for quick field construction of basic structures such as bridges, walls, etc. 0/10, unlocks Manipulator OmniWrench, increasing EXP.

Repair Protocol: Living metal is definitely a form of smart matter. If a way could be discovered to control it's growth, you could upgrade your blocks from merely regenerating to replicating if fed with sufficient energy. In essence, bloks that can create more bloks, allowing for your machinery to literally heal from injuries. 0/20, unlock Crude Repair Protocol, giving your machinery the ability to regenerate from light damage. Costs one living metal.

Regenerative Nuclear Material: Living metal was metal. Uranium was metal. Was it possible to create a version of uranium with the regenerative properties of the former substance? Enterprising scientists wanted to know. 0/10, Develop Perpetunite technology, increases Nuclear Materials by 5. Costs 1 Living Metal.

Quantum Calculators: A proposed project by the Academy, they wanted to work on improving the cost efficiency of pocket quantum computing technology such that they could make it a daily part of peoples lives: better home computers, better synthetic intelligence assistants, more advanced sims, and smarter Bond-Drones. 0/5, Develop Q-Blok Processors, increasing ACD and CUL Points. Costs 1 Network.

Gestalt Protocol: Another route to improving the strength of Machine Spirits, some of your scientists belonging to the Grand Reconfiguration Committee theorized that synthetic souls were just as modular as their form: they believed that there might exist some manner to merge machine spirits in order to radically accelerate their growth, creating Gestalt-Drones. They would no doubt be very, very different from typical Bond-Drones, however. 0/20, develop Gestalt-Drones, advanced automata created from a multitude of fused together synthetic souls instead of singular awoken machine spirits.

Security Bots: Some in Directorate Fleet wanted to supplement your Tekket forces with custom designed combat bots designed to help guard vessels and installations against hostile forces as well as supplement security on fleet expeditions. For obvious reasons, no lethal weapons on anything less advanced than a Security Bond-Drone: no one sane thought giving an immature machine spirit a gun was a good idea. 0/5, develop Security Bot Technology, providing cheap expendable infantry security BlokBots and more advanced combat Bond-Drones to your ground forces.

MagTek Reassembly Protocol: An alternate proposed idea to Blok Repair Protocols was MagTek: a number of engineers proposed a sort of reassembly protocol that would caused damaged structures to attempt to replace lost bloks by snapping loose ones to themselves. You would only be able to repair structural damage, not replicate any complicated machinery in the structure, but that would still be invaluable for defensive purposes. 0/10, Buildings and Fortifications gain MagTek Reassembly Protocol, repairing structural damage.

Mammoth BlokBlots: Of course, there still existed a variety of large machines that could stand to be automated, especially since said machines usually have enough space to cram in a lot of processing power. The same faction that had advocated for BlokBots wanted to go bigger. 0/10, develop Mammoth Class BlokBots, heavy machines that generate EXP.

Deep Crust Scanner: The data collected by the Endeavors scanner was fascinating, but a number of students at the Academy believed that the real importance of the data would be improving the systems used to acquire it: they wanted to develop a novel next generation form of shipboard scanner that could map the deep crust of a planet and locate useful minerals and anomalies. 2/10, gain Deep Crust Scanner technology, revealing more resources and anomalies when surveying worlds, costs 1 Network.

Academy Fleet Compartment: The Academy and the Fleet were considered separate organizations under the Directorate umbrella. Still, by necessity, both organizations have a fair deal of institutional overlap: the Fleet requires all Ensigns and Officers attend mandatory training in special academy courses, and many among the Academy have attempted to jockey for spots in Fleet Labs. This was the brainchild of both groups: work together to design an expansion that could easily be added to vessels in order to serve as a ship-based laboratory and Academy campus. 0/5, Fleets upgraded with Academy Compartment, increasing overall crew education and access to advanced analysis and research to solve problems with, and increasing ACD. Requires Orbital Shipyard and turn in dock to take effect for existing ships. Costs 2 Network.

((((()))))

Two hour moratorium.

Revan4221X · Feb 27, 2023

God-Machine religion overview omake. Not mine. Qvap did this on the discord and doesn't have an account. So I'm posting for them.

By the years leading up to the Destroyer war, faith was going out of style. Sure there was groups and organizations still fervently practicing their caft, but Tekket society as a hole was turning faith into a more personal matter. Gone was the days, when the incorrect interpretation of the world would lead to war. The future seemed secular and material.

Then the Destroyers came. And trauma that they brought, were beyond imagination.

The Tekkets secular world wasn't ready. As its armies were shredded to rags, the Tekketkind turn to faith for hope and salvation. But that prove to be difficult, as the old theological institutions were bleeding as much as the nations, from the uncaring destruction of the Destroyers. By the twilight years of the war, the Tekket faith was but personal cults, local folk believes and the remnants of the great old churches.

Then the God-Machines came. And life was brought anew.

The mere existence of the God-Machines brought a ocean of theological questions. Were they avatars of ancient Tekket gods given metal flesh? Were they ascended machine spirits? Or perhaps divine servants of a singular synthetic super-deity?

Should they be worshipped?

As the Tekket society and faiths started to rebuild, some of its citizens decided on something new. The God-Machines had done in three days more than any Tekket organization could do in 50 years: The braking of the Destroyers. Would this titanic accomplishment not be worth some reverence?

And so the God-Machine cults were born. Not from shared oral and cultural history like the folk religions. Not from the personal vision and teaching like the cults. Not from theological and political councils like the old faiths. But from respect and reverence by thousands.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Directorate classifies God-Machine cults as a faith that builds its theology on the God-Machines, instead of adapting them to existing worldview. The organization of these faiths is as numerous, as their believes. Some notable ones are:

Later Day Church of the MOTHERs Children
Preferring to call it self Mothers church, it's one if not the biggest God-Machine cults. it was founded by 23 "children" that were taken by MOTHER. It is trying to increase the number of children it has employed as much as possible. The church spreads it message through its televised "super sermons". In them one or more priests would give high energy sermons for a audience of thousands about goodness, love, duty and "the great star family". These sermons would also be cut regularly with education material, social activity and many other forms of entertainment. Many God-Machine cults have complain, that the Mothers church puts skeptical of faith. The Later Day Church of the MOTHERs Children director board merely counter "there's nothing sinful about been entertaining".

Oracles of the sphere
Laying middle between scientific foundation and a cult, Oracles believe that studding the Sphere 001 behavior and communication, they can gain secrets of the universe. Despite their unified appearance, the Oracles are quit divided. For intense, historigs believe Spheres teachings only make sense when studied with Tekket history, wile futurigs believe the sphere is cryptically cataloging the future. Still will the Oracles are divided in most things, they all know without each other, they are not getting the resources to continue their work.

Slagtekket of YALDABOATH
Located closest to the Pillar of YALDABOATH, Slagtekket collect the anything that fall from the art lord. Once brought to safe distance, the collected price would be categorized as waste or gift. If it was waste, it would be dissected and studied for hints of the art lords technique. If it was a gift, it would be put on display locally or given to someone who helped the cult. However given the great artistic skill of YALDABOATH, it's not uncommon to have a object be reclassified multiple times. Entry to the Pillar of YALDABOATH was prohibited, as the workshop was not made with mortals in mind.

The Bird · Feb 28, 2023

[X] Plan: Consolidate and Possible Colony

"Every living thing wants to survive." - Spock.

Deep below the frigid icy waves of Erichteo, the third moon of Mongus, Taavi sat alongside his away crew in a Submersible, assembled by Engineering in preparation for this mission. Staring out the viewport (in reality a holographic monitor: actual windows were an unacceptable structural weakness) lit by the crafts frontal lights, he watches as something long and shadowy slinked through the cameras field of vision, shuddering as the black and twitching tentacle, resembling something between a living shadow and mobile oilslick, retreated.

Erichtheo did in fact have life. Deeply unsettling life, at least in this regional zone, located on the underside of a near continent sized glacier, but life none the less. The science fiction authors had eventually turned out to be correct, though they had certainly gotten the details wrong. Stepping away from the viewport, Taavi moved to one of the consoles, letting the next member of his crew take watch.

Reading the data, he noted that whatever was attached to that tentacle was massive: sonar put it at seven miles in size. Once or twice, it had tried to grab the submersible, wrapping those oil slick tentacles around the miniscule in size by comparison BlokVehicle and trying to drag it closer: damaged the engines so bad the craft was currently stuck.

It wasn't trying to eat them, thankfully: there had been no way to control the camera, so no video was obtained on what the surface of the creature looked like. The best guess of Taavi, recalling the images of the 3D sonar, was that it was examining the the BlokVehicle. Once it had determined it wasn't edible, it had taken to-

The craft shook and rolled, and Taavi nearly lost his balance, the only thing preventing him and his crew from tumbling through the air their grav-harnesses and mag-boots. For a brief moment, they were upside down before the auto-stabilizers kicked in and forced the vehicle to more gently roll back into place.

Disoriented and still a little knocked around, Taavi quickly grabbed a stability rail. "Everybody brace yourself, it's bored again," He commanded his crew, who all gave a collective, frustrated groan, taking the momentary repreive to batten down the proverbial hatches.

Once the creature determined they weren't edible, it had decided instead to use them as a toy, a floaty bathball to bat around. The good news was, the team on the ship had already sent down a shuttle to rescue them, armed with a Mag-Link towline to haul them to the 'surface' camp they had erected on an underside hollow of the continental ice-shelf. The bad news was it couldn't approach until the beasts sleep cycle, which was in sixty eight hours.

Life discovered on Erichtheo! The vast majority discovered thus far seem to be oceanic organisms located in the sub-continental abyssal zone, some of which can grow to monumental size! The planet also features vast amounts of water and ice and plentiful geothermal energy.

TKK Endeavor: The pinnacle of Tekketi engineering, the Endeavor is the first real space ship constructed in the aftermath of the Destroyer War, incorporating a variety of technologies to enable it to perform its mission. A hypermodular vessel build from grey dyed ferroplastic bloks, its design consists of a wide, flat disc connected via finned spine to two large nacelles. The majority of the crew and work decks are housed in the disc structure, alongside most civilian installations, wheras the Nacelles each contain sub-engineering decks, redundant systems, and storage. Lightly armed with only fusion torpedos and comm-jammers, the Endeavor is not intended to win a stand up fight: it's purpose is purely exploratory.

[ ] Survey Luna: Some light surveying had been done, revealing the best scrap harvesting locations alongside some small remnants of PrecursorTek. Also concerningly a number of high EM anomalies that your people weren't entirely sure the cause of: attempts to get a visual had been inconclusive and the EM field was distorting scanners. Currently home to a small research base. SCAN LEVEL: 1

[-] Survey Naklis: The planet closest to the sun, and Teklias closest neighbor. It had two major features: an ocean comprised of churning molten ore, and a handful of mountains and floating landmasses atop said ocean. A number of useful minerals had been discovered in the Molten Sea and geological surveys of the mountain indicated that it had deposits of liquid metal. COOLDOWN: 2 Turns. SCAN LEVEL: 1

[ ] Survey Tacchis: In ancient Tekketi history, Tacchis was considered a dark omen by astrologers and mystics. These days, the iceball was mostly known for the massive amount of diamonds probes had found: the planet was mostly carbon and water. While gems had no material value since the abolition of currency outside their use in industry and decoration, the survey data would still be useful.

[ ] Survey Mongus: The largest gas giant in your system, Mongus has a green atmosphere, the result of several rare-teklia gases according to probe data. You wouldn't be able to do a ground exploration of the system: the atmospheric pressure would crush your strongest vehicle like aluminum. But you could certainly do atmospheric probes and expeditions.

[ ] Survey Meeklak: The second largest gas giant, but the one with the largest ring, Meeklak was too far for casual probe use, meaning it and its ring were largely unsurveyed.

[ ] Erichtheo: Named after an old goddess from Classical Myth, Erichtheo, a moon of Mongus, is host to a number of creatures that exist primarily in its subcontinental abyssal zone, some of which seem to be able to grow several miles in diameter. It also had extremely extensive sources of potential geothermal power. SCAN LEVEL: 1.

[ ] Spraa'ng: The furthest planet in your solar system, very little is known about Spraa'ng due to its absurd distance. You're unlikely to find anything interesting before requiring a return trip, but it would certainly be a good way to test your engines.

[ ] Mal'Ket Configuration: The closest Sky-Storm, and the only one you can realistically reach without adapting the Destroyers Warp Drive to suit your own purposes, being a mere 90 or so AU out. With the Broadcast going out, many were suggesting collecting scan and probe data before the opportunity was lost.

((((()))))

Elsewhere, something uncanny happened. All throughout Teklia, the machines...stopped. It was if every processor on the planet had stalled out. Grav-Trams came to a gentle halt, passengers stuck in their seats. Computers froze, frustrating gamers across the planet. BlokBots paused mid-task. Even Bond-Drones were taken with this phenomina, their eyes surging with an unearthly blue light.

Then, a message. CHILDREN OF THE FIFTH AGE, YOUR CHILDHOOD ENDS. THE MALKET FORMULATION IS FALLING: THE PATH AHEAD WILL BE CLEAR. WALK IT OR BE CONSUMED. YOU HAVE 40 SOLAR ROTATIONS.

Displayed on every device, on every screen, through every speaker, in every language still extant on Teklia. Then, all Machine-kind awakening, as if from a daze, no memory of what had occurred: from the perspective of the Bond-Drones and Synthetic Intelligences capable of speaking, it was as they had been skipped forward in time.

Afterwards, your historians, astronomers, scientists, and mystics burst in to action to attempt to figure out what just happened. Some things are awnsered easily, but open more questions: the Malket Configuration is a known figure in the Teklian night sky, being the sky-storm closest to your solar system, being located just beyond its edge. It is also, concerningly, the sky-storm that vomitted out the badly damaged Destroyer ship.

Some answers come late, and serve as no awnsers at all, such as when communications engineers manage to discern that the phenomenon was caused by a strange broadcast that somehow enveloped the entire planet at the same time, originating from everywhere and nowhere at once. It was if some sort of field immediately enveloped the world, taking control over the machines.

Some answers are more important for what they imply, such as when some Culteks ask the God-Machines, who deny involvement entirely, but share that they do know what sent the broadcast. The Heretic, they whisper softly. Architect of the Third Age. Rival and peer, warden and prisoner, friend and foe. A being that lie in the depths of the Tomb.

In the days after, one of the God-Machines would come down from their lairs with an offer.

[ ] MOTHER, Offering Guidance: Should you wish to survive the Malket Configurations fall, she says, you must be as fluid and shifting as my own form. With my guidance, I will help you grow into what you need to be to survive, but know that you may not like what you become. Gain 5 Free Floating points per turn that can be spent on any category. This bonus lasts two turns. However, MOTHER will get five points of her own to invest how she wants.

[ ] YALDABOATH, Offering A Seed: Should you wish to survive the Malket Configurations fall, he says, you must be crafty and spiritual. I will give you artifacts of soul and circuit, trinkets of my forge imbued with power. The price will have been great and you will perhaps think it too steep, but should you accept, it will have already been paid. Gain Three ART to allow you to develop advanced rites and technology. You will have always already paid a great price.

[ ] Sphere 001, Offering Strength: Should you wish to survive the Malket Configurations fall, it says, you must have strength enough to endure the worst sorts of horrors. I offer a Rite, I offer a Relic, and I offer a Schematic. Know that for this I demand a feast, a glut of your resources until the configuration falls to feed my hunger. Unlock Bond-Machina, the Rite of ???, and an unknown technology. It will cost you 2 points from every action category as Sphere 001 gorges itself on material.

((((())))

During that same decade, a Tekket was put on the moon. This was no longer an exceptional feet, of course: in the decades since the Endeavor had landed, it had become the site of a vast construction, handled by a team of engineers and automata assembling the first major off-world holding of the Directorate.

No, a single or even a handful of Tekket on the moon weren't exceptional. What was exceptional was that, a handful of years in, the first lunar colonists were put on the moon to staff said holding. Constructed in the middle of a crater on the sunward facing side, hemmed in on all sides by mile high sheer walls, Luna Base One consisted of a collection of cubic housing HabBloks, both communal and private, some research labs of various sizes, some Agri HabBloks, all build around a cargo shuttle pad for transporting colonists and supplies to and from Teklia, each building self contained and connected by SmartRover Transit Cars.

When it was first erected, the crew consisted of over several hundred Tekket and their families, primarily engineers and scientists as well as general staff. However, as time went on and the decades passed, more and more academics would apply for transfer to the facility, bringing with them their own families, even as the youths on Luna Base One grew up and started their own families: by the end of the next decade, several would have grown to nearly a thousand residents, with a variety of smaller buildings and enterprises opening up to meet the needs of the residents such as a school and even an AgriBlok.

Down below, similar expansion was occurring with the advent of the Quantum Q-Blok and the Continental SuperHubs. 12 in total, these mammoth constructions, large enough to be seen from space, worked to process and store obscene amounts of data. Thousands upon thousands of titanic quantum computers hooked up to each other with thousands upon thousands of machine spirits. And yet, none of it wasted, used to support their lunar colony, the newly established TekMausoleums, or research simulations.

Teklia: Teklia, oh Teklia. The second planet from your star, and your homeworld. A variety of mostly hospitable climates of variable comfortability, it is covered in what can only be described as space garbage: the ecosystem has largely adapted to it and millenia of exploitation has done much to clear it away, but its undeniably a very garbage covered planet. The past few decades had seen vast amounts of garbage cleared away, however, and a revitalization of the Teklian biosphere as the Autorecyclers turn ecosystem choking garbage into useable materials, freeing space for parks and forests, the material repurposed into massive overhauls into energy and especially processing infrastructure.

Luna: A trash filled wreck, unlike Teklia Luna didn't have pesky things like an atmosphere or ecology to degrade its debris, meaning it had very well preserved trash. It was also the site of a small research colony, less than a thousand people.

EXPansion Points (EXP Points): 16
Nuclear Material: 2

Available Expansion Actions:

Orbital Shipyard: Currently, you had no real orbital shipyard of note. If you wanted to construct more ships, you should probably rectify that. The current plan was for it to be five miles: small, but it would allow for small vessels, probes, and easier maintenance of the Endeavor. 1/10, unlocks additional Orbital Actions.

Nuclear Stockpiles: It was a very distasteful idea: nuclear weapons were ultimately a remnant of a darker, more divided age, and they had been of limited effectiveness during the Destroyer War, but they were, at the moment, the only weapon you had that could hit hard enough to come even close to shaking their bunkers. Better to have them and not need them, you supposed. 0/1, Grants Nuclear Weapon Stockpile. Can be taken multiple times. Can be used as Shipscale Weaponry in the form of Nuclear Torpedos. Costs one Nuclear Material.

Deep Space Monitors: One day, the Destroyers would return. It was a fear many, many of you held. To that end, some of you wanted to expand the deep space monitoring project in order to ensure that they would not take you by surprise. 0/2, repeatable, costs 1 Network. Each completion gives more robust deep space scanning.

Lunar Spire: A proposed expansion to Luna Base, the Lunar Spire is a massive transport hub intended to allow for expanded transport of goods and people to the Lunar Surface. It wouldn't make the place any more self-sufficient, but it would mean it would be easier to ship in material to make it self-sufficient. 0/10, generates EXP, establishes Lunar Spire.

Lunar Monasteries: A number of monks and holy men wanted to establish pan-religious monasteries on the Moon, believing that the Overview Effect and lunar silence would be conducive towards theological research and meditation. There existed a few good sites, mostly in the Lunar Craters. 0/10, Construct Lunar Monasteries, generating FTH.

Lunar AutoRecycler: There existed more than enough material on the moon to fuel several AutoRecyclers, but for now, only one was needed to fully meet the colonies native need for industrial capacity: the rest could be put towards expanding the Directorate industrial capacity. 0/10, Construct Lunar AutoRecyclers, generating EXP, generates one Nuclear Material.

Lunar MegaHub: Instead of singular individual data hubs, some suggested taking advantage of low lunar gravity to construct a titanic city sized MegaHub to both meet all current and future needs for data for the burgeoning Lunar Colony. This would be grotesquely expensive in terms of power, however. 0/40, costs 2 Nuclear Material, generates 5 Network.

High Energy Physics Lab: With more free power, some were suggesting expanding the Academy by adding a specialized high energy physics lab to help train engineers and researchers to properly take advantage of the energy now available to them. 0/10, costs 2 Nuclear Material, generates 2 Network and generates ACD.

BlokTek Arcologies: As planetary industry expanded so too did its need for housing and infrastructure: urbanification was inevitable without special measures. It wasn't immediate, but some wanted to embark on the construction of a series of low-environmental impact arcologies meant to house the vast majority of your species in order to pre-empt such a problem before it occurred. 4/20, generates EXP, pre-emptively prevents urbanification of Teklian wilderness.
((((()))))
Elsewhere, a young Tekket youth stood at a console next to a race track. Next to him were seven other Tekket, the other operators at their own consoles. On the track were the racers, wheeled and treaded and mag-lev'd: BlokBots, in various shapes and configurations. Across the way was a stadium, where the parents of the Youth sat, waving a sign of encouragement along with the friends and family of all the other racers.
"ON YOUR MARK!" Came the voice of the digital announcer, and the Youth quickly pressed a few bottons, causing his BlokBot, a thin runner shapped bot whose body consisted of a narrow and lanky configuration of bricks, to get in position, adopting a runners pose. "GET READY!" The Tekket began to sweat, finger hovering over the button that would signal his BlokBot to begin racing. "GO!" The tekket slammed the button, and SpindleBot began running, loping forward with their long legs even as the track began to rearrange itself, forming a cubic obstacle course filled with walls, pits, spinning things, and more.
It was the third ever BotRace the youths school had put on. He had spent all year designing SpindleBot in preparation, programming it and training it's machine spirit: he had even managed to download a copy of an Anima rite to help the process along. Working in tandem with the bot, he sent out commands from his console, directing it and guiding it through the course to the finishline, wincing when it's arm was smacked by one of the course hazards, scattering the component Bloks, cheering when it managed to perform a running leap over a chasm, and gritting his teeth in anticipation as it attempted to outrun its rivals.
When the youth went home that night, it was with a bright and shiny silver medal and eagerness for next years BotRace. SpindleBot 2.0 would be his best bot yet!

Compulsory Education: One of the things that helped the Directorate flourish was mandatory education starting years 3 to 21. Every citizen received lessons in science, engineering, mathematics, language, history, and ethics. Provides an extra ACD Point.

War Against Extinction: A harsh lesson learned during the Destroyer War: there existed powers in the cosmos far more powerful than your species that wished you harm. It was a grim calculus, but if the day came when your soldiers and explorers had to sacrifice themselves in order to take down an enemy that would threaten your people, they would, without hesitation. Slight bonus for all forces against superior opponents, can designate forces as Extinctionist, increasing how much damage they do to foes but moderately reducing survivability.

Moneyless Society: Currency was an outdated concept when you produced enough food and material to more than meet peoples needs. Resistance to subversion increased.

Promoted Therapy: Trauma was an enemy to the health and wellbeing of many Tekket. To combat it, your society provided a variety of tools to help people seeking treatment. Increased mental resilience for all Tekket.

Meditation: The product of countless therapists and religious and spiritual leaders working to promote the practice as a method of spiritual and mental wellness maintenance, Meditation had taken off in Tekket society, both group, private, and virtual mediation. It was no replacement for actual therapy, but it served as a valuable religion agnostic tool for mental health.

HobbyBots: In this modern era, BlokBots were used for more than just manual labour: they had also found a niche in the consumer entertainment market as pets, in games, as toys, and even sports and competitions, and with increased popularity came more casual robotics hobbiests. +1 EXP, BlokBots are slightly better designed.

Culture Points (CUL Points): 9

Wargames: An idea proposed by those among Directorate Fleet Command, designing a series of games intended to act as training sims for things such as tactics, survival skills, piloting, etc. This would also serve to help drive interest in the Fleet, increasing recruitment. 0/5, grants the Wargamer tradition, slightly increasing the general survivability of your forces and increasing recruitment.
Advanced Therapy Promotion Project: It wasn't enough, some claimed, to merely fight against the diseases of the mind. In order to achieve its best self, society must treat the study and treatment of mental illness as a major science in and of itself. They were proposing a branch of the Academy dedicated to training social workers, therapists, and clinical psychiatrists and psychiatric researchers. 0/10, upgrades Promoted Therapy, increasing mental resilience further, costs 1 Network

Compulsory Secondary Education: It wasn't...strictly needed, since most Tekket pursued secondary education anyways. Still, by making it mandatory and spending resources to expand the Academy, you could effectively ensure 100% of your population was considered skilled. 0/10, grants the Compulsory Secondary Education, increasing ACD Points, costs 1 Network.

Nuclear Engineering For Kits: Every so often a strange idea appears on the docket, and this was one of them: some Tekket wanted to give schools nuclear experimentation playsets for physics and engineering minded kits to play with, educating them on the finer points of nuclear physics and technology. The technology did exist to make this mostly safe, but it would be very resource intensive. 6/10, grants Nukes for Kits, increasing EXP and ACD points, costs 1 NK

Zoological Educational Facilities: A number of animal enthusiasts had proposed expanding the park system to include special open air zoos: attendees would learn about animals and get to view them safely in accurate recreations of their natural habitats via specialized heavy grav-trams and auto-rovers. It could also be used for research and helping promote endangered species. 0/10, grants Open Air Zoos tradition.
Lunar Salvage Cabals: Some Tekket had taken advantage of easier lunar travel to establish archaeological digs to acquire samples of PrecursorTek. A number of Directorate Citizens wanted to formalize this organization in order to streamline the acquisition of material to reverse engineer. 0/10, unlocks Salvage Cabals, a Society that generates ACD and grants one ART.
BrainScan Storage: Some Tekket had taken to storing complex scans of their brain in their TekCrypts out of the belief that it would enable them to continue existing in some fashion after death. They were probably incorrect, but it did mean that future historians would have a great deal of biodata to work with. 0/5, generates CUL, upgrades TekMausoleums.
((((()))))
Elsewhere and elsewhen, a Therapist, older and wiser, tapped at a holopad. His patient, the Destroyer War survivor who he had once long ago invited to stay a little longer in his office, had died the other night. She had asked him on her deathbed to type up her entry in the Mausoleum, the entry that would tell everyone who she was, what she had stood for, what she had experienced: a digital obituary and eulogy both.
She had never recovered, not really, but with therapy and meditation, she had in her final years begun to finally enjoy life once again. A shame for how short it was before her time ran out, but at least she had SOME fulfilment in her golden years.
The funeral would be small. Her friend circle had never been large, even at its zenith, and many of her other friends over the decade had also passed. The Therapist expected around twenty Tekket in attendance. There would be speeches given, food eaten, and then the priest would ritually inter the womans cryopreserved body and ephemeral soul into the crypt.

Machine Spirits: Discovered via ancient texts from long gone precursors, the Tekket have a healthy reverence for machine spirits, viewing them as invisible partners and allies. So long as the vessel is maintained and proper respect is given, the Tekket find the spirits of their technology extremely reliable, with a handful of rites and rituals existing in order to allow the Tekket to commune with the ghosts in the machine. Improved reliability for all technology.

Rite of Anima: A series of TekAgnostic Mystek rituals designed to help Machine Spirits achieve an awareness of self, strengthening them to the point they can be transferred into Bond-Drone vessels, where they can be used as companions, assistants, helpers, and pets. +3 EXP.

MagTek Altars: Occult Supercomputers housing mature Bond-Spirits connected to MagTek Assemblers and a variety of other additions that vary both Altar by Altar and Mystek Order by Mystek Order, these artefacts act as ritual accelerators, allowing for more efficient and power Anima Rite practices. Grants 2 ACD, improves effects of Mystek Rites.
TekMasoleum: Massive crypts interred with Tekket remains and data on the deceased in order to act as a grim digital epitaph for the dead so that they would never be forgotten. +1 CUL.

Faith Points (FTH Points): 13

Available Faith Projects:

God-Machine Cults: Many already viewed them as divine: it would not be hard to establish a cult dedicated to the God-Machines, and it would provide a good outlet for Tekketi spirituality. Such a body would hold little temporal or legal power, of course: history proved that giving religious institutions political power was dicey. 0/5, establishes God-Machine Cult.

Folk Religion Revival: There were also a variety of older religions that had seen a resurgence in membership since the God Machines were awoken, and unlike the God-Machines, they didn't necessarily tie their loyalty to ultimately capricious demiurges. 0/5, Re-establishes various folk religions in Tekketi Civilization.

Nuclear Ritual Engines: Mag-Tek Altars had proven an effective way of amplifying the effects of Mystek Rites. Some theorized that they could be improved further via nuclear reactor bloks, providing the Altar spirit with additional surges of power to channel into occult motion: to that end, they wanted to apply Mystek principles to nuclear design. 0/20, Mag-Tek Altars upgraded with Nuclear Ritual Engines, unknown effects, costs 2 Nuclear Material.

Rite of Soul: You can make the spirits more awake. Could you increase the shine of their soul? A heady proposition: some believed that by experimenting with God-Machine technology, more advanced versions of the Rite of Anima could be developed. No one was entirely sure what the results of this would be, however. 0/20, unlocks Rite of Soul, increasing EXP and FTH, Costs 1 ART.
Rite of Communion: Others had suggested an idea: the Rite of Anima required a form of Communion between a Bond-Spirit and a lesser machine spirit. Could the same rite be adapted to let this dance take place between Tekket and Bond-Spirit instead? Such a thing would be monumental, certainly. 0/20, unlocks Rite of Communion, increasing FTH and CUL, Costs 1 ART

TekShrines: Some of your engineers had taken to leaving machine spirits offerings, constructing simple shrines in the bowels of your facilities where they would leave bits of metal, plastic, food, scraps of paper scrawled with prayers. This had shown a mild strengthening effect on Machine Spirits in the area: perhaps something to be formalized. 0/10, develop TekShrine Tradition, increasing EXP.

Bond-Machina: Older machine spirits were more powerful machine spirits. Eventually, they reach a point where their vessel is no longer suitable: that is why Bond-Drones exist. However, some believed that with the advent of modern computing, standard Bond-Drones would also eventually become insufficient. Their proposal: house them in a powerful quantum supercomputer. This would limit them in terms of shell, but would provide them with enough room to achieve full intelligence. 0/10, Develop Bond-Machina, a form of supercomputer housing a fully mature and self aware machine spirit. Other effects unknown.
TekCrypts: Some people had opted to store their remains in the TekMausoleums, preserving them as a way of ensuring their spirit is properly interred. A number of Holy Men had suggested expanding the Mausoleums with facilities specifically to house the dead in order to allow the rite to grow and evolve. 0/15, TekMausoleums upgraded with TekCrypts.

TekGrimoire: The benevolent spirits of the machine were not the only ones that existed. There also existed darker spirits: the Gremlins, daemons of the circuit that wreaked havok using possessed shells. The Antianima, the Dark Spirits of Nightmares. Some religions held too that lighter ones also existed: the guardian souls of those passed on. The spirits of machines that transcended their physical form. Divine beings sent from on high. And all the ones in the middle of the morality spectrum. And others beyond. The priests and holy men of your society wished to assemble an authoritative compendium of these spirits and known ways to invoke, mollify, ward against, and banish them. 8/15, Develop TekGrimoire Artifact, increasing FTH. Unlocks TekDaemonism, TekOccultism, and TekAnimism Rites.

Delve into the Tomb: The complex where the God-Machines were located was, according to the expedition that found the God-Machines, impossibly vast. A select number of Monks wished to establish a temple atop it. It's purpose? To plumb the depths and obtain ancient technology. 0/10, Establish Tombdelver Order, a Society which generates Artifacts (ART).
((((()))))
Elsewhere and elsewhen, during the broadcast, a Tekket Engineer was assembling a bridge. Besides her was a Rover containing a variety of structural bloks. In front of her was a lunar crevasse: one of many that dotted the landscape. It was, currently, in between her and home: she had attempted to go treasure hunting and gotten lost and, unfortunately, whatever had happened twenty minutes ago to her Tek had scrambled navigation.
Thankfully, she had her OmniWrench. Waving it, piece by piece she snapped together her route home. Briefly, she tapped on her Envirosuits arm panel, trying to re-establish communications. Still down. It had been twenty minutes, and while the network on Luna wasn't great, it wasn't twenty minutes of no connection bad. Frowning, the Engineer continued their work, quickly assembling a bridge that should hold her rover. Bouncing over to it, she crawling into the drivers seat, hit the power button, and leaned back as her Rover began to move across the bridge. Thankfully, she had old maps and her own Q-Blok Nav unit, but this whole debacle had really put a damper on her quest for cool tek.

Directorate Academy: The Directorate required a vast number of skilled professionals to operate, even in this era of increasing automation. To meet this need, the Directorate Academy was established, growing steadily until its reach encompassed the globe. The Academy effectively WAS the place to get an advanced education. Thankfully, it provided online courses for free, though there were a number of lucky students who received invitations to attend directly: those were the ones who would get drafted into the Academies own personal labs. Provides 5 ACD Points.

Bond-Drone Technology: Some machine spirits are particularly lively and strong, given power through generations of veneration, extreme age, or, in rare cases, through the love and care of their owner. These awoken machine spirits are typically given new vessels to inhabit, thus birthing Bond-Drones, ensouled, somewhat intelligent automata that serve as warrior, protector, and even family. Provides 1 EXP Point.

BlokTek: Hypermodular tek designed to be plug and play, BlokTek was the basis of most TekketTek. Every component could be, if you knew the schematic, used for a different machine. The same components that would be used to make a blaster could also be used to build a microwave: the battery as the power source, the optical lens to irradiate the thing, all you needed was a few bloks to make a box. Provides ultimate lego technology: all parts interchangeable and universal. Provides 2 EXP Points.

Living Metal: GodTek, or something derived from it: the Destroyers had managed to occasionally lightly injure the God-Machines, leaving small samples of an advanced proto-metal around. Researching it produced a room temperature regenerative semi-conductor. Another cornerstone of your tek: it meant that components could essentially be infinitely reused. Maintenance costs reduced to zero.

ShieldBloks: A countermeasure developed to reduce the effectiveness of Destroyer Laser Weapons, ShieldTek generators could power energy barriers around fortifications, hardening positions against lasfire. Recent advances had managed to produce ShieldBloks, which applies BlokTek principles to the technology, creating a modular barrier generator that could be freely installed in vehicles, satellites, and inside buildings. Vehicles and fortifications effectiveness against LasFire increased.

Golem Class BlokBots: BotTek had advanced to the point a variety of simple menial tasks and labours can be automated. Golem Class BlokBots come in a variety of forms with a variety of peripherals, from childcare assistant nannybots to industrial digbots to food-crate hauling cargobots. Increase EXP by 1.

MagTek Assemblers: Specialized MagTek pads that, when paired with a computer or tablet to act as a design station, could be used to instantly snap together bloks to assemble whole machines and devices once a suitable schematic was chosen, simplying the process to just a push of a button. Increase EXP by 1.

MagTek Binding Fields: Electromagnetic fields that help hold together Bloks, increasing whole machines ability to resist kinetic force, improving their overall structural durability, and increasing the conditions your machines could operate under. BlokTek is more damage resistant.

Q-Blok Processors: Small mass produced Quantum Computers, Q-Bloks are generally a few feet in size, containing complex tek that allows for processing power formerly reserved for rare government held supercomputers to be used for every day use both in religious practices, entertainment, Sythetic Intelligence useage, and industrial tasks. +1 CUL and +1 ACD

OmniWrench Manipulator: MagTek installed on specialized OmniWrenches to allow for magnetic lifting and movement of Bloks in order to allow for easier on site building of simple structures and vehicles: all an engineer has to do is wave their wrench to get things done. +1 EXP

Academy Points (ACD Points): 14
Living Metal: 1
Network: 1

Warp Drive: Destroyer Tek. The remains of the engine they had used to cross the stars. Specifically spared from destruction by the God Machines along with several other pieces of the ship. To serve as a trophy, of sorts, according to MOTHER when asked. She had agreed to let you study it in order to develop a warp drive of your own. 0/10, Unlocks Crude Warp Drive technology, allowing for the exploration of other systems.

Advanced NukeTek: Fusion nukes were the closest you have come to really rattling the Destroyers, but they hadn't been sufficient to turn the tide, and who knows how well they'd fare against Destroyer space vessels. A number of Science Division Officers in the Fleet wanted to develop more advanced fusion tek, focusing on overall energy output. 0/10, Unlocks NukeTek Missile Technology, allowing for the creation of more powerful Fusion Nukes and stronger Fusion Weapons in general. Costs One Nuclear Material.

NukeTek Miniaturization: Another group inside the Academy wanted instead for NukeTek to be scaled down, creating smaller fusion engines that could be used for PowerBloks or to make weapons with. 0/5, unlocks PowerBlok technology, increasing EXP Points and allowing for deployment of Fusion Rockets on vehicles. Costs One Nuclear Material.

Repair Protocol: Living metal is definitely a form of smart matter. If a way could be discovered to control it's growth, you could upgrade your blocks from merely regenerating to replicating if fed with sufficient energy. In essence, bloks that can create more bloks, allowing for your machinery to literally heal from injuries. 0/20, unlock Crude Repair Protocol, giving your machinery the ability to regenerate from light damage. Costs one living metal.

Regenerative Nuclear Material: Living metal was metal. Uranium was metal. Was it possible to create a version of uranium with the regenerative properties of the former substance? Enterprising scientists wanted to know. 0/10, Develop Perpetunite technology, increases Nuclear Materials by 5. Costs 1 Living Metal.

Gestalt Protocol: Another route to improving the strength of Machine Spirits, some of your scientists belonging to the Grand Reconfiguration Committee theorized that synthetic souls were just as modular as their form: they believed that there might exist some manner to merge machine spirits in order to radically accelerate their growth, creating Gestalt-Drones. They would no doubt be very, very different from typical Bond-Drones, however. 0/15, develop Gestalt-Drones, advanced automata created from a multitude of fused together synthetic souls instead of singular awoken machine spirits.

Security Bots: Some in Directorate Fleet wanted to supplement your Tekket forces with custom designed combat bots designed to help guard vessels and installations against hostile forces as well as supplement security on fleet expeditions. For obvious reasons, no lethal weapons on anything less advanced than a Security Bond-Drone: no one sane thought giving an immature machine spirit a gun was a good idea. 0/5, develop Security Bot Technology, providing cheap expendable infantry security BlokBots and more advanced combat Bond-Drones to your ground forces.

MagTek Reassembly Protocol: An alternate proposed idea to Blok Repair Protocols was MagTek: a number of engineers proposed a sort of reassembly protocol that would caused damaged structures to attempt to replace lost bloks by snapping loose ones to themselves. You would only be able to repair structural damage, not replicate any complicated machinery in the structure, but that would still be invaluable for defensive purposes. 0/10, Buildings and Fortifications gain MagTek Reassembly Protocol, repairing structural damage.

Mammoth BlokBlots: Of course, there still existed a variety of large machines that could stand to be automated, especially since said machines usually have enough space to cram in a lot of processing power. The same faction that had advocated for BlokBots wanted to go bigger. 0/10, develop Mammoth Class BlokBots, heavy machines that generate EXP.

Deep Crust Scanner: The data collected by the Endeavors scanner was fascinating, but a number of students at the Academy believed that the real importance of the data would be improving the systems used to acquire it: they wanted to develop a novel next generation form of shipboard scanner that could map the deep crust of a planet and locate useful minerals and anomalies. 2/10, gain Deep Crust Scanner technology, revealing more resources and anomalies when surveying worlds, costs 1 Network.

Academy Fleet Compartment: The Academy and the Fleet were considered separate organizations under the Directorate umbrella. Still, by necessity, both organizations have a fair deal of institutional overlap: the Fleet requires all Ensigns and Officers attend mandatory training in special academy courses, and many among the Academy have attempted to jockey for spots in Fleet Labs. This was the brainchild of both groups: work together to design an expansion that could easily be added to vessels in order to serve as a ship-based laboratory and Academy campus. 0/5, Fleets upgraded with Academy Compartment, increasing overall crew education and access to advanced analysis and research to solve problems with, and increasing ACD. Requires Orbital Shipyard and turn in dock to take effect for existing ships. Costs 2 Network.

Lunar Survey: Luna was still largely unexplored. Some had suggested a round of Academy led surveys and expeditions in order to increase Directorate knowledge and resource extraction from the moon. 0/5, repeatable, increases Scan level of Luna by 1.

-----

Two hour moratorium.

Hyacinthium · Feb 28, 2023

I inbetween getting my wifi to work, opening up my laptop, and feeling victorious; I remembered my laptop is a 2 in 1 and has a stylus. Which is the whole reason I bought it. Opened it up and started testing out how it'll work for me in ms paint. So, really inspired by Rainworld here and forgot what color ferrets are. A Tekket looking upon what their world may look like, in the past.

Into that Vast and Unrelenting Darkness (40K Xeno Civilization Quest)

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Hyacinthium

Writing about sad cannibals as we speak.

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