Most of the
Clade
Darwin
transapients
are unremarkable residents of one of the Sephirotic
polities, or wandering explorers and researchers along the periphery of
the
Terragen sphere. Their common interest in sophont and subsophont level
beings
generally and bionts
in particular has always been
benign. The
actions of Deorvyn and eir
various copies are a particularly striking
example of the fact that every rule has its exceptions, even or
perhaps
especially where the behaviour of transapients is concerned. Though
explanations that come directly from transapient sources are
contradictory,
most sapient-level “godwatchers”
believe that Deorvyn is one of the
proofs that transapients, even such extraordinarily stable transapients
as the Darwins,
are as
vulnerable to insanity as any other entity.
Deorvyn was
originally a member of the Zoeific
Biopolity,
and appears to have had an
unremarkable origin at Ecotopia
in the late 35th
century AT.
There were reportedly Caretakerist,
THRN,
and MPA
transapients involved in eir genesis, but such collaborative
involvement in the
creation of new individuals is quite common in Clade Darwin. For
several
hundred years Deorvyn was engaged in various projects at Ecotopia.
Later e
migrated to Ao Lai,
where e seems to have been resident as an observer
or worker of some kind (transapients from the IPP
have given this
description, but have declared it to be incomplete). E showed great
interest in
the Burning
Library Project,
and acquired data from the old Genen
records in Solsys
during eir residency at Ao
Lai. E then departed for NoCoZo
space, and seems to have been an agent for some aspect of the Argus
Array
there, but also to have acquired considerable resources of eir own,
using
methods that were particularly ruthless even according to local
standards.
During this period Deorvyn became increasingly reclusive outside of eir
business dealings. Some time during the events leading up to the Version
War
e took the name “Deorwyn,” which is simply a more
ancient form of the name Darwin,
and according to
experts may be translated as “friend of animals,”
or possibly simply “good
friend” in the Old Earth language ancestral to Anglish.
Not long
afterward e changed eir name again to Deorvyn (no sophont has divined
the
meaning of this subtle change) and departed for an undisclosed location
along
the NoCoZo frontier. Eir actions thereafter are a matter of conjecture,
since
neither Deorwyn nor any of eir descendants survived subsequent events.
According
to those who have reconstructed events, “Deorvyn”
arrived in the NewLife system
in the late 4500’s and began extensive development: power
generation in the
inner system, mining of the moons and gas giants in the outer system,
and rapid
terraforming of NewLife II and III. NewLife II was altered to produce a
full
Terragen style biosphere, though Deorvyn chose not to alter the
planet’s 42
degree tilt and the extreme seasonality of the resulting climates.
NewLife III
was altered from its original dry airless rockball state to an
intermediate
Gaean/Arean world, similar to terraformed versions of the various
“Martian”
worlds. E then “unpacked” a very large library of
biological information,
created more than 400,000 copies of eirself, and began what might be
regarded as
some form of transapient game or experiment, one that grew increasingly
bizarre
over the centuries and eventually ended in what can only be called the
transapient equivalent of madness and suicide.
Each copy
of Deorvyn lay claim to an area on the surface of one of the two
habitable
planets, and created a unique sophont clade. These varied from slight
variants
on human nearbaselines (apparently a favourite theme among the
Deorvyns) to
some extraordinary and bizarre inventions such as the Kanumae
or the Seedfolk
(both of NewLife II) or the Red Masters who eventually came to dominate
NewLife
III. Most of these sophont clades were highly ingenious or original in
their
design but many were not particularly viable outside of their original
habitat. In fact most of the Deorvyn copies seem to have purposely
created
clades
with significant flaws, disabilities, or shortcomings. All of the
clades were
originally created to live in primitive environments, with little or no
technology. A few achieved some measure of higher technology,
comparable to Old
Earth Agricultural Age or at most early Industrial Age levels.
The notable exception was that of the Red Masters. These, perhaps due
to aspects of their
unique
predatory/parasitic habits and to their Superior
level intelligence in certain key areas, eventually achieved an
interplanetary level technology. However, the vast majority
of the Deorvyns’ creations remained in
primitive squalor, with short natural lives, for the entirety of their
clade’s
short existence. Each Deorvyn remained as a sort of “god” of eir own
clade’s
territory. Eir level of intervention in eir creations’
societies varied from
none at all (the most common strategy) to that a sort of primitive
deity who might
or might not require worship or sacrifice and might or might not serve
an
oracular function. Perhaps of their own accord or perhaps due to
memetic nudging
by the Deorvyns, the clades tended to come into conflict. Over the next
millennium or so, this mad patchwork was kept in continual ferment on
both
planets. On occasion one clade managed to exterminate another. On such
occasions the “winning” copy of Deorvyn subsumed
the loser. On rarer
occasions, according to some pattern discernible only to the Deorvyns,
another
Deorvyn copy would arise, together with an associated clade, and occupy
a
vacant region.
By the
early 5300’s there were still more than 500 clades extant in the
fertile seas and
forests of NewLife II, though most occupied marginal territories and
were
apparently destined for extinction. On NewLife III the Red Masters had
achieved
dominion, and ruled 20 or so subsapient clades; these were descendants
of former
sapient groups that existed only in highly modified forms as
servants to
the Red Masters. This single overarching civilization had achieved
Early Information
Age
level technology, including crude interplanetary travel and genetic
engineering. This was based on primarily on eir own discoveries and
inventions, though also in part on those of the extinct
NewLife II
clades they had conquered and some scavenged technology abandoned by
the
Deorvyns. At some point the Deorvyns had ceased to maintain the
terraforming on
NewLife III, and so the global climate began to deteriorate. As a
result
the Red
Masters began a movement to colonize the habitats of NewLife II. None
of the
other Deorvyns opposed this activity, and it is believed that the
Deorvyn
attached to the Red Masters actively encouraged it.
Cliological
simulations indicate that
without
interference the Red Masters would have eventually subjugated both of
the
system’s planets, and exterminated or enslaved the remaining
clades, leaving a
single remaining copy of Deorvyn. However, this did not occur. The
cause of
this was the action of a minority clade on NewLife II that came
eventually to
be known as the Kanumae. The full tale of the Kanumae and their long
struggle
is perhaps best told in their own sagas, but Kanuma art forms are
rather
inaccessible to most other sophonts. The most popular adaptation of
those
stories is “The Serpentstooth Rebellion,” a
cooperative work by the human
translator and historian Elias Zamiatin and the vec fabulist Iridium
Seeker.
The
Kanumae, due to their unique form of mentality, included some extremely
long
lived personalities, capable of equally long range planning. Moreover,
they
managed to achieve brief flashes of transapient insight as a composite
mind in
some of their larger populations. They had long been aware of the
Deorvyns, and
when the Red Masters arrived they organized a resistance. By themselves
the
Kanumae would have been unable to carry out such a task, given their
small
size, weak manipulative appendages, aquatic habitat, and low
technological
level. However they managed to engineer a surreptitious alliance that
included
some of the Seedfolk and one of Deorvyns’ less damaged human
nearbaseline
tribes. After some initial successes, the invasion and colonization of
NewLife
II stalled, due to memetic sabotage and biological warfare by the
insurgents.
This by itself would not have been sufficient, but the Kanumae were
able to use
their land-borne allies to infiltrate the primitive information
networks of the
Red Masters. They were able to monitor and interpret signals the Red
Masters
had received from nearby systems, which had recently been settled by
some early
Terragen colonist clades (mostly human nearbaselines, Tavi,
and Fabers).
Using a combination of stolen and hijacked equipment, they managed to
send
coded signals that were received and decoded at Nova Anantarivoa, an
orbital
arcology in the Thorin system. Neither the Anantirivoans nor any of the
other
settlements in the system took any action, but a transcript of the
decoded
broadcast was published on the Known
Net
by a Francisclaran
missionary who was active in the
area. Eventually this information attracted
the attention of an S2 entity known as Amida19, who gained the support
of some
Zoeific and Negentropist
backers to intervene. This was a contravention of the Tragadi
Accords
according to some experts, though others state that provisions of
the Sentient Rights agreements allow such action by sophonts who are
signatory
to those provisions.
The
relativistic
rescue mission did not arrive until 5603. By that time the Red Masters
had
subjugated nearly all of NewLife II, and those who had planned the
broadcasts
were long dead (in the case of the Humans and Seedfolk) or enslaved or
in
hiding (in the case of the Kanumae). The
Deorvyns one and all quietly committed mass suicide and erased all of
their
subsidiary records some time in the years preceding the
invasion/rescue,
presumably when they detected the arriving rescue fleet. Their last
avatars
perished only a few months before the first members of
Amida19’s mission were
entering the system.
The
discoveries in the NewLife system were a several years wonder on the
Known Net,
and a major embarrassment for any person or polity with connections to
the
Deorvyn transapients. The Biopolity claims to have discovered a
“vulnerability
to memetic hacking” in the original Darwin
design, one involving the “sensory systems and memeplex
seeds.” They and most
members of Clade Darwin claim to have made changes that will
“reduce the
frequency” of any future incidents. However there has been no
consistent
explanation as to who might have been the author of the alleged
“tampering.” Conspiracy
theorists have suggested any of a number of possible culprits behind
the events
in the NewLife system. Just a few of these supposed sources are the
Cyberian
Network (a prank gone badly wrong), the NoCoZo (an outgrowth of their
“competition” meta-ethic), Metasoft (an attempt to
embarrass the Biopolity),
unknown xenosophonts sending signals through the Argus Array (to
disrupt
Terragen civilization) or the Institute for Primate Provolution
(because of the
disproportionate number of human clades in Deorvyn’s
experiments, and Deorvyn’s
connection with the IPP). The most frequent accusation is that the
entire event
was a Biopolity experiment that got out of hand. Sceptical independent
sophontologists on the other hand point out that transapients, just
like any
other beings, sometimes lose their sanity through a combination of
innate
weaknesses and unique personal circumstances.
Various
organizations
have made much of the Deorvyn incident (or, as some describe it, the
Deorvyn
Atrocities, or the Deorvyn Rebellion). Anti-transapient groups hailed
the
“destruction” of Deorvyn by the Kanumae and their
allies, Francisclarans have
pointed out their key role in freeing the NewLife clades, and many
within the
Sephirotic regions have advocated an expansion of Sephirotic control
into the
less settled regions of the Terragen sphere for the protection of all
concerned.
The
surviving clades in the NewLife system provided a considerable
challenge for
the various aid agencies involved. Biopolity experts from centres such
as
Ecotopia, as well as members of independent specialist organizations
such as
the Institute for Primate Provolution were active in the NewLife system
for
several centuries after Deorvyn abdicated ownership.
Deorvyn’s creations were
extraordinarily diverse, and showed extraordinary inventiveness,
but many
were not viable in Terragen civilization. Some of the least functional
are now
extinct by one means or another. These either chose, when they fully
understood
their situation, to end their clade by failing to reproduce, or
modified
themselves or their descendants and are essentially a new clade, or
have
chosen to blend with a compatible existing clade (this last was the
fate many
of the human-derived clades, who have vanished into the human
nearbaseline
population). Of the remainder, most are now in protected enclaves,
under Utopia
Sphere
auspices. The Red Masters themselves were consigned to their own
quarantined
system, and remain there under the care of their transapient keepers.
