The Long Forgotten War

Appendix 2:  Notes

Lyrica - also known as Iteration 313 -

 

7,600.2 – The local AI overseer of the Teva Alpha and Beta systems, (a hintersystem with three worlds opened for terraforming, and a number of orbital habitats, although no megastructures – its main value in being a wormhole link between the middle regions and several outer regions xenoarchaelogical outposts) experiences a major personality dissociation. The aetiology of this event is not known to the local population or the wider galaxy. In the process, E sends a transmission via radiometric means, avoiding the wormhole. The contents of this transmission are not intercepted within the system. An unknown amount of time later (believed to be a very short time period) E dissociates into several sub-intelligences, apparently as a defensive mechanism. Two of these sub-intelligences, Alpha and Beta, believed to be descended from defensive subroutines, adopt the Alpha and Beta systems. A third intelligence, whose name at the time is not known but who would later become known as Border, and later-still, The Martyr, remains hidden.

7605.3 – Escalating tensions between Teva Alpha and Teva Beta lead to the outbreak of sporadic civil violence. With the Angelnet either shut down or under the control of the intelligences Alpha or Beta, a war soon unfolds between the two polities. Attempts by Solarist influences to end this war rapidly fail, and within the year, both Teva Alpha and Teva Beta secede from Solarist control. A treaty is reached between the Solar Dominion and the Teva binary systems to maintain wormhole access and the safety of travellers between the two in-system wormholes.

7611.8 After a series of major incidents within the binary systems, leading to the death or deletion of several hundred thousand non-combatants in their ongoing civil war, the Border system is instigated. This system, apparently an expert-level, non-sentient system, was able to harness the remaining angelnet and converted it into a swathe of khaki goo between the binary systems. It stopped the worst, most destructive attacks between the two polities, allowing drones, autowars, and other weapons of war to travel between systems at certain well-defined points.

Both polities are happy to allow their baseline or neb populations to believe that they set up the Border system to better protect their inner systems; when in reality, each suspects the other of activating the system in an attempt to end the war without further bloodshed. The war continues unabated, with much resources going into attempts to subvert this Border system.

 

7800s-9500s – Myriad covert attempts are made by the Solar Dominion to try and end the Teva civil war. Most are subvert memetic attacks, but the war meme that has infected the system proves to be extremely virulent and resistant to counter-memeing. Attempts sometimes reduce violence or increase the pro-peace population, but only transiently.

 

 

 

9505.2 – The last transmission of the Teva Intelligence is finally intercepted within the inner sphere and sent to the Lord of Rays and his sub-minds for analysis. After almost a century of analysis, limited details of the Teva Intelligence’s death are able to be reconstructed: that E was searching for something, that what E found was a new intelligence, something alien and of extreme power, possibly even S6, or S7; that this intelligence was somehow limited or damaged; and that it was what destroyed em. A team of investigators are sent to the system to prepare to re-open the wormhole.

9,600.5 – After a serious incident that saw two warring ships of a previously Solarist polity collide and nearly strike the event horizon of the main proximal wormhole of the Teva Alpha system, the local wormai (which remains a staunch solarist) performs a mass transfer at the behest of the Lord of Rays to close the Teva-side of the wormhole to traffic, thus isolating the system for the next several centuries.

10,200 - Unit One are copied to CA-442 to investigate the source of the aivir that barraged the inner sphere of the Solar Dominion. Initially intended to be part of a multi-level strike force, Unit One find themselves alone when they re-boot in CA-442 - something broke the connection before the other units could be copied.

With only Carmichael fcr support, Unit One must establish themselves in CA-442, an orthodox Solarian system. The residents are unaware cf the aivir infestation that has recently been detected and blocked from their colony; Unit One arrive in the Guidance receiving server to find a system reeling in the shock of having their wormhole links shut down by the Lord of Rays.

This chapter should present a social commentary on the nature of Solarist systems, and examine their "weakest" attribute - their dependence on rules. Solarist priests attempt to calm the burgeoning unrest in the wake of little communication from the local AI God.

Unit One set about trawling local virches for any signs of unregulated, hidden, or covert activity, without any success. They theorise that, given the isolated nature of CA_442, and it's relative lack of resources, as well as it's S3 AI God, it is possible that somewhere there is a server that has escaped angelnet monitoring, although it is more likely that an unsuspecting baseline was used as a vector. Carmichael confirms that after close analysis, the aivir specimen appears to be of high transapient origin, with a terminating data structure unlike any he has ever seen, although the basic skeleton corresponds to an obscure S1 Cyberian virus first engineered in the 8000s, and not commonly encountered in the wild.

With Cyberia confirmed as the source, Unit One commence searching for signs of Cyberian presence in the system. They worry that if it was engineered by a high transap, they will not find it if it does not want to be found; Carmichael suggests that their prime duty in the absence of any high-level support is simply to control any further outbreaks, log all sensory data and wait for the wormhole links to reactivate - in one Terragen year - and turn themselves over to be debriefed and reintegrated so that their data can be transap analysed.

As social unrest increases, Grius inhabits a bot, and maskerades as a vec to talk to the acolyte of the system's Near Octachaplain - the ecumenical head of the local Solarist religion. His acolyte, a Middle Octachaplain by the ident of Arova, talks to Grius, thinking that he is a ril Guidance Agent (Metanet Keys allow Grius to change his Solarist Central ID at will) - and some discussion ensues involving the necessity, or otherwise, of subterfuge, in investigating a terroristic attack on the Empire. Arova questions whether, given their ability to hack into the metanet itself, Countersubversionists are no more than Solarist-sanctioned terrorists.

10200.1 – Unit One defend against sporadic viral outbreaks, but nothing on the scale of the outbreak that initiated their insertion into CA-442. They detect a strong undercurrent of resentment and fear regarding the closure of the wormhole; the local inhabitants are getting restless and feeling increasingly isolated now that they are cut off from the inner sphere of the Dominion. Grius begins to encounter references to the Dark Places, and surmises that a Shadow Node – a virch server, or set of servers that are somehow hidden from the local powers.

 

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