Fiat Caecus Lux or FCL Disorder is an extreme form of mania or
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) that afflicts the
incredible intellects of Transapient
minds. For some reason, either
through physical failure, engineering mistake or memetic influence, the
mind of a Transapient becomes hyper-stimulated creatively. The
resulting mental state drives the Transapient to begin creatively
reshaping his environment and all systems in his reach to new visions
and forms. Unfortunately, with the new loss of focus and concentration,
the ideas and directions flit from concept to concept so rapidly, often
projects are never completed, or large projects become disjointed
leaving chaotic designs in it's wake. This is a very rare disorder and
because of this, it has made it hard
to diagnose or prevent.
Only two known events of Fiat Caecus Lux have
occurred in known history. The first occurred during the
Second
Federation, when JD 518791, a small relatively isolated planetary
system in the
Keter
Dominion was struck by this disorder. A burst of
high power transmissions emerged from this system as the ruling
Archailect,
estimated to be a mid level S>3 began transmitting billions and
billions of ideas, artwork, stories, and other creative information.
Since the system was not connected by any regular transportation
network or wormhole, this disaster went unnoticed for the next 73
years, until a passing beamrider picked up the transmissions. When the
beamrider arrived at its destination, 8 years later, it had collected
the entire magnum opus of this unknown Transapient, thanks to some
clever engineering by the crew of the beamrider. These recordings are
now known as "The Stellarajah Transcripts" after the name of the
beamrider that recorded the burst.
When the incident was reported to Keter, a small fleet of ships was
dispatched to JD 518791 to see what remained and assist anyone left.
The Transcripts indicated a rapid descent into more and more chaos that
could pose a real danger for other nearby civilizations. When the fleet
arrived, they discovered a system devoid of all sentient life, but
beautiful in it's destruction. All the surveyed planets had been torn
apart and reshaped into strange exotic forms, including a band of pure
atmosphere at the ideal human habitation level, that was peppered with
"islands in air".
Somehow, the Archailect had cannibalized itself to create a system
similar
to that of an open air dyson swarm with island chunks of planets in
which various levels of ultratech were working to terraform. Scattered
on the surface of these worlds were massive ruins, megastructures,
artifacts of strange and bizarre creation that even to this day have
not been accurately identified, except perhaps by Archai more
powerful than the creating entity. The whole system was slowly
destabilizing,
and was in the process of falling apart as its atmosphere bled off into
space. It became obvious to the fleet that this case of FCL had been
happening for far longer than the 5 year period of transmission.
Indicators, with the level and density of creativity shown by artifacts
found lead investigators to believe that this event took place well
over 70 years before it reached it's final, and most likely, fatal
stages recorded by the Stellarajah Transcripts.
Keter declared JD 518791 off limits due to its instability, density of
dangerous ultratech and even Clarketech and has yet to re-open it.
During the
Version
War the system was "written off" the charts and
incorporated into the Seams. It is classified as a quarantined system,
still being utilized by Keter, but now is protected by the Burdikeer.
Popular rumors persist that Keter has been slowly stabilizing this
system for future use, and development as well as returning it to its
sephirotic fold. It is common knowledge that the entire system has been
catalogued and analyzed to comprehend the inter-relation of all the
technology left behind. Also, another rumor is beginning to surface
that for some reason, the Burdikeer's security on the system has grown
lax and some very clever baselines have sneaked into the system. Of
course, this is only unproven rumor.
The other recorded FCL Disorder event occurred only 196 years ago.
Unfortunately, this was a much more dangerous situation since the world
afflicted was attached to the nexus via nanogauge as well as
transportation gauge wormholes. In the Terran Federation, a relatively
active Transapient administrator of a small cluster of worlds began
acting strangely. The administrator, BasetheoryAGE, was a low S:4
Power. He began providing his citizens with more and more creative
solutions to problems. This was very useful for the first 10 years, but
soon began to look more and more odd as these became like "Rube
Goldberg" solutions of incredible complexity for simple tasks.
Architectural control began to get more and more art like, and less
functional. When confronted by a peer, it is said that BasetheoryAGE
seemed to regain control of his creative impulses and was able to
project a normal front long and well enough to satisfy his concerned
peers.
Life went back to a normal state for another 14 years. Then suddenly,
BasetheoryAGE let loose a burst of creativity that violently disrupted
life on three connected systems simultaneously. It is currently
theorized that the confrontation with a peer inserted an element of
paranoia into his disorder. His creative burst took on a mean-spirited
and hostile vision. Instead of beautiful works of nature as seen in the
Stellarajah Transcripts, incredibly sublime weaponry systems, and
"arts" of war were created. Fortresses, viruses, nanoweapons and other
militaristic, enforcement nature boiled out of BasetheoryAGE's system.
Immediately, he began testing these new weapons on the three wormhole
connected systems. The distress call went out to
Yave to
stop this from
spreading. The Nexus immediately shut down the spread of this threat
before it spread beyond the three systems already afflicted. All
nanogauge wormholes were closed, and the transit wormholes were
deflated, and beamriders were quickly made to haul them out of range of
the expanding wavefront of destruction at top speed.
Yave, sent an armada of military vessels to confront the threat in
BasetheoryAGE's systems. Fortunately, they were able to use the
wormholes pulled out of system to get through quickly, and in the space
of 3 years, a counterstrike force was able to be assembled. They waded
into the first system to discover pure carnage. The system had been
reduced to a stellar waste with active and destroyed weapon systems of
incredible complexity and power. The star had been rapidly stripped for
power and mass for weapons that the investigators could not comprehend.
The best theory currently available is that, when the wormholes were
collapsed and pulled out, BasetheoryAGE was left with no one to fight,
and turned to blood sports against himself, and his remodelled
citizens,
making the systems orgies of death. In this orgy, BasetheoryAGE managed
to destroy himself, and nearly all life in these systems. Any life left
was converted into very dangerous killing machines and literal combat
monsters of great ferocity.
Slowly, Yave has been pacifying these systems with steady military
force, destroying the remaining automated defense systems and
creatures. In one especially dangerous system, Yave was forced to make
the painful decision of destroying the star, and disassemble every
piece of matter in system at a femtotech level. The reasons have not
been released but many believe that a sentient godtech weapon resided
in there that was too dangerous to let roam free. The other two systems
will eventually be re-integrated into the Terran Federation when the
time is right.
No one really knows what causes Fiat Caecus Lux, and much research is
being devoted to these two known cases, to help prevent its spread. No
real similarities between the two cases have been found.
