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Caerwactod
Galactography > Sephirotic Empires > Communion of Worlds
Galactography > Systems and Worlds > Systems & Worlds C - D
Galactography > Systems and Worlds > Systems & Worlds C - D
 Image from Steve Bowers | |
| Caerwactod is surrounded by 150 ring-shaped, circumstellar, vacuum-adapted microgravity habitats, which support three different types of environments with different temperature ranges | |
Caerwactod - Data Panel | |
| System: | Caerwactod |
|---|---|
| Stellar class: | F8V |
| Stellar Luminosity: | 2.1 x Sol |
| Distance from Sol: | 3200ly |
| Constellation: | Cassiopeia |
| Colonised: | 6700 AT |
| Allegiance: | Communion of Worlds |
| Population: | 17.5 trillion embodied 6.2 trillion biont, 10.9 trillion vecs, 200 billion variable clades. |
| Governance: | Mediation via Communion bridge minds. |
| Infrastructure | 2 statite stellar diadems at the star's poles to deflect light and solar wind. 150 circumstellar orbiting wilderness rings. 2 plasma cloud habitats above the poles. Thousands of large structures (>100km) including Castles, Arenas, Chandeliers, and Tumbling Skulls. Billions of smaller structures, such as asteroid gardens and small habitats. |
| Travel | Wormhole: Connected. 160-93-210 Beamlines: 8 Lightways: 13 |
Overview
Caerwactod, a partial dyson sphere, is one of the largest confluences of vacuum-adapted clades in the Terragen Sphere.Its origins lie in a conflict between three very different clades, Nauri, Sailors of the Ebon Sea, and Nabla biowars. Upon request, the Communion intervened to mediate between the original colonists, and in so doing laid the foundations for a peaceful, complex and diverse polity. Thereafter, Caerwactod attracted a wide variety of vacuum-adapted sophonts, and the resultant syncretic culture led to a flourishing in biosphere design, ornate megascale architecture, and strategic games.
Thousands of different cultures thrive in Caerwactod, living in harmony, hybridising to form new societies, and often co-operating on artistic projects. The one constant in all this variety is life in a freefall vacuum. It is not an ideological position, but for many of the inhabitants simply the most natural and obvious way of living.
Infrastructure
Caerwactod's inhabitants have built a great variety of structures. The most notable of these are:Stellar Diadems
Two rings of statite sails and superconductor cables sitting above the star's poles. They redirect additional light and solar wind towards the average ecliptic, where most habitats orbit, and towards plasma clouds above the poles. Each diadem is 1.5 million kilometres in diameter and sits in a plane 0.75 million kilometres above the star's pole.From the average ecliptic, they are visible as two bands of light above and below the star's disc. From the poles, the closest diadem is visible as a halo of light around the star.
Wilderness Rings
Caerwactod has four different vaccum-adapted ecosystems, each specialised to a different level of illumination: aqueous, vitriolic, dry, and plasma.The aqueous, vitriolic and dry ecosystems are organised into 150 circumstellar wilderness rings, each of which is roughly 30 000 kilometres wide and 50 kilometres thick. These rings are flexible structures, composed of a tangled network of producer organisms. They orbit the star rather than rotate to produce artificial gravity, and serve as a sort of continuous forest in freefall vacuum for the inhabitants. The side of a ring facing the star is like a canopy, in full daylight. The interior is shaded to various degrees, allowing cooler environments, and the side facing away is in near-total darkness, lit only by the glow of the other, more distant rings.
"Freefall mountains" of inorganic matter are studded throughout the bands, providing matter caches and further environment. Some of the component organisms generate magnetic fields, which provide safe magnetospheres safe from ionising radiation. The magnetospheres also put the ring under small amount of tension, through a combination of magnetic repulsion and momentum from the solar wind, and by modulating them the ring can stabilise itself against gravitational collapse. Inhabitants live in villages, isolated homesteads, or as nomads in the wilderness.
There are 30 vitriolic rings orbiting between 0.3 and 1 au, 60 aqueous rings orbiting between 1 and 3 au, and 60 dry rings orbiting between 3 and 9 au. Each ring orbits at a slightly different angle to maximise light interception. This configuration is similar to a snailshell dyson, though the wilderness rings don't intercept all the star's light. The angle between the innermost and outermost rings is only 0.08 radians. The region is called the "average ecliptic".
The vitriolic rings are closest to the star and operate at temperatures between 300 - 600 Kelvin (127 - 327 degrees Celsius). Most producer organisms making up the rings are derived from Thiogen Bubble plants and ribbon plants. The former are shaped into fractal foams with large interior chambers, and the latter form tangled networks and gigantic conetrees.
Many organisms generate sulphate and sulphite minerals. The most notable are the giant pyrite mirrors, constructed from iron sulphide by a species of bubble plants to funnel light through its internal chambers. The vitriolic ecosystem also uses denser oxidisers in the form of polysulphuric acids. Freefall mountains in the vitriolic rings are usually composed of silicates and sulphates. The vitriolic rings have a total population of approximately 400 billion.
The aqueous rings are further out, operating at temperatures between 250 and 350 Kelvin (-23 and 77 degrees Celsius). They are composed of a large variety of producer organisms, including:
Vacuum lichens and cacti grown into complex entangled networks, absorbing any stray ions or molecules that touch their surface. Vacuum bladderwrack grows large pressurised blisters to hold oxygen or even symbiotic ecosystems.
Ionotrophic tubeworms (derived from the giant tube worm) extend wires for several kilometres to generate magnetic fields, which they use to extract energy from the solar wind. Their old mineralised tubes can be filled with oxygen, or be open and serve as habitats for other organisms.
Photosynthetic vertebrates are mobile when they hatch, resembling reptiles, but become sessile in adulthood to form part of the ring's structure. The main body flattens into a plate tens of metres across, the limbs stretch to hundreds of metres, and the digits stretch and branch fractally to forms hundreds of tips, each stretching hundreds of metres further. The digestive organs and oral cavity harden to become oxygen storage or habitat spaces.
Consumer organisms are never predatory. Most are adapted to hold tightly onto the ring, but some are capable of free flight. They include a number of creatures resembling beetles, millipedes, and iguanas. Giant vacuum sloths carry entire ecosystems in the long fur of their back. Pegasi, derived from equine stock, are some of the largest free-flying consumer organisms; they extend solar sails to move between wilderness rings, and latch on to the rings with clawed legs.
The aqueous ecosystem maintains closed nutrient cycles to prevent volatiles loss. Usually this takes a form of symbiosis: Producers release an oxidiser in return for excreta. Gaseous oxygen takes up large volumes, requiring large lungs or, for long journeys, inflatable air sacs. Alternatively, some consumer organisms use denser oxidisers, such as hydrogen peroxide, nitrous oxide or ammonium nitrate, held in special organs to prevent degradation. Freefall mountains in the aqueous rings are usually composed of calcium carbonate. The aqueous rings have a total population of approximately 3 trillion.
The dry rings are furthest out, operating at temperatures between 100 - 250 K (-173 - -23 degrees C).
They are composed a hylotech ecology using both macroscale and nanoscale self-reproducing systems. Some parts of the ecosystem are derived from the physiologies of the Nauri, Echir-(n), and Shimmerers, allowing each of these clades to interface with it directly. While Hobo Sapiens have an aqueous biology, they generally find the environment of the dry rings more amenable, and often form parts of these systems too.
Other parts of the Dry Rings are an entirely novel artistic mechosystem. These parts are built around standardised modules which can be used to construct numerous bots. Rather than producers and consumers, it has three types of bot: Extractors, which specialise in extracting energy and transmitting it to other types via superconducting cables, lasers, or mass beams; Maintainers, which specialise in repairing and building the modules; and Movers, which specialise in carrying parts across and between rings.
A form of predation occurs when a bot of one type signals another with a resource request. The prey bot then ceases operations and disassembles itself into modules the predator bot can use. The three types operate in a predilator (predation-oscillator) cycle: Each type preys on one other, leading to oscillations in the population of each type.
For example, if Extractors prey on Maintainers, Maintainers prey on Movers, and Movers prey on Extractors, then the oscillations occur as follows: An increasing population of Movers will reduce the population of Extractors, which will allow an increase in the population of Maintainers, which will reduce the population of Movers, and so on.
The population oscillations are local, so at any given time all three types are represented somewhere in the ring, allowing Extractors to transmit energy to Movers and Maintainers.
The direction of the predilator cycle reverses occasionally due to a fourth parasite type. These small bots study the predation signals of other types and learn to imitate them to extract modules. With each cycle, the parasite load grows. When the parasite load is high enough, it prompts the other three types to refuse normal predation signals and switch to an alternate set of predation signals in reverse order. The parasite bots, no longer able to imitate the new signals, are subject to predation by all other types, save for a small number which begin to learn the new signals, beginning the cycle again.
Extractors usually utilise photovoltaic panels superconducting loops. However, those in the other rings often use fission or fusion reactors. Lightmill Flowers use loops of angled light sails to turn using light pressure, and then extract energy from the rotation.
Freefall mountains in the dry rings are usually composed of frozen volatiles or metals. The dry rings have a total population of approximately 5 trillion.
Plasma Ecosystem
The plasma ecosystem occupies two dome shaped clouds above the rotational poles of the star. Each cloud is 0.7au from the star, and measures 2 million km across and 20 thousand km thick. The clouds are not in orbit, but are supported against the star's gravity by absorbing momentum from light and solar wind.The clouds sustain lifelike processes based on dusty plasma, derived from naturally evolved forms discovered Langmuir. Complex MHD processes (similar to those found in Menexene life) interact with charged dust, which can freeze into low-density Coulomb crystals or melt into liquid-like states.
Producer organisms absorb energy using the solar wind to induce secondary currents or by using starlight to ionise neutral dust. Their metabolism is based on magnetic reconnection events. They transmit energy through electrical currents and plasma waves and hold genetic information in ordered Coulomb crystals of dust.
Most organisms are large, low density, and extremely simple. The largest organisms are ten kilometres across and about as complex as jellyfish.
Plasma Menexenes inhabit both clouds and, being fully sophont, are the primary exception to the rule of simplicity. The plasma ecosystem is also inhabited by a number Dance-Don't-Dream, who enjoy interacting with the plasma and like to maintain parts of the ecosystem as gardens.
The total population of the plasma clouds is 200 billion.
Castles
 Image from Steve Bowers | |
| The Castles that orbit Caerwactod are freefall, vacuum structures which take many forms, including 3D Mandlebrot sets and other geometric figures. | |
Castles vary vary in size from hundreds to thousands of kilometers across. Despite the size, they have a low density and low mass. The largest host populations of almost ten billion sophonts.
There are two dominant architectural styles, arising from a schism in the 8000s: baroque and bauhaus.
Baroque castles, influenced by Barzelona Maximalism and Abergism, are shaped like mandelbulb fractals, with detail reaching the micrometer scale. Statues of frolicking bionts and vecs encrust the internal infrastructure, and trompe-l'oeil murals make the vast internal cavities appear even vaster. They are usually constructed using vacuum deposition.
Bauhaus castles follow a minimalist architecture and are most often shaped into surfaces of constant negative curvature or minimal surfaces. Popular forms include pseudospheres, Dini's surfaces, Costa's surfaces, unit cells of the Neovius surface, and Jeener's klein surfaces. Bauhaus castles do not use external ornamentation or colour; the surface varies only in lightness, reflectivity, and transparency.
There are roughly twelve thousand castles spread across Caerwactod, anywhere between 0.2 and 40 au from the central star, with a total population of approximately 7 trillion.
Gardens
Grown on volatile-rich asteroids 1-5 km across, Vacuum Gardens are most common in the aqueous regions. They are more controlled, isolated and self-sufficient than the wilderness rings, and the plants grown on them are smaller, using the asteroid as a growth substrate.They are usually home to small communities of sophonts living relaxed, bucolic lives tending to the plants and managing the asteroid's orbit. Jötunn, Sailors and small Sritht hives are the most well-represented clades in the vacuum gardens, but some Starhand vecs also cultivate gardens for the aesthetics.
There are close to two billion gardens in Caerwactod, most of which orbit between the aqueous rings, though some operate closer to or further from the main star, using shades or mirrors to maintain a proper temperature. Roughly 500 billion sophonts live in gardens.
Arenas
The Arenas are specialised structures for playing the Great Game. Mirrored tetraheda close to 100km across, they contain a labyrinth of interior chambers. During the game, the chambers contain both traps and rewards for players, and can be hazardous.There are several hundred arenas in Caerwactod, many of which orbit at high angles outside of the average ecliptic.
Chandeliers
Introduced in 9100 by a collective of Shimmerers and Echir-{n}, Chandeliers are artistic megastructures constructed entirely from transparent crystals. Most are approximately cylindrical, with the diameter larger than the height. The largest chandeliers are 800km in diameter and 10 km in height.The architects carefully tailor the ornate structures inside, playing with refractive indices, chromatic dispersion, lensing, birefringence, and optical interference. When finished, chandeliers rotate, catching the starlight and generating complex, shifting patterns of light, colour and polarisation for observers inside and outside.
By convention, only clear, transparent materials may be used. Construction rules specify maximum allowable absorption for given paths and require builders to specify the frequency band they wish to work with. Introduction of colour should be solely through chromatic dispersion. Common construction materials are diamond, silicates, silicon carbide, carbonate minerals, and polyethylene.
There are 2000 chandeliers in Caerwactod, the majority of which orbit between 0.3 and 3 au. They are not designed for long-term habitation, but a small number of sophonts live within them.
Tumbling Skulls
 Image from Steve Bowers | |
| A Tumbling Skull castle habitat in the form of a giant whaleskull | |
They are giant replicas of vertebrate skulls, built with a consistent scale factor of 100 000 (making a human skull close to 20km high, and a blue whale skull 550 km long). The outer surfaces are constructed of biochemically-accurate vertebrate bone, but the interior bone volume is a cavity-filled foam to reduce the mass. They rotate slowly with large axial tilts, all at a distance of 8 au from the central star.
The skulls are not just art, but mortuaries, serving the small number of mortalists and metamortalists who do not wish to have their remains destroyed, recycled, or lost. While only a small proportion of modosophonts request such an end, the absolute number across the entire Communion of Worlds is considerable. Thus the interiors of the skulls hold tens of thousands of vacuum-mummified biont remains, and over a hundred vec bodies.
A small schism in the 9900s led to some skulls being constructed to hold the bodies of sophonts who have been uploaded or resurrected from backup in new bodies, though this practice is disdained by the original keepers. In recent decades, two new skulls have been built to hold tributes to sophonts permanently lost in the Oracle War. (These deaths have rarely left any intact remains. Instead, the tributes consist of bone statues of the deceased placed in poses and contexts that represent their lives.)
Additional Structures
Caerwactod contains many other structures that do not fit into the above categories. Many of these are clade-specific constructions, such as Sritht hives, communities of Faster/Jonah Jötunn, and amalgamated bodies of Echir-{n} and/or Shimmerers.These additional structures hold a total population of approximately 600 million sophonts.
Transport
Many of the inhabitants of Caerwactod are free-flying, capable of moving autonomously across interplanetary distances, and this remains one of the most popular methods of transport for both lone travellers or large communities.The usual means of transport is through combination sailing, using reflective or diffractive light sails, superconducting cables, and plasma to move via light pressure, electric sailing, and magnetic sailing.
Active propulsion is less common, though Dance-Don't-Dream bodies and some Sritht hives have conversion drives, and Nabla mobile forms routine use fusion drives.
Some inhabitants, such as unmodified Jötunn, Hobo Sapiens, and Amphista, are not capable of free flight. Generally such inhabitation move less often, remaining in a particular garden or castle. Alternatively, one can still move great distances (albeit at much slower speeds) while remaining on a single wilderness ring. Otherwise, such inhabitants can fabricate combination sails and life support systems to move as easily and quickly as their free-flying associates.
Alternatively, there is a large population of sapient Anomalocaris-derived bioships and Faster/Jonah Jötunn who ferry travellers across the system.
To supplement autonomous transport, Aldrin cyclers operate between most ecosystem rings and many of the largest castles. Modern cyclers are designed with the same architectural principles as the Bauhaus castles, and take the shape of an umbilic torus two hundred kilometres in diameter, with a single face and edge. The edge is open, allowing access to the interior. Cyclers operate as full communities in their own right, intermediate in size between gardens and castles. There are 100 million cyclers in the entire system, holding a total population of approximately 400 billion sophonts.
In the inner system, open-vacuum solar moths are popular as a form of recreational travel. The combined surface area of the wilderness rings allows a significant proportion of the exhaust to be recaptured, reducing volatile loss.
Finally, all wilderness rings and castles, and many other structures, have mass beam emitters, allowing any sophont with an appropriate sail to travel across the system in a matter of days.
Notable groups
The Great Game
The Great Game arose from the strategic games of Nabla Biowars, which over time attracted other participants and extended to a system-wide institution. Each game covers the entire system and lasts between three and six years. During this time, a number of smaller sub-games interact with the main game, allowing other inhabitants to participate on a more casual basis.The game reflects the agonistic strategic behaviour of Nabla Biowars, but follows Communion values in being ultimately co-operative. At the start, multiple teams are each assigned specific acquisition goals across the arenas. The goals bring the teams into conflict. Over the course of the game, however, it becomes necessary for the teams to co-operate with one another to mutate the goals into something achievable by all.
Architects
Many of the clades in Caerwactod have a propensity for zero-gravity construction, such as Amphista, Hobo Sapiens, Nauri, and Starhand, and over time individual traditions have merged into a complex synthesis. The two most dominant trends are the Bauhaus and Baroque in castle construction, but there are many more architectural movements, such as the Arrhythmic School, Oscillationism, and Revulsion Revolt, all of which find expression in smaller structures the wilderness rings, within castles, in chandelier design, or in starship construction.The Slow Orbit
The Slow Orbit, located at 3au between the aqueous and dry wilderness rings, is a habitat of Machina Babbagenseii. The largest structures are the Babbagenseii themselves and the asteroids they mine. Since its creation, it has attracted a number of bradychronic provolves such as Anttechians, Tvekna, Brain Kelp and Iniliak, living in small habitats. In fact, as a consequence of this, the Slow Orbit holds the densest congregation of non-vacuum-adapted sophonts in all of Caerwactod.Because of the large difference in subjective time rate, the Slow Orbit is somewhat detached from the rest of of Caerwactod culture. However, its members do contribute to the system's artistic output, and often provide a stabilising influence against rapidly-shifting trends.
Xeno-astragen Reserves
Some of Caerwactod's inhabitants maintain a population of free-roaming xeno-astragens, such as cosmoamoebae and conchsquid. Many places on the ecosystem rings and castles provide resting places for such organisms.Neutrino Singers
This aioid clade uses bodies with particle accelerators and crystalline neutrino detectors. They are spread thinly across the outer system, and rarely meet in physically or even communicate via electromagnetic radiation. Instead, they continually sing to each other through modulated neutrino emissions. Some songs are solely aesthetic, with no semantic content, while others are messages with interesting or useful information. The distinction itself is the subject of play, where listeners try to figure out whether they are picking up a signal or nonsense, while the emitters try to blur the lines and utilise ambiguity.Sometimes all the neutrino singers harmonise. Other times, they all but ignore each other, generating songs based on entirely incompatible aesthetic principles.
Hermits
Many sophonts in Caerwactod choose to live alone for years or even centuries. There are two broad classes of hermits: those who live in the wilderness rings, foraging in the ecosystem; and those who live in open space, extracting energy from the star. The two groups have no rancour, and some choose to alternate between the two lifestyles.While hermits live alone, they do not abjure contact with others. In fact, there is a strong culture of hospitality. Most welcome visitors for a short time, sharing stories and offering support if needed.
The population of free-living hermits is approximately 500 million.
The Illusion of Immanence
The Illusion of Immanence is a competitive, individualistic and highly rheomorphic subculture. Individuals frequently adopt new outlandish forms, apparently in an effort to outdo each other.Members never talk directly to other members, and often seem to actively avoid each other. Instead, they listen to gossip and open comms traffic and thereby try to track what impact their compatriots are having. They talk freely with other Caerwactod inhabitants and speak "in character" relative to their current form, though given how unusual some bodyforms are, such characterisation is laced with self-aware absurdism.
Occasionally bodyform trends sweep across the IoI, with all members all trying to put a new spin on a common idea. Some of the more recents trends include bodies shaped like:
- Famous (and obscure) megastructures, scaled down
- Real and imaginary galaxies, scaled down even further
- Folded proteins, scaled up (a trend which evolved into biomolecules in general)
- Swarms of flying animals inside a transparent terrarium shaped like one of those animals
- Two-dimensional impossible objects rendered on a micrometer-thick film.
- Corroded water-related objects from pre-Technocalypse culture, such as sinks, showerheads and cups
- Pillars of joined-together human heads in various states of decomposition.
The Illusion of the Illusion of Immanence
A more casual version of the IoI. Members of this group adopt interesting bodyforms, but do not always follow the IoI's emphasis on competition or obey the strictures of avoiding one another and speaking in character. They are more often members of other clades who are taking a temporary vacation in a different bodyform. Even so, it can be difficult for observers to tell the two apart.History
Caerwactod was initially colonised in the 6700s by a a group of frontier Nauri, and soon afterwards by a tribe of Sailors of the Ebon Sea, both of whom found the system's extensive debris ring to be a useful habitat. While the two cultures had little in common, the debris ring was sufficient to accommodate both, and they live together, barely interacting, for close to a century.6800 marked the arrival of a third colonisation mission, this time by rogue Nabla Biowars. While the Nablas had lost most of their aggressive instincts and dangerous weaponry due to a partial shutdown order, their behaviour was erratic and unpredictably violent. The Nauri and Sailors, being so different from each other, struggled to communicate well enough to formulate a coherent response.
After several skirmishes and further uncertainty, the Nabla Biowars appealed to the Communion's mediator guilds (with whom they'd had previous experience). Subsequently, several Communion mediators and bridge minds travelled to Caerwactod. After extensive negotiation, the Nablas consented to have their psychology modified to alter their aggressive instincts into an appreciation for strategic and co-operative games.
The presence of Communion bridge minds also allowed the Nauri and Sailors to communicate with each other more effectively.
By 7000, a complex syncretic culture had emerged. The Nabla games became a major institution, attracting a Sritht hive and a number of Dance-Don't-Dream from nearby systems. The Sailors and Nauri, working together, began to construct larger and more elaborate vacuum megastructures in which they could live in close proximity. The blossoming architectural tendency attracted several vacuum-adapted constructor clades, including Amphista, Starhand, and Hobo Sapiens.
The 7600s saw a burgeoning culture of Jötunn establishing vacuum gardens. A trend of progressively more elaborate and wild gardens grew into a multi-clade movement of ecosystem design.
In 7620, the Blodeuwedd Collective proposed merging the largest wild gardens to form part of a circumstellar ring. This idea attracted the attention of ecosystem designers and architects across the system. Acquiring enough material to build an entire ring would require starlifting, changing the nature of the entire system, and the resultant cross-system debates took several decades. Finally, in 7650, starlifting and construction began, lasting until 7800. Long before construction was finished, a second wilderness ring was proposed, and Nabla Biowars, driven by a residual competitive instinct, began work on a third ring based on vitriolic biology.
The arrival of colonists from the recently-discovered Echir-{n} in 7800 generated another shift in Caerwactod's culture. First, Echir-{n} mathematical principles influenced its architecture, leading to the first geometric castles. Second, the Echir-{n}'s habit of merging their bodies into megastructures hybridised with the Nauri mechosystem, leading to the first dry wilderness ring.
In 8000, Caerwactod was connected to the Nexus, leading to a surge in its population and the construction of further wilderness rings. Machina Babbagenseii took up residence in the outermost dry rings, and vacuum-adapted anomolocaroid bioships formed a nest in the aqueous rings.
By 8400, all the current wilderness rings were finished, and additional mass had been starlifted. Following discussions about retiring the starlifting apparatus, a number of Dance-Don't-Dream who had been involved in ecosystem design put forth a proposal for the fourth and final ecosystem type, based on plasma. After some debate, this proposal was accepted. The starlifting apparatus was repurposed into the stellar diadem, providing enough light and solar wind to support a plasma ecosystem above the poles of the star.
In 9100, recent Shimmerer colonists influenced the architect cultures and led to the construction of the Chandeliers.
In 9400, Menexene uploads, carrying the morbid culture of their homeworld, led to the creation of the Tumbling Skulls. Some of the Menexene uploads were later engenerated as Plasma Menexenes in the plasma ecosystem.
A number of Gammerganner colonists arrived in 10300. It remains to be seen what influence they will have on Caerwactod's culture.
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Development Notes
Text by Liam Jones
Initially published on 10 July 2024.
Initially published on 10 July 2024.
