01-07-2017, 08:47 PM
The Physiology and Psychology of the Nomad Vagrants
I. Physiology
While tranquil, the time after the Nomad War was anything but easy for the remnants of those that were pulled through the Hypergate activated by Edison Trent. Vast swaths of emptiness, systems whose jump connections phased in and out sporadically, with little hope of accurately predicting when the next failure would happen, were commonplace, and the Vagrants later figured out that this was due to the gravimetric distortions caused by two black holes at the edges of the sector they had been transported to and interfered with the hyperspace currents connecting the jump anomalies. With the discovery of the Hyperspace Beacon and the subsequent decision to venture into finding out its merit towards the end of returning to Sirius, the Vagrants, although slowly, began to learn and adapt accordingly.
Other than the Slomon K'Hara in Sirius, the Vagrants' enemies were not petty little bipedal creatures stealing their heritage and hunting their spaceborne shells in the pursuit of ever greater technological inventions. What the Vagrants faced was the unpredictable force of nature itself that seemed to obey completely different rules than in Sirius, their native environment. One of the most noticable deviation from normal Nomad behaviour was that the Vagrants started prefering the safety of planets during periods of rest, which in itself also posed difficulties, like finding suitable places that permitted sufficient amounts of cosmic or residential radiation to reach them in order to recuperate. The reason for this change in behaviour were, again, based on natural occurances in the lost sector. Giant ion storms, gravimetrical surges that were strong enough to break apart moon-sized asteroids and wandering acidic nebulae pulled by the black holes framing the lost sector were not common, though the whole deemed them dangerous enough to seek shelter from them on planets, as their own gravitational well weakened the force of sporadic graviton surges, while ion storms and nebulae engulfing the stellar objects would not harm the Vagrants as long as they stayed underground. Over time, the Vagrants would adapt to the changed environment, causing their warforms to adapt more towards terrestrial stays than the Slomon K'Hara of Sirius, who prefered to remain spaceborne. The outer membranes of their vessels would turn less rigid than the crystalline structures that Nomad vessels consisted of in order to prevent easily-preventable fissures and other damage that would come with maneuvering underground and allowed a quick and easy mending of the occasional damage, but that wasn't the most outstanding divergence.
![[Image: PtdDqC1.png]](http://i.imgur.com/PtdDqC1.png)
Observed only scarcely, the Vagrants, in the time of their absence from Sirius, have developed the ability to create temporary hyperspace currents to traverse long distances rather than relying on jump anomalies, which were often prone to destabilize or phase out, making their usage dangerous. While it was true that even the Vagrants didn't experience death quite like humans did, their resources were limited, and each vessel lost presented a huge setback. The root of this ability developed slowly and over a long process of trial and error that involved checking jump anomalies for their integrity and predicting when their inevitable collapse would occur. Over time, the Advisors acquired enough knowledge to predict when gravimetric currents would cross the two jump anomalies in their positions in Einsteinian space in order to 'phase align' them and allow safe passage. It was a means to an end, as it was necessary to avoid losses that were, under normal cirvumstances in Sirius, easily preventable. With the discovery of the ancient hyperspace beacon in what the Vagrants call 'the Abyss', the sector on the other side of the Sirian Hypergate, however, this changed. The concept of hyperspace jump modules was completely foreign to the Nomads at the time, thus it came as a surprise to know that their acquired knowledge of hyperspace currents could be harnessed in other ways. With the salvaged hyperspace beacon and ritualistic zeal, the Vagrants bent every effort towards the effective adaptation of this fantastic technology, as it hadn't taken long for the Advisors to figure out just what this technology could be capable of: Returning to Sirius.
II. Psychology
The topic of a race's behavioral pattern are often inextricably intertwined with their habitat, their peers and the predators that are above them on the food chain. An animal that is prey to a stronger, faster raptor will necessarily have to favour those genes which display favourable traits to deal with the threat — in this case maybe a fur color that blends better with their surroundings and makes it harder for the predator to spot them, or a better social system, where one animal can 'warn' the others of an impeding threat in order to give them the chance to hide and thus live on.
![[Image: b7sfPXO.png]](http://i.imgur.com/b7sfPXO.png)
The Nomads never had this problem. As a product of an artificial creation process, every single nucleotide of their DNA was crafted for perfection, to create the unchallenged apex predator capable of overwhelming any opponent by sheer numbers for as long as they have the material to sustain their creation of warforms, or, in case numbers and brute force fail, to adapt to the threat and eventually overcome it by having learnt it. Imagine a creature that is the weapon itself, where there is no a clunky and unwieldy interface between human pilot and its ship, that moves through space like a human does on a planet's surface. In other words: The Nomads are used to being the very zenith of evolution, the curator of life, alpha and omega.
It was for that reason that the sudden shift of priorities that awaited them on the other side of the Hypergate that the Vagrants were, at first, completely overwhelmed with. Contrary to the Sirius sector, there was no lifeform that the Vagrants needed to fend off, making their entire skillset of hunt and kill obsolete. What they were woefully unprepared for was being exposed and alone, without the safety of their hives in Sirius to give them shelter. The new surroundings were new and foreign, filled with things that did not make sense. Many of those who were washed ashore with them wandered off into the distance in their confusion, never to be seen again. The longer they stayed and the more they explored, the more it became apparent that the methods they had so effectively used in Sirius were not effective at all. Stellar phenomena like described above made it impossible to set up completely in space, forcing the Vagrants underground, and even the acquisition of energy proved burdensome for the same reason, prompting the Vagrants to rely on the energy found inside a planet's core to sustain themselves, at the drawback of ultimately completely destroying the planet they had nested inside of, leaving it a cold, hollowed-out husk of stone in the end.
In Sirius, the enemy had been predictable. The Advisors of the Slomon K'Hara had known exactly what they were going up against and could prepare accordingly, though in the Abyss, the enemy was not humanity. The complete unpredictablity of the place slowly turned the Vagrants into paranoid and careful creatures, and this mindset dominates their Advisors until this day.
I. Physiology
While tranquil, the time after the Nomad War was anything but easy for the remnants of those that were pulled through the Hypergate activated by Edison Trent. Vast swaths of emptiness, systems whose jump connections phased in and out sporadically, with little hope of accurately predicting when the next failure would happen, were commonplace, and the Vagrants later figured out that this was due to the gravimetric distortions caused by two black holes at the edges of the sector they had been transported to and interfered with the hyperspace currents connecting the jump anomalies. With the discovery of the Hyperspace Beacon and the subsequent decision to venture into finding out its merit towards the end of returning to Sirius, the Vagrants, although slowly, began to learn and adapt accordingly.
Other than the Slomon K'Hara in Sirius, the Vagrants' enemies were not petty little bipedal creatures stealing their heritage and hunting their spaceborne shells in the pursuit of ever greater technological inventions. What the Vagrants faced was the unpredictable force of nature itself that seemed to obey completely different rules than in Sirius, their native environment. One of the most noticable deviation from normal Nomad behaviour was that the Vagrants started prefering the safety of planets during periods of rest, which in itself also posed difficulties, like finding suitable places that permitted sufficient amounts of cosmic or residential radiation to reach them in order to recuperate. The reason for this change in behaviour were, again, based on natural occurances in the lost sector. Giant ion storms, gravimetrical surges that were strong enough to break apart moon-sized asteroids and wandering acidic nebulae pulled by the black holes framing the lost sector were not common, though the whole deemed them dangerous enough to seek shelter from them on planets, as their own gravitational well weakened the force of sporadic graviton surges, while ion storms and nebulae engulfing the stellar objects would not harm the Vagrants as long as they stayed underground. Over time, the Vagrants would adapt to the changed environment, causing their warforms to adapt more towards terrestrial stays than the Slomon K'Hara of Sirius, who prefered to remain spaceborne. The outer membranes of their vessels would turn less rigid than the crystalline structures that Nomad vessels consisted of in order to prevent easily-preventable fissures and other damage that would come with maneuvering underground and allowed a quick and easy mending of the occasional damage, but that wasn't the most outstanding divergence.
The fallout of a graviton surge cracking a once green planet's surface
Observed only scarcely, the Vagrants, in the time of their absence from Sirius, have developed the ability to create temporary hyperspace currents to traverse long distances rather than relying on jump anomalies, which were often prone to destabilize or phase out, making their usage dangerous. While it was true that even the Vagrants didn't experience death quite like humans did, their resources were limited, and each vessel lost presented a huge setback. The root of this ability developed slowly and over a long process of trial and error that involved checking jump anomalies for their integrity and predicting when their inevitable collapse would occur. Over time, the Advisors acquired enough knowledge to predict when gravimetric currents would cross the two jump anomalies in their positions in Einsteinian space in order to 'phase align' them and allow safe passage. It was a means to an end, as it was necessary to avoid losses that were, under normal cirvumstances in Sirius, easily preventable. With the discovery of the ancient hyperspace beacon in what the Vagrants call 'the Abyss', the sector on the other side of the Sirian Hypergate, however, this changed. The concept of hyperspace jump modules was completely foreign to the Nomads at the time, thus it came as a surprise to know that their acquired knowledge of hyperspace currents could be harnessed in other ways. With the salvaged hyperspace beacon and ritualistic zeal, the Vagrants bent every effort towards the effective adaptation of this fantastic technology, as it hadn't taken long for the Advisors to figure out just what this technology could be capable of: Returning to Sirius.
Vagrant Slipstream Emitter | Infocard — Function, Form and Effect |
![[Image: xF6SeUM.png]](http://i.imgur.com/xF6SeUM.png) | Dissimilar to human jump devices, the Vagrants developed a means to 'feel' the ever-shifting Hyperspace currents that underlie every nook and cranny of Einsteinian space and are responsible for the spontaneous appearance and vanishing of jump holes in case two or more of these currents ever cross, thus creating a temporary connection of two points in Einsteinian space, which we call jump holes. The ability to know how hyperspace currents shift, writhe, and turn allows the individual Vagrant to use their 'weapons' to bombard a small nanometre of space in front of them with a cascade of tachyons and thereby create a little rift with which they enter a hyperspace current. The Vagrants usually take care that their younger Wanderers scout regions of space to relay to the others which currents to take, because otherwise, a jump could potentially lead anywhere and nowhere. Just like with all Nomad machinations, the exact source from which an individual Nomad shell draws the enormous power to operate its weapon appendages or propel itself through space remains unknown, the secret only privy to the Nomads themselves, their Creators and maybe select few infected humans. |
Vagrant Hyperspace Scanner | Infocard — Function, Form and Effect |
| Commonly found on smaller ships, these 'appendages' send out tachyon waves in a rhythmic fashion in order to allow the Vagrant to locate its own position relative to the hyperspace currents that lead to its current location from at least four systems away. The appendage is placed in the very centre of the Vagrant's propulsion section and shares the same energy source as the engine, which remains a mystery to human scientists until this day. |
II. Psychology
The topic of a race's behavioral pattern are often inextricably intertwined with their habitat, their peers and the predators that are above them on the food chain. An animal that is prey to a stronger, faster raptor will necessarily have to favour those genes which display favourable traits to deal with the threat — in this case maybe a fur color that blends better with their surroundings and makes it harder for the predator to spot them, or a better social system, where one animal can 'warn' the others of an impeding threat in order to give them the chance to hide and thus live on.
Natural chasms provide extra cover for Nomad ships hiding under the surface
The Nomads never had this problem. As a product of an artificial creation process, every single nucleotide of their DNA was crafted for perfection, to create the unchallenged apex predator capable of overwhelming any opponent by sheer numbers for as long as they have the material to sustain their creation of warforms, or, in case numbers and brute force fail, to adapt to the threat and eventually overcome it by having learnt it. Imagine a creature that is the weapon itself, where there is no a clunky and unwieldy interface between human pilot and its ship, that moves through space like a human does on a planet's surface. In other words: The Nomads are used to being the very zenith of evolution, the curator of life, alpha and omega.
It was for that reason that the sudden shift of priorities that awaited them on the other side of the Hypergate that the Vagrants were, at first, completely overwhelmed with. Contrary to the Sirius sector, there was no lifeform that the Vagrants needed to fend off, making their entire skillset of hunt and kill obsolete. What they were woefully unprepared for was being exposed and alone, without the safety of their hives in Sirius to give them shelter. The new surroundings were new and foreign, filled with things that did not make sense. Many of those who were washed ashore with them wandered off into the distance in their confusion, never to be seen again. The longer they stayed and the more they explored, the more it became apparent that the methods they had so effectively used in Sirius were not effective at all. Stellar phenomena like described above made it impossible to set up completely in space, forcing the Vagrants underground, and even the acquisition of energy proved burdensome for the same reason, prompting the Vagrants to rely on the energy found inside a planet's core to sustain themselves, at the drawback of ultimately completely destroying the planet they had nested inside of, leaving it a cold, hollowed-out husk of stone in the end.
In Sirius, the enemy had been predictable. The Advisors of the Slomon K'Hara had known exactly what they were going up against and could prepare accordingly, though in the Abyss, the enemy was not humanity. The complete unpredictablity of the place slowly turned the Vagrants into paranoid and careful creatures, and this mindset dominates their Advisors until this day.
![[Image: sS0Knxu.png]](http://i.imgur.com/sS0Knxu.png)
![[Image: 7GxjgdT.png]](http://i.imgur.com/7GxjgdT.png)
![[Image: Q76pbZM.png]](https://i.imgur.com/Q76pbZM.png)
![[Image: naLf5f7.png]](https://i.imgur.com/naLf5f7.png)