Origin

[|nfrared]

//Please note: This is concept RP. The following events (possibly) take place immediately after Edison Trent defeats the Nomads in the Nomad war, and is submitted here as concept-only RP to explain the origins of the Temples for public perusal. The timeline for this content is 801 AS and the following decade. This is all my own work and was originally written for another server, however that community has now come to DGC and I would rather salvage what I can of hours of late-night story writing than lose it to the immense internet void. Please don't post feedback here, direct your imminent "phoom" hating remarks to my PM box, thanks.

EDIT: At the request of leaders of the K'hara faction, this concept is being reworked. Thank you to Treewurm for your patience and ideas.

Outline - The Events of 801 AS

As most humans continued their ordinary existence oblivious to the threat of the Nomad War, a small group of humans lead by the infamous Edison Trent thwarted the nomad invasion, prematurely activating the nomad hypergate that would allow the nomads to complete their invasion of the populated human systems. Instead the majority of the Nomad fleet was sent at random far across the galaxy, with the few nomads that were left behind completely disoriented from the shock of losing the mindshare. Edison Trent had saved Sirius from the imminent nomad threat. No one really cared where the countless nomad fleets had gone, the important thing was that they were no longer here and were not likely to be a problem again.

This turned out to be a very selfish point of view. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and the nomad fleet had to have a random exit point from Hyperspace. That exit point was at the centre of the Etherium Empire, far across the stars. The day Sirius was saved, the Empire of the Etherium was doomed.

The Etherium Empire had grown to be a utopian society for its inhabitants, their culture was very advanced in technology and space travel, but the Etherium were a physically weak people, and had few warriors. They had found an equilibrium with their environment long ago and lived in peace, considering violence to be primitive and uncultured. These beliefs are what contributed to the downfall of their aeons-long Empire - a near complete lack of planetary defences. The Etherium had ships of war, but they were deployed near the outskirts of their systems and they had not foreseen such an attack as was made during the Fall.

The Fall

The first signs of any disruption to the inhabitants of Etheria, the home system of the Etherium Empire, was the rapid change in the colour of the sky. Etheria's sky is normally purple, due to the large nebulae that the Etherium call their home. The hypergate event horizon initialised very close to the planet, with the planet being stripped of its atmosphere, destroying all life on Etheria. Fragments of this shattered planet were sucked in with the backlash effect of the sudden jumphole event horizon. The debri of the planetoid, its satellites and a small orbital research station were sent on a random trajectory to be scattered across Sirius.

The Nomad Fleets began to arrive through the now established hypergate. The Nomads were disoriented by their journey, and irritated at the results of the Nomad War and loss of their power source. Unlike the nomads that were left behind confused and in shock from the loss of the mindshare, they began systematicly gathering resources to build a new Dyson Sphere around the young star at the centre of the Etherium Empire. The Etherium had no way to defend against the countless ships of the Nomad mindshare and were overwhelmed and defeated with very little resistance. The planets were scoured for resources, and one by one the stars of the Etherium fell to the unknown invaders. They became extinct within their previous borders in under 1 Sirian year.

The Last of the Etherium

All was not lost however. The event horizon backlash caused by the hypergate initialisation had flung the remains of the Etherium homeworld through the gate on a reverse trajectory to be deposited at the very fringe of Sirius Sector. Mostly this was planetoid fragments, a large portion of the purple nebulae surrounding Etheria, and an Orbital Research station. The station, which later came to be known as the Temple of the Revenant, survived the journey intact, with its crew the only survivors of the nomad invasion. Other fragments of the planatoid may have survived but could be located anywhere in Sirius and if so no contact has been made with them.

Physiology

The Etherium are a silicon based asexual lifeform, a seemingly bipedal being. The body is in fact made up of several million translucent silicon strands woven together, each a synthesising organ absorbing precious Iridium from the atmosphere. The only known source of this precious element is in the nebulae of the Etherium Empire. The Etherium require this element to survive as any human needs water. Without it they grow weak in a matter of hours and will invariably die a short time later. Fortunately for the Temple survivors a portion of this nebulae was also sent across the galaxy with them. This synthesising process (similar to that of a plant) defeats the need for a digestive system, giving the Etherium a wispy, ghost like appearance. Etherium are very intelligent beings, and their silicon composition makes for easy technology grafting. It is not unknown for a single Etherium to have several implants. Their ghostly appearance would later see them occasionally called "Phantoms" by the rare few that may encounter one in Sirius sector.

Reactions

During the first moments of the Nomads arrival the Etherium were confused and in disarray. They could not understand how or why this stellar event had occurred, nor why anyone would want to send what was clearly an invasion fleet to them. The Etherium had no enemies, in fact they had existed in isolationism for centuries, their worlds rich in resources, and this approach is what caused their society to thrive. But from the Etherium perspective the coincidences did not stack up. The attack had clearly been a calculated strike, and the sheer mass of the fleets sent showed that the beings responsible were far more advanced then them if they could send entire fleets across the galaxy with such precision. Before succumbing to the focused Nomad attacks, the Etherium managed to make contact with the research station on the edges of Sirius using their advanced communications technology, requesting that if they had survived to find those responsible for this heinous act of war. As the last of the Etherium stars fell, they sent a final transmission to the people of the research station and an ultimatum - Find and destroy those responsible or die a forgotten people. They were all that remains of a 3000 year old Empire. This saw them rename the station "The Temple of the Revenant" in honour of those billions lost during the Fall.

---

Shard - The Faceless One

[|nfrared]

The following data entry is a Sirian translation of what appear to be personal logs of some unknown lifeform.

Alone in the Dark

For hours we huddled together, for hours and hours even long after the terrible shrieking had stopped outside. There we huddled in the dark. It was quiet now. I could feel the vibrations of the station's systems rebooting. I could feel the vibrations of the others around me, the fear we all felt was as tangible as the floor on which I lay. Some of us did not rouse, dead from system shock. After many hours of dismay the survivors and myself gathered in the Command Centre of the shattered orbital facility.

The huge structure was the crowning achievement of the Etherium, for centuries it had orbited Etheria, every generation of Etherium adding to this legacy, this monument of technological perfection. Due to the silicon nature of the Etherium genetic structure, technological grafting and overlays allowed for much faster and finer control. It also reduced the crew to only 7 Etherium, with the maintenence performed by automated machines. These 7 beings were grafted into the station at control nodes and lay dormant in a trance-like state, with their mental capacities manipulating the computers, using the large visual displays to show the survivors the full extent of the damage. The rest of the Etherium on the station were predominantly researchers, the intellectual peak of Etherium culture. They had research divisions for all aspects of technological advancement on this station, experimental spaceship technology and weaponry, as well and exploration, communications and space travel. There were also a few others that were here due to their particular skills for use in research exercises. Shard was one of these, a recon pilot for an experimental ship design being tested on the station, or Temple, as the Etherium called their space-born facilities.

The full darkness of the situation began to dawn on them. A final count of 66 survivors. The realisation that near complete scouring of the external sensors where they had been sheered off and destroyed, the understanding that there were no known stars or systems being given by the rest of the crippled sensor array. The only thing they could determine for sure was that there was a small star not far from the orbital facility, and that this stars gravity had locked the station in an elliptical orbit, along with the remains of the nebula and planetoid fragments that had come along with it. This was an important point, as the precious Iridium in that nebula was needed for the Etherium to survive.

When the final conclusion was raised, that one amongst them would have to take one of the few space vehicles outside and actually look that many looked around in disdain. The crew were needed to coordinate the repairs of damaged systems on the station. The researchers were very focused in their fields of knowledge, and the experimental vessels present on the station were beyond most of them. They needed someone who had been bred for this particular function. None of them could answer this. Those that could fly the smallest fighters, in any capacity, were immediately sent out to survey the damage to the outside of the station.

Only one among them could claim to have any knowledge or ability to fly the experimental vessels secured in the station's cavernous cargo bay. That Etherium was Shard. He knew what he must do.

The information from the damaged sensor array gathered all available data on the system. The residual background radiation from the flawed hypergate event posed the most risk, probably being responsible for the state of the sensor array. He must sweep the entire field, and report any immediate threat to the vulnerable Temple, and he knew few would expect his return. He would be the only eyes of the Etherium.

---

Shard - The Faceless One

[|nfrared]

The Enemy


I returned, exhausted but proud. I had done what none of my people had thought possible. I had come back. For some time I rested, my fellow survivors giving me a chance to recover after my ordeal. The rich Iridium atmosphere aboard the Temple replenished me quickly, and soon I was summoned to appear before what was left of my people. I bonded myself with the Temple's computer grid, as it had been designed to. Etherium barely spoke beyond a whisper and using this method Shard could show everyone an exact record of the events after he left the Orbital research facility. I had something terrible to show them.

As Shard began his debriefing, everyone could see a great burden was weighing heavily on him. He knew what they wanted to see, that they were safe for now, and in that moment he wished he could fabricate those memories as if he had seen nothing out in the void. But he knew he must show them the truth.

He showed the images of the exterior of the Temple complex as he had left, and to their great relief it did not appear as damaged as they had first come to believe. He could feel their joy swelling at this news. The diagnostic on the star was also hopeful.

Then a slight hesitation as Shard replayed his memories through the large viewers.

A panic was felt through the Command Centre, and disruption threatened to overwhelm the assembled Etherium until Shard showed the next image

A great wave of happiness went through the Etherium. The new weapon system could in fact destroy these beings. It was also noted that they appeared slower and weaker than the beings that had attacked the Empire. The experimental vessel had performed perfectly, and Shard with it. He continued broadcasting his thoughts through the viewers. He began showing the wreckage he had discovered of unknown origin.

This drew gasps of astonishment. The Etherium people had never seen anything like this, and the designs did appear more primitive than their own. He then showed them the jumpholes he had mapped, indicating on the screens where he suggested the deployable weapons platforms should be placed.

Seeing that Shard clearly needed more time to recover, the assembly dismissed him while they digested this new information. Their worst fears had been realised - The invaders were here.

---

Shard - The Faceless One

[|nfrared]

Hope Renewed


We waited, we waited, for so long. We had no choice, we could not go back. We must rebuild what we can, scavenging, scraping, as inferior beings do. The Etherium had long forgotten these hardships, our progress was slow. The invaders would not approach us, soon we could call this place our own. We built our weapons, our defences from the resource-rich fragments that had followed us. After an eternity of hardship, the Etherium had something to show for all their toil and woe. We had hope. We had the Eidolon.

It took a long time for the Etherium to accept the truth. Thier home was gone, thier physical past, thier monuments of history, gone, obliterated in a heinous act of war. All that was left was the Revenant. The survivors struggled at first, with so few of the Etherium left. This fact alone would have crippled human communities, but the Etherium did not need to mix and diversify thier genetic material as primitive carbon-based lifeforms do. Instead they could split themselves, as an ameoba does, with the result being that both sentient beings possessed all of the memories and personal traits of the other, and both could then become individuals through thier own new experiences. This genetic replication had been progressing for millenia, and all the knowledge of the Etherium had been passed down through the ages, giving the Etherium an immense knowledge collective.

This collective had been whittled down to the original 66 survivors. Over the next decade, those numbers swelled to almost 200. During this time the Revenant had been overhauled and everything that was deemed no longer needed was repurposed into something usable. The Etherium had mastered mass fabrication long ago and the numerous research facilities aboard the station made it possible to fabricate and alter redundant systems, and soon they were able to start building what was to be the first ray of hope for all of those aboard the restored station. They had built what would be a colony ship, exploration vessel and war machine all in one. They had built the Eidolon.

The Eidolon was built at a painstakingly slow rate by Etherium standards taking almost a full decade to construct. The Eidolon was the first of its kind, built to tackle the infinite possibilities of this new space. It did have a specific mission though, to confirm the presence of the traces of Tridium that had been picked up by the repaired exploration and analysis sensor array.

Many centuries ago the Etherium had refined the process of locating the scarce resource they needed to survive though faster-than-light long range molecular spectrum analysis. Tridium was never located outside of the borders of the Empire, but the hypergate reflux had spread patches of the nebula surrounding Etheria far across the stars and the Etherium had poured research into detecting this elusive element from afar. One of these drifts had been detected across the sector some 20 star systems away, but the Etherium were not convinced the readouts were accurate, or that a compound similar to Tridium without the life-sustaining properties could exist here and therefore be giving false data. The purpose of the Eidolon was simple - to confirm or disprove the presense and composition of that distant drift.

The Temple of the Revenant was truly an extremely advanced technological behemoth in comparison to most structures attempted by the lifeforms of Sirius. The immense station had many functions, and part of the Revenant's purpose was to act as a gateway node to other similar structures built throughout the empire, however without a recieving node to calibrate the jump the outcome would be unknown. This ability made it possible to transport specially prepared vessels over several star systems, but not across entire galaxies or on the scale of the Nomad Hypergate incident.

The process of charging the Starjumper was a taxing result in its own right. The composition of the system was similar to home, the star's mass was close to that of the Etherium home system, and the nebula of Iridium was also present. When the crew of the Revenant ran the calculations, they came mixed with mixed news. Yes, the could confirm that Revenant would be able to absorb enough power to start the chain reaction, but the amount of interfering radiation was deteriorating the solar platlets on the exterior of the Temple. They had to tell the rest of the survivors that his may be the last Starjump. The was also worse news. The same radiation was also destroying their ability to reproduce, that is, of the 196 of the Etherium on the Temple as of 10 years ofter thier arrival, dividing themselves would result in weakened molecular composition, and both Etherium would probably die.

This was a moment of great sadness. Those still alive on the station could see that thier superiority, thier greatness that had been built up over a period of 3000 years was declining, and the Etherium were doomed to fade. This led them to seal the majority of thier personal technology, anything that could be perishable to this radiation in a special vault deep within the station. They would take this one last great risk, sending the Eidolon across the stars, in a hope that they could find a cure or a way to ensure the Etherium's legacy.

The crew charged the station, preparing the portal at the end of the centre coil of the station, of the 4 Etherium needed to crew the ship, only 4 of the Etherium were able to utilize most of its functions. Among these 4 was Shard, and the other 3 were near-perfect copies of him, having been produced over the last decade before the sickness had sterilized them all.

The gate was charged, and a bright flash erupted at the arch of the station. The whine of the station diverting every possible electron to the event horizon caused some of the systems to shut down.

Then just as abruptly the noise and light died. The survivors grew sombre. The Eidolon was gone. All they could do now is wait, and hope.

---

Shard - The Faceless One

[|nfrared]

Preservation

We waited, We waited. We knew we were alone now. There was nothing. Only the faint hope of the Eidolon. We were sick. I was growing weak from the radiation of the Fall. The nomads, my hate for them swelled. But I was powerless. I was to wait. To hope, or to die.

After the departure of the Eidolon, the Etherium were only able to wait out its return. This led to a long period of hopelessness and dismay. When the crew discovered that they were the only Etherium not getting any weaker did they come up with the idea that would allow the Etherium to sleep out this illness. They would intergrate the remaining survivors into the station as they were, if they chose to.

Many had already succumbed to the illness by this time. Whether it be from exposure where the station's radiation shielding had failed, or from desperate attempts to divided and survive despite the warning of the Temple's crew. The choice was given, stay awake and walk the station, or become part of the Temple as the crew had. This would see them woven into the station's computer system, increasing the processing capabilities at the same time. It would also mean that the body would cease its degenerative state although extracting themselves later could be difficult. Of the 100 or so remaining, only 32 chose to remain as fully physical active beings.

While the others went to into their intergrated state, those awake grew hateful and bitter over the following years. They knew they were doomed. As they grew weaker they became more desperate, their intellects slowly began deteriorating as their bodies had, each one going quite insane by Etherium standards. Some were determined to make one last strike against the nomad invaders or anything between them. One by one, they went down to the technology vault, fitting themselves with the most destructive personal weaponry implants the Etherium had come up with over the millenia.

They would then select a ship from among the fighters in the hangar, packing the cargo bay as portable research laboratory and engineering suite all in one, filling the entire ship with Iridium for their final journey. Knowing that they had only as much time as they had Iridium on their vessel, the survivors set out to strike a final blow against something... Anything.

---

Shard - The Faceless One

[|nfrared]

Arrival

We made it, we had survived. When the ship stopped shaking we began to restart the Eidolon's systems. The ship rebooted and immediatly we knew there was something wrong. There was no Iridium here. Instead there was something strange here, we could detect communications on the sensor array between some lifeforms. The invaders had been completely silent during any encounters with them and we instantly knew this wasn't them. This was something else.

The Eidolon's arrival in the system had attracted some unwanted attention. The sensor array began feeding Shard and the copies the information, trying to decode thier communications. It didn't take long for the crew to see one. This was Etherium first contact with humans.

The realisation that the entire sector wasn't overrun with the invaders was hard for Shard to accept. He also recognised the importance of this. While the new lifeforms appeared less advanced then themselves and having seen the immense power of the invaders first-hand, the only logical conclusion was that they were at peace, or worse, working together. The mission had been to find Iridium and that had failed. They would not wait for the invaders to kill them.

As one, the crew activated the neccessary systems. Weapons charged, targetting the small craft that were approaching them. The language was strange, the computers recording everything so as to try and decipher it after the danger had passed. The weapons were very effective on these small fighters, rending the primitive ships into molten slag. It seemed the danger had passed.

Then a much larger contact came into range. It weaved through the molten rocks and ship remains, then the sensors picked up a bombardment of radio waves. They were being analysed.

The Eidolon's weapons focused on this new threat as the primitive's vessel opened fire. The smaller ships had all been destroyed easily but this larger craft was much more resilient. It was also taking its toll on the Eidolon's external systems.

Soon it was apparent that the alien ship was in trouble. It was diverting power to its engines. It was trying to escape. The crew knew what this would mean. If even one got away, they could bring more back. Or worse, they could bring the invaders.

Targetting the rear of the ship with all of the weapons, the Etherium watched as the alien vessel blew apart. Again there were more communications. The Eidolon instantly began targeting the small shells that the crippled ship was expelling. When only a few remained, they were tractored aboard. As those lifeforms that were tractored in were analysed the Etherium found a way to stall the degenerative state completely, and make it possible to reverse it.

If the Etherium were to consume a small amount of human DNA and then divide, the resulting reactions would re-coat the deteriated silicon makeup of the Etherium. Both duplicates would be cured for a short time and be able to repeat the process again when the effects began to wear off. The procedure was tested over the following years numerous times when an overzealous human pilot insisted they had "discovered something".

However there was a much bigger problem. The engines of the Eidolon had been damaged, and the Etherium had no parts available to fix them. The mission was a complete failure.

It was Shard who formualted the plan to hide the Eidolon. Using powerful tractor beams, the Eidolon moved between the molten asteroids, coating itself in molten rock along the way. When the ship embedded itself in a similar sized rock, it caused it to cool, until only the ship's docking port remained. This process was slow, with the Etherium waiting until there were no contacts on the scanners before tractoring in more material to conceal it fully. To preserve the Iridium left aboard the ship, the Eidolon's crew went into a similar state as their kin aboard the Revenant. All except one.

Shard made his way to the small docking bay aboard the Eidolon, fitting himself with the best equipment available. He had to warn the others. He had to get back to the Revenant and tell them of this discovery that the sector was not overrun with the invaders like they first believed.

Filling the fighter with Iridium from the Eidolon's tanks for the voyage, the others went into their hibernation-like state, keeping the systems of the new Temple running as if by themselves, much like the Temple of the Revenant.

[

The rest of the station, with the exception of the docking port and a few weapon placements, had been completely concealed. As Shard departed, he took one final look at the newly finished Temple of the Eidolon.

It was not the purpose it had been intended for and was a tiny base by Etherium standards. But it was concealed, disguised well enough that there was a chance it may never be found. He knew this may be the last time he would see it.

---

Shard - The Faceless One