A vessel as improbably large as Warden could only be propelled to fractions of the speed of light by equally improbable engines. The mighty thorium-fusion engines that are the thundering heart of Warden are accessed at the aft end of deck 8. A complex of engineering stations, machine shops, laboratories, and crew quarters lay within the bulkhead immediately before and around the six power units and the three outboard vents that focus the propulsive force they provide. These not only provide Warden with its ability to move, but also the energy to maintain all shipboard activities. And that energy is staggering in its volume.
Warden's engines were a modified version of the power plants that had been developed to provide the power for much of the Earth. Each engine has the potential to provide the energy for large nations; all six together could keep the lights on for entire continents. It had been intended that Warden would provide its colonies with power via broadcast energy until they became self-sufficient. At the moment, the engines are set at their lowest levels, having powered down after braking into orbit around Xi Ursae Majoris.
Such massive power was necessary to provide motive force for a ship of Warden's size in normal space, especially because it needed to reach relativistic speeds to reach its destination before too many generations had passed within the ship. Theoretical models and field experiments had been on the verge of breakthroughs in faster-than-light propulsion during the construction of Warden and her sister ships, but those breakthroughs remained tantalizingly out of reach. Warden's engineering personnel and the scientists in the universities and labs in the citydomes kept in constant contact with their counterparts on Earth, gleaning any and all information on FTL travel that could be sent their way...until Earth went silent. Still, the minds aboard Warden felt that they could one day harness the great engines of the ship for an even greater ability to travel between the stars. And then, Warden fell into chaos.
In Warden's engine section, engineers, physicists, and the robots and androids that served them held their ground valiantly as armies of mutants swept through the ship. To lose the engine room was to lose all hope for the ship's complement. So fanatically did the engineering crew hold its section of the ship, that eventually all else faded into memory, and then even the memory faded.
The engines became the center of their world, the source of light and life. They took to bathing themselves in the radiation of those holy energy sources, hoping for and accepting any judgment their now-god passed onto them. Illness and death were considered punishment for transgressions; beneficial mutations were the blessings conferred for exemplary existence. This is the world of the Brotherhood of the Divine Radiance. Any intruders are subjected to the judgment of the engines. The Brotherhood awaits the divine word of the Captain, the Prophet of the Engines, the only rightful leader. Until then, the engines are maintained and protected, as to do otherwise is to bring on the end.
Next: Part 8: Deck 7: Farm Deck
TEN-FOOT MULE: Ruminations on the art of Old School-Style D&D Dungeon Delving
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
Tuesday, June 14, 2016
Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega: Part 6: Deck 8: Factory Deck
Thick humidity, tropical heat, an overwhelming smell of living things, and a cacophony of sounds from birds, animals, and plants assault the senses of those who venture onto this deck. This is Warden's Factory Deck, an odd name for a space that seems far removed from industry.
The genesis of this equatorial-like biome occurred sometime during the madness after Warden was beset by the radiation that altered so much on the ship.Tropical flora and fauna that had been brought to the deck for recreational areas began to displace the neat lawns and small parks that had once been the norm. The shattered AI adjusted the climate to accommodate, nudging the heat and humidity higher and higher as the jungles and grasslands overran the entire deck.
Once, this deck had been the chief manufacturing section of Warden. Factories were regularly placed in pleasant industrial parkways. The workers who produced everything from holograph-chips to megadroids lived in a great, terraced city built against the forward bulkhead of Warden. It was an idyllic life, with the permanent residents here content and stimulated.
That all ended long ago. Chaos reigned after the radiation disaster, with mass death, subsequent plagues and mutations, and multiple wars and skirmishes laying waste to the population. The change in climate and ecosystem, which, while gradual, was still strangely speedy, overwhelmed the deck with a riotous spectrum of strange life. The factories were at first kept running at a limited capacity with robots and a dwindling handful of workers and their descendants. As living workers eventually became impossible to find, the factories eventually ground to a production halt.
A shard of the AI finally noticed its army of robots and androids was suffering attrition it could not replace. Sending in what mechanical forces it could muster, the AI reopened the factories. Not all, certainly, but the ones directly necessary for further android and robot production. Once production had resumed, the activity attracted the notice of remnants of the various warring factions that once dominated so much of the ship. One final battle was fought, with mutants and robots struggling claw-to-manipulator for control of production. It was nearly a Pyrrhic victory for the AI. The last vestiges of the mutant army were destroyed, but a scant score of robots and androids remained. It was a long, slow, and, if the AI and its mechanical minions had been able to feel physical sensation, painful rebuilding of forces. The AI shard had no access to the climate controls on the deck, so the climate was almost as implacable a foe as the mutants. The pervasive humidity and a strangely-mutated fungus that feeds on synthetic materials made simple maintenance on machines a constant meticulous necessity. But even with these obstacles, as well as the random mutant animals and plants that choose to prey on machines, the AI shard has been able to bring android and robot production back to a respectable level...and the AI did not skimp on the building of warbots needed to guard the factories.
Beyond the AI-controlled factories is a thronging wilderness, with dense rainforests and teeming savannas home to a rich array of life. Malevolent blur-lions prey upon the retromastodon herds on the grassy plains, while in the jungles the oranguborgs war with the vinelords and their robotic allies. The abandoned factories are now completely overgrown, appearing as green-covered hills on the landscape, but still possessed of artifacts of the past deep within their vine-covered walls. The once-gleaming city that had been home and haven to humans in the forgotten past is now a vast stepped garden on the surface, with the inner dwelling-places a shadowed maze of lost technological treasures and lurking death. Over the entire deck is a thick, suffocating atmosphere and a constantly encroaching layer of growing and grasping life.
Next: Part 7: Deck 8A: Warden's Engine Room
The genesis of this equatorial-like biome occurred sometime during the madness after Warden was beset by the radiation that altered so much on the ship.Tropical flora and fauna that had been brought to the deck for recreational areas began to displace the neat lawns and small parks that had once been the norm. The shattered AI adjusted the climate to accommodate, nudging the heat and humidity higher and higher as the jungles and grasslands overran the entire deck.
Once, this deck had been the chief manufacturing section of Warden. Factories were regularly placed in pleasant industrial parkways. The workers who produced everything from holograph-chips to megadroids lived in a great, terraced city built against the forward bulkhead of Warden. It was an idyllic life, with the permanent residents here content and stimulated.
That all ended long ago. Chaos reigned after the radiation disaster, with mass death, subsequent plagues and mutations, and multiple wars and skirmishes laying waste to the population. The change in climate and ecosystem, which, while gradual, was still strangely speedy, overwhelmed the deck with a riotous spectrum of strange life. The factories were at first kept running at a limited capacity with robots and a dwindling handful of workers and their descendants. As living workers eventually became impossible to find, the factories eventually ground to a production halt.
A shard of the AI finally noticed its army of robots and androids was suffering attrition it could not replace. Sending in what mechanical forces it could muster, the AI reopened the factories. Not all, certainly, but the ones directly necessary for further android and robot production. Once production had resumed, the activity attracted the notice of remnants of the various warring factions that once dominated so much of the ship. One final battle was fought, with mutants and robots struggling claw-to-manipulator for control of production. It was nearly a Pyrrhic victory for the AI. The last vestiges of the mutant army were destroyed, but a scant score of robots and androids remained. It was a long, slow, and, if the AI and its mechanical minions had been able to feel physical sensation, painful rebuilding of forces. The AI shard had no access to the climate controls on the deck, so the climate was almost as implacable a foe as the mutants. The pervasive humidity and a strangely-mutated fungus that feeds on synthetic materials made simple maintenance on machines a constant meticulous necessity. But even with these obstacles, as well as the random mutant animals and plants that choose to prey on machines, the AI shard has been able to bring android and robot production back to a respectable level...and the AI did not skimp on the building of warbots needed to guard the factories.
Beyond the AI-controlled factories is a thronging wilderness, with dense rainforests and teeming savannas home to a rich array of life. Malevolent blur-lions prey upon the retromastodon herds on the grassy plains, while in the jungles the oranguborgs war with the vinelords and their robotic allies. The abandoned factories are now completely overgrown, appearing as green-covered hills on the landscape, but still possessed of artifacts of the past deep within their vine-covered walls. The once-gleaming city that had been home and haven to humans in the forgotten past is now a vast stepped garden on the surface, with the inner dwelling-places a shadowed maze of lost technological treasures and lurking death. Over the entire deck is a thick, suffocating atmosphere and a constantly encroaching layer of growing and grasping life.
Next: Part 7: Deck 8A: Warden's Engine Room
Monday, June 6, 2016
Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega: Part 5: Deck 9: Cargo Deck
Warden's deck 9 is a vast supply station. There is a labyrinth of multi-story warehouses, freestanding shelving, pallets of material and equipment, open staging areas, bulkheads, and vast bulkhead doors. The place is in a perpetual gloom, with only minimal lighting needed in certain sections. All around come the sounds and smells of machinery on the go, with robotic lifts, cargo drones, heavy autonomous tractors, and a myriad of robots and androids going about the ceaseless business of keeping Warden supplied and running.
A number of loading docks and shuttle bays are placed regularly around the outer bulkheads of the deck. Extravehicular drones enter and exit through small portals, tending to the Warden's outer skin and equipment, as well as collecting any and all possible raw material that might be within range. Now that the great ship is within a stellar system, the big, ungainly cargo shuttles have awakened from a long machine slumber to begin gathering vast loads of heavy raw material, from metal ore to helium. Warden's bunkers begin to fill, though the pace has been slow without human supervision.
Within this machine world are havens of organic life. Horticultural stations, hydroponic labs, and zoological cloning samples in cryogenic storage units harbor specimens of plant and animal life essential for human existence. Unlike the vast preserves found on Warden's other decks, these various labs and stations contain specimens that are essentially unchanged by shipboard life. Or they were unchanged; Warden's radiation disaster altered a sizable percentage of the specimens on this deck. Incredibly unfortunate malfunctions allowed many of these strange mutations to be released, where they fled into the deck's shadowed industrial maze.
The most important cargo on this deck is contained in a series of medical stations and labs. Thousands of colonists were placed into suspended animation, and genetic samples of even more potential "colonists" were stored in these laboratory facilities. The radiation also hit these buildings, and many humans, including mutated humans, were somehow revived and released. Over the decades and centuries, strange tribal societies formed, roaming deck 9's dark recesses, battling strange plants and animals as well as each other. Cafeterias and break rooms, once used by the deck's long-gone human crew, became centers of contention, as they were supplied with edibles by food synthesizers and service robots. The chaos of the great mutant revolt only lightly affected this deck, as most sought to leave the deck for more hospitable environs. This left the stone-age society and monstrous inhabitants to war among themselves, with the majority of life here still sleeping dreamlessly in its cryo-pods.
Next: Part 6: Deck 8: Factory Deck
A number of loading docks and shuttle bays are placed regularly around the outer bulkheads of the deck. Extravehicular drones enter and exit through small portals, tending to the Warden's outer skin and equipment, as well as collecting any and all possible raw material that might be within range. Now that the great ship is within a stellar system, the big, ungainly cargo shuttles have awakened from a long machine slumber to begin gathering vast loads of heavy raw material, from metal ore to helium. Warden's bunkers begin to fill, though the pace has been slow without human supervision.
Within this machine world are havens of organic life. Horticultural stations, hydroponic labs, and zoological cloning samples in cryogenic storage units harbor specimens of plant and animal life essential for human existence. Unlike the vast preserves found on Warden's other decks, these various labs and stations contain specimens that are essentially unchanged by shipboard life. Or they were unchanged; Warden's radiation disaster altered a sizable percentage of the specimens on this deck. Incredibly unfortunate malfunctions allowed many of these strange mutations to be released, where they fled into the deck's shadowed industrial maze.
The most important cargo on this deck is contained in a series of medical stations and labs. Thousands of colonists were placed into suspended animation, and genetic samples of even more potential "colonists" were stored in these laboratory facilities. The radiation also hit these buildings, and many humans, including mutated humans, were somehow revived and released. Over the decades and centuries, strange tribal societies formed, roaming deck 9's dark recesses, battling strange plants and animals as well as each other. Cafeterias and break rooms, once used by the deck's long-gone human crew, became centers of contention, as they were supplied with edibles by food synthesizers and service robots. The chaos of the great mutant revolt only lightly affected this deck, as most sought to leave the deck for more hospitable environs. This left the stone-age society and monstrous inhabitants to war among themselves, with the majority of life here still sleeping dreamlessly in its cryo-pods.
Next: Part 6: Deck 8: Factory Deck
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