Image from Steve Bowers
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An object of erotic horror fiction since Industrial Age Old Earth, the first vampire clades came about when gothic romanticists set up their own gengineered and tweaked subculture during the Interplanetary Age. As part of their mythos about avoiding natural sunlight, they chose to get as far from the sun as possible, and set up small habitats and colonies around Neptune and in the Kuiper belt. In this way they escaped the Technocalypse, and in the subsequent centuries further evolved their own cultures and subculture (with each hab is a separate "clan") - keeping sacred the memory and myth of the 19th century c.e. Count Vlad, the 20th/21st century c.e. Blessed Lestat, and other figures who came to be considered real historical personalities
The Vampire clans had no desire to join the new Federation, and as even the haloists and hiders considered them strange, they had little to do with the rest of civilization. They have good relations with the Backgrounders, being attracted to their cyborg "cold adaptations", which were compatible with their own aesthetic of the cold and the grave (this latter referring to the pre-medical nanotech period when humans were mortal and would be interred in the ground following death). The Backgrounders for their part tend to be simply amused by these funny little tweaks and either humour them or use them to further their own goals
Among the diverse clades and clans, there are some vampires who go for backgrounderization and cryocyborgization, but others would see that as a sell-out, because by becoming cyborg they lose their inhumanity
Among the many well known tribes that have developed and cladized over the millennia are the vlads, wampyres, bloodborgs (vampire cyborgs), Children of Lestat, House of Lamia, Tan'gg DruU, the Convocation, and many others.
It is not uncommon for there to be long-running feuds between the clans.
Most raid hu settlements, usually haloists but sometimes inner system worlds, to seek new victims (although they also have their bionano blood replicators it is considered contemptible to rely on them too much. If you can't kill a real hu you are not considered a true Child of the Undead). Some clades kill their victims, others retain them as erotic slaves, and others again inject into them the vampire nano, thus making the victim emself a vampire (until they can get the nano flushed out, but the clever vampire clades use a type of nano that is very difficult to remove without killing the victim).
A few vampire groups claim or pretend to be involved with groups like the Shadow Federation, usually because they like the name. It is not known what Shadow Federation powers themselves think of this.
In addition to neogenic and symbiotic bionano virus clades, there are also high tech nano-based vampires that use massively-parallel bio-nanocomputers in the bloodstream and achieve data transfer via blood-cell memory. In some parts of the Durath Orwoods they are so common that if they tried some kind of wireless transfer they'd irradiate their hosts. It would be pointless for such creatures to attack others, but that hasn't stopped rumors of the "bloodsucking fiends".
In the Current Era vampires and vampire colonies, are fairly rare, but still well entrenched throughout the galaxy. While thinking of themselves as hunters they more often find themselves the hunted. In isolated or frontier worlds they are hunted ruthlessly, while in the more hi tech systems if they are caught they get their biochemistry redone to convert back into normal hu, as well as extensive behavioural and memetic re-engineering. But even though there are not many (compared to other clades), they are tenacious, and survivors, and live off their reputation and notoriety. There is no shortage of unhappy near-baseline children wanting to join their ranks, but very few survive to their 100th birthday (usually the newest are sent on suicide missions to prove themselves. Only those that make it are truly accepted). But there are also more easy going vampire clades who happily accept newcomers. These are despised by the serious older vampire houses and clans. In the present era there are perhaps a billion vampires of all types and tech levels, in more than a hundred thousand houses and clades throughout the galaxy.
Source : http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/47f6f53cdcd3a
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270 BT to 30 AT: The Industrial Age
On Old Earth, the period from 270 BT (1700 c.e.) to 30 AT (2000 c.e.), preceded by the Agricultural Age, and followed by the Information Age. It was dominated by macrotech mass production, the massive acceleration of science and technology, tremendous social change, and the development of consumerism. This period's surge in population density and social complexity was made possible by an extraordinary energy subsidy from extensive burning of the planet's accumulated reserves of biomass and fossil fuels. The latter part of the Industrial Age is sometimes called the Atomic Age.
Gengineering
Gengineering is the art and science of manipulating hereditary material to modify organisms or even to create entirely new organisms. Traditionalists restrict the term to manipulations of the hereditary material of biological organisms, and sometimes just to Terragen organisms. Others apply the term to any technology that involves altering the code of neumann-capable devices, regardless of substrate. Popular usage tends to lean in the direction of the more traditionalist sense of the word, but this varies by context.
Source : https://orionsarm.com/eg-topic/488ce64d7f4d0
130 to 400 AT: The Interplanetary Age
Humanity continued to become increasingly involved with electronic and virtual worlds, and earthbound humanity became increasingly dependent on the vast computer networks that maintained this infrastructure. Huge strides in biotechnology enabled the creation and genetic engineering of new forms of life, and the cladization of the human race into baseline normals, splices (animal-human hybrids), tweaks (genetic engineered superhumans), and digital-interfacing cyborgs. At the same time advances in molecular manufacturing made possible the construction of ultra-strong ultra-light building materials and new lifting bodies, and hence the colonization of space became economically viable for the first time in human history. The Interplanetary Age had begun. Explorers, adventurers, idealists, utopians, and eccentrics of all kinds vied with desperate neo-prole gammas hoping to break out of the poverty cycle on Earth. Many faced disaster, but a few lucky ones flourished. The old Earth based nation-states decreased in relative power as new actors arose in the Inner Solar System and beyond the asteroid belt.
Source : https://orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45b2b10d8b211
Neptune
Neptune, 8th planet from Sol, Solsys
Population : 7 billion sophonts on Neptune and in its moon system (31% nearbaselines, 9% low gravity tweaks, 2% space adapted humans, 9% vecs, 45% sophtwares, 4% other). The majority of Neptune's population is on the large, cryovolcanic moon Triton and in various virch clusters. The Arcadia ring and Eyes of Neptune are considered separate political and demographic entities.
Source : https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/46cf9d774980c
Kuiper Belt
In the Solar System, the region beyond Neptune. It includes more than 70,000 small objects, a number up to asteroidal size. It is located from 30 to 50 A.U.'s and was discovered in 1992. The Kuiper belt may be the source of the short-period comets (like Halley's comet). The Kuiper belt was named for the Dutch-American astronomer Gerard P. Kuiper, who predicted its existence in 1951. In general, any belt beyond the outermost large planet of a solar system, consisting of mainly icy objects (ice dwarfs and ice planetisimals).
Source : https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/467496ca7cc39
Technocalypse, The
History of the civilisation collapse that befell Earth and the Solar System in the Late Interplanetary Era. The Technocalypse is known by many other popular names, including the Nanodisaster, the Technocrash, and the Swarms as well as more technical terms such as the Cascading Complexity Collapse.
Source : https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/559d3b5ae17aa
Haloers
History
The Kuiper Belt contains a mixture of millions of icy bodies ranging from dwarf planets such as Pluto, Makemake and Haumea down to bodies less than 20km across. The first mission to this region was the New Horizons probe, passing Pluto and Charon in 46 AT and 2014 MU69 in 50AT. Several more flyby and orbiting missions were followed by the first autonomous lander in 119 AT; this included a rover powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, which operated for nearly ten years. The first manned landing (on Pluto) in 290 AT was followed by sporadic colonisation of several other objects, but most of the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud were still largely untouched by colonisation even at the end of the Interplanetary Age.
Source : https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/466748b666cc8
Backgrounders
During the dark ages, between 500 and 700, several cyborg communities escaped from the nanoplagues into the Oort cloud. Gradually they developed their own culture, the Backgrounder culture. Their view was that all intelligent species of sufficient technological power inside a crowded solar system would inevitably destroy themselves in a Technocalypse or similar disaster, so the only way of survival was to hide in the Oort cloud or interstellar space. They focused on getting rid of the wasteful biological parts that had to be kept hot, and instead became fully technological entities based on metal, diamond, ice and superconductor structures. They spread from icedwarf to icedwarf, converting them into habitats and moving them outwards. Their culture developed into paranoid isolationism - each habitat was independent and would keep its location secret from everyone else at all costs. To be known was to be vulnerable. Communications were set up by transponder buoys and elaborate cryptographic schemes, making communications slow and usually in the form of non-interactive propaganda/art transmissions.
As interstellar expansion began, the Backgrounders generally distrusted it. Many backgrounder habitats had begun to consider the advanced superturing and hyperturing AIs of the solar system not as saviours of humanity but as subtle tyrants balancing each other with threats of mutually assured destruction. Of course, their own nanotech AIs were beyond reproach. Transapientech advances like the conversion drive were just a ploy to divert attention. Still, some habitats decided it was safest to leave the solar system since with the drive, they might be vulnerable to attacks from the solar powers. Since then the Backgrounder culture has spread widely in its stealth habitats, always keeping to interstellar space and occasionally making forays into the outskirts of solar systems to grab resources. They do not take much part in interstellar civilisation and are generally viewed as little more than barbarians, but some cultures value their art, cryptography or low-temperature nanotech. There are also hints that they have stumbled on many odd discoveries out there.
Source (avec image) : https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/47e9abdff26f3
Cyborg
Cyborgs are one of the oldest phyles in the terragen sphere and also the least well defined. Most cultures classify cyborgs as bionts that have radically augmented their phenotype through the grafting of technology onto/into their body, often replacing natural features in doing so. Cyborg augmentation is often acquired during the lifetime of the individual, although inherited augmentations are becoming increasingly commonplace. Thus many cyborg clades grow from willing conversion of their children or from migration. A common dividing line between "true" cyborgs and "just" bionts with implants is that in the case of the former the augments have become necessary to survival, take them away and the sophont will be greatly crippled, or dead. Conversely, the types of implant that are ubiquitous among biont societies (such as personal medical systems) could be disabled without significant harm.
Exactly where the line is drawn on what makes a sophont a cyborg or not varies wildly across different cultures and times. In some societies and the pre-First Federation Era simply having any elective technological implant was enough to qualify as a cyborg. In others, sophonts that don't have roughly equal parts machine to biology are regarded as either bionts-with-implants or vecs-with-biotech. Nevertheless there are some generalities among cyborgs (self-identified or otherwise);
- A tendency for non-conformity in favour of personalisation of one's augmentations
- Frequent alterations, additions and removals of body parts for reasons of experimentation, aesthetics and specialisation suitable for the latest interests
- A strong acceptance of mind-body identity, particularly the belief that the two are synergistic parts of a whole (to varying degrees this is responsible for lower average upload rates among cyborgs)
- Extropian derived cultural values expressing that the teleological purpose of mindkind is to improve oneself mentally and physically, ultimately towards godhood
Further divisions within cyborg culture revolve around the nature of the technology employed. Traditionally (and stereotypically) cyborgs are a fusion of sophonts with a predominantly evolved, biological heritage and intelligently designed inorganic technology. However, there are alternative approaches as well as divisions within the traditional view (such as whether or not the drytech used should be "smart" i.e. self-maintaining/replicating). Bioborgism is the largest subculture and is predominantly found within the Zoefic Biopolity. Bioborgs prefer to utilize gengineered, neogenic and xeno-derived augmentations, seeking to explore the phase-space of chimeric biological forms. Smaller, but by no means less well-known groups include cyberborgs, the cyborn and synaborgs (for whom the dry/wet-tech distinction grows extremely fuzzy).
Source : https://orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45c5389352fa1
Fornius Tup'arrah
Home of a proud clade of 'vampire' near-baseline humans
Planet in the Queenus Nine system notable for a population of vampires known as the Tan'gg DruU. Distinguishing the Tan'gg DruU from other vampire cultures is the adoption by Tan'gg DruU society of a moral high code known as the Gor'dan Thi'tsu. This code, which is rigorously adhered to by the vampire population, precludes the involuntary "victimization" of any non-vampire sophont. Issuing planetary edicts is the governing Bloodthane, with each edict binding upon the entire Tan'gg DruU population.
A much larger population of nearbaseline 'normal' humans also exists on this world, safe in the knowledge that they are protected by the Gor'dan Thi'tsu, and will only be 'preyed upon' if they give their consent. Because of the enticing, quasi-erotic nature of human/vampire relations, a small but significant fraction of the nearbaseline population give their consent to become 'victims', either on a temporary basis or more permanently. A 'normal' may also give their consent to be infected with the vampire-virus toolkit, which will slowly change them into a vampire; but this treatment is also governed by the Gor'dan Thi'tsu code and is only rarely administered (in order to keep the vampire population down).
Source (avec image) : https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/464f49f4dbfb0
Convocation, The
A clan of vampire tweaks first encountered in Cableville in 8666 in the unlighted section known as the Dark. Several groups of near-baseline humans have established settlements in this region, including the Carodigians, a cadre of Mortalists who reject the use of life-extension technology. When the Convocation settled next to them the vampires began to infect the mortalists, converting their victims into effectively immortal vampires.
The Convocation claim to have existed for many millennia before arriving in the Dark, although there is scant evidence for the truth of this assertion. They retain no records of where or by whom they were created; it is possible that they are a relatively late modification of earlier vampire clades.
Like many other vampire clades they have biotech vasculoid circulatory systems, so that they do not need a heartbeat; they have augmented strength and sensuality, paler skin than the norm, and moderately augmented intelligence. The Convocation use a number of relatively hi-tech devices to conceal themselves, including small quantities of utility fog to change their appearance or to conceal themselves on occasion- they carry this u-fog in concentrated form in their elaborate and often outdated clothing.
They are unusual in that they can not reproduce sexually, despite having augmented sexual drives and desires; their genome is partially encrypted so that they can not be cloned without ultratech assistance. Not all of the information required for healthy growth and replication is included in their genome; the rest (the encryption key) is stored elsewhere, in the mind of the vampire emself.
When a Convocation vampire bites eir victim, a virus is introduced into the body which modifies the nuclear DNA of each cell to become like that of the vampires. The victim becomes resilient. sensual, and sensitive to many new stimuli. But the victim also becomes sterile, and subject to a degenerative genetic condition that can only be treated using additional genetic data stored in the memory of the vampire. This data is stored not as DNA, but as a string of digits in their physical memory, which is transferred into the victim during the process of 'making' them a vampire. The relevant memory storage systems of the vampire are biological, but are nevertheless augmented to reduce the chance of error to near zero.
If an attempt is made to clone the vampire this data will be erased, rendering the clone non-viable. With the additional data the vampire is effectively immortal. The only way that the Convocation can reproduce themselves is by biting other human-derived sophonts and infecting them with their biotech blood-replacement system. Most augmented human clades in the Current Era are sufficiently well protected against this sort of biotech invasion, so the vampires prefer to seek out victims with reduced resistance to such attacks, such as the Cardogians on Cableville.
Some of the more louche elements in the big cities of Spaghetti and elsewhere are quite happy to encourage a small population of vampires to prey upon themselves and their friends; a modosophont with fully active genetic defence systems is immune to a vampire's bite, unless they deliberately disable their defences, and even then they can usually cure themselves of the effects afterwards using moderately advanced gene therapy.
In recent centuries vampires of the Convocation clan have begun to appear on other worlds, especially those with long dark periods or low light levels. The Convocation might be seen as a threat by other denizens of the Dark and the other worlds where they are found, but they are not evil supernatural beings. They are instead an artificially created clade with an idiosyncratic lifestyle. Almost all of their 'victims' (who think of themselves as 'initiates') are quite happy with their new way of life.
Bionano, Bionanotechnology
organic / biological devices capable of modifying their environment with molecular or atomic scale precision
Bimolecular Nanotechnology (Bionanotech). Use of biomolecules as replicators, assemblers, or components for molecular nanotechnology; any molecular nanotechnology based on such biomolecules or biotech. Biomolecular Nanotechnology tends to be more reliable and also to have a higher adaptive/evolutionary capacity than inorganic nanotechnology (hylonanotech). It may be used as stand-alone nano or interfaced with living systems.
Source : https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/460db23bcd4e8
9999 AT to Present: (Current Era)
The Current Era is one in which there has never been such stability at home and yet, paradoxically, such instability. The old Inner Sphere archailects still rule over all as Olympian deities, reigning over countless different races and clades. But some of the sophonts of the Inner Sphere are worried that in the process of reorganizing and assimilating larger stretches of newly claimed space, and coming to terms with an increasing number of new emerging Archailects, Ascends, and Transcends in the Outer Volumes and along the Periphery, the Sephirotic archailects may reorganize things and do some fancy ascensions or transcensions that might just absorb ordinary sophonts as a side-effect. Most believe that they wouldn't do any such thing, but they certainly could if they wished to.
Beyond the populous core of billions of worlds and habitats that have been settled for centuries and millennia, the prosperous polities, mighty capitals, and major wormhole links that constitute the Inner Sphere and Middle Regions are the seemingly endless stretches of the Outer Volumes, extending five, six and seven thousand light years and more in every direction.
Extending through the more Sol-ward regions of the Outer Volumes in a somewhat radial manner, the various empires and federations have expanded creating a fairly regular region (with lots of local inconsistencies, enclaves and misplaced volumes). Outside this is the chaotic rim where other empires, civilizations and lone cultures exist, safe from the dominance of the core simply because space is so large that there is no way for anyone to keep track of everything out there. There is no fixed border to the unknown, just a gradual decrease of population. Yet with all the crises, the vision of going beyond the old empires and Houses is growing stronger.
This is a growing period of uncertainty. The Emple-dokcetics emerge as a major culture/House/empire, along the lines of Metasoft. Metasoft is already starting to decline because their standard is starting to fall out of favour. Cygexba is no longer an empire, the STC is being threatened by the new emerging polities on the Periphery, the Paradigm might be brewing some "offspring expansion spheres" in the periphery, the Amalgamation wants in as usual ("Feed me!"), the NoCoZo is trying to make a buck from all of this, Keter doesn't answer calls ("Keter is not in right now, It is contemplating the All. Please call again next kalpa"), a few sporadic Daharrans are still managing to let loose fanatics with system-wrecking weaponry, Jean Te Uahlg Aestheticism might be the next big thing and the Caretaker Gods have begun to get irritated over the number of exploding/imploding stars, ecologies converted to nanostuff and the general messiness of things...
So some ten thousand years after the first AI attained transapience on Old Earth, and the first baseline humans ventured forth to colonise their solar system, things are looking anxious, at least as far as the sapients go. Many of the old Houses are falling apart, two aggressive new cyborg Houses are on the rise, what is Verifex really up to in the Gehenna Cluster, and what is the Empledok-cetic regime really up to (despite their denials) with his/its employ/puppets/allies? And what is going with the Carina wormhole network? And for that reason do even the original Tunnler AIs seem to have developed some strange agendas of their own?
Source (avec images) : https://orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45b2ad0f11181
Biochemistry
Biochemistry is the study of the chemistry of living things, including the structure and function of biological molecules and the mechanism and products of their reactions.
Source (avec de nombreux autres hyperliens) : https://orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45b18ad53a990
Near-Baseline Human
One of the most common clades in the Terragen Sphere, Nearbaseline humans can be found in every major Sephirotic empire and most minor polities on the Periphery. Nearbaselines have been part of the Terragen Expansion from its earliest days, and in the millennia since then their vast numbers have given them enormous influence over modosophont societies. They slowly separated from Baseline humans over time, adopting the most popular genemods for themselves and their children, while not carefully controlling their development as Superiors do. The result has been an astonishingly diverse collection of human-derived cultures with many advantages over Baselines, though which ones they possess varies from one Nearbaseline clade to another.
Certain genemods have been adopted by almost all Nearbaselines, such as fertility control and life extension, while others are found only within specific local subcultures or ethnic groups. As a result, it is rare for Nearbaselines to be interfertile with one another, and interclade reproduction in the modern age is usually carried out by artificial methods for this reason. They can sometimes be difficult to distinguish from Tweaks, especially those with more extreme aesthetic modifications, but Nearbaselines still require earth-like conditions in which to live, while many tweak clades have adapted to very different conditions (such as a lack of gravity). Nearbaselines with minor adaptations for hostile environments, such as extra body fat for warmth or darkened skin for radiation tolerance, are usually not considered to be Tweaks.
Compared to their Baseline predecessors, Nearbaselines enjoy long natural lifespans of around four hundred years, robust health thanks to their enhanced immune systems, enhanced empathy, improved mental health, modular genetics for easy modding and greater compatibility with artificial implants such as Direct Neural Interfaces. They are usually not Superbrights, as although mental enhancements like innate calculating ability and inducible idea incubation are common among Nearbaselines, they are not integrated in such a manner as to produce truly superior intelligence. Nonetheless, even an average Nearbaseline would have been considered a genius by Old Earth standards, due to the endless opportunities for education and improvement that the Sephirotics provide.
The term 'Nearbaseline' dates back to First Federation census surveys, as a means of distinguishing Baseline humans with only one or two minor enhancements from Tweaks and Superiors, who tended to make more radical changes or even overhaul their entire genome. Since then, Baselines have declined almost to the point of extinction, and are so rare that the label 'Nearbaseline' has long since become redundant. The term persists to the present day due to cultural inertia if nothing else, though it is worth noting that many 'Nebs' are they are commonly known do not identify as such, regarding themselves first and foremost as members of their local subculture or polity. In addition to this, is is common for Nearbaselines to adopt Cyborg or Bioborg implants while still remaining mostly human. This has lead some commentators to regard the concept of 'Nearbaseline' as a spectrum of human-descended beings rather than a distinct category.
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Source : https://orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45c53b6ae0957
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Despite the fact that divisions between different populations of Nearbaselines are far from clear, the Institute of Biological Taxonomy on Erasmus recognises some 36,000 modern subspecies of the clade. Some of the variants that developed early in the history of the Terragen expansion have become particularly widespread in the time since. These include H. s. lunensis, originally native to the domes and tunnels of Old Earth's moon and now found on low acceleration orbitals and moon-sized bodies across the Terragen Sphere; H. s. mediaphilus of the Nova orbitals and a number of other NoCoZo worlds; H. s. barnardensis and related subspecies; H. s. pacificus; and H. s. novaeterraensis, originally of New Earth, Terran Federation. Some argue that the more radically divergent Nearbaseline clades, such as the low-gravity adapted H. s. lunensis, would be better classified as Tweaks, and the preferred terminology is often more a matter of politics than of science.
One noteworthy trait of modern Nearbaseline cultures is that despite their willingness to modify themselves in line with the latest trends and fashions, relatively few of them ever permanently alter their form to a different clade of being. Many Nearbaselines will spend a century or two engenerated as a Provolve, Xenosophont or a Vec for the sake of variety, but most return to their original bodies, and the Nearbaseline population has held steady and even increased over time. This phenomenon has puzzled demographers and detractors alike for millennia, who often wonder how such conservative beings have persisted throughout the ages when they could become far more capable entities such as Superiors or Uploads.
Some have pointed out that enhanced abilities confer little advantage in a post-scarcity society where automated systems can meet all material needs. Others claim that their presence across Terragen civilisation from the very beginning has given them an advantage over clades that emerged later, as environmental and political systems have tended to be developed for human needs first and foremost. Whatever the reason may be, Nearbaselines continue to have a great deal of influence on modosophont society and culture by their sheer weight of numbers. Even now, they continue to settle new worlds, explore new ways of being and on rare occasions even ascend to the next toposophic level.
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