The Fifth Weird Thing: The Machine World Fragment

 The Fifth Weird Thing: The Machine World    

This is a fragment for a Cypher System idea I had. Enjoy!

The Machine World Campaign

Premise: Carrageon the Machine World is a vast self-sustaining world ship, a vessel hundreds of kilometers in size traveling the vast distance at superluminal speeds between the stars. Carrageon was once an ancient ship developed to serve as a permanent waystation between worlds in a nascent expanding space colonization effort, but in the intervening years it lost its way, and now, ten thousand or more years later, has been drifting from world to world, its original purpose long forgotten.

Carrageon’s inhabitants dimly remember an age when the world ship served as a bridge between ancient human worlds, colonies as part of an expansive expanding human sphere of interest in the galaxy. They tell stories of how a great leader, the Captain called Mirathael, or possibly Michael, or occasionally even Michelle, led the ship away from human space in a final grand mission to the edge of the cosmos, on a journey of endless discovery. Some scholars, of the College of the Founders, have old records suggesting that Mirathael’s expedition was not scheduled, and was part of an unknown mutiny. Others suggest he protected the Machine World from a greater threat which had attacked the worlds of humanity, and point to the ever present danger of the Cybrids and their kind, who they believe could be the product of this unknown threat known only as the “Ultras.”

Carrageon got its name after a period known as the Long Dark. The stories say it was once called Icarus, but after the great exodus under Captain Mirathael, there was an extended period known as the Long Dark, so called because it is said that there was a period of time when the ship passed both through literal and metaphorical darkness. During this period, according to surviving records, the Cult of Mirathael rose after the leader’s death, and there was a period in which the Machine World entered a great and seemingly endless darkness as it made its way toward a solitary gliding light known as the Eye of the Goddess Andromeda.

During this period of darkness, civilizations rose and fell within the Machine World as different factions fought to control the world, and one by one they failed. Eventually even the technomagic of the ship began to fail, plunging whole regions of the ship into an eternal darkness. It was not until the ship’s arrival at the Eye of the Goddess that power was restored and the world awoke once more, thanks it seems to the beneficience of a Godmind called Exofar. Exofar, a name given to it by those scholars of the dark age who communicated with it, restored the functionality of the Machine World, and gave it an advanced intellect and personality, which was called Carrageon. It was from here that the Machine World gained its name.

Carrageon’s enahncements were so great that it developed new technologies and fostered a new population to replace the severely depleted humans on its ship through genetic reconstruction. It introduced new variants and as the ship proceeded once more to move on a course of discovery and exploration Carrageon found new species to join in its ranks. It had become a scientist in its own right. This lasted until the arrival of the Supernals.

The Supernals were enigmatic and inimically curious aliens from the outer darkness, and they coveted the power held within Carrageon and its denizens. They began to experiment on and kidnap citizens of the Machine World and seemed efficient at evading the intelligence of Carrageon. Eventually Carrageon, despite a directive to commit no violence or harm, instead granted such will to its human subjects so that they might protect themselves. And so was formed the first of the Machine World Armies, designed to hunt down and destroy foes of humanity.

This was all ten thousand years ago. Something happened in the intervening years, though the ancient records were carefully preserved by the Machinists of Carrageon. Records of more recent nature were lost, including the mystery called the Cataclysm. Exactly what the Cataclysm was remains unknown, but it is known that a swathe of the ship was badly damaged in an unknown event. Some scholars claim it was a collision with an object in space. Others claim sabotage by Supernals, or an attack by a hostile alien force. No one truly knows what happened, only that the results were devastating: Carrageon’s higher order functions ceased, and about twenty percent of the Machine World was utterly destroyed.