The Eternal Dawn

The Eternal Dawn
System Info
World Name: Rebirth Map ID: White 25 Surface Gravity: 11.3 m/s2 Climate: Tropical Atmosphere: Nitrogen/Hydrogen/Methane/Carbon Monoxide, 81 kPa
Population:  40.0 million Population Breakdown: 100% augmented Capital: Conception Type of Power: Magnate Continuum
Infrastructure
Domestic Support: High Wealth: 450 + 240 (690) CIP: 750 + 320 (1070) PIP: 850 + 320 (1170) Delta Dust: 150 Delta Dust Logistics:

Rebirth

Rebirth is a hot, humid world heavily covered in thick black jungle. Temperatures average ~40 C about the equator and humidity is often above 80-90%. Despite being lush and life-bearing, it has relatively low oxygen content compared to Earth, a near-nonexistent ozone layer, a somewhat toxic atmosphere, and is generally hostile to human or terrestrial life.

Nature Red In Tooth And Claw

Rebirth has near-zero UV protection and its weak magnetosphere and high concentration of radioactives exposes it to all sorts of constant radiation bombardment. Evolution has been supercharged, animals living, breeding, and dying quickly to avoid inordinate genetic damage. The arms race has created deadly predators and even deadlier herbivores, capable of eating toxic, spined plants.

Boost

One of the interesting evolutionary tracks of Rebirth fauna is that their adrenaline-equivalent is a powerful oxidant, redlining a creature's metabolism and giving them virtually unlimited endurance during high-stress situations-high enough that often massive organ damage can result from using this chemical, 'boost', for too long. Rebirth animals are often languid in normal movement, lazing around to dump heat and store up boost by metabolizing the thin oxygen of the world, but blurs of motion when threatened or in pursuit.

A common predator tactic is to harry a large herbivore in packs, each animal cooling down as it reaches the limits of its endurance, but the pack itself constantly harassing. Either the herbivore tires out and bleeds out, or it cooks itself.

This biochemical adaptation has seen actual use in several Eternal Dawn combatant designs.

Dawn Society

Gimlet was originally colonized by an eclectic mix of civilians, many of them wealthy and transgenic. With plenty of funds and government backing, they ended up as one of the longshot colonies, choosing one of the more promising worlds, a faraway planet which showed signs of life and a healthy biosphere. Unfortunately, the planet was a seductive hellhole, hot, radioactive, and poisonous. Despite this, the colony's wealth and position made it a common stopping point for rim exploration and kept it in contact with the human sphere at large, something many colonies that far away from Earth failed to manage. The colony survived a few decades without incident, but eventually one of Rebirth's protozoans jumped the species barrier to humans, leading to a horrific plague that required external help.

Alshain had been a nexus of exhuman and biomodification until the exhuman insurgency used it as one of its main bases and it was invaded by the PLA. Its fleeing citizenry was intrigued by the odd biochemistry of Rebirth, and its skilled bioengineers were tasked to enact a cure, with the promise of riches and the planet itself as an experimental lab for more techniques to improve the exhuman condition. They worked hard, tirelessly, through failing quarantines and martial law, isolating the protozoan and finding a cure.

But the damage had been done. No longer was Gimlet a rich trading hub. Now it was impoverished by the fleeing rich and the funds spent on finding a cure to an elusive, deadly disease. Traders had left it, found alternative hubs. Many who once lived there were dead. Only the Alshain refugees and workers, with their hyper-advanced immune systems, had been left mostly unscathed. Those who still lived of the original Gimlet families were often the poor or now-broke, embittered by the abandonment of their jewel by its peers. Renaming the planet Rebirth, the refugees took to building Alshain-in-Exile, a exhumanist hub and survivalist haven. Assimilating Alshain survivalist exhumanism into its ideology, they would strive to conquer the harshest worlds, live anywhere in the galaxy, become men like gods.

It would be an eternal dawn of human dominance of the galaxy, humanity spreading to every corner of the galaxy and beyond.

The Politics Market

In the 21st century, it was theorized that a market could be programmed via inputs to solve difficult problems. In theory, a market capable of constant optimization of goods and services would be capable of hypercomputation, with literally infinite processing power. This, of course, never came true. But yet, the idea of using the market as a parallel-processing system, with human computation nodes, lived on. To cure the plague, everything had to be repurposed to find a cure. With moderate libertarian leanings, Gimlet had a healthy free-market economy at that point. The Alshain computational experts were quick to disassemble it and rebuild it into another computer system, one that still lives on today.

The Politics Market is Rebirth's own sleeping god, a powerful (if slow) programmed-market computer that is guided through constant transaction between people. The Dawn have no leaders, no masters, just the dictates and results of the distributed-computational element that is their market system. It is part economic manager, part societal manager. Its whispers have provided the citizens of Rebirth reasonable wealth despite their isolation, incredible industrial might, and common happiness. To enhance its ability to enact domestic policy, Rebirth is a panopticon state with no right to privacy.

Although not actually capable of hypercomputation (and not immune to human error in either interpretation or input), the guidance of the politics market has brought Rebirth recovery from devastating plague and a growing, happy population.

Market Regulation

Because regulation of the politics market itself would create potential distortions that would reduce its effectiveness, Rebirth runs on a fully lassez-faire economy with near-zero regulation on outputs and market processes, only on input (and interventions to fix market failure states). It does, however, run a social safety net, funded via an independent "shadow economy"-essentially a command economy. This societal safety net provides free education, utilities, food, and basic shelter-basic public services-that any citizen of the Dawn is guaranteed to be given access to, as even if they produce nothing of value economically, they are still a processing node in the Politics Market.

Basic housing is communal, generally space-efficient barracks with shared hygiene facilities. Basic food is often vegetarian in nature (as the Dawn have transgenically adapted themselves and several staple foods to the local environment, they do not use food factories but rather still maintain an agricultural sector), and utilities include education in any field of study up to any level of expertise, power, data access, water, and medical care up to and including fairly significant elective augmentation and neural reprofiling-something no other universal health care programs offer.

That is to say that the Dawn make it possible for anyone to achieve their wishes, almost regardless of ability. There have been immigrants from ZOCU or the Core who have sought out Rebirth as their final chance to achieve the dreams they wished for. They often find out that no matter what you wish for, it never comes out the way you imagine it to. The vast majority can accept that, but a handful leave, going back home with their surgical and psychological modifications, shattered dreams, and a black mark on their record.

Rejecter Enclaves

Approximately 35% of the Dawn are not large-scale participants in the politics market. These are disproportionately exhuman immigrants, who are allowed autonomy and their own local governance as long as they abide by a fairly short set of policies which amount to noninterference and cooperation in Eternal Dawn affairs, and acceptance of the panopticon monitoring that is common to the Dawn. Often, these enclaves are used as experimental controls for sociological experiments, as they range from cults of personality to autocratic dictatorships to democracies to libertarian freeholds that simply reject the idea of using the market as a computer.

One of them is an autocratic, militaristic, survival-state. It is the professional Dawn military.

The Dawn Military

Ad Finem Temporis, Fidelis Tamquam Post Mortem-"To the ends of time, loyal even after death" (Official motto of the Eternal Dawn Military Service)
"No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy." (Unofficial motto of the Eternal Dawn Military Service)

The Eternal Dawn military is not part of the politics market due to potential conflicts of interest. As an effective military requires top-down organization and loyalty in its personnel, but this same top-down organization and personal loyalty means that it could easily create market failure situations, its soldiers are withdrawn from the politics market for the duration of their service. They no longer are allowed to interact with the market and are provided amenities by the military itself, running off of the same command economy that provides utilities.

Voluntary militia are not, and although the professional military has more advanced equipment, better augmentation, and more glamorous jobs, many of the Dawn's citizens prefer serving public service in the voluntary militia. Their existence (and the militias/military forces of other enclaves) is a counterbalance to the Dawn military in the event of insurrection. However, the indoctrination of the Dawn military and the loyalty of its citizens to the Eternal Dawn as a whole (not just the military) is the first line of defense against such a problem.

The Dawn military's founders were predominantly of the minority exhuman religion of (X), exhorting Upgrade as a method of achieving divinity and avoiding the sins of flesh, and although the military itself is a mostly secular organization the trappings have never faded from existence. Even so, the military is disproportionately religious, with 40% claiming (X) as their religion and another 34% claiming another religion.

Infantry

Relatively prestigious and numerous, the infantry are the core of the Eternal Dawn's fighting force. With cutting-edge bioaugmentation and elective cybernetic enhancement, the Dawn's infantry are trained to fight in any environment with any tools. Originally trained with lessons learned from being the insurgency fighting a much-better-resourced foe, they have shown a surprising amount of counter-insurgency skill, and even during the closing year of the Magnate War, many of the Dawn's remaining light infantry went to ground and became surprisingly adept guerillas.

Aerospace

Dawn aerospace specializes in close support and strike operations, with competent but uninspired training in air-superiority (they leave that to other Magnates). Their aerospace craft tend to reflect this, heavily armored flying tanks with angled armor that provides both some degree of stealth, but is primarily intended to deflect enemy fire.

Unconventional Warfare

Civil Affairs

Civil Affairs includes combat engineers, interpreters, military police, medical personnel, and infrastructural management staff, and are the softer side of the Dawn unconventional warfare duo. Nonexistent until the Magnate War, their job was to administer, along with the other Magnates, conquered worlds, minimizing resentment by bringing infrastructure back on, treating the sick and wounded, and other positive incentives. They also administer the economy-in-miniature that supplies the Dawn military with the goods and services it needs, and what little interaction it has with the politics market.

Special Forces

Eternal Dawn Special Forces were near-nonexistent until the windup to the Magnate War, where Alshain refugees with insurgency experience and exhuman insurgents were requested to form the initial training cadre. This perspective, gained from being the terrorists and insurgents fighting an organized military force, has limited Dawn Unconventional Warfare units in terms of counterterrorism and rapport-building, but they are excellent terror units, with scads of institutional experience in committing assassinations, kidnappings, hostage-taking, and other dirty wet works. As Hyperborean unconventional warfare units were better at missions that required a "softer touch", the Dawn's own covert warfare units found themselves building a somewhat exaggerated reputation for brutality and cruelty, as their highest-profile missions were reprisal operations or battlefield assassination.

History Paths

Hell World-Radical Morph. Change-100 CIP, 100 PIP, RMC [+5 Transgene]

Limited Precursor Relics-150 Dust, +5 SP

Limited Feral Drones (terrestrial)-30 Pop, 50W, 100 PIP

Observation Posts-100 CIP, 10 SP [+2 FTL]

Hub World (for Exhumans)-60 Pop

Longshot-2500 military, 100 PIP, 100 CIP, 20 SP) +5 spending limit on SP

Inner Rim-30 Pop, 150 PIP, 50 CIP, 100 Fabs, 25 SP, 20 TG

New Freedoms-20 TG [+4 Transgene]

Pod People-180 Pop, 300 W, 100 CIP

Seperatists-2500 Mil

Civilian Sponsored-60 Pop

Fleeing Transgenes-20 TG

Natural Disaster-+Morale

Na'vi Helljungle Attack-200 Wealth, 2500 Military

Go Weird-40 TG, 100 CIP, 4 Logistics, 10,000 Military

I'm A Magnate-100 CIP, 15000 Mil, 20 SP

Exhumanize-100 CIP, 50 Transgene, 300 Supersoldier [+5 Transgene, +5 Xenotech]

Series VII Replicants-+2 Ground Apps, +2 Ground Doctrines, 100 Supersoldier [+3 Ground, +3 Transgene]

Future Government-20 TG, +2 Morale

Found Religion-+1 Morale, -100 Wealth

Communism!-100 PIP, -100 Wealth

+3 Physical: 1.6x Population PIP

+2 Reactions: 1.4x Population CIP

+2 Intellect: 1.2x Population Wealth, -10% R&D Costs

+1 Soc: +1 DAP, +1 Support, 1.2x Trade Income

Totals

Final Stats

SP: 96

SP Limit: 25

Population: 545 Base bonus: 272.5

Trangene: 240

Morale: 9

Wealth: 400 + 327

PIP: 670 + 436

CIP: 850 + 381.5

Fabbers: 100

Delta Dust: 0

Theta Dust: 0

Military: 32500

Doctrines: 70

Logistics: 60

Global Tech Level: 16

Applications: 400

Stockpiles: 0

Debt: 0

SP Expenditures

Additional Limit: 0

Wealth: 0

PIP: 17

CIP: 0

Dust: 0

Theta: 0

Pop: 25

Mil: 0

Tech Indices: 0

Apps: 10

Transgene: 24

Doctrine: 20

Logistics: 0

Tech Indices

Shipbuilding: 16

Parasite Construction: 45

Carrier Construction: 16

Aviation Warship Construction: 16

Aerospace Construction: 16

Mecha Construction: 16

Ground Construction: 23

Projectiles: 16

Lasers: 25

Railguns: 20

Particle Weapons: 16

Mega Particle Weapons: 16

Missiles: 16

Propulsion: 16

Power: 18

Materials: 16

Shields: 16

Electronics: 16

Stealth: 16

Transgenics: 42

Mass Production: 20

Civilian Technologies: 16

Xenotechnology: 35

Basic Theotechnology: 16

Advanced Theotechnology: 16

Floating Points: 0

Sociology

Eternal Dawn Slang

Land of Dreams

The idea of transhumanism to both enhance strengths and shore up weaknesses have made the Eternal Dawn a civilization which has dedicated itself to not only constant self-improvement, but also to allow its people to reach its dreams. A significant part of their ideology dedicates itself to the idea that people should not settle for what they're born into, but should only settle for achieving their dreams.

The government of the Eternal Dawn agrees, and subsidizes just about any reasonable improvement or training (up to and including enhancement) necessary for someone to achieve their dreams. Although it means a lack of liquid wealth, the job satisfaction-and mass popular support-are both boons to the government and its citizenry, who have record job satisfaction ratings.

Religion

The Dawn are a melting pot of extreme exhumanist variants of various Earth religions, including Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism, as well as a handful of secular exhumans similarly dedicated to extensive self improvement. By far, most of the Dawn are religious, with less than 5% of the society being secular, although not all are fanatically or significantly religious. Interestingly, the extreme pro-trahsuman sects of various religions were originally some of the most liberalized, but their involuntary exile have caused a rather significant backlash and the warning signs of religious extremism.

Government and Economics

The Eternal Dawn are a weighted-vote democracy backed by a council of experts. As a "weighted vote" system, people's educational backgrounds, previous voting histories, and a host of other factors are checked to give each citizen a variable score of their "weight" on a topic. Notably, these weights are set topic by topic, rather than universally,

The multiple councils of experts and religious leaders provides guidance and oversight as well as analysis. Notably, to be part of the Closed Council, the highest oversight group, one must give up much, as the Council requires heavy cybernetic alteration to even interface with-to become part of the Closed Council shows you have the skills, mindset, and willingness to sacrifice everything for the nation and its people.

Panopticon

The Eternal Dawn have everyone willingly hooked up to a constant data network, which records their movements, transactions, and more or less all security-relevant data. This renders non white-collar crime near-nonexistent in the Dawn, as well as rendering its facilities and civilian populace highly secure. Despite popular culture images of the Magnates being dim gray dystopias, Rebirth is on the surface no less lively than any other world.

Economy

The Eternal Dawn use a controlled market economy as is semi-standard across many Sphere worlds, providing all citizens with the basics for living (food, water, education, and living space) and rations for limited amounts of items such as entertainment. In theory, it is possible to live without working a single day in one's lifetime, but heavy socialization and indoctrination against this prevent significant amounts of malingerers.

Money in the Dawn can be earned by most jobs and used to purchase amenities such as entertainment, living quarters larger and more lavish than the government-guaranteed barracks, decorations, and so forth. The government pays and employs polity-critical employees, however- employees in manufacturing, education, research, and military service are all Dawn-backed and government-employed. Dawn mercenary units are merely units which have command approval to work for causes the government deems acceptable in exchange for renumeration.

Style and Architecture

The Dawn's cities are generally built beautiful-it is a point of pride to many architects among the Dawn to build beautiful, as they are after all, creating utopia. There are no rectangles of concrete and polymer windows on Rebirth, and all architecture is designed for aesthetic appeal. Most popular styles emulate Renaissance or Medieval architecture although there are styles from all over the globe and through most timelines, but obviously with significantly higher technical advancement. The timeless nature of the Pancreator, who exists in all times simultaneously due to its acausal nature, is what the Dawn seeks to emulate, by blending modern technologies with ancient style.

Similarly, clothing on Rebirth follows similar norms, blending smart cloth and active materials with styles not out of place in the Renaissance or early Industrial Revolution for the most part.

Eternal Dawn Augmentation

"You are only minimally modified. We can help you correct this." -Abraham Watts, Advancer cybersurgeon

The path of the faithful of the Eternal Dawn is marked with continuous cybernetic enhancement, but there are generally two approaches to this. There are those who, out of vanity, personal reasons, or for any of a hundred other rationales, preferred to look outwardly human, replacing and rebuilding internal organs, skeletal structures, and other components to improve ability. There are also those who preferred extensive, obvious cybernetic modification, replacing entire limbs with smart-alloy metal and myomer musculature.

There are sufficient amounts of both parties in control of the interpretation of the holy texts that both paths have been considered acceptable-as long as one continually modifies oneself on the road to improvement, instead of staying back and accepting stagnation, any means were necessary. Eternal Dawn cities are extremely cosmopolitan, almost as if they were out of a space opera, as the alien-looking exhumans who wholeheartedly embrace the cult of augmentation mix and mingle with the majority, who eschew significant enhancement for a slow process of optimization and convenience-based implants, whether biotech or nanotech or cybernetic.

The shared doctrine of every Dawn religion is built around the continuous improvement of the self. Doctrinal differences and (comparative) conservatism or full exhuman tendencies tend to alter the method which people seek this self-improvement by, but nevertheless the improvements are sought, and the slow process of Upgrade continues as minor improvements stack up generation by generation, and the older generations upgrade themselves in turn to keep up with the younger ones.

Biology and Biotech

The Eternal Dawn does a healthy black-market trade in biotech, as Dawn-built machinery is often absolute bleeding-edge in this category if nowhere else.

Eternal Dawn Transgenics

"Some of the human race criticize us for going too far in our modifications. To them, I say that the difference is not that we have gone so far, but that they have stayed behind, failed to grasp the divine fire of gods and angels when they could. Either they refuse to push their bodies to what science can give them, or they use their technologies to reinforce social structures created by the failings of baseline humanity. And eventually, they, too, will learn that the path of the faithful waits for no-one."
-Eternal Dawn Prelate Phillip Masse.

The constant self-improvement, competitiveness of transgenic sciences (human enhancement is literally the unifying religion of the Eternal Dawn) and common use of enhancement cybernetics in the Dawn have split its population into easily a half-dozen different variants with varying traits. However, due to the constraints of the world they chose after their exile to transform into paradise, each of these templates is roughly similar, no matter what the methods used.

Every member of the Dawn has heavily enhanced physical capability, as well as reaction and cognition speed, and intellect. Furthermore, all Dawn are designed with some level improved social bonding. Due to the sheer hostility of the environments and many of them working off of a survivalist template, they are additionally heavily resistant to toxins, disease, and radiation, and can survive for longer in vacuum than most. Finally, because of the light the sun of Rebirth gives out, virtually all Dawn citizens are enhanced with thermographic vision. These traits allow them to survive in their hostile high-G world without undue difficulty. Superior error-correction and higher precision as well as their physical conditioning make it so that the Dawn's citizens tend to also be stunningly attractive due to higher symmetry.

More worryingly for League powers, many members of the Dawn take it even further than the basic packages plus a few occasional upgrade retrovirii, and the Dawn are some of the leading theorists and engineers in the field of R-grade military cybermodification.

Dawn Subspecies

Isolate: The survivalist members of the Dawn have a complex template that fully eschews postnatal cybernetics in favor of heavy genetic adaptation to oncoming threats. The obsession with species survivability without technological aid over personal viability means that long-term problems are common-Isolate genomes are notorious for manifesting multiple exotic cancer modes around the 80 to 100 year mark, which require significant expense and difficulty to treat. They are also generally "primitive", gaining much of their increased strength and durability by relatively crude methods such as multiple redundant organs, sheer size, dense "armor plating", and so on.

Exalt/Demi: One of the more common adaptations, the 'demi' (short for "demigod", although officially renamed the Exalt) is less viable outside of technological civilization than the Isolate due to lower efficiencies, but makes up for this in being smaller and generally much more difficult to identify than Isolates, as well as having fewer issues with senescence.

Uplift: Although the term "uplift" brings images of making octopi or dogs or ravens sentient, the uplift is nowhere near that dramatic. What it is is a semi-standardized set of cybernetic augmentations which, when applied to a baseline or near-baseline (such as an Alpha or a Spacer) can provide them with roughly identical performance to a common Dawn citizen. Bone lacing, ocular implants, dermal weave, and synthetic muscle grafting, as well as a complex set of neural enhancements, provide these improvements, but the surgery is relatively expensive and therefore fairly rare (although a significant minority of the Dawn are ex-baselines). Finally, the modifications do need regular maintenance and the body around it often needs some as well.

Transgenic Template

Tentative

Primary Attributes (57 pts)

Enhanced Physique 3 (21)

Enhanced Reactions 2 (15)

Enhanced Intelligence 2 (15)

Enhanced Socialization 1 (6)

Secondary Attributes (10 pts)

Boosted Durability 2 (7)

Combat Reactions 1 (3)

Tertiary Attributes (4.5 pts)

Attractive 1 (1.5)

IR Vision 1 (1.5)

Survival (Vacuum) 1 (1.5)

Survival (Bio/Radio/Chemical Resistant) 3 (0)

(71.5 ~ 71 * 4 = 284 - 46 = 238)
2 points spare = 10 WU

Combat Replicas

"Soldiers, are you going to let your asses get kicked by overgrown farm equipment?!"
"SIR, NO SIR!" -Apocryphal League quote, An Unofficial History of The Magnate War

The Dawn had gone into the war without sufficient soldiers-their primary goal was to acquire a buffer and resources, as well as forge a new national identity in the fires of victory. The handful of old warriors the Dawn had were experienced, but too few in number, to provide an invasion, although they could be levied as shock troopers and training instructors.

The answer came from an agricultural technician. The sprawling farms of Rebirth, coming of, the Dawn's efforts to adapt humanity to their world rather than to simply transplant humanity to yet another world and never truly thrive on it, were difficult to clear, owing to the thick and deadly flora and fauna that choked expansion. To clear more room for the colony against harsh conditions, and owing to Alshain advanced biotechnology overshadowing robotics (as well as the lower logistics footprint of drones which could literally live off the land), advanced, biotech replicants had been used.

These replicants were intended to clear brush and eliminate any predators or territorial herbivores. As such, they were fast, extremely resilient to harm, and already designed to be adept with weapons, primarily large-caliber explosive-cored "hunting" rifles and flamethrowers. Only minimal modification would be needed to convert them to combat use, most of it being encrypted command and control and differing tactical programs.

Soon the Replica, Humanoid, Agricultural (Combat Repurposed), Series VII Variant A, was built. Minimally modified, it still managed to take Miranda, although it rapidly showed its age on Finnegan's Folly, where the limited tactical reprogramming that had been used fell flat against experienced insurgents, and the war was largely carried by insurgency veterans.

Replica Models

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Series VIId Combat Replicant, in experimental-type coloration. Note similarities with Alshain battle armor design.

• Series VI Utility Replicant

The progenitor of the entire line of combat replicants, the base VII model is still chugging along after nearly half a century, with several overhauls. Initially, Replicant lineages were labeled by role, and the roman numerals I-X were reserved for utility and agricultural assistants. Due to the derivation of the combat replicant from farmland reclaimant specialists, the VII series code is now reserved for combat replicants.

• Series VIIa Combat Replicant

Initial breed from the VII line, built by CyGene Biosystems for the Eternal Dawn. Modifications from the Series VIx included encrypted communications links, additional datalink capacity for various external modules, a (then) cutting-edge solid-state brainstem with Survivalist 2.5 Trauma Management Software, and additional tactical programming. Finally, a plug and play genome, with high-selected augmentation acceptance indices, was added to the VIIa to allow for easy battlefield repair with biomech spares.

• Series VIIa2 Combat Replicant

Alternate model produced by the competing Misriah Agrisystems. The VIIa2 was cheaper but lacked the same level of upgrade potential as the VIIa, and was not adopted by the Dawn. However, the schematics and model was sold to allied Magnate powers, as it was somewhat less complex and easier to produce with more limited bioscience.

• Series VIIa+ Combat Replicant

Initial update from problems in the Miranda invasion. Update package included several hotfixes to biology to reduce autoimmune disorders and increase combat readiness, bug patches for target recognition software, and a superior encryption method. This update was delivered in autoinjectors which combined a retrovirus and a software patch, and could literally be delivered into the field. Most other updates to VII physiology were not so simple.

• Series VIIb Combat Replicant Update

Experimental Replicant update for the Finnegan's Folly occupation, involving a rebuild of organs and tactical programming for additional self-preservation against ambush and IED. Update included an interlocking ribcage and thickened spine to protect better against blast and shrapnel, acrylic artificial musculature layered across major skeletal muscles, a human-emulation pheromonal suite that was designed to defend against pheromone-triggered smart bombs, additional optical sensor emplacement, and an altered skull with an armored lower palate and solid jaw, preventing shrapnel deflected by the thick neck protector from penetrating the brain.

• Series VIIb+ Combat Replicant Update

Optimized tactical software with ad-hoc command networking was installed in this 'plus' update, allowing for increased autonomy and reduced necessity for constant command oversight. This tactical hivemind was very simplistic but provided at that time sufficient defense against Finnegan's Folly insurgents. Of course, this touched off an arms race between the Finnegan's Folly insurgents and the Series VII designers, one that continued to the end of the Magnate War.

• Series VIIbNL Domestic Security Replicant

Nonlethal riot control and police replicant variant based off of the Series VIIb+ model. Additional tactical programming was added for riot control, and vocal cords were reinstalled to allow for warning off crowds. The VIIbNL had a limited phrasebook and was not Turing Test capable, and was generally paired with non-bioroid security personnel at a 4:1 ratio. Nevertheless, it freed up nonspec soldiers for various other theaters of war rather than the Miranda pacification.

• Series VIIc Combat Replicant Physical Update

Additional cybernetic strength and speed augmentation was added to allow for higher mobility and survivability while engaging in heavy combat. The skeleton was reinforced with interlocking metal struts, major joints were rebuilt with cybernetic replacements and servos, and Replicant components were compartmentalized to allow for plug and play repairs. All Replicants shared the same blood antigens and could swap limbs freely, but at this point a limb replacement was now something that was possible within a matter of hours.

• Series VIIcT Combat Replicant Durability Update

Improvements in tissue efficiency from research breakthroughs allowed shrinking of many organs in the Series VII, allowing for additional mechanical and biological backups to be implanted, just in time to defend against increasing battlefield lethality, due to high-caliber League weapons. The Series VIIcT had a biomechanical backup heart, self-sealing blood vessels, a dispersed excretory system, and additional processing nodes implanted across the nervous system with wireless connectivity, allowing for function even with a severed spinal cord. The VIIcT also shrank and moved the brain of the Replica into the chest for additional protection.

Proliferation

A black market trade rapidly developed in this advanced combat bioroid, causing the design to proliferate throughout the Rim, although only a handful of powers have the technical know-how to do more than maintain them, as their complex genetic code is prone to failure if edited, and their birthing requires significant high-tech infrastructure that most Rim powers do not have.

The Eternal Dawn Military

The Eternal Dawn military is where you generally find the highest proportion of Advancers to Highers in service, as those who abandon pretenses to humanity for heavy combat augmentation generally find themselves significantly more combat-effective than those who do not. The Dawn Military is divided into three rough components:

The Templars

The Eternal Dawn Templars run the primary manned branch of the Eternal Dawn military. They provide the commanders for any major operation, the "nonspecialized" (not Replica) forces, and take care of prisoners of war as well as the recruitment of "nonspecializeds".

Although the Templars require all members to be religious, in practice there has never been an incident of a Templar being thrown out for religious violations-those who are nonpracticing are only told to pay lip service to the issue and show up when meetings are being held. Most of the Dawn are practicing, however, so this is only relevant to a small minority.

Templar Rank Structure

All Templars have a rank, and a grade in a rank, ranging from I to VI, which represents both one's paygrade and seniority within the rank. Promotion upwards in rank is generally done by showing drive and qualification, while promotion in grade happens over time with the accumulation of experience. The Templars also generally promote soldiers upwards from enlisted ranks to act as officers instead of training officers up from scratch.

Ranks are given with their rough equivalents in a Core military, PACT to be specific.

Noviciate (Recruit)

Acolyte I-VI (E-1 Private to E-2 Private First Class)

Lector I-VI (E-3 Lance Corporal to E-5 Sergeant)

Cantor I-VI (E-6 Staff Sergeant to E-7 Sergeant First Class)

Curate I-VI (E-8 Master Sergeant to E-9 Sergeant Major)

Vicar (Officer Candidate)

Subdeacon I-VI (O-1 2nd Lieutenant to O-2 1st Lieutenant)

Deacon I-VI (O-3 Captain to O-4 Major)

Archdeacon I-VI (O-5 Lt. Colonel to O-6 Colonel)

Bishop I-VI (O-7 Brigadier General)

Exarch I-VI (O-8 Major General)

Patriarch/Matriarch I-VI (O-9 Lt. General)

Cardinal I-VI (O-10 General)

The Lux Dei

The elite of the Templars end up joining the Lux Dei, the "Light of God" as it were. These special operations units operate as any other special operations unit in the Sphere. Lux Dei members must be religiously faithful and extremely dedicated to the cause, as they often undertake high-risk wet works operations in dangerous situations, and signing up with the Lux Dei is signing up for a tour of duty which measures at least two decades and often more.

Procurement

Dawn Procurement deals with R&D, budgeting, and industrial manufacture. Procurement is also responsible for the Eternal Dawn Combat Replicant Program, and has significant influence in the Magnate Continuum due to the wide-ranging export of these. It technically has its own military forces but it lacks commanders, putting its mass-produced soldiers and war materiel under the command of the Templars. Procurement operates a handful of special operations units as well, which are independent of the Templars and their Lux Dei.

Advanced Research And Development

Advanced Research And Development (ARAD) is the organization in Procurement which runs its covert operations arm as well as funding all cutting-edge Dawn research. Its covert operations units are generally employed for operations involving capturing technology to reverse-engineer, sabotaging enemy research, and recovering artifacts.

Joining ARAD's direct action units is interesting, as one must successfully join Procurement, which involves some level of scientific and technical know-how. To join ARAD's direct action arm, one must pair that with extensive willpower, dedication, and a mind well-suited for combat operations. ARAD's "commando scientists" might not be doing much of the latter but have despite the odds proven themselves to be quite capable of the former, although not with their occasional extreme failures-the largest of which was failing to prevent the reverse-engineering of the Aleph architecture by ZOCU.

Procurement Rank Structure

Procurement has a paramilitary system of rankings based off of its psuedo-academic, paramilitary functions. Although Procurement members are not expected to deal with active combat, any members are expected to be familiar enough with military weaponry and tactics that they do not get in the way, and ARAD trains with the Lux Dei and other Magnate SF units.

Associate (E-1 to E-9)

Researcher (O-1 to O-2)

Senior Researcher (O-3 to O-4)

Project Leader (O-5 to O-6)

Rector (O-7 to O-9)

Provost (O-10)

The Faithful

There are those who defend while the Templars are away-the legions of the Faithful are a defensive militia, numerous but less well-trained and equipped with weapons and armor that are generally built for reliability and cost-effectiveness rather than individual combat superiority.

On the other hand, they're a defensive force and can often count on weight of numbers due to the difficulty of transporting a significant invasion force anywhere.

Other Stuff

Peace Given To The World