Alien Sky:Terms and Concepts

Gaia and Vector Biology

Linears

Linears is a term for the navigational lanes that exist along major tectonic fault lines between Vector clusters, a sort of 'ley line' that allows for Vectors and craft that employ Vector-derived technologies such as Fractals and dry naval vessels such as airships and landships equipped with reactionless drives to traverse at speeds comparable to aircraft using-current generation rocketry. The Linears are comparable to the Casimir Effect, wherein to metallic plates placed in contact generate an attractive and repulsive force. In this case, two large clusters of Vector biomass in contact generate a resonance effect that enhances the power of Vector-based drive systems.

Linears are strongest and common around the equator, and branch off into smaller and weaker lines as one heads towards the poles. Although there is no single line for circumnavigation, there are several strong pathways that intersect at multiple locations and allow a proper navigational route around Gaia. This route mostly cuts through Centauri League, NSCS and Parabolic Grove territories and does not pass beyond the Equatorial-Tropical divisions in both hemispheres.

Vectors

The Vectors of Gaia are the native swarm lifeform that has seemingly covered all of Gaia, and hidden any original landmasses the world had. Vector lifeforms is generally used interchangeably to refer to lifeforms such as Fractals or the bizare and hostile spherical nodules made of airborne worms that rise from sinkholes in the Vector's surface, while the term Vectors refers to the crust or the collective type of lifeform on Gaia.

Although they have been observed, dissected and even incorporated into existing human biotechnology, much of Vector biology is still a mystery. They are a powerful lifeform that completely reshaped the natural environment of Gaia and overtook almost every other species native to it. Their terraforming abilities extend to tectonics and landmasses, having stretched kilometer-thick sheets of biomass over the oceans, radically changing the shape and patterns of the Gaian seas.

Most of the ocean is locked underground in a massive cave system while what little that is above ground is confined to shallow seas and an underdeveloped hydrological basin.

The relationship between humanity and the Vectors is stretched, at best. Some factions wish to destroy them altogether to return Gaia to a pristine and manageable state, while others see the lifeform as a resource to be protected... or exploited. In most cases, the conditions between colonists and the native fauna is one of competition. To withdraw minerals, boreholes have to be sunk through the kilometers of Vector mass, and most settlements around the tropics need to dig wells to withdraw water from the underground oceans.

The Vectors have similarly impacted humanity by creating the Marked, humans who bear parasitic biomass fibers throughout their bodies that radically improved their ability to communicate with the native fauna at some cost to themselves. Rumors also abound of humanoids being retrieved from the Vectors who resemble pure humans in every way, save for their natural violet eyes and strange, technicolor hair. To conservative factions such as the Messians and Heng Sha, this is both disturbing and antithetical to their goals on Chiron, but to the others... intriguing to say the least.

At the same time, many of the newest advances in human technology were based on Vector biology, including metric distortion drives and field generators that might enable a rebuilding of the destroyed Tannhauser gate centuries before the ships from Alpha Centauri are due. The impending conflict is one centered around the Vectors and Gaia, with every faction fielding Vector-derived Fractals to combat eachother, using the latest in Vector beam and metric-altering blade weaponry.

Scalars

Scalars are the collection of properties unique to Vectors and Vector-derived technology, generally referred to as unified amplification effect because it encompasses a number of seemingly unrelated theories and physical properties. In Gaian academic parlance, a Scalar might refer to a specific theory, such as the native life's ability to distort space with zero-reaction systems, known as the Metric Scalar, or their ability to focus laser beams or accelerate railgun rounds magnitudes more effective than the lens or acceleration chamber should allow, referred to as the Lensing Scalar.

In practice, any system that fundamentally violates or sidesteps a major thermodynamic property can be referred to as a Scalar in the context of Vector technology.

Humanity and the Future

Humanity is a being that is in a constant state of change, undergoing genetic and memetic adaptations to their chosen environment, a constructive process that has arguably produced an ever improving human society since the dark aeons from humanity rose. Human enhancement technologies, with the emergent advances in cybernetics, neuroscience and genetics accelerated this process in the intervening century after planetfall on Chiron, but the Lathe Messiah incident destroyed much the near-singularity technologies that had begun to arise.

Only the factions of Tsiolkovsky and Heng Sha retained the knowledge and infrastructure to maintain sustainable populations of bioroids and cyborgs after the LMV Incident, and these technologies are still somewhat rare in other factions. Thankfully, gene therapy technologies remained somewhat prevalent in spite of the collapse, and most human beings on Chiron and Gaia count themselves as either purified Liners or more extensively modified Rays. Above both of these are the heavily geneboosted Talent, a Tsiolkovsky test tube baby designed for intelligence and self-control.

The Gaian ecology has had an impact on certain humans as well, producing the Marked and Linked, two human variants distinguished by their acceptance of Vector biomass upon their bodies. The Marked tend to be humans with slight physical deformities and scarring across their bodies, with a strange ability to control psychosympathetic Vector biomass nodules with incredible ease. The Linked are rarer and more mysterious, the children of Marked or simply found as young children surrounded by large blooms of Vector biomass colloquially referred to as 'Cradles', who have an even stronger connection to the Vector lifeform that covers Gaia. These tend to have pale skin, pastel or technicolor hair and strange features like elfin ears, translucent wings or glowing nodules on their bodies, and universally seem to have violet eyes marked by bands of other colors.

Notable Events

117 Before ACE: Lathe Messiah Virus

Two hundred years after the colonization of Chiron and one hundred and seventeen before the beginning of the Alpha Centauri calendar, there was a period of great advancedment on Chiron. Various colonies has formed into well-managed and prosperous colonies and technological advance was rushing forward faster than it had at any point in human history. Such was the pace of development that the Tsiolkovsky envy the scientists of this era and had it continued, humanity might have been the superior lifeform arriving on Gaia. But like many rising stars in the firmament of human history, it was not meant to be.