Sea Devils

Introduction

Sea Devils (their true name is extremely hard for humans to pronounce but translates as People of the Greater Realm) are one of the most important and challenging alien species yet encountered by the Expanse. Many Expanse policy makers believe that finding a way to engage with and solve the potential conflict between Sea Devils and humanity is perhaps the most important xenopolicy issue of the modern age, eclipsing even the potential threat of Cacophony or Quiet, or the newly revealed threat of greater galactic powers in importance and immediacy.

Sea Devils are present on about 50% of Expanse worlds, and their habitation extends beyond the borders of the Expanse in both directions. In general the area of their habitation is oval, laid with its long dimension across the middle section of the Expanse. This region is not continuous, with large pockets where the Sea devils either did not begin the process of hibernation they call The Retreat in time or who somehow failed or were found by the search parties of the Grand Civilisations.

More and more Sea Devils awake, and begin to rebuild their civilisation every year, unless the Expanse can understand (and come to an understanding) with the Sea Devils conflict is almost inevitable.

History

Early History

The Sea Devils first arose on an earth like world some five hundred light years beyond the area that is now the Expanse. The precise date of their assent to sapience is somewhat unclear, but it seems the first of the species which would become the basis of modern sea devils evolved around one and two million years ago.

Like humans they were their world's sole sentience, and were quickly able to expand to fill all parts of it which were immediately and easily liveable, which for sea devils was the bathyal and abyssal depths of the ocean, from around seven hundred meters to six thousand meters. Above and below the sea was uncomfortably high or low pressure, though it was subject to sea devil exploration, few saw reason to settle in either the extreme low or ultra-high elevations of the ocean, let alone on the windswept land.

Sea Devil technology developed more slowly than humans, as they faced far greater challenges in technological development. It was impossible to create fire so deep underwater. It appears that Sea Devil civilisation achieved states of equilibrium several times which lasted as much as ten thousand years without significant technological development. Agriculture and domestication of animals was much more easily advanced than tool making, which suffered from the lack of easy supplies of heat, and seawaters affect on metals.

These problems were overcome in a period beginning around a hundred and fifty thousand years ago, when various techniques began to develop revolving around chemistry. This included the creation of pockets of air in which to conduct industrial processes, and the creation of various chemical mixes in water which would generate energy. Other sea devil works revolved around harnessing volcanic vents or better use of mechanical energy which the currents allowed then to produce in great quantities. While these mark the beginning of the Sea Devils as a technological civilisation it would take many more thousand years for them to climb to the stars.

Expansion

The Sea Devil's did not have any single paradigm shift from preindustrial to industrial civilisation as humanity did but rather advanced by iterations, creating more and more effective manufacturing and scientific processes which gradually allowed them to overcome the remaining barriers to their technology. By forty thousand years ago the Sea Devils had fully harnessed electricity, fission and biotechnology and had begun to set up stations not just on land but in orbit. Despite several back slides resulting from natural and sea devil generated calamities, sea devil expansion had begun in earnest. The discovery of faster than light drive followed fission by only a few centuries, and as sapient life tends to do, the Sea Devils began to spread between the stars.

The Sea Devil's expansion period was relatively similar in structure to humanities, structured as it was by the physics of FTL drive technology. Various long shot expeditions set off to distant stars and eventually met up with the main core of Sea Devil civilisation once again. The Expansion was also a time of intense change to Sea Devil biology, as they changed themselves to better fit the rigors of space flight and subsist on various new worlds.

The Sea Devils found various alien races in their trip across the stars, but it seems that the galaxy they found was far more empty than the modern one. The Cacophony had yet to begin their expansion and most of the current sentient races were still in their infancy. The Sea Devils had this part of the galaxy to themselves, and their expansion continued until it was stopped.

The Dark Tower

The Sea Devil exploration fleet that found the dark tower was not unprepared for combat. The Grand Civilisations had apparently set a layer of defences around it, but these had extensively degraded, allowing the Sea Devils to break through with relative ease. On finding the tower, the Sea Devils investigated and activated it whether by accident or design is lost to history. Whatever the case the response was immediate, with several vessels of the Grand Civilisations appearing and attacking immediately after informing the Sea Devils of what they had done.

The battle that followed was extremely hard fought, but several Sea Devil vessels were able to escape (perhaps because the Grand Civilisation fleet allowed it) and spread the word of their oncoming doom. The Sea Devils prepared for war, and managed to put aside their factional squabbles to face off against catastrophe.

The Cull

For all their preparations, the Sea Devils could not face off against the Grand Civilisations. The enemy plan seemed simple, though it was not obvious at first. Using the advantage of their powerful drives, the Grand Civilisations launched a series of massive raids into Sea Devil territory, attacking both space and ground targets with great strength and speed, while at the same time various biological and memetic kill vectors were set lose to slowly undermine and eventually annihilate the Sea Devils. What is interesting about these strategies is that they deployed a comparatively small number of craft, and sought to minimise the risks to them: several times the Grand Civilisation fleets fell back from what could have been victories due to the likelihood that that the Sea Devils might destroy even one of their warships.

Despite this level of restraint, the Cull was devastating to the Sea Devils. Raids stripped whole worlds of sapient life. Biological agents spread through whole populations, killing them or turning them into insane, massively augmented monsters. Memetic agents set Sea Devil against Sea Devil or propagated suicide cults, anti-sapientism and other destructive ideas, or worked stranger and more terrible things on psyche and biology. The Sea Devils attempted one plan after another to tip the scales, even attempting an assault on areas which they believed were used by the Grand Civilisations as bases, none succeeded, and some even sped up their own demise, as resources were expended on risky enterprises which served only to weaken their defences.

Without hope of victory, the Sea Devils sought another option: they sought to hide.

The Retreat

It is a testament to Sea Devil planning that they were able to conduct the retreat at all. Somehow they were even able to conceal their intentions from the Grand Civilisations, as well as from many of their own people (by now suffering extensively from biological and memetic corruption). The Sea Devils constructed a series of vaults in the deepest parts of the ocean designed to last over twenty thousand years and then reawaken their occupants.

Obviously no stasis system could preserve a body for this long, so the Sea Devils instead equipped their Retreats with fabricators and bioforges both to keep themselves in good repair and recreate Sea Devil bodies once the time was right. The Sea Devils also obtained large numbers of uninfected mind states and store them in the facilities, ensuring the survival of a large portion of their population.

Not all these bunkers survived. In some places carelessness missed a mind state infected with the Grand Civilisation's mental viruses, and these spread through the entire facility, destroying it. In others, the grand civilisations located and destroyed the facilities. Some simply failed, as twenty thousand years of Entropy took its toll.

As many of forty percent of the faculties made it through however, and this was more than enough to allow the Sea Devils to begin regenerating their civilisation due to the levels of redundancy built into the system. The clock reached zero some twenty years ago, and now the Sea Devils are once again beginning to fill the oceans of the various worlds they inhabit, though they have found them no longer empty.

Biology

Like humans, Sea Devils have a variety of physical forms. While they did not make the same use of augmentation technology that the Expanse did, their civilisation was far older at its height, and over time became extensively different and augmented.

Morphology

Physically Sea Devils are 7-8 feet tall and have four limbs. They are extremely flexible, and capable of swimming like an otter in the water. Sea Devils are capable of breathing both air and water and storing large amounts of oxygen for very deep dives where their lungs and gills fail to work. Sea Devils are also hugely strong and fast, matching an augmented Expanse sleeve like a Valkyrie in terms of strength and speed.

Sea Devils are slightly less intelligent than Expanse humans as a baseline, but can go higher than the human norm. At least some of these advantages are the result of long term genetic engineering of the basic Sea Devil species but it is unclear exactly how much is natural and how much the result of bioengineer. Either way the Sea Devils remain a formidable species, even next to the genetic engineered might of the Expanse.

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