The Eternal Dawn
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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.
Language
The lingua fraca of the Dawn military (and of other Magnate forces) is officially called Combat-Specialized Planned Language, CSPL. This is shortened to ComLang by most forces familiar with Solomonic practices. ComLang is a very simplistic language, based on a few dozen unambiguous, short sounds, sometimes paired with gestures, that can be strung together to allow for quick and precise battlefield communication. ComLang is atonal to minimize ambiguity and is completely insufficient for anything other than combat tasks, although some particularly avant-garde artists have attempted to do things such as write poetry or even a novel in ComLang. So far, none of these movements have met with any sort of popular success or recognition.
Grammatically, ComLang uses single-word sentences, with one word representing a single statement of fact or orders. For example, two words in ComLang would translate to "Contact, enemy infantry 50 degrees to your left side, approximately twenty. Close in and assault." A pair of sentences which would take several seconds to speak takes less than one. Psychological researchers from Magnate states have also posited that the guttural, alien structure of CSPL are a great psychological aid, and the difficulty of learning an entirely new language with an alien grammatical structure compared to all non-engineered languages has been an additional tactical benefit.
There is no such thing as written CSPL, as anything that requires writing is generally too complex to express in this simplified, pared-down protolanguage. In fact, many Core Linguists refuse to classify CSPL as a language at all.
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.
Armor
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'viHelljungle 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: 26
- Population: 550 Base bonus: 275
- Trangene: 240
- Morale: 14
- Wealth: 400 + 330
- PIP: 850 + 440
- CIP: 750 + 385
- Fabbers: 100
- Delta Dust: 0
- Theta Dust: 0
- Military: 32500
- Doctrines: 29
- Logistics: 60
- Global Tech Level: 16
- Applications: 400
- Stockpiles: 0
- Debt: 0
SP Expenditures
- Additional Limit: 1
- Wealth: 0
- PIP: 25
- CIP: 0
- Dust: 0
- Theta: 0
- Pop: 26
- Mil: 0
- Tech Indices: 0
- Apps: 10
- Transgene: 24
- Doctrine: 10
- 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
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.
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 "Zenith" template originated with the Dawn and is found on Rebirth near-exclusively, although there are a handful of radical transhumanists who have had children modified by the Dawn to the level of the Zenith.
Transgenics
The original designers of the Zenith template were radical transhumanists, styling themselves after Prometheus. It would not be enough to develop a transgenic template like the 'common' types. It would have to be adaptable, powerful, and capable of surviving in the world of Rebirth. What it manages to do to the human form is incredible, but the cost is that very little of it remains human DNA.
Less related to humanity than most primates, Zenith transgenics suffer from extreme disadvantages compared to other transgenes. Many medicines and drugs, formulated for human or near-human physiologies, simply refuse to work on them. They often suffer from exotic cancers which take time and effort to root out, and thus require regular checkups from specialist medical experts every few decades. They have markedly reduced fertility and a significant percentage of Zeniths are utterly sterile. Outside of the Magnates, the expertise required for maintaining and repairing Zenith biology is difficult to come by at the best of times. In powers such as the League, with essentially no friendly channels towards the Magnates, the expertise is nonexistent. Even though the genome is available via many sources, only one of which is the Dawn itself, to piece it together with human or standard transgenic DNA (i.e. to have Zenith children from non-Zenith parents) requires precision bioengineering technology that is rarely standard in a hospital exowomb.
Why would anyone become a Zenith? The answer is fairly simple. Outside of Kanonian nobles or dedicated supersoldiers with significant post-natal biomodification, the Zenith All-Purpose-Upgrade is the most powerful general-purpose transgenic upgrade suite in the human Sphere. Its hyperdense skeleton, threaded with pseudoaramid fibers, provides significant protection against threats from the incredibly strong blows of apex predators to high-velocity projectile fire. The skeletal durability also allows attachment of extremely high-strength musculature, giving Zeniths incredible strength far beyond what their size and build might cause one to assume. If wounded, most Zenith organs are multiple-redundant, with heavy tolerance for trauma and extremely fast blood-clotting, which, combined with natural transgenic 'regeneration', mean they can survive and heal from massive injuries which would drop even an Atlas-upgrade dead. Even a Zenith's skin is engineered to defend against threats, a layer of protective shielding matted with aramid fibers, as thick as leather and capable of stopping some shrapnel, although even small-caliber chemical-propelled sidearms are capable of penetrating the protection provided. The fashionable lack of body hair and sweat that Zeniths possess (requiring extremely high-efficiency tissues and high thermal tolerances as a workaround) is merely a very happy coincidence.
One may think something so tough and strong would be slow, but Zeniths deny the tradeoffs of biological evolution and are faster than any normal human. With reaction and cognition speeds significantly better than human normal, Zeniths make ideal soldiers, especially due to modifications to their endocrine system via xenobiological modification. Like native Rebirth life, instead of adrenaline they use a complex biochemical cocktail of what is essentially "biological rocket fuel". When in a high-stress situation, this cocktail floods their system, refueling and supercharging their mind and body, making them even faster in combat situations or other stressful encounters. The moderate increase in ADHD and the increase in "crimes of passion" due to the overcharged fight-or-flight response has disappointed other Magnates but has been deemed acceptable given the survivability increases of transgenics so equipped.
Finishing off the package is a broad range of cognitive and sensory upgrades, including eyes capable of seeing naturally in infrared spectra, intellect boosts matching any Omoikane in both social and reasoning areas. These, perhaps, are the least impressive of any of the modifications done, but the difficulties in cognitive enhancement, as shown by the litany of mental issues that transgenics with extreme cognition modifications have, were enough to scare even the scientists and visionaries of the Eternal Dawn into approaching cognition enhancement with a glacial pace and extreme care.
Transgenic Template "Zenith"
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
- Series VI Utility Replicant
- The progenitor of the entire line of combat replicants, the VI 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 and limited activity despite significant brain damage.
- Series VIId Combat Replicant
- The Series VIId was the pinnacle of Magnate War combat replicas, essentially unrecognizable as an offshoot of the Series VIx. At this point, the fusion between biology and machine had reached a tipping point. Previous combat replicant designs had already been ever-increasingly bonded to their combat armor, but the D model reached a point where the armor could not be fully removed and was essentially fastened to the skeleton by implant sockets. Intended fully for combat, the VIId had no pain receptors or touch receptors, and its skin instead was a thick impact-and-energy absorbent layer that provided additional protection. The armor it wore/symbiotically bonded to was redesigned, with partial removal of components possible to allow for surgical repair, but otherwise it was intended to, and could, be inside its armor more or less permanently.
- Series VIIe Combat Replicant
- A significant overhaul of the VIId, the fusion of machine and flesh had become even closer, with significant amounts of the armor processing offloaded to the VIIe's enlarged brain and even closer sensory integration, the armored "helmet" attaching directly to a thick, armored skull dotted with sensor feeds and a handful of fleshy backups. Disconcertingly, the VIIe still has a mouth, and like all previous combat replicants can consume almost any organic matter for maintenance purposes, including each other and (allegedly) the corpses of the war dead. The VIIe was fielded in small numbers as a prototype in the aborted invasion of Dogma, but has seen no other action.
- Series VIIe+ Combat Replicant
- The VIIe+ is the current Dawn variant, with several minor reconfigurations of body geometry, a modular outer shell which provides improved upgrade capacity, and enhanced 'plug and play' compatibility.
Variants
- EOD: A Finnegan's Folly variant, the EOD versions of Replicants were built significantly larger to carry thicker armor plates, with a much tougher armored skull to protect their more developed brain. They were also visually distinct, with sharp angled armor and overlapping plates that provided excellent protective qualities against blast, arms tapering to delicate high-precision hands. EOD Replicants were never capable of matching even somewhat experienced Dawn combat engineers, but they were far more expendable. Although capable of combat and with an identical strategic movement speed to Dawn Replicants, tactically they were much slower to move and react, meaning that they were only used in combat as last resorts.
- Maintenance: The limited cognitive ability of Series VIIs meant that they found complex tasks difficult. However, by the VIIc, the plug and play nature of their limbs, boosted immune systems, and near-identical physical attributes meant that complex tasks, up to and including organ swaps, were possible in the field in unsanitary conditions. Furthermore, improvements in VII cognition met these improvements in simplification halfway, allowing for the maintenance variant to be built. Half surgeon, half medic, maintenance variants had a different hand configuration more suited for complex work and additional processing power, as well as a savant-level knowledge of weapons, biomedical, and cybernetic maintenance.
- Vacuum/Extraterrestrial Operations: VEO Replicas had integrated cybernetic thrusters, full leg replacement with skeletal-seeming prosthetics, including knee joints which could bend in either direction, and gyroscopic navigation, and hyperoxygenated blood. As they would often have to encounter the small corridors and cramped confines of Minkowskan architecture, later models were often forced into neoteny, much smaller and more delicate-seeming than their terrestrial-environment brothers, but still possessed of massively superhuman strength, speed, and toughness. The late-war variants were even more specialized for their environment, without even functional lungs or a fully formed digestive tract. Instead, their integration with their armor rebreathers allowed the armor to infuse oxygenated blood directly into the aortic arch, and they fed on a specially engineered protein and nutrient paste.
- Rear-Echelon: RE Replicas were built from the same stock but were missing much of the combat ability that standard replicas possessed. Their carapaces were generally minimally powered or even unpowered, most of their cybernetics were replaced with cheaper substitutes, and so on. Their primary role was to patrol and monitor the relatively defanged insurgents on Miranda and safe zones on Finnegan's Folly and Ares, freeing up more capable assets for higher-importance missions. On meatgrinders such as Ares and Sarreva, though, they served another purpose-spare parts. The Rear Echelon variants used identical DNA to the frontline ones, and most of their organs were identical. Series VII facilities were often Rear Echelon replica "slaughterhouses", where organs were pulled from rear-echelon Replicas to surgically repair other ones, or even non-replica troops. In the case of severe damage, a frontline replica could be disassembled to uprate a rear-echelon one to full combat status, but in practice doing so was much rarer than cannibalizing a rear-echelon replica to maintain frontline ones.
Proliferation
With the end of the Magnate war, the Dawn were equipped with a distinct surplus of moderate-grade Series VIIs, from the Series VIIb and variants to Series VIIc surplus. With the Gimlet colony's origins as an entreprenurial venture, and more than a few Gimlet survivors in the Dawn, it was unsurprising that many of these machines ended up being sold to the highest bidder or sympathetic causes.
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 Dawn, for their matter, have been more than willing to sell the VII to various powers, reasoning that proliferation of advanced bioscience will force people to adapt or get left behind.
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.