Mod Race Overview: Alpha

[Unwashed_Pleb]

Allow me to begin

If you have been keeping your eyes on the general forum, you would know that the community has decided to undertake creating a MOD race. Being the carbon-based bipedal life form in charge of the story aspect, i will share with you the basic overview of the race. The working name is "Matrixi", though they referr to themselves as "The collective conscious"


Biology

The Matrixi are a silicate life form, having evolved on a super-large, atmosphere-lacking planet. The close proximity to the planets star, highgravity, high silicate and metallic composition made the planet into a crystalline world with lakes of liquid metals. Like any life form, how they came to be is a mystery, and like any culture, their origins are clouded in myth and legend.

What little information the other races have gathered is that the Matrixi are Photo-chemovores, gaining energy from the high powered raditation and light from their sun, and raw materials for growth by absorbing 'nutrient' rich liquid chemicals and metals from the environment. This process is aided by the inherent electrical nature of the organisms, and the lens like structures on their frontmost 'legs'. complex chemicals can be broken down by either a high energy electrical discharge, released from the 'head' of the creature (with an average range of 3-5 yards) to vaporize materials for easy absorption. They can also use the lens like structures on the foremost legs to create a powerful solar laser beam. While less effective then the discharge, this allows for long range communication with other life forms, and a more effective self-defense weapon.

The Matrixi percieve the world around them in several ways, first and foremost they have a light recieving 'disk' grooved out on the 'head' segement of their bodies, roughly the size of a large serving platter. This pitch black disk (one of the only parts of the body that does not resemble a precious stone), absorbs a broad spectrum of light, and is the closest organ to the 'brain' of the life form. However, they do not use this formation for sight, they use it for communication. With the lenses on the front most limbs, they can focus beams of light in precise patterns in a number of different spectrums, allowing for complex communication far exceeding verbal speech, and probably only defeated by the Liir's direct telepathy.

The Matrixi are effectively deft, since they evolved on a planet that had no sort of atmosphere, sound could not travel. the only beings that have any sort of sound receptors are strange crystalline fish-organisms that use vibrations in metallic lakes and oceans for sonar.

One of the most impressive aspects of the Matrixi is their ability to grow new organs on a whim, or modify current ones for new situations. The conditions, however, are specific. The formation requires a massive amount of resources and energy, and usually requires the matrixi to sit in a large vat of liquid conducting metal and nutrients while several others use their solar lenses to focus high intensity light onto the mutating matrixi. The process can take as few as a few solar days, to almost one hundred years, depending on the complexity of the formation.

This is how they interface with their starships, by literally fusing themselves with the ships, they control it as if it were another body or limb to control.

Growth cycle

The Matrixi reproduce via fragmentation and fusion. When two, three, or even four individuals decide to reproduce, they literally break off a specialized portion of their bodies (located underneath the very last tail segment of their bodies), stack the crystalline portions together in a pool of liquid metal (preferrably gold, silver or copper. Any metal will do, but the highest success is with high energy conducting metals) and fuse the shards together with a combonation of discharge and solar beams, literally melting the surfaces into a single lump of near-molten silicon. They then take turns guarding the young formation as the metals are absorbed into the structure, forming the basics of the new matrixi's nervous system.

At this stage the formation is little more then a lump of liquid metal, crystalline formation, and slag formed from the fusion, Over the span of a terran solar year, the pool of liquid metal is absorbed into the formation, and starts to take shape as new crystalline formations develop, first sea-pen like organs designed to absorb solar radiation, then root like structures which release both heat and liquid metal into the ground to absorb material for growth.

After three solar years of absorbtion the formation starts developing its 'head', 'legs' and 'tail' and is semi-sentient, able to communicate basic needs to its caregivers, like the need for more nutrients or raw materials. If there is a need for more energy, it can be provided by solar focusing via the lenses, or in dire situations, a direct electrical discharge. this is where education begins, similar to infant children. Instead of going to school, it is educated directly by its parents.

After two more years, the solar collectors degrade and snap off naturally, as the dorsal and limb collectors mature, and the last phase of developmental growth occurs when the 'roots' are re-dissolved and absorbed back into the body of the young Matrixi. It then will follow its parents to learn about the world until it fully matures in size and intelligence.

Over roughly one thousand human years the Matrixi is in its mature phase, and is a normal member of society.

the road to sentience

While being several times more massive then a human, the Matrixi are far from the largest life forms on their planet. In terms of diversity, the matrixi's homeworld is on par with any other sentient life forms, only that the concept of a carbon based life form simply does not exsist. There are massive, slow moving crystalline mountains resembling third grade science projects, slowly moving around the planet in a massive herd, trying to get the maximum amount of solar energy in each day, and glow with eerie light when the sunset catches them. There are miniscule spider like parasites that embed themselves in solar collectors of slow moving metallo-vores with drill like teeth, capped with pure diamond.

The top predator of the planet is what the Matrixi call (loosely translated) "The God of Neuron-Axon", each of which contain ten times the precious conducting metals of any Matrixi, and hunt other organisms by releasing massive, indiscriminate blasts of electricity, converted from solar energy by the solar collectors on its back. The Matrixi were its natural prey. Should one of these bursts strike a Matrixi, its Central nervous 'circuts' would instantly boil, overload, and possibly shatter parts of the matrixi's body. instantly killing it. The predator will then use its massive limbs to break up the body, and absorb as much of the precious metals inside the being, along with much of the delicate crystalline formations inside of the body to aide in its growth.

Like many intelligent species, they developed it slowly in response to predation. At the time the Matrixi had a far more developed self defense discharge weapon, but it was only truly effective against smaller predators, and the "God of Neuron-Axon" had so much metal in its body that it could easily take several bursts with no ill effect. Herding tactics developed for more effective feeding and better protection. At this time, primitive solar lenses were used for display purposes and finding mates. As herding became common, the need for strong self defense waned in the presence of so many more bodies to intimidate predators, and the need for more impressive displays gave rise to more complex and impressive solar focusing lenses. the mating rituals are most impressive for beings with developed eyes, but it is recommended you wear eye-protection to prevent being blinded.

As the lenses developed, the Matrixi eventually started using them for self defense, using incredibly high intensity light to baffle the sensory organs of other predators. this eventually started to replace the discharge organ for self defense, and by modern times, the discharge organ has since receded inside of the body of the Matrixi, when it once was an impressive metal spike protruding from the head.

The leap from sentience from animalism is shrowded in legend for the Matrixi. They claim that the planet itself spoke to them, telling them to awaken from their dullard life and to grasp the gift of intelligence. To this day, the Matrixi firmly believe that the planet is sentient, and even communicates to them from time to time.

It happened literally overnight, according to their legends, one day, they were little more then herd beasts, the next, their planet erupted in color and energy, and their minds were forever changed as the exotic energies of the planet coursed through them. They were able to figure out that if they surrounded a "god of Neuron-Axon", and focused the highest energy light their display lenses could muster, they can overload the solar receptors on the beast, and make it explode in a shower of metal and silicon. to them, this was the equivalent of discovering fire.


From Silicon to Space.
The growth to space was a very slow one, the Matrixi, docile by nature were not particularly curious or interested in understanding the universe, instead they took their time in art, exploring the myrad caves and tunnels that ran through their world, seeking the 'heart' of their god-world, and trying to understand the mysterious 'noises' coming from distant stars during the nights on their worlds.

According to the history poems, the population became interested in the concept of an 'outer space' in two events. The first one was the explosion of their closest stellar neighbor. When it went nova, the light and radiation was like a chaotic howl of pain and anguish that bathed the world for almost ten of their solar cycles (roughly five terran solar years). The second was a meteor impact near the northern pole of their world.

The first event made them curious as to the nature of the terrible anguish that came from outside, and what could have possibly caused such an event.

The second made them realize that there may be something else aside from their jewel of a world. They knew it was alien in origin because chemicals absorbed were either alien, or commonly so rare that the few deposits on their world (numbered in the tens), were counted in the parts-per-billion. Elements like Oxygen, nitrogen and helium were unknown to them, and super-rare elements like carbon, boron, aluminum, iridium, iron, fluoride and others were found in abundance.

It was after this discovery that they decided to venture into space.

Religion.

The religion of the Matrixi is heavily focused on the worship of their home planet. They believe that it is sentient, and ever living. They believe that it decided to create the 'true life' because it, in essence, was lonely, and wanted something to communicate with. So it broke off parts of itself and formed the first life (thought to be the luminous "solar pyres" which are thought to be the most primitive form of life on the planet, which reach almost a mile in height and reproduce by fracturing themselves)
Once the matrixi evolved, their god-planet felt that it had discovered its true children, and granted them the gift of its intelligence.

The religion took a massive turn when the star closest to theirs went nova. The fear of their own star doing the same and destroying the god-planet was too terrible to speak of, so they felt it necessary to spread 'the true thought' to other, similar worlds which had not gained the blessings of intelligence.

Thus their goal in the SotS universe, to colonize as many crystalline worlds and to defend them from any race seeking to defile them in search for the wealth of resources commonly found on said worlds.

The ultimate honor for any Matrixi is what is called "the Mind Gift," where the honored one may merge itself directly with the planet, and transfer all of its being into the planet, effectively killing the subject. The matrixi believe that its sentience has entered the planet itself, and claim that they can communicate with the merged one if they must. There is some reality to this claim, because crystalline worlds which were electrically inert gain a very low electric feild within the crystals (similar to quartz), once a merging is complete. Over time, this field grows to the point where the planet itself glows in the darkness of space.


Relations with other life forms
The very idea of carbon based life is as alien to them as silicon based life is to us. They don't believe its possible. When shown examples of said organisms, they doubt the authenticity. This makes relations with the other races very difficult. Frankly, they find it difficult to believe humans, Tarkas, Hivers or Liir even exist, even when talking to them.

The first problem is the language barrier. By communicating with complex light displays with intricate laser, spectral, and radiation light, its almost impossible to form an 'alphabet' in their language. To them, the idea of alphabet does not exist, and written language was obsolete before it was invented.

Without being able to hear naturally, it could take decades to communicate the concept of sound to the Matrixi, and another century for them to develop an organ that can percieve sound, only to enter an entirely new nightmare of teaching them language.


The second problem is that other races commonly mistake them for mindless beasts, since they don't form massive city structures, or have any sort of defined 'technology' in other races terms.

The only race that tends to bridge the language barrier are the Liir, because their telepathic abilities allow them to communicate-to a degree- with the silicate minds of the Matrixi, however it is difficult and can be painful for even the eldest of Liir to do so, and requires special training to do it for prolonged periods.

For the other races, the best means of communication are intricate laser displays which mimic the motions of the solar lenses, however, the translation is incredibly crude, and takes many years of fine tuning to make it effective by any standard.

Once the language barrier is bridged, the response is just as mixed as any race would be when communications is established with an alien being. Everywhere from enthusiasm, to curiosity, to xenophobia.

Tensions between the Matrixi and others tend to result from their goal of spreading the sentience, when another race (frequently the hivers, since they tend to be able to inhabit worlds that the other races can't), tries to colonize a world suitable for 'sentience'. The Matrixi do not feel emotion the same way we do, and feel no remorse for eradicating interlopers from worlds they deem to be their property, even if there are billions of them. To them they are liberating a fledgling god.

Technology

to the untrained eye, it would seem that space faring to the Matrixi is just like primitive man holding a club. All they need to do is form crystals around themselves, and use their own bodies to provide power to their ships. to investigate something new, they seem to just need to grow a new organ to percieve things

This could not be further from the case. The Matrixi ships and technologies require highly sophisticated structures and circutry, true it is grown as organs from their bodies, but they can be just as sophisticated and effective as one built by any of the other races. the time it takes to form the nessicary organ requires deep concentration, massive resources, and the input of several other Matrixi in order for proper formation. If a mistake is made in formation, it could result in disastrous consequences., anything from CNS overload, causing the Matrixi to explode, or an out of control crystal formation, which acts like a cancer in the body, and quickly kills the host.


whew.. my fingers are tired.. more to come later after a good nights sleep![/b]

Now for a little more


living habits

The Matrixi live in glimmering peak filled cities, typically carved out of the living crystal of the planet they inhabit. On their homeworld, these cities are formed from the bodies of some of the more massive photo-vores which can grow over seventy feet into the sky, and be as big around as business offices. These cities from space resemble natural crystal formations one gets out of a childs toy chemistry lab, and during the night they glow with residual sunlight reflecting constantly off of the crystalline surfaces, and synthetic light created for nocturnal activity.

Usually the matrixi enjoy a very social life, living in large family groups of up to or greater then sixty, usually occupying one or two crystal spires of their own. Larger family groups can inhabit as many as five spires of their own at a stretch.

Industry, Currency, and Wealth

The currency of the Matrixi is primarily of raw materials, usually precious or pure metals necessary for reproduction (mercury, gold, silver, copper, iron, chromium, aluminum, boron, Iodine, Sodium, Pure silicon, Iridium, Radioactives). These are earned by doing 'jobs' for society. These jobs can be things as simple as slag removal from birthing sites, herding 'food' organisms (creatures high in metals and silicates), or merging with industrial technology to construct large mechanical devices from excavators to star ships.

Those who are gifted with a particularly talented and well formed brain-organ go into science and development. These precious few organisms are considered to be the 'closest' to the sentient planet they believe they inhabit, and with the use of their great minds, further the technology of the race.

Recent times have them working with "atmosphere chambers" and low gravity environments to see how their native life forms survive in habitats that the other races do. As it turns out only one life form from their planet truly thrives in atmospheres, It is a small creature, very rare on their home world, and closely resembles a mammal. It is a small, six legged scavenger animal with large foreword set eyes and two small antennae that spring from its top. While there is no distinguishable head (mostly looking like a ball of fur with four legs, big shiny eyes with antennae), it is roughly the size of a kitten, and breeds like locusts when in contact with atmospheric conditions. While most of the other races view them as adorable and pay much to get their hands on them, the Matrixi consider them a rare treat full of rare materials (carbon, nitrogen and oxygen mostly). Thus proving once and for all that no matter how cute a creature is, someone, somewhere, will cook it and eat it on a stick. The Matrixi referr to them as "Sneeches" (Sneech in singular).

Recently the scientists of the Matrixi have observed curious energy surges coming from sneeches when in contact with carbon based organisms. The Liir claim that they have limited telepathic powers, and quite confusingly to the liir, amusing to humans (when told), that they steal the idea of poptarts from the minds of their owners. No one knows why.

[silvaril]

Heya

Wiki pages created for Mod Support.

I don't know about everyone else, but I find it hard to keep track of the desired changes in these threads so I have set up basic pages on the Wiki.

Category:Mod_Matrixi is the category for organising working pages.

Matrixi now contains 'Pleb's first post, with
Talk:Matrixi containing the culled racial discussion from the General thread

Matrixi_Ships contains not much as nothing appears to have been finalised,
Talk:Matrixi_Ships contains the discussions culled from the General thread

Matrixi_Sounds contains just my own notes on sounds for the UI...

Please alter the Wiki pages as required and link from here

[Sevain]

1000 years to reach adulthood? They can't have higher than 0,1% population growth/turn if that piece of the backstory stays.

[Blazer]

I'll be honest with you, I'm not wild about the name either.

[Unwashed_Pleb]

the name is a working name

which means it can be changed

[buddahcjcc]

My suggestion for name:
Sillicons.




EDIT:
Sounds like this:

[Covenant]

There's also some threads in the General forum that deal with these guys. These here are just Pleb's ideas, the finalized nature of the species will be decided by consensus, and you should follow those links (I don't like the name either) to get an idea of what the general idea is right now.

That or by whichever mod team can finish the mod most efficently. I think it'd be most helpful to agree on a basic biochemistry and body design first, then work on their ships. If we can start working on their starships, we'll have plenty of time to debate their actual backstory, but we'd be doing something in the meantime.

[Mecron]

risks moving the world closer to armageddon by agreeing with Cov wholeheartedly

[Blazer]

So then let's start with everything that our guy Pleb has listed under Biology to Religion and just pick a day to come together on xfire or that nice irc room and hash it out.

From there, maybe even in the same session, we can look at some model proposals. ( we'd need to give you, Mary, and whoever else is modeling some time to get those together though)

Once we've got their basic biology and their ships down the rest should start to fall in place, right?

BTW, I didn't mean to come off negative on that last post Pleb. I was sort of running out of the door and now see that I could have been perceived as kind of a jerk on that one.

[Unwashed_Pleb]

Mecron, what did we say about pressing the big red button?

what did we say?
hmm?

[Mecron]

lol


the main sots chat room on xfire is a good meeting place.

[Stonefish]

I like every bit of that.

Except the name. For the love of god, change that.
(and the growth rate)

[Stonefish]

Oh this thread died weeks ago? My bad. :v: