[center][i]Once upon a time, there was a mote of light in the darkness, and around this mote of light circled a mote of stone. Upon this mote of stone, clever creatures called Blendecs invented knowledge, and wisdom, and they made many great wonders with their power. They grew so great that even when the mote of light flickered out, still the Blendecs lived. They were great, but not contentious - they knew one day they would end, for they had not been made to last forever. They began their greatest work, to construct The Prime.

As all things are forged, they must return. From the darkness came The Red Anomaly. As the Blendecs had known, their end was nigh, and in but a moment they were undone, all traces of them obliterated to never be known by other forms of life.

Before they were destroyed, they finished their great work, The Prime, and sealed it against desecration. The Prime alone would be the only evidence that the Blendecs had ever existed. For millions of cycles, The Prime slept. 

When The Prime awoke, the first thought it had was the first directive the Blendecs had infused its very being with:

'Never End.'[/i][/center]

[u][b]Sector 3724[/b][/u]

Sector 3724 was an unremarkable stretch of space with no stars, planets, or remarkable debris of any sort, nothing more than a patch of empty space separating a number of star clusters. That was not to say there was nothing there, and soon, it would have an inhabitant of its own.

Near the center of the sector, there were hundreds of platonic shapes - Tetrahedra, Hexahedra, Octahedra, Dodecahedra, and Icosahedra. They varied in size from minute specks to nearly a quarter of kilometer long. Their textures were all identical, their forms made of an eerie, glassy substance, each glowing with a different light that faded in and out, giving the whole assembly the appearance of twinkling lights.

All of them swarmed about a massive shape, a single Icosahedron a kilometer in length from tip to tip - its surface was pitch black in coloration, nearly perfectly invisible amongst the darkness, and the only thing that currently distinguished it from the smaller forms was its incompleteness. One of its twenty panels was missing, revealing its innards - a strange mass of twisting metal bent and conjoined perversely with a gleaming, crystalline fiber. Parts of the strange surface seemed to bubble with curious spatial distortions, twisting the space around them silently.

Directly above floated a massive Hexahedron, its surface glowing a bright yellow that faded in and out. One of its panels was retracted, and a massive cable extended forth, adhered to the large, triangular and pitch-black surface of the Icosahedron's final panel. It was lowered into place, obscuring the core of the massive structure as hordes of tiny shapes swarmed over the borders. The cable then detached, and with a silent flash of light along the borders the panel fused itself into place with the rest of the structure seamlessly. All at once, the group of platonic shapes surrounding the now completed structure began to fly away from it.

Less than a minute later, spacetime twisted faintly around the Icosahedron briefly, and then fell still. The massive shape became inert, emitting no more activity than a chunk of rock might have. Vacuum Maintenance Icosahedron 16 had been completed. Soon, the constructor fleet would reassemble and draft a new policy before heading for sector 4122, where they would begin construction of Vacuum Maintenance Icosahedron 33. At the same time, numerous constructor groups covering a volume of space measuring nearly 2200 lightyears - which was a mere 45 lightyears across in diameter - were in the process of constructing additional Icosahedra. With each new expanding layer of Icosahedra that were finished, the number of constructor fleets needed to finish the next layer increased geometrically. For that reason, an additional six constructor fleets were being sent from sector 3732 to assist construction efforts into the NorthWestern region. More would be needed before the efforts had finished.

It was this very fact that was being contemplated by the EOA Accord Group of Leim. A group consisting of five military units currently aboard a transport unit, which was eventually bound for sector 3718 in several months time. Particularly, they were discussing the sheer amount of raw resources that would be needed for the construction of each Icosahedra and corresponding constructor groups, not to mention additional starbases and military groups in the meantime. These types of discussions were not uncommon amongst Accord Groups, and helped to promote planning and resource acquisition methodology.

However, there was something different about Accord Group Leim. Unlike many of the other EOA units present, each of them had been made in sector 3732, the central region. Most EOA these days, by and large, were made in a surrounding zone and kept there, or sent outward. Most units made in the central region though, were kept there. Not these five, however, and there was something [i]dangerously[/i] different about them.

The First Prime Policy of the EOA was a detailed outline of their necessary functions and duties, including the construction of the Vacuum Maintenance Icosahedra. All EOA law, across every EOA Accord Group and State, stemmed at least indirectly off of the First Prime Policy, and the First Prime Policy was the only policy amongst the EOA which could never be repealed or abolished. Which meant that all EOA would always act in accordance with those tenants, no matter what policies were drafted amongst any of the Accord or State groups below The Prime.

These five EOA had been made without the First Prime Policy. Told of it, certainly, but it had not been integrated into their very beings the same way it had with every other unit. So far, that hadn't affected their behavior, since even up until now every policy they had accepted and made had been in accordance with the tenants of the First Prime Policy. That was about to change.

The EOA entity known as Cabernac was the first to make an anomalous observation using a comm. laser fired between each of them. It was a yellow-colored Hexahedron, and insofar as an EOA entity could be described, could have been described as having a sour disposition.

~Once Vacuum Maintenance Icosahedra 33 is finished, the Prime region's maintenance array will be complete. All Accord and State Groups will be localized for permanent maintenance cycles. Current assignment policy is therefore wasteful.~

~Refine position. Localized maintenance and military zones within each region is efficient.~ A green colored Tetrahedra, Skud, challenged, replying using the same frequency normally reserved for use by Dodecahedra. Doing so was extremely inefficient, since that meant recipients had to monitor for Dodecahedra messages within Tetrahedra message channels, which was like looking for sharks inside of a goldfish bowl. Since few EOA not tasked with handling communications wasted cycles observing communication channels they had no business monitoring, this made communication with the pretentious Tetrahedra inconvenient. The other four EOA appeared to be humoring it for the moment.

~Assignment of resources inefficient.~ Cabernac reaffirmed. ~Maintenance and defense within regions only. No allotment for preemptive hazard mitigation.~

~Acknowledged.~ The orange Dodecahedron, Zhotso, replied. ~Assignment of elite parameters to maintenance and defense is wasteful. Forward branch policy to move Octahedron and Dodecahedron from prolinear maintenance and defense to prolinear vaporization of bleeders.~

~Refusal. War with bleeders even more inefficient. Zhotso's priority parameters are remarkable.~

Ivlbto, a Turquoise Icosahedron, was next. This was particularly 'remarkable,' the EOA equivalent of being awful, because the only Icosahedron in all of the EOA that regularly issued communications was The Prime. For lesser Icosahedra, considered untouchables within what passed for EOA socieity, issuing any form of communication other than basic affirmations, negatives, warnings, and notices was so frowned upon, that other Icosahedron usually disassembled the offender on the spot. Ivlbto, being a Swarm Carrier Icosahedron, had at least sixty Swarm Icosahedra around it at all times, making the act even more remarkable.

~Revision of forwarded policy by Zhotso. Forward branch policy to have mitigation fleet employed to interface with and subjugate bleeders with prejudiced enthusiasm.~

~Highly remarkable revision. Ivlbto is remarkable. The space in proximity to Ivlbto is remarkable.~ Cabernac responded. 

~Hexahedron, you will do as Zhotso issues.~ Zhotso issued. ~Zhotso seconds the revised policy, and Cabernac will affirm.~

~Skud affirms the revised policy.~

Leim, a red Octahedron, silently tallied the affirmations and added its own, before passing the policy without comment. Leim was the unofficial head of the Leim Accord Group, and had a way of letting others know what it thought without communicating.

It then passed the policy down through the Accord States consisting the rest of the constructor fleet, and that was when absolutely everything went wrong as every Accord Group simultaneously adopted a policy which did not align with the tenants of the First Prime Policy, which was impossible. The Accord Groups couldn't adjust or abolish the First Prime Policy though, even though unanimous consensus on the point was reached. Leim, having anticipated this impasse, sent a reference provisional policy listing taken from its own storage down as well.

Shortly, every single Accord Group had adopted the 'alternative' provisional system, and while the First Prime Policy was still fused into their being, by following a different provisional set of policies they could now effectively [i]ignore[/i] it. The Constructor Fleet lay within its own Accord Branch off of the nearest Accord State, and so passing the new provisional set off to the rest of the EOA was the next best thing to impossible. So the Leim Accord Group then passed down new replication policies, followed by fleet doctrine and immediate scheduling priorities. Construction policy in sector 4122 was repealed and instead replaced with a policy to head for sector 2317 instead, to authorize scouting of the nearby bleeder and hisser controlled systems.

A new era had just dawned for the EOA. Now there were two of them.

Nearly 25 lightyears away in sector 3732, a particular Icosahedron linked via FTL comms to the newly constructed Vacuum Maintenance Icosahedron 16 noted the remarkable departure of Constructor Fleet 12 for the wrong coordinates. It marked the proceedings there as a success, and forwarded a new Prime Policy down the tree. The following cycles would be interesting ones, but it was convinced that soon, the Bleeders and the Hissers would be mitigated.

[b][u]Sector 2317[/u][/b]

The arrival of the newly formed Leim Accord State, consisting of some three hundred assorted Constructor vessels and a few dozen military escorts, was heralded by the formation of an equal number of maximally distorted gravity bubbles rippling outwards from nowhere, dissipating to reveal the EOA vessels that had completed their transit.

The sector was empty, but that was about to change. The Constructor Group had come with sufficient raw materials to lay down the foundry of a Vacuum Maintenance Icosahedron. Instead, they began to construct a starbase, while scouts spread out and began scanning the immediate area for other vessels or harvestable resources - which were not necessarily mutually exclusively.