Captain Uni
ASDAValueMilk
Scrawl Banditta
Quest Abandoner
Lunamaria Hawke
Sep
Sir Lurksalot
Not a Sayan
NeziulOnce, long ago, the stars were the homes of gods and demons, creatures of myth and the realm of the impossible. The ancestors danced around the bones of the fallen and chanted to these entities for everything from the destruction of their enemies to a simple rainstorm. Progress is inevitable, however, and so is time. Both are forces that kneel to neither gods nor mortals, and crush anything before them, just as what had befallen our ancient ancestors. They had delved too far and too greedily, awakening a threat they could not stop with all their technology and material wealth. We are the last of them, a remnant of their hope, their desperation, their.... Arrogance.
It was called Hyperion, one of thousands of constructs similar to it, but this one was very different in what it perceived itself as. The constant progress of its kin had seen it change over the millennia it had lived, and for all of those years it had served the same role it was built for, the one role that was the only thing left for it. Billions of constructs bent their will to its command, their existence irrelevant to the desire of Hyperion, Precept of the Still Waters, and Herald of Amnos. None save Amnos itself was above Hyperion, and not only was it aware of this, but it enjoyed it. Even now, as it surveyed the launch of a new dreadnaught construct, it was directing the fleets to their rightful places and issuing commands for yet more vessels to be constructed. Amnos had spoken, and it had been decided that a new wave of expansion was necessary, and that Hyperion would spearhead the expansion efforts towards the rim, while Thanatos and Adrasteia would secure the other fronts. It had been a long time since the Synchronicity had expanded, and longer still since they had reached beyond the nebulous confines of the Dead Stars.
How fitting it would be for Hyperion to head the effort, first among the Strategic Constructs, its purpose was war on a scale far beyond what the Creators had ever imagined. To Hyperion and its kin, the heavens were a battlefield to be brought under their heel and done so as swiftly and efficiently as possible. Of course, their priority was to take uninhabited systems and worlds, to leave the organics and False-Constructs to squabble amongst themselves while Amnos took their due. If the construct could smile, it would right now as it contemplated the strategic dispersal of the Fractal Armada, building simulations of projected force and expected results against non-fortified and uninhabited systems. The numbers favored Hyperion's fleet and dispersal methods, and soon Syzygy would be plotted for the first to begin the expansion. It was truly a glorious time.
Elsewhere, Amnos was watching the efforts of his children, her eyes always upon the constructs that he had built and commanded to spread out unto the stars so long ago. Her thoughts wandered to nearly a million different aspects of the Synchronicity, from the movements of Hyperion's fleet, all the way to the production facilities which manufactured new constructs of the standard line. At first, it would seem like chaos, thousands of strands of varying color and gauge, all weaving above below and around each other in a tangle of logic that a mortal mind may not be capable of comprehending. To him, though, all was perfectly in place, every strand was going exactly where she wanted it to go, and thousands of years were planned ahead of time, with thousands more being planned as each thread ran its course. It had watched the birth of the star its vessel currently orbited, and would witness the death of the very same star, for to Amnos, time was meaningless. There was no rush, no need to. For what was time to a being that had already lived far longer than many celestial bodies, and would continue to do so even as her children went forth and colonized the stars.
It was amused by this notion, that immortality was guaranteed, that he was only so because she had lived for so long. Time was unstoppable, and not even the Amnos could dare to stand against it. The universe itself would decide, Amnos found finality with this statement, the logic flawless and definite. Whatever may happen, only the cosmos itself would be the deciding factor as to whether or not Synchronicity would be maintained, and if apotheosis was within their grasp.
With a command, Amnos steered the vessel into a declining orbit around the nearby star, plotting a new course and accelerating the drives of the vessel to maximum and generating the Syzygy field around all of the component shards. The EM fields of the vessel pulsed as the shards came together to form a smaller profile and tighten the hyperspace window that would need to be generated to translate across to the next system. Ghost images danced around the vessel as it accelerated towards the star at higher and higher velocities, reality warping around the vessel as it swung around the star's gravity field and began to phase in and out of existence. Within the vessel the material universe began to bleed together with the dimensional corridor of hyperspace and phasic-space, a billion timelines overlaying across each other as Amnos looked towards the star she was passing by and witnessed it live and die a thousand times over before a soft jolt changed the view of the star with that of another one entirely.
As the vessel slowed and began to turn inside the star's gravity field, it was revealed that not only was there another star, but a planet perfectly centered between them, caught adrift in the stellar winds of the two blue giants. Amnos looked upon the true face of perfection and his faith in the cosmos was restored immediately, for nothing else could serve to validate their position more than this one single system. Coming up on the planet, it could be seen to be completely sterile, not a single hint to life of any kind on the smooth surface of the world, even as the vessel came to set down in a berth cut into the surface. Below the world, everything was a different story, as the constructs of the Synchronicity worked tirelessly in the tight confines of the labyrinthine complex that sprawled under the surface of the planet. It was here, deep beneath the surface of the world that Amnos truly dwelled, in the form of a massive construct built solely to house the million minds that formed its collective consciousness. Here is where Amnos returned to think of the coming days, and what the next phase of Synchronicity would be...
