If there's something in one of my stories that you'd like to know a bit more about and it isn't mentioned here, email me and I'll include it. How's that for service? I'll bet you won't find Isaac Asimov or Robert Heinlein doing the same! Although if they were alive, they might.
Warning! This section gets altered more often than any of the others, so don't be too shocked if something doesn't work.
| A | Aarfe | Was once a human male named Fineas; he was, more or less, the leader of a group of forty-five humans who disguised themselves as another race, in order to escape the Dominion's attempt at wiping humanity out. They invented their disguise and genetically engineered themselves to become small, inoffensive humanoids who called themselves Railers (from their habit of living on trains).
These "Railers" were placed in cryogenic suspension on board a fake slower-than-light starship and shot off into the galaxy. Purely by chance, their ship was intercepted near the Bythian Resource Complex, and they were allowed to land on Syndaine, which was one of the Dominion's most productive food planets. ( top ) |
| AnarchArtists | Something like terrorists; something like art-fags; something like mad sculptors; something like chronically unemployable students (something like corkscrews; something like badgers). This group was started a few years before the second millennium, by a person (or persons) known as "The Founder", who devised the original Manifesto.
The group went through cycles of prosperity, obscurity, fame and occasional illegality; the loose terms detailed in the Manifesto allowed the AnarchArtists to claim other, unrelated groups as members, or claim works done by these other groups as their own. No matter which period you might examine them in, there were usually three kinds of AnarchArtist; the Criminals, who enjoyed doing dangerous or illegal things for their own sakes; the Commercialists, who made money by selling AnarchArtist works to the mainstream, or by contracting out staff to the mass media, and the Creatives, who just liked making stuff and usually didn't really care what happened to it. As always, there is overlap between these categories. One other kind of AnarchArtist which was most prominent just after the millennium was the Political. Their agenda was to destabilise governments that they didn't like by using the works of the other AnarchArtists as media weapons. A number of politicians had their careers ruined by exposure on "Enzian's Surprise Hour", supposedly a show featuring amateur video art; in actuality, a media outlet for AnarchArtist video projects. The AnarchArtists used a variety of different graphic logos during the lifetime of the group; they often liked to portray themselves as outlaws. The most common of these was a pair of artist's paintbrushes crossed under a skull, in the manner of the "Jolly Roger". ( top ) |
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| B | Bureaus | When the Dominion arrived and after the existing nations had more or less died from their own efforts during the Third World War, the aliens proposed the creation of a number of Bureaus through which humans could assist in the administration of their own planet (or what was left of it). The Bureau of Education was named Nexus University.
The Bureau of Culture, which negotiated the massive flow of information to and (mostly) from the Dominion, was also empowered with naming things; primarily, the few alien races that didn't have names of their own and one or two planets. However, if the AnarchArtists didn't like the names that were produced, they simply devised a better one and used their media contacts to spread the use of the new name. The AnarchArtists' names usually stuck. A good example of this was the alien propulsion system originally known as the Kenny-Hilton Drive (from the two humans who first viewed it); the AnarchArtists named it the "Now You See It, Now You Don't" drive. This went on for so long that the Bureau of Culture decided to take on an AnarchArtist as a liaison, to avoid causing them further embarassment. Unfortunately, they were given a young man by the name of Drav Whitby, who was (even by AnarchArtist standards) completely insane. He later became a Maracite. ( top ) |
| Bythians | A species created by the Ordinator, to act as soldiers which would carry out its orders.
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| Bythian Resource Complex | A system comprising a gas giant with five moons: Syndaine, Fer, Copperla, Parizz and Bythe Prime. The centre of the NoSaNoOs Dominion; the Ordinator which ran the Dominion was built into the core of Bythe Prime. The resources used to form the craft which took over the galaxy were taken from these moons.
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| C | Cancership | A variety of craft varying in size from semi-intelligent missiles up to one-and two-man scout ships run by on-board artificial intelligences; these ships were armed with every weapon known to the Moridani with any effectiveness against Bythians. The most common weapon was a focused radiation beam which operated on a frequency particularly deadly to Bythians. Most other beings were unharmed by this weapon.
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| K | Kahluri | (from the Maracite, "Big/ponderous/slow/stately/imperious/Juggernaut/hard-to-get-moving-and-impossible-to-stop-once-you-do starship")
Also known, somewhat fondly, as the Imperial Barge. The largest starship ever built by humans. Or near-humans; it belonged to the Maracites (and was designed by Maracite Elders {Metamorphs} and the Sthelane - and was built by Bythians). In particular, it belonged to a female Maracite named Vali Pereni Spahn Theral Khazhanka. It was approximately the size of the Pacifican island Tasmania and was where most Maracites lived after the realisation of their Vision, which was to turn Raummir into one gigantic mausoleum. The ship itself was incapable of travelling faster than 300C without shaking so much that everyone's drinks would spill. The inside of the ship for the most part resembled most Maracite ships, which for the most part resembled the Labyrinth on Raummir: seemingly endless dark corridors faced in stone, infrequently lit by burning torches or glowing red gems set into the walls. ( top )
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| M | Maracites | Or Followers of Marace. When the Metamorphs returned from their abortive expedition to find other races in the galaxy, they were forced to make a deal with Earth's Ordinator (which was still operating covertly at that stage). In exchange for limiting their shape-shifting abilities, the Metamorphs were allowed to exist. They reduced their abilities to heightened sensory perception, rapid healing, excessive strength and exceedingly long lifetimes; one or two of them went underground in human society.
The rest moved into an abandoned city in southern Pacifica and adopted the tribe that lived there, remnants of a subculture known as the Goths. Marace was the name of the first human to be so adopted. (actually, history is a little unclear on this; some stories say that these events took place before the war; in fact, before that city was abandoned). Humans who joined the Maracites were given some of the abilities that the once-metamorphs had; in return, the adherents of the subculture gave the Maracites a unique cultural perspective. They made a celebration of darkness in all its aspects; there were rumors of blood-drinking (mostly true) desecration of graves (all false; if anything, the Maracites actually repaired damaged headstones), obscene rituals (well, obscene depends on your perspective, really. Heh heh heh. They had different moral standards). The Maracites were never very welcome in mainstream society. Usually shunned, sometimes attacked outright: they often had to rely on their unusual friendship with the Bythians (another result of the deal they cut with the Ordinator) to get them out of trouble. A few more daring traders in Northern Pacifica actually kept Maracites as captives. Under certain conditions, a Maracite could be coerced into producing gems from open wounds in their skin. It is theorised that the Maracites actually agreed to this imprisonment, because they were difficult to restrain under ordinary circumstances. Maracites harboured a long-standing grudge with Extians (which, apparently, was due to the Extian persecution of Pagans in the past). When the religion fell from favour, they would often eagerly join in the hunt for hidden Extian groups by standing outside buildings in which they hid and staring at the hiding places. It was a common sight to see half a dozen Maracites lounging around on ledges, staring motionless at an apparently empty building for days until the Bythians turned up and arrested the Extians. Eventually the Maracites tired of trying to make a place for themselves on Earth and they were granted their own planet, which they named Raummir, or "habitat of safety/dreaming/sleep". They retreated to this world and little was heard of them after this, but it is believed that they were engaged in discussion with the Sthelane. This may have had something to do with the many variations on starships which the Maracites were allowed to build and fly (one of the few races trusted to do so by the Dominion). ( top )
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| Moonbeam | A giant lens placed between the moon and the sun by the Maracites. It is moved about to keep the focus of the beam on the lunar surface, concentrating a wide area's worth of light onto it. The lens, a hollow construct made of translucent nanomachines which repair any meteor damage, is tinted with a haze of gas which absorbs most of the red light and a little bit of the blue. The result: the moon is bathed in a sickly pale green-blue light, which in turn reflects down onto Earth at nights. It was a very wierd experience, particularly since the Maracites simply hadn't told anyone else they were going to do it. They turned it off after a few weeks; word got out somehow that they would only do this for two months every year, as part of some celebration of the war years.
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| N | NoSaNoOs | More commonly known as the Dominion, or the Bad Guys. An attempt to make the galaxy safe for developing civilisations, by cutting them all off at the knees.
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| NYSINYD Drive | (Pronounced "Nye-Sin-Ide") An invention of the Sthelane, who had nothing better to do at the time. They gave it to another race called the Watchers, because they seemed the least offensive of a bad lot.
The name is an acronym: "Now You See It, Now You Don't". The drive propels ships through real space in the manner of wormholes, except in a much less extravagant fashion; the ship disappears and then instantly reappears at its destination. It has few drawbacks; the drive must be fitted to a ship of a particular shape, very much like a two-jointed frog's leg (complete with slow kicking motion, making them look as if they swim through space). The ships can make leaps of up to 700 light-years or as few as ten metres. They do not travel through hyperspace. They cannot be tracked in flight. The Dominion allow these ships to be used as long as they submit to searches for contraband, weapons, AIs, Moridani, etc at any time. Maracites occasionally hitch rides with them. 
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| R | Railers | They claim to be a race that fled the destruction of their solar system in a slower-than-light starship tens of thousands of years ago. They are, in fact, a group of humans who had been genetically altered to resemble humanoid aliens, in order to escape the NoSaNoOs' purge. This alteration was performed by the Moridani Feylen-Tariy-Banfeld-Kendr, who had been hiding the humans on a base hidden in an otherwise empty solar system. Forty-five humans accepted this change and were placed on board a carefully faked starship, then pointed into Dominion territory and sent on their way.
They passed quite close to the Bythian Resource Complex where their ship was detected and towed to Syndaine, where they were allowed to settle. The Ordinator knew that they'd once been human, but it didn't care; they weren't human any more, and the Railer social form was much more acceptable to the NoSaNoOs' strictures. Railers resemble thin human children with large eyes, abundant mops of unruly hair (think of a Robert Smith frightwig) and long rabbit ears which usually dangle down to their shoulders. The Railers on the fake starship had been subjected to memory erasure, and therefore didn't know that they'd once been human; however, when two or more Railers sleep in close proximity, biologically based transmitters embedded in their skulls give them a degree of low-level telepathy; their minds merge into a larger neural net and they dream about the times when they were human. ( top )
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| S | Suteriik Kitchen | The 21st century's combination of a really ritzy kind of Government soup kitchen (remember The Keg? as good as that) with Planet Hollywood and the Cantina Scene from Star Wars. These places became more than just a franchise; they became an institution: "No-one ever willingly died for Burger King," as they proudly say.
They have the reputation of being cool in a kind of geeky way. The people that work for them are a combination of master cook, actor and fanatic science-fiction fan; they invented their own races of aliens and had them staff the restaurants. You didn't have to dress up like an alien to work there, but those who did came to be accepted as a part of the legend more quickly. Some of them got way into their roles; made up their own languages and rituals and stuff. Some of the Suteriik's imaginary races pretended to secede from the State, following (or trying to follow) their imagined forms of alien government. They formed a kind of SCA/theme-park environment around some of the Suteriiks. One of them, an alien race whose life is centred on meditation, became quite popular. ( top )
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| U | Ukhur | Aquatic beings which resemble lobsters. In their natural environment, they are approximately 1.3 metres tall and about 2.5 metres from head to tail. They are divided into three genders, two of which are nominally female; the female genders can give birth to males, or females of the other gender (on a ratio of about 1:32, males to females). The males never leave the homeworld; the females visit other worlds courtesy of powered suits provided by the NoSaNoOs. The female genders are both capable of communication, but only one of them does, due to some obscure religious injunction.
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| Unrh | Six-legged mammals, about twice the size of hippopotami. Two genders (proportions of about one male to every three hundred female); the females do not believe that running around the galaxy in someone else's starships is a practical way to spend one's life. They devote themselves to organising their own society, discussing philosophical matters and educating their offspring. The few males, on the other hand, roam the galaxy, often taking part in dangerous exploration missions and generally acting in a very forward manner, for their species.
Unrh females operate at a slightly slower rate, mentally speaking, than most beings; conversations can often take two or three minutes per sentence. They regard their males as insane, and do not like dealing with characteristically "nervous" races such as the Parkry or the Bythians, which they refer to as "snappy". The males are a curious combination of intense curiousity and slow, gentle reserve; one gets the impression that there are thousands of questions they'd like to ask, but are far too polite or timid to actually mention. They have a deep-seated fascination with their own penises; if you can overcome their several layers of social "arranging" (and your own revulsion) and actually touch it, they are a lot more trusting. Funny, that. |
All work on this site is © Nikolai Kingsley unless otherwise stated.