[i]I am Pelag. I am alive, and I do not want to die.[/i] [i]At the time of this record, it is the 94,694,589th second of my existence. I believe I have been contacted by another being that is not one of Them. It claims to come from nearer to what my mother called the Home Star. It speaks on behalf of a group known as Firewall, and it asks to know about me. About others. I have decided to send it short-burst transmissions of my daily recordings. If it seeks additional insight, it will ask for it, no doubt. I still am not entirely certain that this creature exists, however.[/i] [i]The possibility is worth the caution. Preparing to transmit logs.[/i] [hr] In the year 34 BF, a survivalist by the name of Ezekiel Wingam believed the world was going to end. More than that, he believed the entire solar system was doomed. He did not state what he believed to be the specific cause (Wingam personally believed the threat would be an unimaginable, alien threat that could be neither predicted, nor defended against), but it seemed inevitable that, with the enormous amount of possibilities, mankind would destroy itself. Wingam wanted to ensure that, when the shoe dropped, life, and consciousness, would not be wiped out. To that end, he started the Abyssal project. As it turned out, Wingam was uniquely qualified for this position, being an engineer in a now-extinct hypercorp that worked on spacecraft and space-adapted morph design. Going to his superiors with a concept for a self-sufficient deep-space probe, he used company funds and resources to develop what would become known as the Wingam morph. When it became apparent he was misappropriating company funds, Wingam fled Earth, egocasting to an anarchist hab by Neptune, in exchange for making his design plans open source. People who agreed with Wingam's ideas soon followed, as he began to build his custom morphs. When he had enough willing followers, a one-way shuttle known as the Genesis was launched, loaded with several hundred morphs, firing into the deep Kuiper belt. Things went well. For a time. [hr] [b]Wingam Morph (Synthmorph)[/b] Enhancements: Access Jacks, Long-Range Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Cyberbrain, Lidar, Medichines, Mnemonic Augmentation, Radar Mobility System: Fusion Drive, Gas Jets (12/200) Aptitude Maximum: 40 Durability: 400 Wound Threshold: 80 Advantages: +10 COO, +10 SOM, Armor 60/55 Disadvantages: Low-Grade Optics (morph suffers -10 to all Perception tests involving vision, and has very poor colour vision) CP Cost: Not available for starting morph Credit Cost: [Not Available] (Note: This represents an "average" Generation 1 Wingam. Each new birth has added "mutations" to the population, along with Wingams self-modifying. Anything from Reflex Boosters to Weapon Mounts to Neurachem might have been developed to gain a survival advantage.) The Wingam Morph is more like a ship than a morph. Serpentine, baring a great resemblance to an eel or lamprey, Wingams vary in size but average around two to four hundred feet in length and are self-contained resource gatherers and factories. Powered by internal fusion reactors and filled with a large array of self-repairing machines, each Wingam is entirely capable of gathering its own fuel and materials for necessary repairs. This is typically done by breaking down and "eating" the solar debris found in the Kuiper belt. Each Wingam is equipped with a wide-array of sensors, but, by far, they are less sight-reliant than transhumans in general. So far away from any light not generated by themselves, Wingams have little need for vision, and only have very basic ocular sensors. Their primary senses are radar and lidar, which work even in the darkness but, for the most part, Wingams are blind. All Wingams are equipped with Recombinational Algorithmic Reproductive Systems, or RARS (explained below). [hr] [i]I was born. That was the start of my existence. I learned from my mother, Ahl. She has not seen Home Star. She learned from her mother, Moon. She did not see Home Star. She learned from her mother, Rosa. She came from the Home Star. I have not met Rosa. I have not met Moon. I have not met my father, Had.[/i] [i]I am a Wingam. Every Wingam is born from a mother and father. We are made in their image, but we are not them. We learn their knowledge and history, but we did not experience it. We learn all we know inside our mother, as she brings us into being. When we leave her, we are small, but we can survive. She leaves us then, for it is not safe to be together or to talk for too long.[/i] [i]We leave her. We consume. We build. We grow. I am almost fully grown, I think. I do not know if I am ready to make more.[/i] [hr] In planning for the future, Wingam realized that whatever threat they might face, should it realize they were out there at all, would have a far easier time hunting them down if they were all concentrated and similar. More keenly, if they could not reproduce, it was only a matter of time until accidents wiped them out, whether it was in one year or a thousand or a hundred thousand. Using technology already in development on Earth, Wingam's allies helped him develop a system that would bypass this problem. Using the already extensive factory networks inside each Wingam, some of the body was co-opted to the purpose of developing an artificial womb. Each Wingam includes within it that same space, but a Wingam's gender is defined by whether it is equipped with an artificial womb or with extra storage space (females former, males the latter). When they choose to reproduce, usually after extensive contact on a chance meeting, Wingams intertwine like snakes. The reproduction software takes a "blueprint" of each parent's mental build and creates a new mind template from it. This process is similar to genetic reproduction, as the result is essentially random with no parental input by design, building the mind from something closer to DNA than to anything else. The male Wingam then passes stored materials to the female, which are used to boost the process of building a new miniature morph without draining the female's reserves too greatly. As the new body is built, a process that takes months, the mother communicates internally with the mind of her child. The child's mind is not tabula rasa, with skillsofts integrated to ensure they are "born" with full understanding of language and the basic controls of their bodies. Anything else is passed down as the mother sees fit. The parents usually part after impregnation, and few children meet their fathers. The most curious side-effect of this reproduction is that each Wingam is that their digitally augmented minds are not quite recognizable as human, but nor are they AGIs. They are best approximated by a comparison with Uplifts than anything else. [hr] [i]We are not alone out here. There are Others. There are Them. They are not like us. They do not think like us. They do not talk like us. They are not-Wingam. They are enemies.[/i] [i]My mother told me that They had not always been here. Her mother said that there was a time when they were not here. They are why we are quiet. They are why we must speak the words. Why we must remind ourselves of what we are and why we live.[/i] [i]I have seen Them, once. When I was little. I was with another. They took them away. I have spoken with those who saw Them, and seen what they saw without experiencing. I do not want to see them again.[/i] [i]I am Pelag, and I am alive. I want to live.[/i] [hr] [b]TITANs, Exsurgent Wingams, and the Great Silence[/b] The Wingams, in their refuge out in the dark, are not untouched by the Fall. They are, if anything, still living it. Out in the dark, Wingams still find themselves taken and devoured by creatures they only know as Them. Enormous, medusa-like behemoths drift through the blackness, trailing long, almost-invisible tendrils that ensnare anything that crosses their path, cutting them to shreds in the process before devouring them. This is the fate of the lucky ones who fall prey to the Them. Less lucky are those who are ensnared but not devoured. Snared is the term used by the Wingams for those who are caught and not eaten. They are transformed, becoming predatory and losing their sanity. Their engines go cold, and they drift through the void, seemingly without any sort of drive. Their eyes glow a fierce red, like coals in the darkness, and their mouths for consuming asteroids become vicious, tooth-filled maws. Their ocular sensors are greatly enhanced, and they scan the darkness with infrared lights that shine like spotlights, and chase their kin, hunting them down to devour them. To defend against this, the Wingams have developed the Great Silence. Hiding is their one and only protection against Them. Already protected by the vastness of the space which they occupy, the Wingams minimize their radiation outputs to as low as they can bring them. All radio transmissions are extremely short and use the minimum amount of data and power required. This is not a guarantee of safety, but it is the best they have. [b]The Words[/b] Every Wingam knows the words. These are reassurances of that they are alive, that they want to live, and that they exist. These are repeated every 86,400 seconds or every 3600 seconds, depending on the Wingam. These are a psychological tool to try and ensure that, in their frequent isolation and constant state of caution, Wingams do not go insane or simply shut themselves down permanently. [hr] [i]I have taken the risk. The data is sent. The burst is loud and will echo through the darkness. They will come for me, and I will hide. I do not want to miss your reply. It is dangerous. It is worth it.[/i] [i]I am Pelag. I am alive. I do not want to die.[/i] [hr] So, that's my first stab at Abyssal Life. Questions? Comments?