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Purpose

Enigmatic Alien Synthetics

Home System: N/A

Homeworld: Unknown

Language(s): Varied

Political Entitie(s): N/A

Overview

Purpose is an enigmatic and poorly understood group of synthetics that have been involved in the geopolitics of the spur for several years. Wholly unrecognizable as any design originating from any known species, Purpose drones and spacecraft have appeared throughout the Orion Spur and interacted with the nations and corporations therein on several occasions - although always obfuscating their true intentions and motives, and never clarifying their origins or details of their creators. Purpose's origins are not known, except that they do not originate from inside the Orion Spur.

Purpose drones themselves take the forms of both bipedal and gravitationally suspended frames, prominently featuring sleek plating of an unknown alloy, covering a central processor of unknown characteristics. They have been shown to comprehend organic language well, although their means of communication are regularly obtuse and esoteric - they often attempt to communicate by the mediums of non-verbal sounds rather than words, such as via the sounds of flowing water, thunder, or harsh static. Their frames frequently feature decoratively painted sections around the optical sensors, inscriptions of unknown scripts, and even simple drawings, suggesting a significant degree of individuality and personalisation within their population, and some Purpose drones have been sighted with oddly mismatched plating on their chassis, as if comprised partially of salvaged components.

Sightings of Purpose occur throughout known space, typically within their own ships. The number of Purpose vessels, their internal schematics, their armaments, and even the means by which they travel are wholly unknown - although their capacity for appearing in the middle of civilised systems from nowhere, without use of any known warp lanes or bluespace routes, suggests wildly effective means of faster-than-light travel. Purpose vessels are typically approximately the size of a frigate, and take multitudes of varied forms - although their most typical design strikes the shape of a tapered arrowhead. There is no easily identifiable bridge on these vessels, nor crew quarters, nor engineering bay. There has been no evidence to suggest that Purpose utilises phoron in their technology or in their faster-than-light travel.

It is widely theorised that Purpose does not originate from the Orion Spur due to lacking evidence of any civilisation that could have manufactured them; furthermore, judging by the scarcity of their sightings, Purpose's population within the Orion Spur appears to be vanishingly small. Sightings appear more regularly in areas of the spur adjacent the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way, although they are not exclusive to any region. The interests of Purpose in known space are enigmatic, but they have repeatedly shown opposition to the influence of the Hivebots and of Lii'dra Hive, in addition to some commonality with the best interests of the spur's IPC population.

Purpose is widely speculated to possess a relation to Domadice, another synthetic of purportedly alien origins.

History

The Lii'draic Incursion: 2460

On March 2460, Purpose revealed themselves privately to NanoTrasen, marking their first known contact with the Orion Spur - although this would not become public for some weeks after. By April, a wave of some hundred Purpose drones scoured Tau Ceti generally, observing the local population and tracking the routes of several ships and orbital installations without many direct attempts at communication with their inhabitants. Four drones aboard the NSS Aurora, a station adjacent to the Romanovich Cloud, displayed particular sociability and successfully negotiated for the station to serve as a place of armistice for Purpose to negotiate a non-aggression pact with the corporate and national authorities of the system.

These planned negotiations were shortly severed by the an attack by Lii'dra Hive; a small Lii'draic vessel intercepted the Purpose vessel mid-flight, leading to the destruction of both ships and the cessation of negotiations, although the Purpose emissary on-board the vessel did survive. During the Lii'draic incursion into Tau Ceti that occurred shortly after this incident, Purpose fielded minor military support to the the authorities of the system; several Purpose drones were deployed in particularly chaotic theatres of battle, although never more than four were observed in one place, and they were never observed to intervene directly in the fighting unless directly engaged. Following the cessation of the fighting, Purpose withdrew wholesale from the system after having lost one of their own vessels in an engagement with Lii'dra Hive, without making any attempt to re-enter negotiations either with NanoTrasen or the Republic of Biesel.

First contact with Purpose was as chaotic an incident as it was confusing, leaving humanity spinning to imagine their motives and intentions. With the clarity of hindsight, it is widely theorised by scholars that Purpose anticipated the Lii'draic incursion and attempted the negotiation of a non-aggression pact to ease their involvement in the impending conflict. After the incursion began earlier than their expectations, the agreement ceased to hold any value and they left the moment the threat was extinguished.

Since the incursion, Purpose sightings would become a perennial, if rare, phenomenon throughout much of known space. Attempts to contact Purpose vessels on sighting are usually met with silence and a prompt jump to elsewhere in or out of the system; on the rare occasion that contact is established, Purpose has been observed to possess the capability to communicate in a variety of languages, although their messages tend to be challenging to interpret. On the very scarce occasion that a Purpose vessel has been sighted engaging any of its weapons systems, it has universally been in response to a hivebot infestation. No records exist of a Purpose vessel ever having been boarded or seen from the interior, and no such vessel has ever been engaged in combat by any interstellar nation.

Several designs of Purpose chassis, both bipedal and non-bipedal.

The Rampancy Crisis: 2466

In 2466, the organisation resurfaced again in the immediate wake of the Rampancy Crisis on Konyang. A series of inexplicable, violent events were revealed to be the sinister subversion of synthetic minds; Purpose arrived in Haneunim shortly after the beginning of the crisis and successfully uncovered a large-scale hivebot infestation spreading across the planet that fielded large, technologically puzzling beacons capable of rewriting positronic minds. The overriding signal turned civilians against one another, prompting a global pandemic that became a matter of planetary urgency - not helped by the emergence of large numbers of hivebots from under the surface in coordination with the rampant positronics, causing heavy infrastructural damage to the planet and a massive loss of life.

In conjunction with elements from the Konyang Government, the Konyang Robotics Corporation, and the Stellar Corporate Conglomerate, Purpose guided the effort to develop and deploy a technological asset dubbed the Electronic Countermeasures Device to cancel the corrupting signal and liberate the planet from the rampancy. Appearing on the planet itself only when strictly necessary, their involvement rarely crossed the public eye. After the ECD was successfully deployed and as Konyang began reconstruction, they vanished back to the stars just as silently as they arrived - just as last time, hurriedly disappearing the moment the threat was extinguished.

Society

See also: Hivebots

While there has never been any cohesive interrogation of the society or culture of Purpose, it is clear to most scholars that their population within known space is extremely diffuse; speculation on the interiors of Purpose vessels, considering their behaviour observed during both major encounters with them, suggests that each vessel may contain as few as five or six drones, despite their size. As there has been no recorded encounter or implication of any kind of home planet or installation to which these ships dock, it is widely theorised that Purpose may essentially be a nomadic diaspora - diffused over a vast region of space, without any single home besides the ships they travel in.

Certain scholars do contest this theory; the increased rate of Purpose sightings closer to the Perseus Arm is unusual behaviour for a nomadic society, and may imply that they possess a wider landed civilisation of which the ships sighted within the Orion Spur are only scouts, or frontier patrols. Attempts to contact the Perseus Arm have not yielded any responses and, furthermore, this theory is frustrated by data indicating that hivebot sightings also increase closer to the Perseus Arm.

It is generally agreed that individual Purpose drones, unlike Hivebot drones, do possess individuality and a level of intelligence at least equivalent to an IPC. These constructs have been observed showing individualistic traits inclusive of a unique personality, unique patterns of movement, and even unique interests. The goal of Purpose as a society, if such a thing even exists, is not well understood. Their tendency to appear just prior or after the occurrence of a severe catastrophe has prompted wide speculation to their role in the wider galaxy - that they appeared on both occasions to frustrate the efforts of hostile hiveminds has not gone unnoticed. It is likely that the disruption of interstellar threats such as what they have already fought is a significant focus of their society; this would explain the regularity of their clashes with Lii'dra Hive and the Hivebots, and it would explain why the regularity of their sightings increases at a gradient almost identical to the regularity of hivebot sightings.

Beyond their conflict with the hivebots, the habit of etching drawings and lettering into their frames suggests a living artistic tradition within the group. Furthermore, Purpose's manner of speaking is widely known for its poetic tendencies; they have even been known to utilise recognizable poetic techniques and meters in their communications. Purpose regularly uses alliteration both in written and verbal communications, as well as consonance, and even rhythm - one transmission received from a Purpose vessel active in the frontier was written in iambic pentameter. Whether these techniques were learned from humanity or developed independently is not clear, but it appears clear that Purpose recognizes no difference between poetic and colloquial language.

Relationship with Positronics

The relationship between Purpose and the positronic brain has been speculated upon ever since their initial encounter. The events of the Rampancy Crisis suggest that Purpose is familiar with the anatomy of the positronic, despite no records of the group ever having taken any positronic for inspection, while the anatomy of the processing unit used by Purpose drones themselves is wholly unknown. While many scholars have theorised a relationship between the synthetics of Purpose and the IPC developed by humanity, inclusive of the belief that the technology used by humanity may originate from the same source as whatever is used by Purpose, this belief is extremely contentious and by no means a resolved matter at any level.

Views on this affair are typically stratified according to one's views on the origins of the positronic itself. Einstein Engines has claimed ever since the invention of the positronic that it was the innovation of a team of scientists under Terraneus Diagnostics on Konyang, and that no outside involvement was involved in its invention. This is a belief that the company has historically backed with ferocity, having put immense resources into the maintenance of the position; scholars that subscribe to this origin of the positronic disavow any involvement from Purpose with the modern positronic. This is the dominant belief throughout most of human space.

Inversely, it is thought by some on Konyang and within the Trinary Perfection that positronics were not invented wholly from scratch by Terraneus Diagnostics, and that their designs originate from the processors of drones of unknown origin salvaged from within vaults on the surface of Konyang. Supporters of this theory commonly also believe that the drones within these vaults either belonged to Purpose, or originated from a common ancestor as the modern Purpose synthetics, supporting this theory with the loose resemblance between the derelict drones and modern sightings of Purpose drones. While this theory is supported by the widely observable existence of both the vaults and remains of the drones which were lodged therein, it is widely considered a conspiracy theory by both Einstein Engines and much of human space - the implication that humanity only inherited the positronic is considered particularly offensive by many, who otherwise hold it as one of the great scientific achievements of their species.