Vaurca

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Vaurca (Vaur'uyit'zir)

V. esseli / V. sapiens

Home System: Sedantis (Ske'hazik'staza, "Blinding Light.")

Homeworld: Sedantis IVc (Vaur'azek'uyuz, "Home.")

Language(s): Vaur'uyit'yaza.

Political Entitie(s): Zo'ra Hive, K'lax Hive.

Overview

The Vaurca (sing. Vaurca, pl. Vaurca, Vaurcas, Vaurcae) are a bipedal insectoid race hailing from the unknown star system Sedantis. They are notable for their virtual-reality and brain-uploading technology, as well as their strong caste division between the robotic Bound workers and virtual reality-dwelling Unbound intellectuals. The Vaurca appeared in known space on the 21st of December 2456, and have since begun to spread throughout human space. Although tolerated on Nanotrasen Corporation facilities and in Biesel, they are generally unwanted and marginalized in the Sol Alliance, and face discrimination even in places they're welcome. In addition, they have been shadowed from across light-years by the mysterious Li'idra Hive, dedicated to avenging their ancient loss and exterminating them.

To apply to be one of the insect-like Vaurca, apply here

Heads of Staff

Vaurca can't be any Head of Staff. Their employment opportunities are strictly limited.

Mechanics

• Global hivemind, accessible via :9 and heard only by other Vaurcae and stationbound synthetics.
• Pressure & Cold resistant, allowing them to survive in space with internals.
• Unaffected by Phoron gas.
• Have natural insulation.
• Immune to slipping.
• Can only healthily consume food consisting of K'ois paste and byproducts.
• Require phoron to breathe. They spawn with an internal phoron tank they can refill by consuming plasma reagent.
• Cannot wear normal shoes or gloves.
• Cannot wear normal helmets. (Can wear hats.)
• Cannot wear most spacesuits.
• Do not self-heal from most damage types.
• Takes 2x the toxin damage.
• Suffer from additional blood loss.
• Vulnerable to EMPs.
• Can be permanently rendered blind by flashing them several times in a row.
• Cloning tanks will not clone their non-organic organs.

• • Vaurca Warriors are more resistant to fire than their Worker brethren.
  • Vaurca Warriors are faster than their Worker brethren, and can sprint for longer.
  • Vaurca Warriors can bite.

• • Vaurca Workers are more resistant to brute than their Warrior brethren.
  • Vaurca Workers are more resistant to radiation than their Warrior brethren.
  • Vaurca Workers are more resistant to suffocation than their Warrior brethren.
  • Vaurca Workers are slower than their Warrior brethren.
  • Vaurca Workers cannot bite.

Non-mechanic traits:

• Dislike light.
• Generally very specialized, often no inter-department knowledge.
• Face severe discrimination in human space.

Coloration:

• Vaurcae exoskeletons are typically coloured depending on the type and hive of the Vaurca specimen in question. Individuals can vary from the normal color by 10 or fewer points.

Zo'ra Hive

Unbound of any type: (RGB 51, 0, 0)

Bound Warriors: (RGB 71, 0, 21)

Bound Workers: (RGB 71, 21, 21)

K'lax Hive

Unbound of any type: (RGB 51, 51, 0)

Bound Warriors: (RGB 51, 71, 21)

Bound Workers: (RGB 71, 71, 21)

Lii'dra Hive

Lii'dra can be any colour, to permit them to masquerade as Vaurca from other hives.

Information for Whitelisted Players

Playable Factions/Types/Castes

Vaurca can come from the Zo'ra, K'lax, or Lii'dra hives. Vaurca from the Zo'ra hive must also choose a brood. The Lii'dra are exclusive to antagonists and events, though an antagonist Vaurca can be from another hive, or pretend to be from another hive while being from Lii'dra.

Playable Vaurca can be either Bound or Unbound, and their playstyles are drastically different.

Personalities: Playing a Vaurca

Playing Bound

Playing a Bound (Viax) is very similar to playing a station-bound synthetic; your first responsibility is to obey orders and do as you're told. Hive-bound Bound are completely lacking in any sense of self-preservation and obey orders at any consequence to themselves, but the Bound distributed to Nanotrasen through the labor lottery have a special 'subordinated locus,' a set of root-level directives that keeps them from being too dangerous or untrustworthy. These 'subordinated' Bound are expected to flee from combat rather than fight, and must return to safety if they feel they are in mortal danger. This doesn't give them a lot of common sense, but it keeps them from being a threat to others. (An antagonist could absolutely give a Bound a bomb-detonator and tell them when to press the button.)

Bound Vaurca are notoriously poor at dealing with complicated or overlapping chains of command, or with standing regulations, and generally can only recognize a single supervisor at a time to the exclusion of all others. They are thus a point of weakness for any antagonist seeking to cause damage to the station; any ne'er-do-well who gets control of one can generally rely on it to further their wicked cause without resistance.

Bound are barred from security, medical, and science jobs. They are free to take civilian jobs (except Quartermaster) or engineering jobs. They are also free to be menial lab assistants, or orderlies in the medical department. They do not need to be formally promoted before taking these jobs. Because Za bodies are only for combat, and because Bound cannot join Security, playing a Za'Viax is not permitted.

Playing Unbound

Unbound (Akaix) Vaurca are people; there is very little within the realm of human experience that an Unbound cannot encounter. They are capable of learning any skill and performing any job, but due to prejudice and discrimination, they are limited to the lowliest professions – civilian jobs and internships. Promotion comes only on a limited basis.

The vast majority of Unbound live in the Virtual as information beings, enjoying lives of pure thought. There are three primary reasons to descend from the Virtual and incarnate in a material body. The first reason is the pure joy and adventure of it; Vaurca possess a natural curiosity and a desire to seek out new phenomena and experiences. The second reason is careerism; Vaurca who want to rise to real leadership positions must spend time in the trenches of on-the-spot management. The third main reason is the Black Number; their human hosts demand a levy of experienced professionals with specific skill-sets. If none volunteer, then they must be conscripted – unlucky Vaurca who draw the Black Number are forced to descend and work for the new human masters.

Unbound are currently restricted to only civilian-level jobs, including lab assistants, security cadets, medical interns, and engineering apprentices. NanoTrasen has introduced a "Peer Review" system to accomodate promotion to higher positions - Read the "Avowal of Responsibility" form available in form dispensers for more information.

Unbound Career Paths

There are three major reasons why an Unbound descends from the Virtual to go out into the Material world.

Black Numbers: In order to pay their debts, the Vaurca have agreed to a system of force corvee labor. Nanotrasen, the Biesel government, and other corporations can submit their labor requests to a special body of the Biesel government, which in turn forwards them to Zo'ra Hive. After distributing these requests (though by this point they have become demands), the Zo'ra broods each hold a lottery among all their members capable of doing that work. Those Unbound who draw the Black Numbers are required to go out and work for whoever requested them, for whatever length of time the government requires. Jargon and the Unathi have similar systems for the K'lax.

Journeyers: All Unbound are equal, but those with age and great accomplishment are given pride of place and their words are more important. In order to become a person worth listening to, Vaurca must prove themselves by going out into the Material and working for the Hive by managing their public property and public affairs. This custom persists even as the Vaurca are in captivity, and volunteering for the Black Numbers is a valid journey. Other Journeyers work to maintain the Hive itself.

Vagabonds: Some Unbound want to escape the stifling burdens of Consensus, of Procedure, and of Discipline; they want to live a life where they're the only person in their heads and they can figure out who they are by themselves, or to explore human culture and life for the joy of it, or for any other personal reason. Nanotrasen and Biesel welcome these Vagabonds and try to take special care of them; in a society with nonexistent secret control, they consider these Vagabonds to be a valuable source of information.

Speaking like a Vaurca

The native Vaurca language, at least among the Vaurca on Tau Ceti, is called Vaur'uyit'yaza. It is synthetic, fusional, agglutinative, conjugative, and cased, and is extremely different from Tau Ceti Basic. Some Unbound are quite literate and fluent in TCB, but others still struggle to express themselves in it - they are still thinking in the old language and have odd sentence structure and syntax. Bound still have a lot of trouble with Basic.

Natural Vaurca voices are completely unable to speak Tau Ceti Basic, and they use cybernetic implants to make up this shortfall. This is still a rough new technology to them, and their robo-voices are harsh and buzzy. They have not yet settled on a single design for these implants, so speech impediments still flourish. The most common element of the Vaurca 'accent' is replacing s with z, but they generally have problems with unvoiced consonants (p, t, s, k, f, sh) and put too much voice into them (b, d, z, g, v, zh). This can lead to a situation where they can't pronounce their own names.

Help with naming

Vaurca names consist of four components – form, caste, designation, and residence. The first syllable of their name will be Ka, for a default body, or Za, for the common ‘warrior’ or ‘VIP’ body. Other prefixes exist, but are much rarer. The second syllable will be Viax (pronounced vee-YACKS) for a Bound or Akaix (pronounced ah-kah-YEEKS) for an Unbound.

The third component is their given name, usually in the form of a number. Names should be unique and limited to one or two syllables. Their language makes great use of crunchy double-consonants, like TL, TZ, KS, KT, and the like – but no C's and Q's.

Names are not very important to Unbound; it's trivial for them to identify themselves and each other by their accomplishments and affiliations. When speaking to one another over the Hivenet, Vaurca can transfer their greater resumes in only a moment - or, in the Virtual, their entire lived experience. Besides, everyone in a particular Brood knows everyone else in that Brood, and the Zo'ra hive circulates lists of who's who.

Finally, the last component of their name is their home. Each of the five Zo'ra Broods has its own name – Ya'tzil, Tli'yez, Ax'tal, Tza'tzo, and Kte'kzil – but many Unbound prefer to use the Zo'ra name, affirming their belief that the Broods are temporary measures of no importance and the Mother Hive is still the homeland of their spirit. Real Vagabonds also often adopt the Zo'ra name. The one K'lax brood in known space has an individual name - it is Kzi'lak - but since there's just the one, K'lax just name themselves K'lax.

Biology

The Vaurca look like terrestrial insects, but their biology is actually much more complicated than that.

Life Cycle

Vaurca start their life as eggs, laid in clutches of 12 to 60, and then hatch into larva that look like tiny prawns. At the moment of hatching, all larva are the same, and absent any special intervention they will all grow into Bound workers.

A Bound begins work as soon as it's able, which is usually about five to seven years after it hatches and after its third molt. From there, it continues to work until it is too old and must be recycled, which is usually after 45 to 50 years. If treated with special hormones, it can develop male or female sex organs. Males have very short lives; they get one breeding season with the females and then die. Females, on the other hand, will lay six to eight clutches of eggs before their ovipostors wear out and they, too, must be recycled. Their genetic engineering and husbandry technologies aren't good enough to completely weed out hereditary diseases, so they stick with sexual reproduction as a way of refreshing their gene pool. Unless a given Vaurca body is explicitly a breeder, then it is essentially a neuter female - their bodies are a straight subtraction from the breeder females but not so much as to be real lowest-common-denominators with the males.

If, while still in the egg, the embryonic larva is treated with a special artificial hormone, then it will not mature as a Bound – it will grow a large, ponderous brain much too big for its body. These 'protobound' are kept in special quarters, constantly fed and cared for, until their first molt is complete. Once they have their shiny new carapaces, they face Upload and enter the Virtual.

The process of Upload is intentionally destructive; their brains are extracted, sliced into cell-thin segments, and copied as data into the Virtual – the massive part-organic, part-cybernetic brain-computers that are the focus and soul of their entire civilization. The Virtual is a garden of infinite delight; Unbound are free to use its nigh-unlimited processing power to study and create whatever they wish. When living as pure data, Unbound have no well-defined 'lifespan;' they will start to go senile at around 120 years of age and will eventually corrode so badly that they cannot communicate or think coherently. At that point, the Virtual gradually purges them as junk data. Mental exercise keeps their thought-patterns fresh and vital, and active and vivacious Unbound can live longer, but it's almost unknown to go beyond 200 years.

Internal Organs

Internally, Vaurca are much closer to terrestrial mammals or reptiles than to arthropods. They have a closed circulatory system with well-defined veins and arteries, allowing them to maintain a regular body temperature. Their blood is primarily copper-based hemocyanin with sulfur binding, which causes their blood to adopt a pale yellowish color and a potent stench. Hemocyanin is not as efficient as iron-based hemoglobin blood, meaning that their twin hearts must maintain a quick pulse and a high blood pressure to keep them oxygenated.

Vaurca lungs are totally organic. However, they cannot naturally process oxygen without there being phoron present in the mix. Pure oxygen is toxic to the Vaurcae, and pure phoron will suffocate them. As such, Vaurcae in human space must go masked and wear external respirators - otherwise, the urge to breathe could lead to accidental oxygen poisoning. Scientists have begun work on a Vaurca body with no external breathing apparatus at all, but progress is slow for lack of resources.

Vaurca posses in their head a neural socket that allows interface with the HiveNet quantum radio system. The Vaurca in Tau Ceti can no longer reproduce these devices - the required industrial base is simply too high - and must now repurpose them from the bodies of the dead.

Limbs

Vaurca have two large insect-like eyes with two smaller ones underneath, which are hyper-sensitive to most forms of light. While they can function in light-heavy environments perfectly fine, most complain about frequent migraines and tendency to get frustrated after long exposures to light like the sun, or even general station lighting. This hyper-sensitivity, however, leads to greatly increased eyesight in dark areas. Their eyes are completely black in terms of coloration, with no variation between the castes. They also have large, insect-like antennae that protrude from their head. These antennae are used for greater perception of their surroundings and to communicate with each other through subtle movements, or rubbing them together with another. Also acting a sensory and nerve database, when these antennae are lost, they can cause confusion, dizziness, nausea, communications problems, and extreme pain. A Vaurca with a missing antenna has similar connotations to a human with an eyepatch.

Their mouth parts are similar to a prawn's, in that they have two large mandibles, with small feelers and chewing parts that come out of the bottom.

Senses

Vaurca senses are generally comparable to those of human beings. Their eyes are better in low-light conditions but have less color-definition; they have more rods but fewer cones. Their hearing follows suit; their range is narrower (60Hz-12KHz) but better with faint sounds. Because of their hard carapaces, their sense of touch is very weak and they can sometimes seem rather clumsy. A stubbed toe in the dark is not nearly as awful for them as it is for us, but they can have trouble touch-typing on a human-spec keyboard or rooting around in their pockets. Their sense of smell, however, is far beyond that of humans, though weaker than a Tajaran’s - they can reliably differentiate each other based on smell.

Sleep Cycle

The sleep cycle for bound is a very hard to one to predict. Their natural sleeping cycle seems completely random and is more in line with SSD that plagues other species. They simply go into an inert state and remain unresponsive for a few minutes or hours at a time before suddenly being roused and getting back to work.

Body Types

Workers (Ka)

The Ka are the most common and can be seen as the 'backbone' of Vaurca societies. Their most prevalent feature is their hardened exoskeleton, varying in colors in accordance to their hive. This exoskeleton provides protection against harsh radiation, solar and otherwise, and acts as a robust pressure-suit to seal their soft inner core from the outside world. This allows most Ka Vaurca to have extended, several day-long EVA expeditions, assuming they have internals. They are bipedal, with bird-like talon toes. Their hands consist of two middle fingers with small talons at the end, and two opposable thumbs, a left and a right, on either side of their hand.

The Ka are the baseline; they are the closest to the original, unmodified Vaurca.

Warriors (Za)

The Za are the second most prominent of Vaurca society, taking the form of heavily augmented warriors. Designing new and weird Za bodies is a constant hobby among the Vaurca, and they have a history of some truly wild designs - quadrupedal, hexapedal, guns for arms, laser-eyes, rending talons, and more. Despite their creativity, in modern times they generally have to stick with the basics. The Zo'ra have a history of being a warlike and martial Hive, so even in times of peace they maintain a force of warriors as large as they can feed and breed.

The 'basic' Za body, unchanged for millenia, covers their vulnerability to lasers to the best of their ability. It's also faster, allowing them to close to melee range as swiftly as possible. As a last-ditch weapon, their mandibles have been strengthened so that they can bite their enemies and do horrific ripping damage. With a tiny handful of exceptions, this is all the modern Hive has to offer.

Nanotrasen has experimented with employing Bound Warriors, but these experiments have not borne fruit - they're too difficult to corral and direct without Unbound officers, and that leaves a sour taste in people's mouths. As such, there are no Bound Warrior types employed anywhere in Nanotrasen, or anywhere else under Biesel administration.

Breeders (Tche)

The Tche are the rarest among Vaurca, in that they make up around 2-3% of their entire species. They are the only individuals in Vaurca hives that are fertile and that show sexual characteristics. Male and female are both exclusively Bound. Reproduction and infant-care thus falls under the general category of Bound scut-work, and Unbound consider it beneath them.

Others

There are 11 other 'body-names' in common circulation, most are obsolete - nobody living has ever had occasion to use them and they only live on in dictionaries. Of those that remain, the name Ra is used for Rapid Transmission bodies and Kza is used for stationary Hivenet dispatchers.

These Transmission bodies are designed for hyper-rapid typing – they're so quick that it's faster than transmitting on the Hivenet. Once the messages are sent, they go straight back into the Virtual to deposit as many as they can and collect another packet to send. The turnaround is about 20 minutes plus typing time, which – for this exact document – would be about 25 seconds. Transmission is the equivalent of a lowly internship; it's tedious and unpleasant, and a common stepping stone for Vaurca seeking higher prestige.

The Dispatcher bodies are designed with powerful neural sockets - they're so powerful that they're called Rods - and they moderate and control the Hivenet traffic. Hivenet is not peer-to-peer; it all travels back to the Dispatchers and then out again. This is exhausting and important work, and it's not for novices. The Hivenet is universal across all Broods and all Hives; its effective range can be measured in astronomical units.

Social

Language

The Vaur'uyit'yaza language is their greatest cultural treasure; for thousands of years, it has been the clay of poets and philosophers. It is also stunningly complicated, compared to any human language - its deep literary canon, as well as the relative high education of its speakers, means that it's ridden through with allusion and reference. There is a plain way to ask where the bathroom is, but most Unbound wouldn't say it that way. They'd instead say that they were facing north behind a garden. (North is the opposite of south, South means the Southern Polar Star and thus navigation, garden means working in the dirt means dirty hands means washing hands which means the toilet.) Their whole language is like this, and not even they have a good dictionary for it - you just have to be well-read in general.

Obviously, none of this works on the Bound, so the Unbound grade their language when speaking to them.

Inter-caste Relationships

The Unbound regard the Bound as furniture, and use them up with callous indifference. Provided that there's a reasonable expectation that any valuable or unique implants in a given Bound can be collected and recycled, the Unbound show complete bravado in throwing away or discarding Bound lives. Every Bound is theoretically attached to an Unbound supervisor, and must obey their supervisor's demands without question or hesitation - but they will accept orders from any Unbound in the same Hive who gives them. It is only social understanding that keeps Unbound from poaching each others' Bounds.

Inter-brood Relationships

The wise say that brothers at war ally against cousins. This is true of the Zo’ra broods as well. Left to their own devices, they continuously struggle with each other - they mark borders and shove along them; they launch raids and pillages; they declare ritualized ‘flower wars;’ and, most Vaurca of all, they blast each other with strongly-worded missals and journals decrying each other’s philosophical contradictions and weaknesses.

But the All-Hive Consensus is simple - this is not the time for that foolishness. Attitudes within broods regarding other broods runs the gamut - some openly admire them, some shrug their shoulders to live and let live, others cluck their tongues indulgently, and some even scorn and criticize. But regardless of their personal feelings, nobody denies that the Hive is family - and family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten. Ya’tzil, Tza’tzo, and Kte’kzil may have serious arguments about how they should face their mutual and individual challenges, but they will resolve these differences the way Vaurca always resolve their differences. They will speak their hearts, hash it out, explore the options, find a Consensus, and phalanx up. That’s their way.

Inter-hive Relationships

The Zo'ra and K'lax hives have theoretically warm relations, and many Zo'ra feel a kind of condescending warmth towards the K'lax. The K'lax formally accept their conditions of servitude, but many individual K'lax chafe against it. Both hives despise the Li'idra, who in turn despise them.

Inter-species Relationships

Due to most Vaurcae hiveships being present in human-space, most inter-species relationships Vaurcae have are with humanity. Zo'ra and K'lax Vaurcae tend to be co-operative with humanity out of necessity, but on an individual level the opinions vary between each Unbound, depending on what the specific Unbound has experienced. Unbound rarely if ever esteem any human higher than a Vaurcae, due simply to biological constraints. Bound Vaurcae are completely subservient to the whims of their master hive, and it is only because of this that rented Bound workers obey their human owners. The hierarchy of servitude that a Bound abides by is a topic of concern among humanity, because Bound are hard-wired to satisfy the needs of other Unbound Vaurcae of their hive firstly, creating the possibility for complex situations should the interests of a Bound's human owner ever conflict with the interests of an Unbound Vaurcae of the same hive. However, such situations are unreported if they do occur, and the cheapness and effectiveness of Bound labour tends to surpass the potential dangers.

Culture and Society

Values

To reiterate what was said before, Unbound are individuals and can have conflicting or complicated motivations. While they possess cultural norms, they are capable of acting against them.

The Vaurca prize philosophy and intelligence; they are beings of thought and they value thought for its own merits. By human standards, they spend an absurd amount of time thinking about the nature of goodness, of beauty, and of morality, and questioning why they do things and what their actions mean. The 'first among equals' in the Virtual are generally philosophers, and any Vaurca worth its k’ois will have a basic ability to express an idea in a logical and rhetorically-pleasing way.

At the same time, they are keenly empathetic with one another. They treasure their language and their oral heritage, and they produce 'experiential' or 'noetic' art that can only exist in the Virtual. Poetry, composed in their ancient Vaur'uyit'yaza language from before they established the Hivenet, is omnipresent, and those who don't compose it must at least show an appreciation for it. They accept dramatic, romantic expression; chivalric and epic literature makes sense to them.

It's also important to note how they worry about the feelings and well-being of each other. Ambitions flare, personalities clash, and rivalries fester within the safe boundaries of the Virtual, but the Unbound are connected to one another on a deeper level than most humans can understand; it's trivial for an Unbound to serve up their entire lived experience and memories to another as a basis for understanding. Vaurca are much better at talking frankly about what's going on with them than humans are.

Equality is also an important virtue to the Vaurca. The oldest, wisest, and best-connected might lead them, but every Unbound is a component in the Virtual and a contributor to the great Synedrion of Thought, and deserves a certain degree of respect and consultation. The phrase 'that's an order' means nothing to them, for they don't accept commands; the phrase 'we have all agreed,' however, will generally induce compliance provided that we, whoever we are, has actually generally agreed. They will accept apprenticeship beneath someone else, but they aren't willing followers for someone else's ambitions. There's nothing wrong or dishonorable for a Vaurca to ask, 'what's in it for me?'

Vaurca love knowledge and discovery. Traditionally, they say that 'the proper study of Vaurca is Vaurca,' and somebody who completely eschewed the humanities (the Vaurcities?) would be kind of a deviant, but they've always had a deep respect for pure science and especially pure mathematics, at which they excel. They are also fascinated by biological diversity; counting themselves, they have only brought eight species with them from Sedantis and five of them are microbes. They feel this loss very keenly, and are always joyous to encounter new life.

Arts and Entertainment

The native environment of the Unbound is a purely noetic one, made entirely of information and ideas without any reference to the senses; as such, their native entertainment tends to be noetic as well. They have entire libraries of 'boardless board-games' - viz. Mornington Crescent. They are experts at constructing 'mind-frames' - artificial states of knowledge and memory that prompt certain interesting feelings. Less-disciplined Vaurca like playing with virtual blocks and creating digital environments as a form of artistic expression, and collaborating and sharing them with others.

In the Virtual, there are two kinds of art: noetic and literary. An Unbound could create a virtual space and create a virtual piece of tactile art - a painting or a sculpture - but noetic and literary arts completely dominate the scene.

"Noetic" art, like noetic entertainment, is entirely information- and idea-based. It generally takes the form of trains of though, the process from hypothesis to conclusion. Sometimes these trains of thought are cross-cut between multiple perspectives, jumping between participants in a conversation as they mull over points and arguments. The topic is usually philosophy, or perhaps romantic personal angst. (Watch the movie Mindwalk for a good example.)

"Literary art," on the other hand, runs the same gamut as it does among humans. Poetry is the highest art, and there are dozens of different schools and styles. They also write stories and narratives, but these aren't as common unless it's as a personal autobiography - when I was in the Material, this is what I saw, this is what I did, and this is what I felt.

Descended Vaurca, forced to work for long periods of time away from home and with unusual amounts of leisure time, are beginning to explore their ancient art-forms, or mixing them with human and other styles. This is still a fresh and new field of exploration. When in the Material, Unbound with a few moments to kill like chattering on the Hivenet, either to have meaningful conversations about life and the universe or else to play little word-games. They also have a handful of games to play in person, the most popular of which is Tsa'tlan - it involves throwing sticks into the air to create shapes or constellations.

The Bound are completely derived of pleasure and have no desire to entertain themselves.

Fashion & Cuisine

In ancient history - in the Antediscidic phase of their history - Vaurca would wear colorful and elaborate clothes as a way of showing their status. Now that they've moved into the Virtual and only Descend to work, it's considered good Discipline to eschew clothes and accoutrements in favor of going naked, or limiting their clothes to just a few pockets and toolbelts. Because of their hard carapaces, they have little trouble being naked. Blindfolds are also useful in high-light environments.

Vaurca that venture EVA, despite their natural tolerance to high/low/vacuum pressure environments, are usually seen wearing soft-suits that allow them prolonged times in space for construction, operations, and other EVA activities.

The Vaurca used to eat all kinds of exciting and diverse cuisines - they still have ancient cookbooks that describe fantastic ingredients - but all of that's gone now. The only edible substance they have is K'ois, and it lacks both flavor and nutrition. It is, however, extremely easy to grow in vast quantities, making it the perfect food for the Bounds and an acceptable austerity for their Unbound supervisors. A disciplined Unbound will view its food as medicine, and just eat it to get it over with.

Religion

The specific rites, practices, and theologies differ from Hive to Hive, from Brood to Brood, and from individual to individual, but all these strains of thought exist more-or-less within a single religion among all the Vaurca – adoration of the Holy Mother Goddess, the primordial being who created the universe and put the Vaurca in the center of it on Holy Sedantis, and whose weeping shook the heavens when her beloved children destroyed the Garden of Eden for everybody by growing up.

Their religion is uncomplicated, and is so by intention. The Holy Mother Goddess is a big glob of sweet, gooey mother-love, embracing all her children with unconditional forgiveness. However calculating and intellectual they might be otherwise, the warm and welcoming HMG gives every Vaurca an opportunity to regress back to the safety and comfort of infancy. It's childish, and it's supposed to be. The HMG exists alongside formidable Vaurca philosophies about truth and morality and society and metaphysics and all that, but it's very hard to resist her allure for long. The HMG loves you very much and wants the best for you, no matter what you do, and will always forgive you and welcome you back to her if you're really sorry and do your best.

Vaurca venerate the great figures from their past, but only the HMG receives genuine veneration and prayer. Even those Vaurca who abstractify or re-interpret the HMG, perhaps as the emergent gestalt consciousness of the Virtual or as a symbol of Sedantis or as a metaphor for the bewilderment of adulthood, do not replace her with another deity for genuine worship. They are thus a monotheistic society.

Obviously, none of this is of any use to the Bound.

Procedure and Consensus

To Vaurca, the most important word - the most magical and sacred of all words - is Procedure. Procedure comprises the essential rules of conduct and responsibility among the Vaurca, and broadly speaking, it has two elements. The first is that every Unbound has the right to weigh in on any subject or any question before the Brood, to have their objections known and acknowledged by the group. The second is that every Unbound has the responsibility to cultivate valid and informed opinions about those subjects and questions. Procedure is a massive burden on most Unbound, and most Broods have a hard time sticking to it.

Consensus means the same thing to them as it does to us - everybody agrees on what they should do - but to Vaurca, it's heavy and serious. When the Brood or the Hive reaches Consensus, that means that everybody (everybody who cares) has brought up their thoughts and their objections, and those objections have been systematically answered. It means everybody is on the same page, everybody's had their fair hearing, and the matter has been conclusively decided.

Technology

The Vaurca are weirdly primitive; they seldom surpass humans in any field of science by any meaningful margin, and in a lot of fields they're far behind. They do not have FTL travel, and their ships cannot go any faster than .95 of the speed of light. While they do possess ansible technology, it operates on quantum entanglement - it requires paired sub-atomic particles that get used up with each message and have to be shared on-site before the two parties part ways.

But the Virtual, and the Cephalon bio-computer on which it runs, is a singular and unparalleled achievement. During the Sedantene period, the Vaurca enjoyed a scientific ascendancy far beyond the present - they had such technologies as subatomic element conversion, quantum computing, self-perpetuating nanotechnology, and more. While they have kept the theoretical knowledge-base required to make these things, the industrial capital that they'd need is far beyond their current means - at the height of their civilization, they had tens of thousands of Broods spanning an entire solar system, and needed all of it to make their society work. The Hive must carefully ration and defend its dwindling stockpiles of technology that it inherited from its parent-colony in Phi Auricae.

Hives and Broods

There are three Hives in human space, but only one of them - Zo'ra - is large enough to divide into Broods. The Hives are like ethnicity; during the Sedantene period, they were countries with borders, governments, and treaties. At the end of the period, they sent out separate evacuation missions to different star systems, and a lack of contact with other Hives has sharpened divisions within each Hive.

Zo'ra

Zo'ra - "Ever-Victorious."

During the height of the Sedantene period, the Zo'ra were a great power. Traditionally an aggressive and warlike Hive, they bear a major responsibility for the arms-race and ecological collapse that forced their great migration. Their language and culture is now the gold standard for all Vaurca thus far encountered. Their Hive-Ship, Titan Prime, was the one that fell into orbit in the Tau Ceti system and thus served as first contact for humanity.

They have warm but condescending feelings towards K'lax, and regard Li'idra as an enemy in an off-handed way. Titan Prime held six Cephalons and six Broods, one of which was in a terminal death-spiral and remains unconscious on life-support. All these Broods are 'siblings,' spawned from a single Cephalon on Phi Auricae called Tla'xa; as such, no Unbound can Descend from one and Ascend into another.

Ya'tzil Brood

The Ya'tzil Brood is based Mendell City. It was the first to be moved off the Hive ship, and thus had the best head-start in finding good ground and establishing itself. They position themselves as the guardians of tradition and morality, and their long-term goals for the Vaurca – the 'Ya'tzil Plan' – can be summarized as 'endure what we must, repair the ship, get out of here, forget this ever happened.' They are the first-among-equals, and assert for themselves the right to speak for the whole Hive.

Ya'tzil is strong in Procedure, but there's a powerful force in the brood called the Committee on the Division of First Principals. While the Committee exerts no obvious control, it serves as a gatekeeper for new ideas and proposals, and is thus a moderating force on the brood – most Ya'tzil trust the Committee to weed out any stupid ideas and only entertain the ones the Committee endorses. Some Ya'tzil do not approve.

Tli'yez Brood

Tli'yez is another Zo'ra brood, located on Biesel but not in Mendell. Before the Contact, it was renowned as a home for scientific experimentation and discussion. As such, the Black Numbers have decimated it, and many of its brightest minds have been press-ganged into service of NanoTrasen. Tli'yez's leadership is thus focused on the struggle to live.

Tli'yez is extremely bureaucratic, compared to the other broods. Its Unbound identify very strongly with their individual Departments, and each Department handles its own policies with very little outside interference. Within the Departments, however, they generally follow Procedure, with the caveat that older and more experienced people get greater consideration.

Tza'tzo Brood

Tza'tzo is another Zo'ra brood, still clinging to its old quarters on the Hive-ship Titan Prime. Tza'tzo keeps very strongly to Procedure and Discipline, such to the point that they have mandatory all-brood messaging – it is forbidden for any one Tza’tzo to exclude any other from any communication. Tza'tzo is thus the Vaurca equivalent of religious fundamentalists, and generally disapprove of the other Broods. (Blackadder’s 2nd-season aunt and uncle, the Whiteadders, would not be a bad stand-in for them.)

Tza'tzo trades favors with the other broods in order to avoid the worst of the Black Numbers, so as to keep itself pure and untainted by humans. Their Unbound are the creepiest and most robotic of all, and come off as being utterly devoted to their people and to Zo'ra. Because they are so conformist and controlling, however, they have a lot of vagabonds.

Kte'kzil Brood

Kte'kzil is the fourth Zo'ra brood, but it's based on New Gibson. Isolation from the rest of the fold has made them a little weird, and they've picked up some distinctly... human ideas about how to organize themselves. Unlike all the other broods, they have a single and recognizable leader – Tlakoxaya the Conductor. In the space of a few years, Procedure has almost disappeared from Kte'kzil, in favor of the Conductor and its lieutenants. Debates take place behind closed doors, and secrecy is the rule of the day.

Tlakoxaya is not in the habit of explaining itself to others, but it's made overtures towards becoming a player in Mendell City in its own right and to potentially making Kte'kzil an important fixture in the Republic. Opinion on Tlakoxaya remains bitterly divided in the other broods.

Ax'tal Brood

Ax'tal is the fifth Zo'ra brood, and the last one based on Biesel. It is intentionally left blank, partially to serve as a 'default' brood and partially in case space is needed for some future development. A player with no interest in the hooks and tropes of the other broods is advised to choose Ax’tal.

Za'chai Brood

Za'chai is brain-dead and stuck on life-support. It has no living Descended Unbound, and its Bounds are being culled for their implants. Resurrecting Za'chai is a major project for the other broods. It remains on the Hive-ship.

K'lax

K'lax - "Far-Gazing."

In medieval times, wealthy lords would endow chantries – they would charge a group of holy men to say masses for their soul in perpetuity. This is the task of the K'lax Hive; defeated and subjugated by Zo'ra in centuries past and forced to pray for their masters. In the economy of the Hives, K'lax produces holiness as tribute. Their scent marks them as alien to the Zo'ra majority, and when mixing with their masters they endure constant hooting jests to 'give us a prayer.' Wherever the Zo’ra go, they like to drag a few K’lax along with them to keep up the shrines, recite the sacred incantations, and remind the Zo’ra that they are a conquering race.

Stereotypically, they are the most sensitive and mystical of all the Vaurca, their minds wrapped up in solemn and esoteric contemplation of the Holy Mother Goddess in all Her Glory and Majesty. The work of sanctity, however, only occupies a small part of their number (even if it occupies a much larger proportion of them than it would in another hive.) The rest must toil and scrabble like everyone else, and in fact are more likely to be angry young punks. Many of them are thinking about how this might be the time for red-clawed revenge.

In fact, K'lax has made an excellent deal for itself. The Hive as a whole has recently struck a deal with the young Hegemon of the Unathi, and one of their broods is now quartering itself on one of their planets. While neither side really trusts the other, it's given the K'lax valuable breathing-room and an opportunity to get back on their feet.

The K'lax Hiveship also launched from Phi Auricae, and landed in Skrell space. K'lax actually has three Broods, but because one of them is the parent of the other two, it's possible for Unbound to Descend out of one and Ascend into the others - provided they make a stop-over in the parent Cephalon first. Because of this, they do not name themselves after their brood.

Lii'dra

Lii'dra - "The Patient Revenge."

Although small, Hive Lii'dra matches Zo'ra military might with cunning and tact in Vaurca space. Based on information gathered from Vaurca in human space, the Lii'dra and Zo'ra were engaged in a devastating war that seems to have followed the Zo'ra to known space. The Vaurcae present are currently unwilling to divulge the reasons for this war, but it's become apparent that reconciliation between the two hives may be completely impossible. The Lii'dra were encountered after their own Hive-ship Klo'xzai arrived in the Sol Alliance system of Lalande. Original contact became open hostility almost immediately as the Hive-ship's automated defenses opened fire on investigating Alliance patrol ships, sparking a brief skirmish that claimed the lives of 12 Alliance servicemen. Since then the Klo'xzai moved into deep space, and similar to Vox and Unathi raiders the Lii'dra in known space operate as feared buccaneers.

The Zo'ra estimate that the Lii'dra have a Consensus-system similar to theirs, but nothing is certain.

History [WIP]

• The Vaurca evolve on Sedantis IVc and become sentient life-forms.
• They develop a sophisticated agricultural, industrial, and post-industrial civilization with multiple competing nation-states. This is called the Antediscidic Period.
• The Great Unbinding; Vaurca start creating Bounds and moving into the Virtual. This is the beginning of the Sedantene period.
• Because the Vaurca hadn’t yet shed their nationalist, hive-ist mindset, they continue to compete with each other in warfare and industrial construction.
• Because they no longer live in the world, they begin converting it to massive kois-fields and weapons foundries to better populate and arm their Bound armies.
• Ecological collapse forces the evacuation of Sedantis IVc. Some Vaurca move to elsewhere in the solar system; others go out further to find actual planets. This is the end of the Sedantene period.
• Because there is still evil within them, they gradually corrode and destroy wherever they live, forcing them to keep migrating forever.
• One cluster of Zo'ra and K'lax Hive-ships headed towards Delta Perseus to settle there; it sent out hive ships which sent out hive ships which sent out hive ships to Phi Auricae, which finally sent them to Tau Ceti.

Original History (read with caution)

Early Nomadism

The earliest records of Vaurca civilization gained from limited access to Zo'ra records range from some time starting between 500,000 and 550,000 years ago. Due to the hostile climate of their homeworld caused by the thin ozone allowing radiation to blast the planet daily, many Vaurca were forced to live nomadic lives inside the vast underground cave networks to gain access to edible fungus.

Almost all conflict originated around control of food. Warfare was a matter of survival after a hive exhausted its food supply. Warrior castes became the most dominant caste within Vaurca society and nearly all hives were in constant conflict with one another. Due to the innate deadliness of Vaurca mandibles and claws warfare was fought in melee. Prisoners of war tended to be decapitated by the mandibles of the victor while the surviving hive was enslaved. The mindset appears to be an unwillingness to spare extremely limited resources with enemy warriors.

The Agricultural Revolution

Approximately 60,000 years ago agricultural methods that allowed hives to cultivate fungus had proliferated throughout the planet. No longer a resource that could be easily exhausted, many hives found an abundance of food to be a boon. The population exploded as the hives continued to operate as they always had. Unfortunately fertile territory (in the context of cave fungus) was uncommon and conflict still broke out between hives.

Other avenues of change proliferated through the Vaurca hives, as well as an explosion of art. For understandable reasons living in caves constantly grew tiresome for many unbound Vaurca and they began to experiment with ways to spruce up the place. With an abundance of food Vaurca were able to spare manpower to begin ambitious feats of masonry and architecture. According to secondary sources the Vaurca Homeworld eventually developed elaborate and massive feats of subterranean engineering, with aqueducts, sewage, and entire cities being carved out of the rock. The walls and floors of the cave were smoothed out and covered in engravings, creating a form of art that wouldn't be blasted away by radiation. Thousands of years of trial and error with countless incidents of cave-ins in the early years have allowed the Vaurca to become masters of masonry and architecture.

Along with traditional warfare, queens of many hives had begun an arms race of architecture to show up one another. Massive engineering projects would be undertaken for the glory of the queen of the hive, such as a huge subterranean temple, the rerouting of an entire underground river, or a subterranean road being carved out to connect dozens of spread out subterranean cities all being commissioned. Queens at the time had also begun to develop a cult of personality around themselves, with the queens that managed to succeed becoming the most powerful and influential on the planet. Information on this is difficult to gather due to obvious bias or mixing of legends and facts within Vaurca records. However xenoarchaeologists are in agreement that Vaurca queens managed to retain a vital position in Vaurca society by inflating their status as mothers to a spiritual level. As the only ones in Vaurca society that could give birth to new generations, they had become mystical gardens of life and fertility in an otherwise dead and barren world.

The Era of Augments

The development of Vaurca continued down paths similar to the development of other space-faring species. The major split from the norm occurred around 2,000BCE Galactic Standard Time. The Vaurca had managed to achieve a technological level similar to Earth in the late 20th century. However the Zo'ra, who had emerged during this time, had a breakthrough in augmentation technology. Zo'ra began augmenting its drones with simple cybernetic enhancements. Worker drones would have their limbs replaced with more sturdy prosthetics, and later advancements in genetics had even more Vaurca hives beginning to experiment with altering workers with genetic and cybernetic enhancements.

This technological advancement continued until the Vaurca achieved a version of technological singularity with the technology in 50 CE. The technology had become minaturized and advanced enough that Vaurca hives could cybernetically engineer any aspect of a Vaurca drone. By this time Vaurca drones had become Bound, creating the early forms of the Vaurca we see today. While Vaurca records make no mention of it, human and Skrell xenoarchaeologists theorize that Vaurca drones had incidents of rebellion or insurrection against the mass augmentation and prosthetics, which explains why today bound are all lobotomized, mindless drones.

By 100 CE the working caste of bound drones could work 24/7 stopping only to eat. Soldiers were augmented with all sorts of experiment weapons and abilities. However the augments and genetic alterations forced those altered into very specific castes. A worker raised and given augments for battle wasn't an effective mason or diplomat. While previously Vaurca society was stratified, the 'worker' Vaurca of old at least had a chance to enter into different fields. The modern Vaurca society saw a caste system where Vaurca were literally defined from birth and built into that role. This also created the modern definitions of bound and unbound: bound vaurca are members of the worker caste, literally bound to their role and station. The unbound are Vaurca above the working caste that would be allowed to seek their own destiny in society, forming a form of noble caste.

Eventually the Unbound, supported by a limitless supply of slave labor, began to form a more and more secluded society seperate from the working caste. Unbound scientists and artists eventually unlocked the technology behind virtual reality, and specialized it to create entire virtual worlds for themselves. Unbound with access to VR would lock themselves away for hours or even days at a time, sometimes leaving VR for only a few minutes at a time to let their bound workers feed them without having to even having to leave their seat.

Eventually the technology expanded to the point that Vaurca developed their 'Paradise' we see today.

The Great Evacuation

The proliferation of VR and bound labor created a lull in conflict on Sedantis I. Farming techniques had become advanced enough that the populations could be reasonably fed, and all other desires were being filled in virtual worlds. By all accounts it would have been completely possible that the Vaurca never left their homeworld due to the development of VR. However a combination of push factors forced the great Vaurca hives to embark on extensive plans to expand into space.

The extremely thin ozone layer of Sedantis I had begun to be measured since the start of their modern era in the early CE era. By 150 CE the Vaurca's version of a scientific body between hives had conclusive evidence to show that the ozone would be completely stripped off the planet within another 200 years. While the planet had been bombarded with radiation, life had still managed to etch out a living, but when the ozone layer was completely gone all life on the planet would be killed by the excessive amounts of radiation, rendering it a barren, lifeless rock.

Hives took different approaches to the impending apocalypse. Many hives felt they could simply increase the depths of their subterranean cities to avoid the increase of radiation, and that the subterranean eco-systems would continue to thrive beneath the surface, while other hives began to try to look past the taboo of the deadly sky and consider expanding their hives into space.

Hives devoted massive amounts of bound labor to both projects. For the next 50 years some Vaurca hives constructed the massive hive-ships we see today. In another display of the sheer ingenuity of Vaurca engineering and architecture they had managed, after very heavy losses in early failures, to create and utilize an orbital industry to work on the hive-ships. These ships are also called ark-ships, and were used to transport thousands of Vaurca to other star systems. While fusion power was available to Vaurca at the time they did not yet possess warp or bluespace capabilities, meaning travel to other systems was extremely slow.

This reality meant that hive-ships had to be capable of supporting a population in deep space for hundreds or even thousands of years. They became battleships, colony ships, mobile incubators, carriers, refineries, and production facilities all in their own. They spread through space similar to the Vox, as nomadic wanderers occasionally settling on habitable worlds, but the pace of it was was incredibly slow due to the lack of bluespace technology.

Despite being years or even hundreds of years apart bound drones were still unquestionably loyal to their original queen, and followed directives given by her during their travels to the letter and without compromise. Lesser queens were brought on the hive-ships to help keep the population stable, and others left on habitable planets with a group of Unbound and Bound to settle on the few habitable planets they passed along the way, but the original High Queens of the hives on Sedantis remain legendary religious figures, with the lesser queens taking on a ceremonial role as mothers. Unbound present in the hive-ships were almost entirely connected to VR, which allowed them to function in their worlds, which may have been the only reason they managed to function as a society in deep space for so long.

The ultimate fate of Sedantis I is unknown to Vaurca encountered in human space in 2458, as contact is still impossible.

Contact with Humanity

None of the civilized species of the galaxy had any idea that the Vaurcae existed until an eventful day in November, 2456, when the drive plume and heat signature of a massive ship burning its engine in order to slow down for an approach was detected near the Romanovich cloud in Tau Ceti. While the galaxy was taken aback by this information, the Republic of Biesel acted immediately. A small scout vessel was dispatched to the ship, which was revealed to be a 30 kilometer (18.23 mile) vessel, mostly engine and radiator. Dubbed 'Titan Prime' by the media, Tau Ceti and news places over the known galaxy were bubbling with excitement as the object approached its apparent destination: Biesel.

After a few weeks, the object passed the Romanovich cloud and dispatched over twenty drones to key locations in Tau Ceti. Some of these locations included the NMSS Odin, the NSS Von Braun, NSS Arcadia, NSS Aurora, NSS Exodus, and NMV Retaliation, and one to each planet. Although all drones dispatched to the location turned back immediately, one did not. The one that was headed for the NSS Aurora stayed, and in fact, contacted the station through use of the station's own intercommunication system; displaying a single, unintelligible message. After a period of three hours, the crew were dispatched to the probe and entered, finding a hollow vessel. In the middle was a single alien computer, and in a corner of a room were Vaurca eggs, presumably for use in early colonization.

Research crew of the NSS Aurora, including Dr. Phoebe Essel and team were able to interact with the computer, painstakingly finding ways to translate the cryptic language it was attempting to speak in, and after usage of a pAI, were able to teach the machine Tau Ceti Basic. After some conversation, the computer detached itself and was brought aboard the NSS Aurora for first contact. It had been sent in order to document the indigenous species of the solar system. The computer tapped into the bluespace connection of the Artificial Intelligence of the station, uploaded core data files onto its hardware, and then departed, causing a minor panic on the station as the security forced feared an intelligence leak.

First radio contact was established with Tau Ceti President Joseph Dorn and Titan Prime, which was filled with Zo'ra. It was learned that the vessel was sent approximately 2 thousand years ago and had only now entered human space to find habitable planets to colonize. It was also learned that Titan Prime housed six million Vuarca on it, a staggering number.

Titan Prime eventually reached Biesel, settling into a stable orbit around the planet. Observation showed that the ship was worse for wear after traveling for 2,000 years, launched from Sedantis in 400 CE. Many of its systems were failing or had already failed. The life support was barely working and the hull had lost most of its integrity. After heavy negotiation with the Tau Ceti government it was agreed that in exchange for being allowed to settle on Biesel the Vaurca would agree to 'pay rent' in the form of providing Nanotrasen and the Tau Ceti government with a quota of their bound and unbound for Nanotrasen's workforce. Due to the complexity (and pointlessness) of paying bound Vaurca they would instead earn 'credit' towards their continued stay on Biesel to pay back the cost of housing them.

Settling in Tau Ceti

Ferries, re-purposed cargo ships, and civilian shuttles evacuated 2 million inhabitants of Titan Prime, ferrying them mostly to New Gibson and Biesel, respectively. Evacuations are still undergoing, and most Vaurca live in refugee camps or state-provided housing in special sections of the two planets. The Interstellar Aid Corps has performed most of the work evacuating and housing Vaurca, and they are critical of the government's treatment of them.

Today, roughly 2.5 million Bound and Unbound Vaurca live in refugee camps or slums in New Gibson, and 4 million live in similar areas on Biesel. After NanoTrasen's forced eviction of the majority of Vaurca living on the Titan Prime in June of 2458, the slums of Biesel experienced an influx of almost half a million additional Vaurca. Officials are extremely worried about the cost of continued evacuation of Titan Prime, and integration of Vaurca into the system is confounded by the growing hostility towards them, inflamed by the recent discovery of even further Vaurca hive-ships entering known space. Many fear that the Vaurca are attempting a cultural invasion and will grow to become more powerful than the human governments housing them.

This fear has lead to Tau Ceti and the Sol Alliance working to actively suppress attempts by Vaurca to construct FTL capable communications or ships to contact their homeworld and potentially spread the information to more Vaurca hives in their home systems. While the Zo'ra of Titan Prime managed to leak secrets of these technologies from the Aurora, they remain unable to build FTL communication that's capable of interacting with the STL communications presumed to still be in use in Vaurca home systems. As well, many Vaurca are unsure of the ultimate fate of their homeworld, as their two thousand year travel has had them pass the time predicted to have brought the ultimate death of Sedantis...