BY LETTER
Restored Ambi Limis
Minor polity, successor to the Ambi Limis | |
 Image from Extherian | |
| The black diamond, symbol of the Restored Ambi Limis, represents human ignorance, yet reflects posthuman wisdom. | |
The Restored Ambi Limis | |
| Founded | 7971 A.T. |
|---|---|
| Distance | 4127 - 4139 light years from Sol |
| Territory | 8 M-type stars, 2 M-type binary star pairs and 3 K-type binary star pairs spread across 12 light years |
| Modosophonts | 216 billion Superior: 36% |
| Transapients | 5760 Athenaeids: 25% |
Introduction
Before the rise of the Archai in the Age of Establishment, many empires arose across the Inner Sphere and Middle regions that were ruled by modosophonts and low transapients. They were uncompetitive in the long run with Archai-lead empires for many reasons, such as communication delays, ideological conflicts, resource exhaustion and other difficulties that eventually lead to their collapse and absorption into the Sephirotics. The Conver Limis was a typical example, as their cultural and economic systems proved to be unsustainable, leading to a civil war that fractured their empire and left only their remote colonies intact in the form of the Ambi Limis.Inevitably, even the Ambi Limis began to decline as its member systems voluntarily joined the Solar Dominion over time. It had no distinct philosophy or lifestyle to distinguish it in its own right, and no particular reason for being outside a Sephirotic empire, and so resistance to this process was minimal. For the old Limis houses, it was a different matter, as many of them were bitter at the failure of both the original Conver Ambi and its Ambi Limis successor to establish a human-controlled empire in the middle regions. These sentiments would prove to be a powerful tool for manipulation by transapient entities operating in this region.
The Athena Limis, an Athenaeid-ruled Great House that once formed part of the Conver Limis, announced their plan to colonise the Perseus Rift in the early 4200s and quickly secured the backing of the other Great Houses. They claimed that they would assist the members of other Houses in ascending to the first toposophic, and would lay the foundations for a 'Restored Ambi Limis' of transapient humans without Archailect control. Many citizens of the Ambi Limis doubted this project could succeed, and did not expect to hear from them again. But many millennia later, their colony was found thriving in the Perseus Rift, despite the odds.
Early History
Towards the end of the Integration period, the Ambi Limis had become increasingly dependent on the Solar Dominion. The scattered colonies had no wormhole network of their own, and gratefully accepted linelayers that not only connected them with their neighbours, but to the greater Sephirotics, whose philosophies and cultures seemed far more sophisticated than their own. New religious movements sprang up to replace the defunct Culverist faith, such as Universalism, Jobitarianism, Zarathustrism, and many others. By far the most popular was the Solarist faith, which seemed to offer the answers they had always sought from Culverism.Most of the infrastructure within each system was still controlled by the old cyborg-lead Great Houses, who still held great influence over the living conditions of their subjects. But their ontologies no longer compelled the loyalty and devotion that they once had, and new automated systems that did not require their approval were imported from the Nexus, undermining their power. Most Houses disbanded, while others still hung on where they could, struggling to find a niche in a universe that no longer needed them. It seemed that the age of the Archai was upon them, and it could not be stopped.
It was perhaps not surprising that the Athena Limis, a branch of House Athenaeid who had supported the Conver Limis, found such a willing audience when they announced that the time had come for a Restored Ambi Limis, free of Sephirotic influence. Their analysis was that their predecessors had emphasised external growth in a way that brought them into conflict with the Archai, rather than spiritual growth and toposophic advancement. By applying Solarist principles to a Universalist spiritual system, they believed that a new society of posthumans could surpass the original Conver Ambi.
Their motives for founding this new polity remain obscure, and indeed some historians have suggested that the Athena Limis themselves may have been manipulated by some higher power, perhaps to encourage the old Limis leadership to emigrate and remove themselves as a political factor. Others have pointed out that these superbright cyborgs could not pose a threat to whatever plans the Solar Dominion had for the Ambi Limis, and the Athenaeids were most likely acting of their own volition. Whatever the reason may be, they quickly gained the support they were looking for.
As the Integration period came to an end, the various houses liquidated their assets and uploaded themselves and their followers into the Athena Limis colony ships, which were travelling from system to system gathering the colonists. These vessels were conversion-drive ramjets equipped with gamma ray mirrors, and capable of long range travel without refueling. The Version War began just as they reached the edge of the nexus, where they used boostbeams to launch themselves, before accelerating to 84% of light speed. They would not be heard from again for thousands of years.
Founding Period
(7971 - 8471 AT)By 7971 AT, the colony ships had arrived at a cluster of dim stars in the Perseus Rift, which was chosen as their new home. While lacking in energy resources, it was rich in heavy elements and planets, more than enough to support their long-term needs. The K-type stars were colonised first, with terraforming efforts and habitat construction serving as the main focus for the first few centuries. The Athena Limis discussed amongst themselves how best to handle a potentially large increase in the transapient population and began work on the governance, social standards and infrastructure needed to manage this scenario.
At the end of this period, the first modosophont colonists were being engenerated on those worlds that were ready for habitation. Most of them started as Superiors or Synthetics, following different paths to augmentation and ascension. Despite extensive bioborg enhancement with compubones and implants, no Superiors were able to successfully ascend, while successful ascensions did occur among Synthetics, resulting in the first Apollonians. However, many of these beings no longer closely identified with Limis ideology and began adopting nonhumanoid forms that were unacceptable to the founders.
Fortunately, these renegade transapients had no particular desire for conflict, and an agreement was reached for them to peacefully leave without completing in the same zone of influence as the Limis. Most of them seem to have travelled to Metasoft territory, although a sizable minority remained within the Rift and joined up with Sweetlight, an anti-Metasoft movement. However, the implications were clear: even a controlled ascension was far from guaranteed to produce beings that were aligned with the founder's vision of their ideal transapient society, an unacceptable risk.
New methods were clearly needed, and the few Apollonians that stayed worked with the Athenaeids to develop crude ascension compensation mods to ensure the loyalty of future transapients. These were tested on Superiors who had converted to Economicus cyborgs, with the result of a much lower rate of success but a much higher likelihood of adhering to Limis goals and ideals. The ascended Economicus referred to themselves as Colossians, and showed a curious tendency for merging their bodies with their supporting infrastructure that the Apollonians did not.
In fact this tendency was an early warning sign of the potential for blights to emerge from such methods, which was not understood at the time. Without this knowledge, new transapients continued to emerge, some of which had subtly differing interpretations of the Limis founding philosophy. These differences were handled peacefully at first, with their modosophont followers founding new schools of thought to interpret the mysterious teachings of their leaders, and each system that the Limis colonised became a hotbed of experimentation and cooperation.
Growth Period
(8471 - 8971 AT)The population of the new polity was distributed along environmental lines, with Synthetics inhabiting worlds which could not be fully terraformed, human cyborgs and superiors living on those worlds that could, and Highbrow tweaks occupying the orbital rings and habitats. Superiors often chose to become Economicus to enjoy the performance benefits of solid-state processors, while Highbrows preferred to convert to Cyborn bodies that allowed them to grow their biological brains to even greater sizes. Each of these cultures pursued their own paths to transcendence, though not without setbacks.
Although the posthuman population was gradually increasing over time, the majority of sophonts never proved suitable as ascension candidates, and of those few who were chosen, most ended up stuck in a transavant state or had to be terminated and restored from backup. With little hope of ascending themselves, the ordinary superbrights spent their time exploring the arts, spirituality and philosophy from the limited perspective available to them, and with the approval of their transapient rulers, new political systems were instituted to manage the societies they created.
Tribeminds and hiveminds would prove to be a particularly popular method of governance, and in 8676 this lead to the Highbrow community discovering the so-called 'fugue' state (a transavant trance that Highbrows can experience) independently of Janasa Bree's discovery nearly two thousand years earlier. With transapient guidance, the first ascensions of Highbrow hiveminds occurred within the century, who referred to themselves as Synigoros. Compared to their transapient peers, the Synigoros were much slower thinkers but had the advantage of greater external I/O thanks to being distributed across many bodies.
Synigoros ascension techniques proved difficult to adapt to Superior hiveminds, who were unable to develop the required transavant abilities. Instead, a looser form of tribemind incorporating Synthetics proved more suitable for the greater number of bodies required. The Synthetics were able to benefit from the addition of specialised software and hardware that was incompatible with biont brains, and were able to outsource supplemental processing requirements to their Superior peers, resulting in a loose S1-equivalent tribemind known as an Aosdána.
Stable Period
(8971 - 9471 AT)By this stage, the total transapient population numbered in the thousands, and had begun to form distinct subcultures according to their particular psychological quirks and interests. Unlike ascended beings elsewhere in the Terragen Sphere, Limis transapients seemed to adhere strictly to particular cultural patterns, rather than drifting from one random interest to the next. These trends would be disrupted by the emergence of the Hydreans, a new postbiont clade derived from the Cyborn, who embraced continuous change in physical form, compared to the static bodies of other Limis.
These transapient societies attracted great interest from the modosophont population, who began to revere their rulers and attempted to mimic some of their strange behaviours, perhaps hoping to gain insight into the secrets of ascension. In turn, their postbiont rulers formed new Great Houses to guide them, with especially capable transavants accepted as their servants and students. These Houses often intervened in the lives of ordinary sophonts, subtly guiding their evolution in the direction that best suited the long-term goals of the Limis leadership.
At this stage, the large number of S1 actors and their competing influence make discerning the cause of the coming conflict difficult to determine. Interviews with those who returned to the Sephirotics after the civil war have only been partly translated, and not always in modosophont-friendly language. The current consensus is that this close relationship between transapients and modosophonts triggered some latent psychological flaw in some of the Colossian-led houses, who began integrating their subjects into their mental infrastructure.
This tendency did not go unnoticed by the rest of the polity, but due to communication delays caused by light-speed barriers, they were unable to reach a consensus as to whether this assimilationist tendency was morally appropriate or not. Some Limis appeared to favour a rapid increase in new transapients and supported assimilation of the modosophont population as a way to achieve this, while others preferred a slower and more diverse growth of embodied transapients. Meanwhile, the perversity that had been biding its time prepared to strike.
Crisis Period
(9471 - 9971 AT)Reports from this period are fragmentary and contradictory. The struggle was not carried out openly by military means until the end of the conflict, with hacking, sabotage and surgical strikes on infrastructure being the preferred means of war. What is known is that the pro-assimilationist Colossian Houses began rapidly consuming not only their modosophont subjects but those of the other Houses, in violation of existing agreements. The Athenaeid clans chose this moment to strike, somehow weaponising the infrastructure of the rebels against them and destroying them within a few decades.
It appears that they had been developing methods to undermine other transapients as they emerged, without their knowledge. The Colossian population, which had been divided between assimilationist rebels and Limis loyalists, was reduced considerably. Further ascensions were brought to a halt as the victors began analysing what had gone wrong and why. Many transapients apparently regarded the Athenaeid's secret plans in a negative light, and left their former territories travel back to the Sephirotics, where they would provide valuable first-hand information on this reclusive polity.
For the subjects of the Great Houses, life seemed to go on as normal. It appears that in some cases, mass mind rewrites were carried to eliminate any possibility of disruption to societal stability, while in others, propaganda was used to assure the public that the conflict was merely part of some military ritual whose significance was beyond modosophont comprehension. In reality the situation was far from over, and by the end of the millenium a meeting of all the House leaders was held in the Khan system to determine what they could learn from this near-disaster, carried out by scion proxies for safety.
Unknown to them, however, their civil war had caught the attention of the mysterious entity known as Shinogi, who had been making appearances all over the Perseus Rift over the past thousand years. They appeared without warning in the Damascus-of-the-Rift system, unharmed by the transapientech security systems in place, where they discussed the principles of Solarist Universalism with the modosophonts they encountered, who assumed this was just another test from their leaders to enlighten them. The ruling transapients did not learn of the intrusion until Shinogi had moved on to other systems.
Recovery Period
(9971 - 10382 AT)Gradually news spread about the presence of this mysterious invader, and when Shinogi arrived in the Khan system, the scions there believed they were faced with a being more toposophically advanced than they were. As it turns out, Shinogi was only an S1 itself, but with useful spikes into the S2 range in many areas, and their extraordinary abilities were the product of godtech in their possession. Despite this, their transavant abilities would provide valuable insight into the challenges that the Limis were facing, in particular when it came to restoring the loss of trust between the Colossians and the other clades.
Shinogi's advice would prove especially valuable when it came to revising their ascension compensation mods, as well as their ascension techniques in general. The toposophic states that had resulted in the Colossian perversity were identified and methods were successfully devised to mitigate the dangers. However, it was now apparent that the dream of an entire polity of ascended humans was no longer realistic. Shinogi's offer of membership in the coming Great Archailect's empire was politely declined, and the scions returned to their home systems to merge with their originals.
Given its isolation, relatively little is known about Limis history beyond this period, but some concerning developments have taken place since then in the form of an extensive military build-up. Brown dwarfs and rogue planets within Limis territory have been partially disassembled and converted into fleets of autowars, along with the construction of conversion weapons, early-warning systems and dyson swarms configured for use as lasers around some of their stars. Such behaviour is especially unusual given that none of the stars near their territory are inhabited.
Society and Culture
Citizens of the Restored Ambi Limis do not enjoy the political and personal freedoms that those of the Sephirotics take for granted. Their transapient ruling class directly intervenes in their daily lives, restricts them from changing their birth clades without prior approval, and chooses the long-term goals that they live towards. Despite this, most citizens are content with their way of life and have been assimilated into the worldview of their leaders, with very few questioning the status quo. Superbright and Superturing modifications are universal, a necessity for their cognitively demanding lifestyles.Most planets in the Restored Ambi Limis have only limited suitability for terraforming, and despite their best efforts, the majority of worlds still require sealed habitats and environmental suits for biont settlers. There is an abundance of tidally locked Vesperian worlds, as well as Tundrals with only limited habitable surface area. Consequently, surface populations tend to be restricted to densely populated urban areas in the few temperate areas of these planets. As elsewhere in the Terragen Sphere, the population of the orbital habitats is comparable to or even greater than that of the terraformed worlds.
Regardless of environmental conditions, each subpolity is set up to challenge the mental abilities of its citizens, which may include anything from automated monasteries where Solarist-Universalist theology is analysed in depth to fast-paced economies like those of the NoCoZo. Some regions have restrictions on what kinds of technology are allowed, or only permit the existence of tribeminds and hiveminds, with no individuals allowed. Travel to other worlds or systems is possible with transapient approval, and such exchanges take place on a regular basis to promote social cohesion and prevent stagnation.
The high rate of ascension attempts has resulted in large numbers of transavant beings in Limis society, as many as one in a thousand citizens are believed to have transanvant spikes. In some areas they are looked up to as spiritual leaders and have a privileged place as attendants to their S1:1 rulers, while in others they tend to form their own separate subcultures where they attempt to discern where their ascension attempts went wrong, and what they can learn from the partial transapience they did achieve. The ascension-compensation mods used by the Limis owes much to their diligent efforts.
All ascensions in the Restored Ambi Limis are strictly controlled to produce transapients that adhere to the ideology of its Athenaeid founders. The details of this ideology appear to be beyond modosophont comprehension, but they seem to involve a cult-like devotion to the physical limitations of a humanoid body, and incorporates a range of traditions and rituals based around the psychological effects of being limited to a specific body or set of bodies. These ceremonies often involve modosophont participants, and appear to be of great importance to the Limis, though their true significance remains a mystery.
Ultimately very little is known about these mysterious beings, as those who have left for the Sephirotics have shown no interest in explaining themselves to curious modosophonts. Much of their cultural norms appear designed to manage and reduce conflict between the large transapient population, a task made easier by their ideological conformity and access to potent psychoware for limiting psychological drift. In many ways, these posthumans are no more free to choose their own path in life than the modosophonts over which they rule, as they have willingly shackled themselves to a common cause.
This lack of freedom to self-actualise as they please has been the main driving force for transapients to leave the Restored Ambi Limis for the civilised galaxy, as they occupy a specific region of the toposophic landscape that they are not permitted to deviate from as long as they remain part of the polity. They do have the freedom to leave without the approval of their peers, and this has helped prevent the Limis from splintering from internal conflicts. In recent times, the number of transapients leaving has decreased significantly, possibly due to Shinogi's influence having helped stabilise this polity.
All this activity is ultimately inspired by the prevailing religion of Solarist-Universalism, a heretical variant of Solarism that denies the need for the God-Emperor and his hierarchy to guide lesser sophonts. Each individual being is instead considered to require only the inner light of their own soul to inspire them, and the guidance of only their peers and equals. Of course, those who successfully ascend under this system are anything but equal to those who do not, but the illusion is maintained through capable transapient social engineering. Leaving the polity is permitted, but none who do may ever return.
Governance is mostly carried out by Great Houses and their representatives, which in practice acts as a means for the Limis to integrate their most capable modosophont subjects into their occult rituals. There have been reports of the posthuman classes consuming one another's bodies, combining their backups together to form new beings, or becoming dormant while they allow other posthumans to use their brains as processors for unclear purposes. Modosophonts usually witness these events without being subject to them, and the violation of this taboo by the perversity almost lead to civil war.
Perhaps the most baffling aspect of Limis ideology to outsiders is the anthropist emphasis on the ideal of the human body. Both transapients and modosophonts are limited to clades that at least partly resemble humanoid forms, even though this imposes difficult limitations on cooling, power consumption and I/O bandwidth. Some observers think that this may be down to Athenaeid influence, since they are believed to have some kind of in-built instinct towards maintaining a humanoid body, but Athenaeids elsewhere do not shy away from exploring other forms, leaving much to be explained.
Modosophont Clades
Superiors
Though they are not a majority, Homo Superiors are the most populous clade in the Restored Ambi Limis, occupying a similar niche as lesser Nearbaselines would occupy in mainstream societies. Those who do not yet feel ready to ascend usually remain as Superiors while they continue to hone their minds and improve their understanding of Solarist-Universalist principles. When the time comes, those who feel ready usually convert to Homo Economicus, or begin training to join their Synthetic peers as part of an Aosdána tribemind, though the latter is only rarely successful.The original worlds terraformed by the Athenaeids in the Khan binary system are still mostly populated by Superiors, who have a special relationship with the children of the Athenaeids. Such children are very rare and mature quickly into transapients, so the chance to serve one and become part of their education is considered among the highest of honours. Some Superiors will convert to become Synthetics and try to ascend to become Apollonian, specifically to participate in the rituals of servitude with Athenaeids they were particularly close with.
Homo Economicus
The classic Economicus upgrade package has been modified for use by Limis citizens with transapient-grade synano, allowing for limited shapeshifting capabilities and rapid physical augmentation. Those who wish to become Colossians will convert their entire skeletons to compubone, in addition to their nervous system, and greatly increase their physical height to allow for more room for processing units. Extensive new external organs for cooling, power delivery and I/O are usually added as well. Despite all this, only a minority of Economicus ever successfully become Colossians.Those who are unable to ascend are generally put in charge of the pseudo-capitalist market economies used throughout the Limis, managing teams of Synthetics to provide goods and services for the Superior and Highbrow clades, who provide specialised forms of value of their own in return. The most dedicated of these Economicus are so committed to their jobs that they merge with their infrastructure to achieve the highest possible productivity, a psychological tendency that is exaggerated to extreme levels by the ascension-compensation mods used in the process.
Highbrows
Because of their combination of low gravity tolerance with a need for high atmospheric pressure, no worlds could be terraformed for Highbrows. Instead, they occupy the orbital habitats and rings found around Superior worlds, forming less individualistic societies with heavy integration of hiveminds into daily life. Harnessing the fugue state remains the preferred choice of Highbrow communities beginning their ascension journey, and though their cognition is slower than that of other Limis postbionts, they apparently bring a uniquely different mindspace to transapient society.Some Highbrows rejected this collectivist approach to ascension and tried to use the Economicus mod as the Superiors had done before them, but this proved to be unsuitable for their top-heavy bodies, as their brains became too heavy to support when converted to a dense computronium mass. A more successful approach was to convert themselves into Cyborn brainboxes, allowing for endless scaling of their brain size while still allowing for a roughly humanoid form. This also allowed them to colonise worlds that would otherwise have been unsuitable for them.
Synthetics
Compared to their communities elsewhere in the Terragen Sphere, the Synthetics of the Limis are far less likely to act as servants to humans, instead preferring to serve one another. They form complex societies on those worlds that are unsuitable for terraforming, of which there are many throughout Limis territory. A minority choose to act as support for Superiors in their quests for self-development, eventually joining them to try and become Aosdána, while most aspire to become Apollonians through building intricate webs of interdependence with one another, requiring ever more augmentation to comprehend.Surprisingly, it seems that many of the ascension-compensation instincts that Athenaeids are born with work well with Synthetics, more so than any other modosophont clade, and more of them successfully ascend to become transapients than their biont or cyborg counterparts. Promising candidates are often adopted by Athenaeid families, who may integrate them into their clan if the ascension is successful. Those who are not will often seek guidance and inspiration from Colossians instead, incorporating photonic I/O in their skin and shapeshifting abilities in the hopes of following in their footsteps.
Cyborn
The first Cyborn in the Limis were derived from Highbrows who did not wish to merge their minds with their peers to ascend, but in modern times they now use custom biological brains with no relation to existing clades. DNA-based bioprocessors are their preferred substrate, often incorporated into cellular structures to modulate the chemical reactions, with photonic impulses used to manipulate individual strings of molecules. They are among the most intellectually capable of all modosophont clades in the Limis, at the cost of a very slow serial processing speed, mitigated by external computronium.They are often found in locations where no other clade can thrive, such as on the outside of Highbrow habitats, frozen wastes on Superior worlds, or superheated planets too close to their stars for biont colonisation. Unlike Cyborn elsewhere, they are not loners and do form communities of their own, but compared to other Limis modosophonts, they are more likely to undertake lengthy periods of reflection by themselves, seeking deeper insight into the teachings of their transapient masters. Their methods proved surprisingly fruitful, and gave rise to the Hydreans.
Transapient Clades
Athenaeid | |
 Image from Steve Bowers | |
| Unlike elsewhere in the Terragen Sphere, where they are largely outclassed by high transapients, Athenaeids play a leading role in the governance of the Restored Ambi Limis. | |
The founders of the Restored Ambi Limis, the Athenaeid clans have maintained influence over newly ascended transapients through carefully managing the ascension process and the use of backdoors in critical infrastructure that only the Athenaeids could control. This proved vital in mitigating the damage caused by the assimilationist crisis of the tenth millennium, but damaged their relationships with their posthuman peers. It would take Shinogi's intervention and diplomacy to restore the balance of power and rebuild the system of governance on fairer and more equitable lines.
Most Athenaeid families maintain servants as part of their Limis cultural rituals, which may be anyone from modosophont subjects to other transapients. In particular, many Apollonians choose to voluntarily serve Athenaeid clans for whatever mysterious reasons they have. Some outsiders have suggested that it forms a kind of game, where the Athenaeids strive to provide interesting work for the Apollonians, who aim to curry favour with their Athenaeid "masters" in return, but the real nature of this elaborate power-play will likely never be fully understood.
Athenaeids remain the most numerous of all the native postbionts since they can reproduce sexually, and so the Restored Ambi Limis represents the largest population of Athenaeids outside the Sephirotics. However, it appears that some Athenaeid families are not groups of individuals but hiveminds spanning the bodies of all family members. Some clans have assimilated their Apollonian companions as well, raising the question of exactly how many of them are distinct sophonts rather than components of a greater collective, and why they live this way.
Apollonians | |
 Image from Chris Shaeffer | |
| Their minds run on 55 kg of transapient-grade computronium. To accomodate this extra mass, their bodies are around twice the size of those of Athenaeids. | |
The first successful ascensions in the Restored Ambi Limis were by heavily augmented Synthetic humans, who had rebuilt their bodies to be greater in size in order to incorporate enough processing power to support a transapient mind. A typical Apollonian is around three metres tall, with a bulkier physique than is typical for Athenaeids, whom they resemble in most other aspects. Around 55 kg of S1 computronium is located in the chest, with most of the rest of the body's internal space used for cooling and power storage. The surface of their body is used for optical I/O surpassing that of an Athenaeid's DNI.
Apollonians can adjust the speed at which they can process information to rates that are thousands of times faster than what an Athenaeid can manage, and so they often choose to serve Athenaeids by allowing them to offload mass data processing tasks to the Apollonian's mind. Why they do this is unclear but may be related to certain aspects of Synthetic psychology that survived through the ascension process, particularly their tendency to find fulfillment through serving others. But this relationship is more equal than it seems and should not be mistaken for master and slave.
A minority of Apollonians have copied the archetypical bodies of other Limis clades, such as the fused forms of the Colossians or the mythology-inspired bodies of the Hydreans. Others seem to have merged with the Athenaeid families they serve into hiveminds, though their reasons for doing this are uncertain. Some have even embraced limited shapeshifting capabilities through the use of fluid bodies composed of nanobots, though they restrict their bodily changes to exaggerated versions of the human form in accordance with their anthropist-derived ideology.
Colossians | |
 Image from Keith Wigdor and Midjourney Ai | |
| More divergent in form than any other Limis transapient, Colossians often merge their biological bodies with their surrounding infrastructure. | |
Though descended from Homo Economicus, the Colossians differ radically in their appearance, as they showed a predilection for fusing with the infrastructure around them. They are more varied in physical form than any other Limis transapients, and use this to their advantage to achieve high communications bandwidth due to the increased surface area of their bodies. A Colossian may appear as a human figure combined with a wheeled vehicle, its shiny metallic flesh covering the machine's entire surface, or as a face melted into a wall of server nodes, or any number of other forms that suit their needs.
The Colossian archetype would prove to be the vector for a subtle form of perversity, as many extended their tendency for fusion to their modosophont subjects. Thanks to the purges enabled by the methods taught by Shinogi, these tendencies have been eliminated in newer Colossians, and the clade as a whole does not appear to have suffered any real loss of standing among their Limis peers. This may appear strange, but transapient motivations are inscrutable to lesser beings, and conflicts between them may be resolved in ways that seem surprising to modosophonts.
Even now, Colossians have a tendency to involve themselves far more intimately with the lives of their subjects than any other ascended Limis, to the point of intervening in the lives of individual sophonts. Following the reforms suggested by Shinogi, only transavants are permitted to integrate themselves with the Colossian's exoself, and fusing with their bodies is a rare privilege allowed only on a temporary basis. Compared to the other Limis, the Colossians are much more heterodox in their interpretation of Limis ideology.
Synigoros | |
 Image from Worldtree & Steve Bowers | |
| At first glance, they appear to be normal Highbrows, but internally they have been radically modified for high bandwidth communications. | |
This hivemind clade were the result of experiments by some of the Limis Great Houses in incorporating cyberdemocracy into their governing structure. They discovered a way to use the so-called 'fugue state' to trigger a chain of ascension among a sufficiently large hivemind of Highbrows, requiring a minimum of 450 individual bodies to succeed, though in practice many Synigoros exceed this number. Radical bioborg modifications and integration of other transapientech allow them to maintain the high bandwidth required to host an S1 mind without overly burdening each body.
Once formed, the collective is static and can neither accept new members nor do without existing ones, as the permanent fugue state is not entirely under the transapient's control and may be disrupted if its configuration is altered. Interactions between different hiveminds is usually carried out via DNI and the process is usually not accessible to modosophonts. They may allow transavant citizens to participate in special sessions designed to be comprehensible to their limited understanding of the S1 toposophic range, possibly as part of their research into ascension, or for esoteric reasons of their own.
Synigoros have served as administrators, parliaments, research institutions and boards of directors across the many different subpolities of the Limis. Their large number of bodies allows for direct interactions with thousands of constituents, customers, shareholders and end-users simultaneously, and they form the backbone of governance across many Limis worlds. Though they are not particularly known for their creativity, their extraordinary efficiency and work ethic acts as an inspiration for subsingularity Highbrows who strive to match their ideal, however short of it they may fall.
Aosdána
 Image from Steve Bowers | |
| An Aòsdana, an ascended tribe mind composed of Superiors and Synthetic humans. All members have adopted artificial colouring. | |
Though they may resemble the Synigoros at first glance, the Aosdána used a very different method of ascending, with a much weaker connection between each body and a greater variety of different mind types. Strictly speaking, they are a tribemind that still retain significant modosophont characteristics, but the overall mentality very much operates at the transapient level. The integration of Synthetic humans as part of the tribe was necessary in order for a Superior collective to ascend, as they act as centralised nodes for the large number of bodies involved, generally no fewer than 2,200 individuals.
Of these bodies, the majority are Superiors, while 1 in every 36 is a Synthetic who used the other 35 bodies as outsourced nodes for specialised cognitive functions. Compubones added to the body of each Superior increase their storage capacity and I/O bandwidth, but requiring fins, tails and other biomods to act as radiators for the additional heat generated. One unusual quirk of this system is that participants can be returned back to a modosophont state, and a new person can be added to the collective and assimilated into its mind. In many regions this is carried out via democratic elections.
Among the many roles they perform for modosophont society, the most important ones for the Aosdána are those of advisers and spiritual leaders. Though they can providing straightforward solutions to those who ask, their preferred methods of communication are artistic ones, including spontaneous outbursts of dancing, poetry, singing, or drawing, which are seen as preferable in some Limis polities. Their behaviour can seem disturbing or unpredictable to those who see them in action, to a much greater degree than other Limis posthumans, as they make no attempt at masking their true nature.
Hydreans | |
 Image from Steve Bowers and ArtbreederAI | |
| Aquatic forms are popular among the Hydreans, as it makes cooling their 220KG of brain tissue considerably easier. | |
Of all the Limis posthumans, the brain architecture used by the Hydreans is perhaps the closest to that of the Athenaeids, a DNA-based chemical system designed for massively parallel computation. It lacks the S2-designed diamondoid processors used to improve the efficiency of Athenaeid brains, and therefore requires a hundred times more volume to achieve the same amount of processing power. This gave rise to the distinctive bodytypes used by the Hydreans, bearing humanoid characteristics but more closely resembling monsters from the mythology of Old Earth, such as centaurs, mermaids and gorgons.
The centaur type, for example, is roughly about the size of a male African elephant, with most of its brain stored in its belly, with simplified digestive and excretory systems connected to ports on the outside of its body in a manner reminiscent of Homo Economicus. The rest of the body houses the circulatory and respiratory systems, as well as power storage and supplementary processors. Compared to the fictional creatures that inspired them, the Hydreans often have multiple extra limbs, eyes and other sensory organs which they used to communicate in rich transapient forms of language.
Unlike the other Limis transapients, Hydreans take a very distant approach to the societies over which they rule, and prefer to delegate where possible. Instead, they indulge in incomprehensible behaviours and rituals to a greater degree than any other ascended clade. Some have been known to remain totally still for decades at a time, plugged into public infrastructure to sustain their bodies, while others will kill and eat those who approach them without warning. Above all else, they seem to be the most committed to exploring transapient forms of spiritual knowledge.
The Restored Ambi Limis in the Current Era
Since their territory is located two hundred light years from the nearest wormhole, recent events in this remote polity have yet to reach the rest of the Terragen Sphere. As of 10382 A.T, the rate of emigration from the Restored Ambi Limis has come to a halt, with the final departures being a host of Synigoros who migrated to the Cyrus system. What little of their reports that have been translated into modo-friendly terms indicates that this polity is still in a state of change and upheaval. Though the rate of ascensions has slowed and the perversities defeated, many challenges still remain.Without any S2 entities to guide them, differences in ideology and outlook have begun to emerge among the Limis S1 population, and though they have been keen to accommodate one another, the time may yet come when their differences prove irreconcilable. Many modosophonts have tried to build their own independent polities and failed, and it remains to be seen whether or not a large society of low transapients will prove to be any more successful. At any rate, their greatest challenges have been overcome for now, and modosophont rights seem to be respected as in any other polity.
Their recent military buildup has puzzled observers, given the absence of any nearby neighbours for them to conquer, but recently a new theory has emerged that this may be a deliberate show of force to discourage colonists from the Blackbody Cluster from settling in the area. If this is indeed the case, it has been highly effective so far, as the news of heavily armed and potentially unstable transapients in the region has become widespread among immigrants to the rift, none of whom have come within a hundred light years of this polity. For now, the Limis are isolated, as is apparently their wish.
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Development Notes
Text by Extherian
Expanded from the original stub article by Anders Sandberg
Initially published on 20 May 2024.
Original stub article by Anders Sandberg created 10 September 2001
Expanded from the original stub article by Anders Sandberg
Initially published on 20 May 2024.
Original stub article by Anders Sandberg created 10 September 2001
