Within the Divine Fleet there were 8 divines and their ships. Each Divine and ship are unique, distinct, and created by the Player Characters. These are not the only ships within the fleet but they are the major touchstones for what the fleet is comprised of. The ships are constantly moving, anticipating danger. Unknown reason(s) have largely been the cause of the deaths of most of the Divines as their numbers dwindled from 300 to 8, to 2. This was an odd occurrence and something that may be answered in the series as it unravels. There is a larger mystery as to why Divines suddenly, for the most part, started to die after 30,000 years.
There are explorers in this fleet of different cultures that still adventure despite this danger though, too. And search for the Divine Curiosity's waypoints. The people still live, despite the overall caution of the fleet and the troubled times.
The Divine Gumption - City Ship: Gumption's Gambit
Adapts junk tech and battle debris/parts into themselves to change the things that they can do and also not break down and die. From an old TV to another Divine's arm, they could use anything. The ship is filled with pieces of the Divine Gumption. Once something is detached from it, though. It is not considered to be a part of it.
Gumption used the entirety of themselves to fix the city ship Gumption's Gambit, saving the ship in the process with their sacrifice. "How could this ship even have this many exhausts?" Internally there is metal paneling everywhere to cover exposed wires, dull, copper, rust, safe, but not pretty. It's mostly a scaled up space ship, it does not have a city vibe. People plant makeshift green spaces in the gaps technology leaves behind.
The Divine used to provide ad hoc repairs to the fleet but the people who still live on the city ship still fix things for the fleet.
"Nothing can only be used once", they are a re-use culture. The fashion comes from that culture and can look really great or stupid, depending on how good you are at it. It's a risky style of fashion in the fleet. Most people, though...don't pull it off.
In this time of instability the people of his city ship work harder. Most people, it seems, are primarily the people who repair the fleet, in general.
The Divine Belgard - City Ship: Thyrsus
There a class of Divines that are democratic virtues and then they went away for a while, and when we find the fiction again, there is a much broader range of Divines. And Divines began to make Divines. Generations of Divines broadened out further yet, action names and nouns that refer to actions.
Belgard is an archaic term for a loving look to give to someone. They're sleek and almost person-like. But less like a person's body and more like if a person could have a pupa, or a chrysalis. Does not have arms or legs, loose layers and components like collapsible shields affixed around the "hip and shoulder" areas (pupa hips). Striking colours like a butterfly's wings but more dull and deliberate looking. Joints, seams, moving parts are not entirely clear when still. There are features and dibs where features might be but is otherwise featureless.
Belgard used to attach to objects to either or mend or harm something and heavily shielded (a combination of physical and energy but not like a full force field) and wrap it around other small to mid sized ships/Divines. Belgard died when they were abandoned by their Excerpt during a battle. It prioritized mending other ships over itself, and eventually succumbed to it's own wounds.
Despite Belgard's death the fleet has access to uncommonly intricate shielding mechanisms.
The city ship is called Thyrsus. It's a series of bulb like nodes, connecting bridges, and occasional flat oblong panel sections that more or less come to a point. Visually it might be helpful to think of a stock of Queen Anne's Lace with clusters of flowers, it's broad but comes to a sort-of point.
On the inside because of the construction of the ship there is not a lot of big open spaces. Interior rooms and spaces are not popular. Tall vaulted ceilings and reflective natural looking surfaces: stone, wood, glass metal. The majority of It would feel like being in a series of interconnected nested set of alleys,courtyards, plazas's and rooms being rare. "Spaces between spaces." People might avoid interior spaces altogether if they're well off. Privatized open spaces.
Thyrsus provides effectively working of what exists. Recycling materials 1-for-1 in order to re-work them into something that is more-or-less what it used to be.
A foundational rule of Thyrsus "there is nothing so sacred as cold metal warmed in the palm." and "Like should mend like" Flesh with flesh, metal with metal. Additive stuff is OK, in the same way clothing is OK. But if you take damage to flesh, than flesh must be used to repair that damage.
Highly embellished but rather shapeless overcoats, length and material varies but ankle length cut and extra fabric are considered more desirable as they're both more resource intensive and hold their structure better, if you're using the actual material. Sleeves sometimes slashed up the arm, off-ship they're technically worn open or fastened at the collar to give a more tailored and cape-like effect and be a little less stand-out-ish. Inspiration from Victorian driving clothes and mid-century women's clothes being predominate.
The people of this city ship have double downed on routines and structure. "Be the stability in the world you want to see" but an avoidance of doing the same thing. And they favor the Gumption's Gambit, in terms of world view.
The Divine Anticipation - City Ship: The By-and-By
They were really good at a simulation of scenarios to find the best direction for the fleet as a whole. In terms of figuring out what planets can be sustainable. It's really important in "Uh-Oh" time.
The Divine's physical form is inspired by the funnels of the new Gundam (ask for link later), long rectangular floating pieces. They sit together in a fan shape or spread out and form shields in between them or whatever they need to. There is no separation in this form, but they can form goal posts that create shields to protect other parts of the fleet. A must less elegant of Thyrsus, comparatively. There are layers similar to a pocket knife that are still connected but can move. The body of the Divine itself, which died, is considered the elevator between the different levels.
There is a religious sect on the ship that considers going to every level of the ship an act of penance. The act of moving in between places is something that is considered holy. By experiencing anticipation you're looking forward to something, when you think about something you want or need, when you take a trip to get something you hope for. This act is something, at least in part, holy.
Anticipation decayed over time the ability to figure out stuff slowed down to the point where it stopped or slowed down. It's stuck in a rendering or buffering status, missing RAM, blue screen of death, etc.
Since their death the ship was able to funnel out as though they were birds signaling and calling to the other members of the fleet, and communicate as well. Now they cannot, it can spin out a little bit but they cannot perform that function.
Inside the city ship it looks like huge hotels in which you can see the lobby, with balconies for your hotel rooms. Except there is an entire city sections, and the homes and shops being those small hotel-like rooms and intimacy is greatly appreciated. The grand open spaces on the outside of the ship are inspired by an artist named SPARTH , where there is a futuristic city is floating but it also has floating gardens.
Fashion has a focus on different items or elements of outfits being from parts of the city. Patterns, layers, a weird marketing scheme from different layers of cities. People get cards in which they get stamped for visiting different layers. The more layers you have, the more fashionable you have. 5 Is really avant garde, holt couture, super high fashion. 3..is like, OK.
During this period of instability there is a lot of talk about full unity and making informed decisions for the best outcome for the fleet to be realized.
The Divine Harmony - City Ships: The Two Tides of Harmony
Peregian and Seiche are the two tides of Harmony, interconnected to form the City Ship, referred to simply as the "Tides of Harmony."
Harmony is dead. But their whole thing was connecting communications and networking between ships. Their combat strength is tactical formations.
The way that people in the Tides connect to The Mesh is through nanites within the bodies of everyone who reside there, where most ships residents are "chipped" in order to connect to it, these people have these machines permeating their body.
Harmony was able to quickly communicate to their citizens because they were apart of them. Excerpts could take direct control of Harmony and acted as a very good mediator, as a neutral party. For citizens as well as off-ship. It was a parental figure for the fleet.
The common belief regarding Harmony's death is that they had spread themselves too thin. People aren't 100% sure exactly what happened. They thought they were giving more nanites to more people in order to get more Excerpts, but it got weaker and weaker as it gave more of itself away. The population grew and eventually, it perished. It. deteriorated. Harmony itself was a flower-like shape which had a bright light, which is now gone. Physically it is in-between the two ships, connecting it. But is now a crystalline flower-like corpse. The ships have tracks that things can go on and have connectors from Harmony's corpse and the people never severed these connections because they believe it may come back someday.
The ships used to move like waves, almost. Around each other, forward and back alternating. Now though, they are parallel, and move still--but are more rigid and static.
Since the death of Harmony communication between ships have gotten much harder. Harmony's ships still produces a lot and are efficient. People would switch ships depending on the time of year working different jobs.Textiles are rare, but food and supplies were made by these skilled laborers. Or, they do unskilled labor because no one else knows how to. Everyone has two jobs, one a more intricate job and one unskilled. "Someone who makes socks could also be a really good glass blower."
Some of the nanites have begun to fail. They are hereditary and bio-mechanical and therefor can be passed on to children. However, this has stopped happening. It stops working or a small percentage do not have them at all and segregation of these people occurs on the ships.
There is a lot of pride derived from having one thing on your person made by yourself. It peacocks the thing you can do well.
The Divine Potency - City Ship: The Ever Forward
The Divine's specialty was terraforming planets and moons and at the height of their capability they were even able to transmute resources into other ones. Quickly changing planets and substances to their needs.
Physically, the ship itself has a couple spheres that rotate within it, and Potency lived in one sphere that was opaque; the other spheres being translucent. That sphere could forge a path ahead of the fleet and facilitate their needs at an accelerated pace.
While trying to transmute one thing to another and messed up a planet's mass, throwing it off order and into the star. It was going to collapse and kill everyone but instead Potency stayed behind to allow for the fleet to get to safety and sacrificed itself/themself in the process.
The ship can still make small changes to planets, changing atmospheres to their purposes, enrich earth, etc. No transmutations of resources anymore and even small changes need to have nodes placed on the planet in order to have these things occur. Part of the planet side game will have this goal in mind.
On the outside of the Ever Forward there are two main structures. metal cylinders on the outside, where the engines, shield, etc is. Between them there are a series of independent, translucent spheres where individuals live. Also within these spheres, with keeping ecological changes on planets in mind, they house a multitude of different biomes to support a ship-wide zoo of plants and animals that were effected by any changes that had been made by them to a planet. Within the ship, there are buildings but are lot more close to suburban than urban. Everyone has a garden and shared spaces for that within it as well. People grow plants from other ecologies all over, and everyone is a vegetarian.
"Take what is necessary and leave what you can", is a rule the people live by.
Fashion and style are very functional. Poaches, pockets, with empty vials and beakers for testing can be found on people. There are pockets of seeds on them at all times, just in case they can propagate green space. "World War one era p-coats for everybody."
The tone of the ship in this turbulent time is practicality, including growing a military, which they did not have before. With the aim of protecting their amassed biomes, ecologies, etc. They are not militant but they want to be able to rely on themselves. A different kind of sustainability.
They favor Belgard and do not favor Remember/No Life
The Divine Remember/No Lie - City Ship: Memorious
The Divine was built in a way to preserve the entirety of human knowledge and experience. Inspired by a short story 'Funes the Memorious" by Jorge Luis Borges. The Divine became obsessed with ephemera because what is happening now, appears to be so different than just moments ago because of it's perfect memory, similarly to the young man in the story.
"The Divine is the library the library is the ship."
Memorious died by becoming full of memories. It was believed it's capacity was endless. But they were wrong.
The knowledge is not gone and accessible. But Memorious knew how to call it up instantly, now, it's sorted in some alien way, obtuse and hard to use by people other than the Divine Memorious.
The ship is housed by an artist colony, obsessively cultivated when the Divine was alive, now dead--culture is getting stale.
On the outside the ship is thousands and thousands of interlocking cubes and every six hours there is a design contest held and the winner's design becomes what the ship looks like until the next contest is held. It is always hotly contested. At 7 pm the ship is known to look great, but at 4 am, it may not look that great. Steven has been known for questionable design choices, allegedly.
Inside though, technology makes it so that there are no changes to the physical locations people navigate as a city. It's described as chaotic and with great pieces of art in sync with fast moving trends. "across from the Sistine Chapel is Jack's cubed pizza." Which, has a cube theme within the restaurant and shouldn't be misconstrued as actual cubed pizza. It's like the 80's inside, is all.
"You aren't someone until you make something people care about." So as to say how well would you like to be remembered.
A specific rules for this ship is: "Do not tell me what you have done tell me what you are doing?"
The fashion changes with the movement of the ship but it's made the things people have very solid essentials. They invest in your undershirt, your satchel, the things that you can always have. They make sure those are good.
People are scared and hiding it with lavish parties for art exhibits, late 90's raging against the dying of the light. Or, like finals week your last week in art school. Hardest working individuals that also have the lifestyle where they "party hard."
The people favor the Divine ship Curiosity and do not favor Gumption or Anticipation.
The Divine Curiosity (Perspicacity?) - City Ship: Mirrors
They reach across the galaxy to turn over stones and see what is underneath, traveling ahead of humans and leaves behind a mesh of waypoints, which tell the followers and people in general, "there is something here." It does not promise worth or success or even valuable, or the journey to these things. Instead it wants to build a network of what interests it.
Sometimes referred to as the Divine Ubisoft (jokingly)
There are tens of thousands of linked drones from the size of the palm of a hand to a small spacecraft. They move like water--when they are working together. When they operate independently you see something on it's own that perhaps has other forms that vary, but are in fact a part of it.
When alive it had a massive list of coordinates, varying in scale. It is publicly accessible and kind-of like geocaches all of these coordinates, but the information is vague. Sometimes marked treasure or four adjectives, or a vista.
The cache is still there but there are no notes now that the Divine has perished, however the points exist yet and were still chosen by a Divine. When it found a ship that looks like a snow globe on top of the Nostromo , mechanical undercarriage of tubes and wires and exhaust ports and jets, and on top a beautiful globe. Inside of which is gigantic, massive city. When the Divine and followers landed on this ship, they now occupy. it appeared to be lived in but nobody was there, with no explanation or sign why. After bringing online one district of the city, now their home and hub, by translating a language they couldn't read. They are fairly sure the ship is called "The Sky Reflected in Mirrors." Which, could be an incorrect translation.
One day the entire fleet of Curiosity, thousands of drones, which, leave those waypoints. Picked up on a signal deep inside Mirrors, leaving the followers behind and never came back, ever.
The followers of Curiosity want to unravel the mystery of a god, enraptured by it's strangeness so unlike them and want to know what a god is curious about.
"What fascinates a god and we want to be on that journey."
An idiom of the people is, "leave no stone unturned." It does not mean be thorough, instead it is a way of life. Be constantly finding stones to look under. They do not settle, it is ingrained in the fleet's cultural mythos.
There is a giant city, of which only one is lit. And somewhere in the city there is something that killed a god, or persuaded a god to never return to its flock. The inhabitants believe it is good to become lost in this city despite that.
The people inside Mirrors carry torches or lanterns at all times. And similarly, when they are abroad they wear sunglasses because they are unused to light.
In this period of instability they are rapidly, disconcertingly attempting to find the Divine or its body. They are not equipped for this and there are teams dispatched racing to find it.
The Divine Empyrean - City Ship: Séance
The Divine is alive and continues to create the Twilight Mirage which is hiding the divine fleet as best as it can. Its core function is to propagate the augmented reality Mesh, which has not fully spread to the colony on the planet game.
There may be a mech version of this Divine, which has wings. Something with bird-like qualities, gesturing toward the fact that it is about aspiring to heights.
It has the biggest city in the fleet, in terms of where people go to live and a massive urban center.
The city ship, Séance, is an octagonal cylinder in space. On each side, wrapping all around is a large Victorian city. It is out in space, no cover or dome. On these streets you can look out to the Twilight Mirage, in which there is always sunrise or sunset. People can feel air on their face. There are lots of parks and lakes, slicing their way through space. The interior has ship controls and engineering necessities. One side of the cylinder has a large booster rocket and there are fins on the edges of the cylinder.
The tone of the ship is a sort-of resignation: the people had previously had lots of power, holding the keys to the virtual reality that everyone lives in. They were very powerful and influential, but there is a sense that maybe there has come a time for them to step away and let the people with more active Divines step up--except that now theirs is the only Divine remaining. And now Empyrean is dispersed, creating the Twilight Mirage, so the people feel like it is not there, even when it is.
Their least favorite of the ships is Anticipation but is also their most favorite. They think that ship should take over as leader but also hate the thought of it. There is a double movement of relying on the anticipation crew, and that the "good old days" have passed.
They have a rule on Séance, "Never perch where there is already a bird." and because of that this ship has specifically never tried to colonize any other world that was not barren.
The Divine does not like the notion of displacing anyone else, but is also now in the position of being one of the last Divines.
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