Transhuman civilization is flourishing. Octillions of people are living their lives across...
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Species Report: Omu said:The Omu are a sophont species native to the Quahelid galaxy, with their homeworld located at approximately 67 degrees, 3700 lightyears from core (for reference, Journeyman's Lantern is at 0 degrees, 6540 light years from core).
Biologically, the Omu are most reminiscent of a monotreme mammal; they lay eggs containing their young, but do nurse them with a milky secretion (produced by either sex). Their approximate height when standing upright ranges between 140 cm to 180 cm, and their limbs are well-suited to climbing, including a pair of prehensile tails.
Medically speaking, the unaugmented lifespan of an Omu is 2-4 Gigaseconds with females tending towards the higher end of the range and males the lower. However, with proper medical care their lifespan can be extended indefinitely. Omu are highly resilient to injury by the standards of naturally evolved lifeforms, and have been known to stagger back to civilization with multiple limbs broken and recover fully with minimal treatment.
Initial psychological reports are somewhat tinged by the culture of the Valindir Republic, but from what can be told the Omu are highly protective of those they consider kin. That said, they are considerably less likely to panic in a threatening situation than a baseline human, instead tending to assess the situation at a safe distance before deciding on a course of action.
Though most of the more detailed information about their biology is still unknown, it is confirmed that Omu breathe a Nitrogen-Oxygen atmosphere and are based on conventional organic chemistry.
Nation Report: Valindir Republic said:Our first point of contact with the wider galaxy, the Valindir Republic is a nation claiming four earthlike planets around five stars. They are surrounded on four sides by countries with vastly more resources than them and a severe ideological mismatch. As a result the Valindir have spent the last six Gigaseconds playing their neighbors off against each other with a great deal of success, using such methods as strategically hiring their forces out as mercenaries for exorbitant fees. In addition they have heavily fortified their claimed stars (by local standards, at least; it would be considered barely adequate back in the Milky Way) to raise the cost of invasion sufficiently to make it unpalatable.
Still, this leaves the Valindir Republic in an awkward strategic position, needing to carefully balance not antagonizing any of their neighbors to the point of invasion while also not rolling over for anyone. This has lead to a cultural emphasis on caution and logical assessment of situations, even beyond the apparent Omu baseline. Another consequence is a highly competent intelligence apparatus used to keep tabs on possible threats.
Indeed, the first ship to arrive was in fact a scout from their intelligence service coming to assess the situation. They have outright refused to explain how they knew something was happening here to inspect in the first place, citing national security. Their primary intentions for making contact can be roughly summarized as assessing the level of threat we pose to them, with a possibility of diplomatic relations.
The government of the Valindir Republic is a federalized parliamentary system elected via sortition, with a reshuffle approximately every ~159 Megaseconds. They have universal healthcare, education, and housing along with a bunch of other social benefit programs. They don't have any particularly strong ideological foundations aside from taking care of their people and heading off the possibility of an invasion, mostly due to the problems with their massively more powerful neighbors.
The Valindir Republic are at this time the only other nation to know of us; they are located at six degrees, 4880 light years from core.
Secondhand Intelligence: Valindir Republic said:There are several things that the party from the Valindir Republic informed us of not directly related to them. These include the generalities of the galactic situation at large, a rough guess as to the number of sophont species acting in the galaxy (~70), and some nations they border.
First off, the general astropolitical situation. The extreme prevalence of earthlike planets in the Quahelid galaxy has lead to most nations pursuing a strategy known in video game parlance as "going wide", since habitable area can simply be found instead of built. As a result most of the galaxy is industrially underdeveloped, and despite the fierce land grab politics at play there are still major gaps of unclaimed space where there's a dearth of habitable planets, due to the major galactic players taking the path of least resistance for colonization.
More pertinently, they included basic information on their immediate neighbors:
Gantare Empire: A constitutional monarchy with a colonialist bent, the Gantare Empire has a self-imposed revanchist mission to "civilize" the galaxy, and is quite happy to substitute military force for an answer of "no". Though they do guarantee a number of rights to their citizens, they come together to produce an extremely hierarchical social structure with social mobility bordering on a caste system. Of the Valindir's neighbors, the Gantare seem to be the biggest threat.
Unified Chorus Spur: A representative democracy operating on the Presidential system, the UCS doesn't have an ideological push to colonize. However they do border the Gantare, and not wanting to be crushed by the Empire requires them to expand in much the same manner. The UCS is multicultural and relatively egalitarian, but again is willing to substitute military force for refusal to join.
Pozzoo: An oligarchic republic run by a board of major corporations, Pozzoo is... honestly a complete mess. They've effectively devolved into a single corporate hierarchy where your position in society is entirely dictated by your usefulness to the companies... except "usefulness to the companies" is largely synonymous with "willingness to be exploited". Most of their citizens are in de facto indentured servitude, and since any open labor action simply results in the entire union getting gunned down, the entire country is in one big permanent work-to-rule strike.
Glorious People's Democratic Republic Of Werta (AKA Gwerta): A totalitarian shithole sustained entirely by oppression and various atrocities. Gwerta is an oligarchic dictatorship known for information control, a vastly oversized but somewhat incompetent military due to "dangerous" officers being regularly purged, and absolutely obnoxious propaganda claiming to be a beacon of liberty (that exactly no-one believes).
Phenomena Report: Hyperspace said:Though the Valindir delegation were frustratingly vague about the exact details, they did admit to some of the generalities surrounding their FTL method and the anomalous signals.
Firstly, their method of superluminal travel involves an extradimensional shortcut, called hyperspace for lack of a better term. Its precise nature still confounds our physicists, but it's not a branch timeline, it's not an entirely new universe, it's not just a modifier for physical space, and it apparently has its own sort of astrography. They call their means of hyperspace propulsion a "Hypermotor", which is apparently also their primary reaction drive in normal space. They refused to elaborate on the operating principles of the Hypermotor.
Another phenomenon they noted was something we're grudgingly calling psionics. Apparently hyperspace is heavily responsive to "thought", though our experiences with digital cognition show this interaction is limited to analog systems. Known applications of psionics include information transmission, and hyperspace access/navigation. There are presumably other applications, but the Valindir delegation refused to elaborate further.
Report: Technological Assessment said:Though the information provided was highly limited, we can make several reasonably reliable conclusions about the local technology base.
First off, we can reasonably state that compared to us, their bioengineering and computing technology are highly deficient. They have a very good understanding of analog computation and a workable academic understanding of biotech, but they seem to have missed digital computing (probably due to its lack of interaction with psionics), which crippled their biotech development. As a direct corollary, their materials science has by-and-large missed advanced nanomaterials.
Similarly, everything related to metric engineering seems to have been missed; they have no warp drives of any variety, no wormholes, especially no non-orientable wormholes, no contracted space pockets, and no on-demand heavy element transmutation/black hole production.
That said, hyperspace technologies do provide the locals with a number of advantages. First and most obviously, the minimum size for a ship capable of hyperspace navigation is vastly smaller than a Voidskipper. Secondly, the energy levels observed in hypermotor drive plumes are firmly in the hundreds of Terawatts even for the smaller Valindir ships, indicating that they have similar power density available. Given that the drive structures they use are solid instead of the open cage power plants seen on our own combat skimmers, and the fact that they aren't venting massive amounts of coolant into space, this also indicates vastly superior cooling technology.
Another inference is that hyperspace and psionic technologies probably allow for an approximation of artificial gravity, as ships were observed accelerating at rates in excess of 360 m/s^2. Given that this would have almost certainly crushed any crew not specifically g-hardened (and that they evidently lack the technology to do such), they must have some sort of technology capable of compensating for the extreme acceleration forces.
In addition, it seems vaguely plausible that psionic phenomena have allowed for the local analog computing technology to reach levels of computational complexity and versatility that exceed the normal limitations for such devices.
At the moment we would have a major advantage in any normal space engagement due to the extreme mobility provided by warp drives. However, we have no way to pursue them into hyperspace at the present time, presenting a major risk.
Report: Information Traded said:The Valindir delegation were willing to provide basic information on a number of topics, but in exchange you needed to trade the following information:
-Warp Technology (Basic capabilities; didn't say that Skimming can go up to c but they probably figured it out)
-Digital Computation (Yes it exists, basic underlying principles)
-Brain Uploading/Mindcast (basic idea, yes you have it)
-Bio/Nanotech (Yes, you have it)
-Automated Manufacturing (Again, yes you do in fact have it; they were familiar with the basic concept already)
-Rotating Space Habitats (Basic idea)
-Megasystems (Basic Idea)
-Origin diverging from single species
-Extragalactic origins
-Linguistics Package
-Cultural Package
-That you don't actually know anything about psionics or hyperspace (they "subtly" quizzed you and you evidently failed)
They were not informed about anything to do with wormholes. Similarly, you did not inform them that you are capable of time travel.