Demigueris - Everything You Wanted to Know and More

[Demigueris]

Brief Overview - Updated In Future Tech

Nation Name: No Formal Name
Homeworld: Demigueris
Government Type: Distributed Bio-Computational Network
Ruler: None
Races in Nation: Numerous
NS Type: Rogue Nation

Notable Persons:

Reviewing.

Demigueris - Historical Overview

No one knows where Demigueris came from who built it. Its origins disappear into a cloud of damaged and corrupted memory cores, incomplete star charts, and fragmented popular myths and legends.

What is known is that the ship itself is ancient, and that the current occupants are probably not the first. The ship has travelled the sea of stars for millenia, visited many galaxies over the years, met many species, and fought many wars. What remains of their old memory cores suggest that the ship suffered near catastrophic damage in a war with an aggressive society in another galaxy many thousands of years before, but ultimately recovered and rebuilt with an otherwise completely new population.

More certain is that since rebuilding generations of new Demigueran citizens grew old, augmented themselves into post-humanism and either perished, or cast off their failing bodies to embrace the neural networks of the great world ship. They built more capacity to house their expanding consciousnesses until it became clear they would need to find their own way in the world...

And so it came to pass, that Demigueris, The World Ship... spawned offspring, in a sense of the word and, in a way, became a new species unto itself. The new ships set off, enacted their own ventures and businesses, harvested their own resources and - in time - themselves grew until those with the desire became something akin to the ship they'd left. Travelling the cosmos, occasionally picking up new passengers who might one day become as they themselves had.

Most outsiders will never know if a Demigeuran or even a group of them pass by. Their unique designs are often highly personalized in many cases and quite frequently find other star faring nations to let them register under commercial transport licenses. The larger or more adventurous ships tend to simply do their own thing, relying on the vast emptiness of space or their advanced stealth systems to avoid ever doing much other than listening to the inster-stellar chatter of the nearby star empires while they gorge themselves on star or planetoid matter... or otherwise go about their business.

Then there are the massive city or nation ships, which have become something like roving tribes like Demigueris itself. Most of them are far too large, and support far too many people to go unnoticed. And most outside interactions with these groups are often the first interactions most star empires get with a Demigueran - even if many have already passed through by that point. Generally speaking, Demigueran Worldships never appear in space they expect to receive a hostile welcome in: providing they can help it. But when they do its usually the augmented class of Demiguerans - those who've not yet cast off their bodies - that are the forward face of Demigueris and its' people; though ships, especially solitary ones will often simply have a few augmented clones, robots, or drones to interact with other peoples.

Even the larger ships will often use Avatars to conduct official business.

Demigueran Ships:

Vary widely depending on the ship encountered. As the first generation Demiguerans more fully augmented themselves, the old navy structure that guarded Demigueris in its early years was phased out and replaced almost exclusively by individual Demiguerans who, feeling adventurous, or having grown bored of the unstructured life in The Network, volunteered to take on a starship body. With that the old military classes also disappeared, but many of the old navy personnel went on to take on starship bodies - and many carried their combat oriented mindset into their personal design. To this day many of the old navy personnel much more resemble dedicated military vessels than most Demiguerans - which while often potent combat ships themselves, usually approach self-defence as a secondary concern.


Broadly speaking, Demigueran ships increase in size as they grow older, generally to accommodate the more powerful or upgraded powerplants whenever their current reactors reach the end of their lifecycle. Though it's common for a Demigueran to accumulate resources over their lifespan to plan an expansion after their current reactor starts approaches the end of its life, individual preference can often play a role. It's not uncommon for a ship to simply rejoin its parent network after awhile, or, for that matter, another network entirely.

Some, occasionally. Just choose to finally die.

The technology possessed by Demirians can vary depending on their personal preferences, but some of the more interesting from a RP perspective are laid out here.

Shipbased Technologies

Cascade Cores:
Demiguerans typically employ Cascade Drives, which 'cascade' from a fission reaction thru a fusion reaction process, from there it continues to split protons and neutrons, fuse them into quark-matter, eventually compressing them into a synthetic singularity providing reaction energies of phenomenal scales. The very largest Demirians boast reaction potentials around the energy outputs of entire star systems of FTL capable nations - mostly found on Worldships but there are a few larger Demiguerans that have achieved these states. These powerplant cores typically involve colossal masses compressed into tiny spaces, so Demiguerans of sufficient size typically have incredibly high mass for their size. The largest Demiguerans, without suppressing their own gravity wells, are capable of disrupting planetary orbits and for this reason typically steer clear of star systems, or make sure they suppress their gravity wells inside planetary systems.

Singularity Warheads:
Using radially mounted intense gamma ray lasers, Demigueran warheads are capable of producing high-energy singularities of non-insignificant duration. Typically once the warheads enter effective combat range they will initiate the reaction. Undisturbed the missile will maneuver using it's gravitic drives onto an attack path and delivers the singularity directly to the target. The particle housing is capable of feeding the singularity, and typically calibrates the singularity such that it will penetrate through shields and armour, before 'detonating' inside the hull of the ship in an explosion typically covering areas measured as signficant portions of astronomical units. Needless to say individual starships unable to intercept or avoid the singularity are quite unfortunate.

Once the singularity is generated, however, even direct missile interceptions are not sufficient. While the exterior housing is blown away, the singularity itself retains it's momentum and trajectory. The singularity itself absorbs both energy and matter making it a very difficult weapon to defeat through conventional means once the reaction's been initiated. The Hawking radiation released inside the armour belts of the starship are sufficiently powerful that the weapon systen isn't useable in medium to low orbits over inhabited without risking catastrophic damage to the surface.

Gravitic Drives/Gravity Projectors
Very similar to the artificial gravity equipment possessed by most nations, taken to it's logical conclusions. Manipulates the flow of gravity gauge bosons, using the energy and mass produced by the ships powerplant to project intense gravitational fields sufficiently powerful to allow them to make high acceleration maneuvers at sub-light speeds. Larger ships can project fields of intense power within close proximity to the ship, utilizing them as weapons in their own right, tools, or as defensive instruments designed to deflect incoming fire. They are also used by larger Demiguerans as a means to suppress their gravity wells in system, or for that matter, to suppress their gravity profiles while engaging in stealth activities in normal space.

Gamma Ray Burst weaponry:
Standard electromagnetic based energy weaponry for Demerian weapons, capable of firing extremely powerful, tight burst weapons at individual targets at close, or blasting away large numbers of smaller, less well defended targets in a dispersed beam, or for that matter, engaging targets at considerable ranges.

Radiation Emission Suppression Systems:
Demigueran typically prefer stealth to direct confrontation(except for a very few terrifying examples) utilizing the vastness of space and their fondness for observation satellites to keep eyes on those they are watching while they themselves remain in the shadows.

To do this, Demigueran ships are typically made of materials that absorb virtually all radiation that reaches them, re-emitting virtually nothing. The difficulty is that Demiguerans typically have a LOT of energy which must be bled off, both from their reaction cores along with anything they absorb.

Doing so without being detected is the key, and Demigueran surface materials allow them to 'breathe' as it were exotic particles with a charge in the form of tachyons which self-annihilate within a short time of being emitted through Cherenkov radiation. This allows them to bleed of energy in ways typically not covered by standard sensor arrays, and even if they are, the signatures are intentionally dispersed in such a way that they disperse the signature of the ship across vast breadths of space. Demiguerans typically allow for differently energy level releases that distort the field and prevent simple triangulations of the center of the field in the same way they do with gravitic wells. This tends to result in a 'wobbling' field of imperceptible to the human eye, but decidedly 'blue' light being detectable by instruments.

There are considerable operating limits on ships operating in this configuration. High energy maneuvers and activities can quickly overload their ability to remain 'invisible' and betray telltale signatures. And ships close enough, who are looking in the right range, can typically home in on the tachyon source before they self-annihilate into normal EM radiation, but at a distance they are notoriously difficult targets to spot or track.

Signal Generators:
Emitters embedded in these skins similarly allow them to bleed of energy in desired ways, such as matching background radiation, or the light of starscapes behind the vessel to avoid being detected through sillouetting techniques.

Matter Translation:
Similar to FTL transits, some Demiguerans specializing in extra stealth can effect a space-fold translation of their mass into a non-standard dimensional state, effectively cutting them off from most interaction with normal space and matter. This makes for an effective next-level 'cloaking' system, while also serving as a potent means of evading normal-space kinetic and energy weapons. The converse is also true however, it is technically difficult for such vessels to interact with normal space, and it is prohibitively difficult for them to 'see' or 'fight' with ships in normal space. Typically this can only be done with gravity based systems since there is otherwise little or no other interaction between normal matter and the particular configuration utilized by the system. Similarly against systems designed to engage targets lurking in non-standard dimensional folds, many standard defences and systems simply unavailable or ineffectual, so the state involves a certain degree of vulnerability against cross-dimensional plane threats.

FTL Coms: Relying on FTL particles, are usually reliable for communications up several hundred lightyears via tachyon relays before the signal breaks down. These communications are usually close to real time. Over much longer distances relays need to be used, which must be processed and retransmitted with commensurate lag times. Real time communications over near unlimited distances are possible via quantum entanglement systems, but these allow only a limited number of contacts, and have very low bandwidth limitations making them ineffective for maintaining direct conciousness links and useful only for short messages. Typically Demirians will have only a few such contacts, including with their Matriarch and perhaps a few others with whom they are particularly close.

FTLi field emitters: typically employed externally to avoid collapsing certain required systems inside their Cascade cores, these systems effectively disrupt most dimensional and warp technologies by adding a degree of random space-time 'ripples' in local space. They are small, but the field effectively throws a mathematical monkey wrench into the sensitive calculations required to maintain a stable warp-field or to make dimensional translations.

Shared Consciousness Network:
Picture your usual cybernetic enhancements allowing a mind-machine link, augment that with additional memory storage and computational enhancements to one's brain, and then connect everyone using this together via the internet to create a SkyNet/Matrix hybridized hive-mind. Neither entirely just 'animals' or just 'Artificial Intelligence' Demirians blur the line between both because they can - especially those who maintain, or have built or grown for themselves - seamlessly transition between the two worlds.

Assault Drones:
Some physical security, or force projection, is occasionally required inside themselves, or venturing outside to other destinations where 'ground' combat may occur. When this happens assault drones are Demirians first and last line of defence.

Essentially these drones are near-human sized power-armour like machines. Although since they don't need to actually protect a living organism on the inside they can engage in a variety of reckless maneuvers that would reduce any organic occupant to a thin, pasty goo and pack in additional battle systems and ammunition. Essentially they're capable of violent combat maneuvers that would kill anyone trying to mimic them with power armour. They Utilize hive mind tactics, and feature real-time battle modelling and targeting systems capable of predicting enemy movements and maneuvers, tracking thousands of targets simultaneously, striking with pinpoint accuracy only achievable with complete computerized guidance, and reactions built from the ground up to outperform organic reaction speeds. Particular designs for specialized combat also allow them to engage in maneuvers that would otherwise be impossible in standard 'humanoid' style powerarmor. Ground, sea and air variants tend to differ extensively in their appearance.

Most Demigueran combat tactics rely on extremely high-speed, high-tempo maneuvers in carefully coordinated, calculated movements, and bring astounding concentrations of extremely accurate firepower to the battlefield offering presents moving guerrilla force capable of moving at speed and transitioning with shocking alacrity into furious, impossibly coordinated assaults.

Edits:

Updates to the armoury as well as increasing arsenal size as Demigueris develops. Plans in place some form of battleship in the near future: will be badasstic
Edit 2: Updated arsenal size. Added new battleship and gave Demigueris a more robust history/combat doctrine.
Edit 3: Updated ship deployments and crew complements to reflect tech changes, provided increased information on Demigueris support equipment.
Edit 4: Disgarded Demiria test-switch. Just Demiguerans again. New tribal configuration being attempted, with more to come hopefully on that depending on how well the RP's test.

Influences for Demigueris:
Joe Haldemann. Forever Peace. - human/machine interface, unmanned infantry
David Weber. The Honor Harrington Series - for all things space combat
Terminator - fucking SkyNet
The Matrix - fucking Matrix
Lost Universe and The Ship Who <insert> by Anne Macaffrey - more human/machine and AI inspiration
Robert A. Heinlein - Starship Troopers - additional influences for armoured infantry
Infinite Ryvius - gravity manipulation technology.
Arthur C. Clark. 2001: A Space Odessey. Idea for civilization advancing to the point of abandoning their physical bodies to roam the stars as spaceships.
"Are Black Hole Starships Possible?" Louis Crane and Shawn Westmoreland. Cornell University Library. http://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.1803v1.pdf

[Demigueris]

Demigueris - Modern Tech

The geography of the nation centers around a large sea emptying into the ocean, which it almost wholly encompasses - serving almost as an inland lake around which the majority of their population and industrial centers are located. This is supplemented with heavy settlement and industry along with the three great river networks that empty into it from it's eastern and western mountainous regions.

Otherwise it maintains a continuous border with other nations along it's outlying regions. The western mountains in particular are especially treacherous to pass with only a few narrow transport corridors and railways. The eastern mountains in particular ease into rolling foothills and forested valleys.

Economy;
Demigueris' three largest industries are arms manufacturing, followed close behind by mining of certain strategic resources - but especially uranium and Information Technology. Most mining activities are localized around it's extensive hinterland areas. Food production, which is also quite well developed in areas not torn apart by mining interests congregate around its coastal and glacial river and lakelands.

Government:

The government of Demigueris is a complex affair. Citizens are inducted into the government based on a variety of factors, including their economy and ethnic representativeness as well as professional qualifications. Most committees in the Demigueris government are a mixed portion of the general populace, combined with a number of professionals from all levels associated with the committees' mandate. The standing committee on energy, for instance, is half representatives from the general populace and half engineers, managers, academics, electricians and line-workers: all are randomly drawn.

Most terms are short, two years, paid according to the national average income, and similar to a form of conscription or jury duty.

The government's primary oversight committee has longer, ten year terms, though those inducted may opt out based on a vote. This chamber is typically oriented to roughly entitle 50% of the chamber to be drawn from pools designed to create a body representative of the population as a whole. As well as the other half weighted toward those with educational attainments. Costs are kept down through use of social media, though security groups able to meet and make decisions quickly.

Order in Demigueris society is everywhere present, and agents of the government lurk in all corners of the nation. Comprehensive monitoring of all citizens takes place at all times, including identification tags that track citizens movements at all hours of the day.

Culture:

Demigueris is an extremely close-knit, patriotic nation re-enforced in school and the various social media that comprise the government. Most organizations and individuals, owing to the way in which government in Demigueris is exercised, has either served as a member of the governing body in some capacity or another, and invariably are close friends or family with others that have. It lends a sense of unity to the nation which others lack and most organizations NGO or Private tend to associate themselves strongly with their country even if they have substantial holdings abroad. There is a definite sense among them that their system is superior to virtually all other forms of government and are actively hostile to the diktats of other groups.

That said, Demigueris' culture is rich and reasonably open though again just about all cultural forms are tied in with a national self-image, even if some of those forms are Demigueran in nature. Open communication with other nations is welcomed, as well as new ideas and cultural forms, but invariably it is assumed that all nations are bound to eventually adopt Demigueran principles of non-partisan representative government.

The nation strongly adheres to a rigid laissez-faire policy that emphasizes collective enablement and personal responsibility. Social services as such are non-existent but robust, low interest loans and financing are readily available in order to cover start-up and educational costs, as well as personal planning sessions. The poorest of the poor who are unable to work are afforded for, but those of able body and mind who cannot find work and are unable to pay debts may fall into Partial, or as it sometimes called, Probationary Citizenship; effectively a form of slavery.

Partial Citizenship, in addition to covering loan defaulters, is also employed for criminals having served their time and deemed safe to return to society as well as migrants and refugees set on the path to citizenship. Those with educational and organizational abilities are often bound to Public Service while labourers are typically used to help maintain public infastructure. Partial Citizenship is typically for life, but non-hereditary. Children of Partial-Citizens are supported till adulthood as one of the only endowment schemes offered by the government, while afterward substantially-better-than-average loans are available to assist the children of Partial Citizens. The presence of slaves, sometimes in substantial numbers, within the government bureaucracy ensures at least some representation in government, though they are technically barred from decionmaking bodies. The program ensures that Partial Citizens are provided a stoic, if comfortable existence and access to meaningful work, while government costs are kept low.

The government houses in which Partial-Citizens live usually form tight communities, and are invariably overseen by other Partial Citizens. Disadvantaged children often benefit from the close proximity with more successful government bureaucrats who ensure their social networks are nominally unstinted by their parents' position, and often benefit from outside family members. Nonetheless generational cycles of Partial-Citizenship remain a real social problem.

Partial Citizens have their work hours tied to the national average, and outside that are free to conduct business and own property. Loans are available. Debtors may have citizenship restored if they manage to settle their accounts. Released criminals and New Arrivals may (re)acquire citizenship in their lifetime only through active military service, of typically no less than 15 year duration. A significant number of the professional armed forces are composed of this group, though the professional military's selection process is considerably more demanding than most nations.

Discrimination against Partial Citizens is checkered. It does exist though educated members of the civil service are typically well regarded. Working class government Partial Citizens are typically noted for sub-par performance, though studies show their actual performance is not substantially less other working class groups performing similar work. Animosity between private and Partial-Citizens of the working class is not uncommon.

Military:

Demigueris maintains a very professional military core of around 750,000 personnel roughly 2.5/1.5/1 between the army, navy and airforce respectively. The focus of Demigueris military doctrine has been to focus on a relatively smaller professional military force with considerably better than average training.

It also employs a limited form of conscription, for 2 years of service. This provides basic military training for roles to most of the nation's youth; many of whom continue to serve in the nation's reserve who owing to their 2 years full-time service are nominally more professional than most reserve forces.

Combined these two add an additional 3.5 million personnel to Demigueris' military forces, though for small scale conflicts they are usually relegated to support roles.

Demigueris equipment is about as modern as modern can be without being post-modern tech. Some of the reserve formations make use of slightly outdated technology, but are still designed to be integrated within the overall command and control network.

Composition wise, the armed forces seeks a balance between the army, navy and air force. The navy in particular has undergone a substantial modernization effort. Larger surface ships have been phased out, though a few large carriers remain, in favour of smaller assault ships, and more versatile vessels in the destroyer and frigate range with plenty of shipboard helicopter support. This is complemented by a large, on balance, submarine force of nuclear and silent-deisel models. Demigueris' spurning of nuclear arms means the force does not represent a credible second strike threat without heavy modifications.

The Demigueran Airforce retains a mixed batch of aircraft, including front-line corps of advanced first rate stealth fighters and strike aircraft designed to disrupt enemy air attacks, and penetrate enemy air defences respectively. These are supplemented by a secondary fleet of performance based aircraft, which are in turn supplemented by an economy fleet of aerial weapon platforms capable of deploying advanced sensors and weapons but with significantly increased loiter time, and cost-benefit ratios. Strike aircraft follow a similar model - expensive strike aircraft represent a penetrating vanguard, supplemented by a solid secondary strike force followed up by economy aircraft designed to function largely in secured air-zones. Additional support is provided by close air support helicopters and an array of aerial refueling and JSTAR and AWACS style aircraft.

Demigueris' recent modernization efforts have also seen them equipped with one of the most sophsticated and comprehensive cyber warfare divisions around. The extreme extent to which they monitor internal personnel and security virtually ensures their security protocols are followed virtually to the letter and comprehensive security features are built into the hardware of most systems.

They've also made an effort recently to focus on space development, deploying both air and space based anti-satellite systems.

[Demigueris]

Warning. Information here is in serious need of revision.