Some of this stuff might feel a bit work-in-progress-like(especially cultural and society), and in truth, that's because it is. I look forward to developing it a bit more as time goes on, should I be accepted.
Nation Name:
Numatic Prime
Government Type:
Collective
Government Description:
Wisps run under the rule of a single collective as a direct result of the side-effect of their method of communication. When two Wisps communicate with one another, their emotion is transferred as well. These emotions, given a high enough volume, will compound upon each other. This means that decisions are made very quickly, with little disagreement. Once a change is made, however, it is very hard to change it unless some obvious circumstance arises. Despite this, Wisps are capable of disagreeing. If a Wisp feels strongly enough about a message being passed, then its own emotions can overpower that of the collective. Sometimes, it will convince the others around it, whereupon the emotions become irrelevant and the topic must be settled with concepts.
National Leader(s):
There is no single leader of the collective.
Nation Capital:
While Numatic Prime is their homeworld, their ambassadorial hub is, for most intents and purposes, their capital. The Wisps are extremely secretive about the location of their homeworld; The fluid is extremely delicate, and even more rare, so the loss of it would be catastrophic for their civilization. It is placed far away from the homeworld, and communication is relayed through a complex series of extremely-small and ever-moving nodes in order to mask the origin of the messages.
This Ambassadorial hub is the place that Aliens are welcome to come to communicate to the Wisps.
Nation Age:
All "deviant" collectives were destroyed about 100,000 years ago.
Nation History:
Since the Wisps eliminated all other collectives, their history has been rather boring and uneventful. They mostly drifted throughout the fluid, stagnant, communicating with one another and sharing the stories of the past, while exploring and perfecting their ability to manipulate the chemicals within the fluid. They loved to create shapes, and patterns; Fractality was their largest obsession, creating numerous patterns down to the atomic level, demolishing them then starting again. For years, this was all they had known. This was their world for seventy-thousand years.Then an event happened that changed everything. An object landed within the fluid. Things had come from above before; They knew this from the tales of the past, of their long-lost ancestors whose emotions they still felt to this day. In the past, all things that had come from above had presumed to be given to them from some unknown force; Specifically designed to sustain the the fluid and, by extension, themselves. But this was different.
It was composed of differing materials, yes, but patterned in a way far from than any other object they had seen. It was segmented; Some parts were made of what the Wisps recognized as steel and titanium, interwoven but at a level of purity that only the Wisps themselves have ever created, while others were made of a silicon compound that their waves could pass through. Through the motions of the fluid, and perhaps most importantly, the Wisps could see that it was putting off tremendous amounts of energy.
This object’s appearance made a transition that the Wisps had not had for seventy millennia; They stopped speaking tales of the past, and stopped manipulating the fluid into perfect fractal shape. Years after the thing had been corroded, its energy extinguished and its materials made a part of the fluid, they debated its meaning. A few, early on, thought that it was mere sustenance, but the sheer power of the emotions of the rest quickly extinguished that line of thought. “Was it a message, a cry from more collectives existing outside of the fluid?”, one would ask, the same question resonating in others. Some would say, “Yes”, others would say “No”; Yet more would say “There is no outside.” For years they debated, until a single voice, so powerful that it overrode all of the rest, spoke out.
“We must find out.”
And so they toiled, for thousands of years, to discover what may lie beyond Eventually, they found a means to look outside of the fluid, and in the strange beauty of it all they found purpose. Using their memory from the object that fell in, they found a way to take themselves to the outside, encased in the fluid behind a protective layer of metal and energy. There are still some who debate that the fluid is all that there is, that any outside is merely a manifestation of their own thought.
Whether this is true or not, though, does not matter. The only thing that matters is the discovery of all that this new universe has to offer, and for the past two-thousand years, they have strived to achieve that goal.
Population:
The total number of Wisps is estimated to be around ten-billion.
Major Species:
Numatic Wisps
Minor Species:
No other species are capable of existing within the fluid.
Cultural Information:
The Wisp’s ancient tradition lies in fractality, and the telling of tales of the past to the others. In more recent times, though, it has all taken on a flavor of insatiable curiosity and great discovery. With these two things, a fine balance between tradition and progress has been struck; In regards to themselves, and their own soceity within the fluid, the Wisps are utterly xenophobic, thinking that nothing else can work. But they view the outside universe as something almost entirely different than that of their own world. They look at such things openly, with curiosity; But the xenophobia leaves its traces in the form of caution and distance.
Society Information:
Due to the sheer speed that information travels through the collective, Wisp society is capable of very rapid change, but the compounding of strong emotions can lead to long periods of societal stagnation. Their opinions on most things is very fluid, and can shift from one side to the other and back again in a matter of days; Things of greater importance will stick for longer and be much harder to turn away from.
Language(s):
The Wisps do not speak a language; They communicate by transferring concepts and the emotions tied to it. This can only work within the fluid, to other Wisps.
They have, in the past, preferred to use pictures to represent concepts, and have the same done in return; However, in an effort to facilitate communication with the wider universe, they have developed a way to convert spoken language into concepts. They have a great deal of difficulty understanding metaphor, however, and will almost always take things literally if spoken to.
Notable Locations:
Numatic Prime is their little-known homeworld. Only the Wisps know of its location, and they intend to keep it that way.
The ambassadorial hub is the main pathway of communication, trade, and diplomacy with the Wisps; People are free to come and go, given that they make their presence known. This place, truly a large conglomerate of asymmetrical vessels, has three segments. The first is a massive, empty room, with an atmosphere made up of a dense, totally inert gas used solely for for the propagation of sound. Compared to some life-bearing planets, it is quite cold, sitting at 4 degrees centigrade. It is supposed to be used to allow diplomats a place to rest away from their ship, but there are some squatters who use it as a front to peddle goods.
The second is many magnitudes larger than the first, and notably more well-protected. It houses the fluid, and also all of the Wisps who are responsible for finding out about the side of the universe they were sent to. The third is truly composed of many smaller subsections. These sections are often uncomfortably small rooms, divided by a glass barrier to tubes that extend to the second segment of the hub. Each section houses a very rough, uncomfortable bench for ambassadors to sit upon as they meet the Wisps. When a meeting is set to take place, a number of Wisps will drift through the tube, where it will be sealed behind them. This blocks the communication of other Wisps and allows the ones sealed within to become more individualized with their thought.
Military Information:
Military Doctrine:
The Wisps have a defensive outlook on most conflicts; If they can protect the fluid, they can live on. Even so, they do have a capable arsenal of weapons at their disposal. The Wisps, due to their nature, have no concept of inflicting direct damage to an opponent. In a Wisps point of view, if they destroy an enemy’s environment, they will destroy the enemy. All of their weaponry reflects this viewpoint. They will do everything in their power to strip a ship of its temperature and its oxygen.
Wisps have barely anything in terms of a ground force; The closest thing they have to anything that actually walks on the ground are their lopsided “ambassadors”, which are rather ugly and bulbous constructs used to house the fluid in the atmospheres of planets. These constructs have only two militaristic capabilities. One revolves around destroying large amounts of land with singularities in order to carve a path for their escape, and the other is a self-destruct sequence that will be used to totally destroy the fluid if absolutely necessary. Due to the low number of these that exists at a time, however, they would be near-useless in the grand scheme of things.
In order to take care of anything on the Ground, a Wisp is much more likely to disrupt a planet's ecosystem through subtle, hidden manipulation; For instance, small probes that would introduce radiation into the soil.
Military Strengths:
The Wisps ability to understand and manipulate chemical compositions have given them powerful offensive and defensive capabilities that revolve around the control of energy. Because they have specialized almost entirely in ship life-support disruption, they have become quite good at that, and have a wide variety of tools that they can use to achieve this goal.
Due to their need to defend the fluid, they have also developed excellent defensive capabilities around their ships. Although their energy shields are quite strong, their main defensive strength lies in their power of misdirection; They have developed tools able to confuse sensors, and manipulate light in the hopes of fooling another ship long enough to allow them to escape, if necessary.
Military Weaknesses:
The process of stripping a ships life support can be, given bad circumstance, a very long process, taking a few hours to complete if a ship is sufficiently large. This would, naturally, give their plenty of time to destroy the Wisps’ ships before they even really had to be scared of losing their own. Furthermore, the Wisps methods would be rather predictable, since they only really have two specializations.
Wisps have an extremely difficult time understanding the psyche of biological beings. Although they have somewhat gotten the hang of dealing with them, there are some actions that they would find impossible to predict due to this difference.
Wisps do not have any concept of building defensive bases on planets. They have no ground forces to speak of, and only some of their vessels are capable of entering atmospheres for short periods of time.
Major Industries:
Wisps have only very recently been exposed to the concept of trading anything aside from information, and only a few of the segments of their hub have been equipped with methods of transporting goods to and from. They only really have two trade-goods to speak of. The first aren’t really useful, merely souvenirs and objects of interest to those who pass by; Metal objects, beautiful to behold, fractal down to the arrangement of the atoms. These are sometimes traded for information. Some have mistakenly called them the currency.
Their other industry, way more important, is an asteroid-mining industry. In order to rejuvenate the fluid, create new ships, and repair old ones, they need a constant intake of minerals and metals. They will not offer to trade these unless asked to specifically, and will often not accept if they think they can get the materials on their own.
Foreign Policy:
Wisps are far more interested in observing other species than actually making contact and speaking to them. Unfortunately for them, they aren’t very good at achieving this; Their actual method of “seeing” things outside of the fluid revolves around using something akin to radar, easily detectable by fairly basic technology. Beyond this, they will usually just drop observer ships in and look at what’s happening without making any real efforts to disguise themselves.
Because of the biological beings annoying tendency to make contact with them as soon as they drop in, or start looking at them, they have started to alter their policy to actually making an effort to talking to them. Strangely, this has been to their benefit, as they can provide a unique perspective on their own lives.
Additional Information:
Technological Bases:
Inspired by Star Trek and Babylon 5
NS Activity:
On and Off; When I am participating in a thread, it is daily.
RP Experience:
A Message to the Universe
Map Claim(s):
((Question on this, should I be accepted: Would I be able to put a separate, small marker on the map dictating where the ambassadorial hub is located? I would like it to be quite far away from the actual territory controlled by the Wisps, but still present as it is their most important location for now.))
Map Colour:
Bright Green (Not super important; If any other color would be better, I'm open for it.)
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Species Name:
Numatic Wisps
Physical Description:
They do not have physical form, but can only be seen by their effect on the environment around them. When a Wisp drifts through the fluid, the fluid (truly a mass of microscopic organisms) cavitates around it, producing a vacuum. Furthermore, the sides of the organism touching the vacuum begin to reflect enormous amounts of light from an unknown source. This light, combined with the vacuum that apparently produces it, is called the Numatic Wisp.
To say that it has no form is not to say that it cannot be killed. Numatic Wisps cannot exist outside of the fluid. If the fluid is destroyed, the Wisps cease to exist.
It is theorized that the force that gives a Wisp form stems from extra-dimensional waves, which give it both energy and intelligence.
Average Lifetime:
No Wisp has ever come to the end of its natural life cycle, and such it is unknown, but a Wisp can end its own life. Such an event is a regular occurrence; Most Wisps choose to do so between every 200 and 300 years.
Respiratory Gas:
The Wisps do not breathe. The closest thing they have to a respiratory gas is the Fluid, which they cannot leave.
Reproductive Cycle:
Wisps are capable of (seemingly) spontaneously appearing in the fluid when the conditions are ideal.
They may also choose to reproduce. When a number of Wisps make the decision, they will intersect with one another at the exact same time. This combination of will produce an extremely bright flash of energy, and a new Wisp will be formed from the . After some time, the original Wisps will appear randomly throughout the fluid, similarly to the first method of reproduction. For reasons unknown, they will retain their experiences and memories.
Wisps will not simply churn out more Wisps in this manner, though; The huge burst of energy required to create another Wisp damages the fluid. If the fluid is saturated in too much energy, then it will be irreparably destroyed
Natural Abilities:
The Wisps first natural ability is their ability to communicate with one another. They are able to create bursts of detectable energy to send messages throughout the collective. Because these messages are propagated at the speed of light, ideas are passed around the collective at extremely high rates.
A side effect of this ability is that emotions are not entirely separated from the concepts being spread; When a Wisp feels a message, it feels the emotion behind the message. The emotion behind the message will also feed on itself and compound as more emotions build up around it. This means that, as the number of Wisps in a given fluid rises, each Wisp becomes less individualized.
Their second and perhaps most important ability the Wisps possess is the ability to manipulate the chemical nature of the Fluid. This ability is essential to their prowess as a space-faring race, as it is the sole thing that allows them to construct ships and weapons. Any object that falls within the Fluid can be dissolved, added to the Organisms, then manipulated into any form the Wisps desire.
This does not imply that they are alchemists; They cannot turn iron into plutonium. They can only alter the compositions of such items once they have the raw materials.
Diet:
The Wisps do not eat, but the fluid must be sustained. The organisms that compose the fluid are numosynthetic; They live off of the energy that the Wisps produce in a sort of symbiosis. Due to the high volume of living creatures in the fluid, any toxins that they produce must be regularly cleaned by the Wisps through means of simple chemical conversions.
The organisms within the fluid must also be repaired. Most of the time, this can be done internally by converting the waste into usable materials, but occasionally raw minerals must be brought from space to accelerate the process.
Possible Genetic Defects:
All “defects” within the Wisp collective have to do with their ability to read the emotions of other wisps, herein dubbed as “frequency”. Millennia ago, there was a more healthy balance of frequencies between the Wisps, with numerous collectives forming and spreading. Eventually, all of the collectives were eliminated, leaving a single one. Sometimes, new Wisps appear in the fluid with a different frequencies than the other Wisps. These wisps are usually isolated immediately, the fluid around them destroyed so they cannot exist (One of the few acceptable times to destroy the fluid). A very rare occasion happens, since spacefaring, where entire new collectives form on Numatic vessels, destroying the old before they can be demolished. These ships tend to go rogue, either fleeing very far away from the homeworld or terrorizing the Numatic ships.
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But I imagine it would do my civ good to meet up (again) with the cold, brutal nature of the galaxy. Any place you'd like a handful of my explorers to arrive?
