The Lonely Galaxy Wiki - User contributions [en]

User:Lurker

2026-06-26T17:09:40Z

Lurker:

[[File:Meditation.png|thumb|this is a caption.]]
[[Writing claw]]

{{Special:categories}}

Retribution field

2026-06-26T11:53:08Z

Lurker: Undo revision 788 by Lurker (talk)

A retribution field is a type of force field that absorbs the kinetic energy of incoming projectiles and projects that energy back at the attacker in the form of a pillar of light and concussive force. Retribution field generators come in a variety of form factors, from disposable granades meant to be tossed toward the attacker to systems built into powered armor.

[[Category:Science and Tech]]

Oracle OS

2026-06-26T11:48:40Z

Lurker: The old article had links

One persistent subject of interest to amateur [[cyberarcheology|cyberarcheologists]] is the so-called Oracle OS. It was said to have been programmed by a mad [[research monk|monk]] who claimed it was a conduit through which the [[Uncreated Light|Light]] could communicate with mortals. While many pieces of software claiming to be the original Oracle OS are in fact full operating systems, able to execute other programs while running, the earliest mentions of the software describe it as a standalone piece of machine code designed to boot and run directly on the processor.

Many, many software images claiming to be the true Oracle OS are known. Cruder examples are little more than random number generators used to for divination. More sophisticated attempts employ anything from Markov chains to complex AI chatbots that form more coherent sentences. In modern times one doesn't so much speak of THE oracle OS so much as AN oracle OS, divination programs used much like Ouija boards. Such programs are popular among the casually spiritually inclined, but are condemned by the Claravian Magisterium as superstition.

[[Category:History]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

The Outlands

2026-06-26T11:45:33Z

Lurker: Merged with megathread

''The Outlands'' is a somewhat vague term that refers to the outermost region of [[Focus]], comprising at least the [[Outer Belt]]. If one defines the Outlands as that region where [[Outlander]] is spoken, the planet [[Moonlitter]] would also be included.

The citizens of Partisan Territory refer to the polity as The Outlands, and to themselves as Outlanders. Moonlitter objects to this usage, since the term historically implies a larger territory than the Partisans currently control.

The Outlands

2026-06-26T11:44:12Z

Lurker: Undo revision 644 by Lurker (talk)

File:Untitled Artwork (2).png

2026-06-25T23:27:23Z

Lurker:

Category:Megathread Uploads

2026-06-24T23:33:56Z

Lurker: Created page with "These pages were converted from posts on the Lonely Galaxy Megathread. These are not intended to be archives of those posts, but rather content that should be edited into a more wiki-like style."

These pages were converted from posts on the Lonely Galaxy Megathread. These are not intended to be archives of those posts, but rather content that should be edited into a more wiki-like style.

HUD Specs Render

2026-06-24T23:27:15Z

Lurker: Beep Boop I'm a bot!

[[File:8roogpt.png|thumb]]

Here's a render of a pair of HUD specs. They work similar to Google glass. They're designed to sit about half way down the muzzle. The angle of the lenses can be adjusted to meet the wearer's needs, and there are brightness and contrast dials on the side. As mentioned in the post about tail rings, HUD specs are intended for both portable and stationary use.

[[Category:Xenoergonomics]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

Xenoergonomics: Tail Gesture Ring

2026-06-24T23:27:14Z

Lurker: Beep Boop I'm a bot!

[[File:znzopia.png|thumb]]
In addition to keyers, the yinrih use tail gesture rings as computer input devices. The ring is worn around the tail, and the tail can execute 3-dimensional gestures like flicks, swipes, and twitches etc. Tail rings are favored when walking since it's easier than hobbling on 3 legs with a keyer in one paw. The input flexibility is limited, especially when it comes to text entry, but most people are just doom scrolling anyway.

-----

I just realized that a MUCH simpler version of the spacer's canteen can be achieved by using a plain water bladder and bite valve. Since the yinrih have prehensile paws, they can just squeeze the bladder to get the positive pressure they need for the water to flow out.

[[Category:Xenoergonomics]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

YAP and YIP

2026-06-24T23:27:13Z

Lurker: Beep Boop I'm a bot!

The Yinrih Ansible Protocol (YAP) is the human designation for the link layer protocol used to send information from one ansible to another. Ansibles sharing tailstone wafers from a single monocrystal are assigned unique ansible numbers at the manufacturer. When an ansible goes online, it sends a neighbor solicitation request to any other ansibles on the link. The neighbors respond with neighbor response packets containing their own ansible numbers. Once every ansible on the link is aware of every other ansible, they take turns in a time-division multiple access (TDMA) fashion, with each ansible having a designated time slot to send packets. When it's not sending packets, it passively listens for packets addressed to it (with its ansible number in the receive address portion of the packet.) The packet format is very spartan: a preamble, a receiver address, a sender address, a payload, and a checksum. The lengths of each field are TBD. The length of the address field creates a hard limit on the number of ansibles that can share a link. a six bit address field, for example, allows 64 ansibles (assuming an all zero address is viable, which it likely isn't.)

YAP is a best effort protocol, meaning message delivery is not guaranteed. If you want reliable message delivery you have to look to a higher layer protocol like YIP.

YIP (Yinrih internetworking protocol, also a human term) is the network layer protocol used when sending messages between ansible links, or between nodes on a more "conventional" non FTL network. YIP can operate in either a reliable (message delivery is guaranteed) or best effort (message delivery is not guaranteed) mode. YIP addresses are SUPPOSED to be globally unique, but the proliferation of network nodes eventually exhausted the smaller address space of the original YIP specification, and a new, non backwards compatible version had to be developed. Adoption was positively glacial, and there are STILL single stack networks using the older version of YIP by the time of First Contact, millennia after the publication of the new version of the protocol.

After First Contact, network bridges are developed to translate between human TCP/IP networks and cynoid YIP networks, making the Internet an interstellar, bi-species endeavor.

Sending YIP packets over YAP is known as YoY (YIP over YAP) and sending IP packets over YAP is called IoY (IP over YAP).

Some humans are disappointed (and others overjoyed) to find that the monkey fox version of the internet is almost exclusively a text-based affair thanks to the very low bandwidth achievable by ansibles. Multimedia content does exist, but isolated to non FTL planetwide networks. If you want to reach an interplanetary audience, you're stuck with what amounts to bulletin board systems or GOPHER.

There is also an application layer protocol used to coordinate flows among mass routers called MRP (mass routing protocol). It's a very common misconception that the matter transported over the Underlay is somehow digitized at ingress and rematerialized at egress. This confusion is compounded by the fact that mass flows are segmented and encapsulated in a manner analogous to data while in the Underlay, but it's all still matter, just wrapped in sheaths of realspace. MRP is there to synchronize impulse buffers and route mass flows.
<div style="background-color:#c1dae6;border-radius:4px;border:1px solid #3b8db7;padding:4px">
'''Edit:'''
YAP should have an upper-layer protocol tag between the source address and the payload. That essentially mirrors the Ethernet frame format, and I wanted YAP to be a little unique in some way. I should see how TDMA works. Perhaps a sender address isn't necessary if everyone knows who's sending based on the time slot. Ethernet and wi-fi use CSMA instead. Ansibles sharing tailstone crystals also share a broadcast/collision domain similar to Wi-fi, or old Ethernet before switches. I have much to think about.
</div>

[[Category:Science and Tech]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

Micro Mechs

2026-06-24T23:27:12Z

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Micro mechs are remotely operated robots used in medical procedures. They range in size from smaller than a blood cell to the size of a grain of rice or a small pill. They're designed to enter the patient's body and aid in surgeries that would otherwise require invasive incisions. They're most widely used for endoscopy and removal of small tumors, calculi, and foreign bodies.

The healer operates the micro mech remotely while perching. Movement and manipulation is controlled by paw gauntlets and a tail sheath. Video, audio, olfactory, and tactile output (via the whiskers) are relayed from the mech to a helmet that covers the healer's head.

Micro mechs also make great spying tools, since they allow the operator to be a literal fly on the wall.

[[Category:Science and Tech]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

But what do the missionaries do anyway

2026-06-24T23:27:12Z

Lurker: Beep Boop I'm a bot!

There are several different ideas about what it means to fulfill the Great Commandment. Everyone agrees that the yinrih have been chosen to find other intelligent species, but different groups within the Bright Way have their own ideas about what that looks like.

When humans think of missionaries, they think of people travelling to distant lands to preach and accept converts. While this view is popular, it's not the only one.

Probably the simplest view is that the yinrih are to meet and interact with other species on a personal level, forging friendships with their new galactic neighbors. This is how Tod sees First Contact, which is fitting given his Commonthroat name means "Steadfast Friend".

Another rather straightforward view, held by the Farspeakers, including Stormlight, is that in order to unite the yinrih's noosphere with those of other species, they must physically unite their computer networks together. Stormlight spends most of his time figuring out ways to bridge the Internet with the yinrih's ansible network.

Still another view says that the other species have important lessons to teach the yinrih. This manifests primarily in yinrih converting to various human faiths. There are hints that Iris espouses this view, or at least considers it as a possibility, given that she vehemently insists that the lapsed Pascal lodge with the human priest.

Others hold that the yinrih are to actively uplift less technologically advanced species. This is what Sunshine tries to do by researching human medicine.

As for Lodestar, he doesn't have a specific vision in mind other than the basic "find aliens", but he decides to live out his vows as a Knight of the Sun among his new human friends by protecting the weak and trying to uphold justice.

[[Category:Religion]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

Farspeakers

2026-06-24T23:27:11Z

Lurker: Beep Boop I'm a bot!

In the days when the Bright Way controlled interplanetary communication, farspeakers were responsible for maintaining that infrastructure, much like hearthkeepers maintained the power grid. Unlike hearthkeepers, farspeakers were not descendants of the old shamans and thus were not considered clergy, meaning both males and females could become farspeakers.

Farspeakers approach the task of network engineering with a similar degree of reverence and sacramentality as hearthkeepers do electrical engineering. In the farspeakers' case, they regard the network as the "body" to the "soul" of the noosphere. The secular inheritors of the interplanetary network are more prosaic about their work, but farspeaekrs on Hearthside and other pious enclaves like Wayfarers' Haven are more traditional. This includes the missionaries, Stormlight among them.

Since the Bright Way's goal is to unite the yinrih's noosphere with those of other species, and since the farspeakers view networks (including the human Internet) as a kind of physical incarnation of the noosphere, the act of bridging the Internet with the yinrih's ansible network is approached with much solemnity and celebration.

Other corners of the Bright Way have different ideas about what exactly it looks like to fulfill the Great Commandment. As the saying goes, "Ask two Wayfarers about the Great Commandment, and you'll get three opinions."

[[Category:Religion]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

The Noosphere

2026-06-24T23:27:11Z

Lurker: Beep Boop I'm a bot!

The <rLr-sfB-g> /chuff, long low weak grunt, chuff, yip, early falling weakening whine, short low weak growl/, "realm of minds, noosphere" sometimes poetically called the <jhq-sfB-g> /short falling strengthening growl, huff, etc/ or "mind sea" is an important theological concept in the Bright Way. Wayfarers view evolution, indeed the wider development of the universe as a whole, as a teleological process. A planet accretes from a stellar nebula; life arises from the inert matter of the planet's geosphere, giving rise to the biosphere; and, through the process of biological evolution, life grows more and more complex until sapience emerges, giving birth to the noosphere: the realm of rational thought, reflection, social connection, and communication.

The Light is likened to a gardener tending a flowerbed, with worlds growing from a lifeless geosphere, to a growing biosphere, and eventually flowering into a noosphere as a sapient species emerges. Claravian doctrine holds that The Light has tasked the yinrih as a species with drawing these hitherto isolated noospheres together into union, hastening the ultimate convergence of the universe to a perfect whole.

[[Category:Religion]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

The Knights of the Sun

2026-06-24T23:27:10Z

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<blockquote><div>
The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, "If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them."

--G.K. Chesterton, ''Saint Francis of Assisi''
</div>
</blockquote>
And Oh boy, did the Bright Way have a lot of possessions, with a veritable army numbering in the billions ready and willing to defend them.

As noted in an earlier post, there's no real defining threshold between the Golden Age and the Age of Decadence. While current ecclesiastical historians who, it should be pointed out, are the ideological descendants of the Pious Dissolutionists, set the transition at the first occasion the High Hearthkeeper attempted to halt interstellar mission work, the reality is there was a slippery slope sliding from religion to megacorp that took place over millennia.

It is in this fuzzy transition period that the Knights of the Sun enter the scene. The clergy were now responsible for multiple planet-wide power grids, as well as a communication and logistics network that was single handedly keeping all of colonized space together. These institutions became attractive targets for pirates, gangs, and other criminal elements.

The interplanetary ferry system was a particularly juicy target for pirates. The typical modus operandi involved setting up a base of operation in a hollowed out asteroid and intercepting passing ferries.

It soon became clear that the clergy would need to establish a monopoly on violence in the system. However, the very strict taboo against females in military roles prevented the clergy from taking matters into their own paws. The hierarchy's solution was to found an order of warrior monks dedicated to protecting the Bright Way's physical possessions.

They recruited pious young men by framing the protection of the hierarchy's material holdings as saving the lives and livelihoods of the people who relied on that power, transport, and communication infrastructure against wicket men who sought to destroy it, painting threats to that power as the very enemies of The Light itself.

To be sure, pirates and gangsters are, as a rule, ruthless and unsympathetic characters that society would be better off without, and the knights were indeed directly responsible for saving countless lives precisely because the infrastructure they protected was vital for interplanetary society. But the clergy's decision to take advantage of the zeal of pious young men for their own worldly gain would come back to bite them in the tail on multiple occasions.

The first of these occasions was the High Hearthkeeper's first attempt to permanently halt interstellar mission work. While I've portrayed the missionaries and the "corporate" arm of the Bright Way as being at odds with one another, the truth is that both sides were in a mutualistic relationship. The missionaries relied on the funding and R&D provided by the wider clergy, and the clergy needed to at least pay lip service to the missionaries since they were the ones trying to fulfill the Great Commandment, which the entire religion revolved around in the first place.

One particular High Hearthkeeper forgot the importance of that relationship. She saw how much of a dent interstellar mission work was putting in their bottom line, and attempted to "balance the budget" by putting the missionaries on the chopping block. This did not sit well with the Knights of the Sun, to put it lightly.

Here was a group of young men who saw themselves as protectors of The Light's little ones, as upholders of the very core of the Bright Way's mission to find other sophonts, facing the fact that their leader, who they regarded as the symbolic embodiment of that mission, was going to spit in the face of everything they were told was sacred.

They mutinied en masse, laying siege to Yih until the High Hearthkeeper repented of her blasphemous designs.

The knights were also instrumental in the War of Dissolution, but that, again, is something I have to tackle later.

Lodestar, one of the missionaries aboard the Dewfall, is a member of the Knights of the Sun. In the millennia since the war, the knights have developed into a more traditional contemplative religious order, though retaining an emphasis on using ones physical strength to protect the weak and uphold justice.

The knights get their name from the fact that most of their monasteries are located inside the orbit of Hearthside very close to Focus. Their lighthouses are designed with a central aisle leading up to the star hearth, dividing the congregation into two inward-facing "choirs" that chant back and forth to one another as part of their particular liturgical rite. This central aisle is a transparent window looking nadirward toward Focus, allowing the star's light to flood the space from "below".

The knights are known for their ceremonial powered armor, a relic of their more active military role from millennia past. It's much bulkier than the more streamlined form-fitting pseudosinew that modern soldiers use, making them look like four-legged knights in shining armor.

[[Category:Religion]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

The Litany of Creation

2026-06-24T23:27:09Z

Lurker: Beep Boop I'm a bot!

<blockquote><div>
V: From the breath of the sun The Light wrought the Earth.

R: Glory to The Light!

V: From the stone of the earth, The Light drew forth life.

R: Glory to The Light!

V: From the garden of life, The Light kindled mind.

R: Glory to The Uncreated Light!
</div>
</blockquote>
This is a portion of the ordinary of the liturgy of the Bright Way. It's sometimes also called the Wayfarers' Creed. A much longer version detailing the yinrih's evolution is recited during the feast of the Kindling of the Fire of Understanding.

There's also an abbreviated version:

<div class="codebox">
Code: [[#|Select all]]

<pre>B scrMr, sKGqMr. B sKGqMr, rcBrMr. B rcBrMr, sfBMr.
B scr-Mr sKGq-Mr B sKGq-Mr rcBr-Mr B rcBr-Mr sfB-Mr
from star-3P stone-3P from stone-3P life-3P from life-3P mind-3P
From star, stone. From stone, life. From life, mind.</pre>
</div>

[[Category:Religion]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

Pascal the Wanderer

2026-06-24T23:27:09Z

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Pascal is one of the crew of the Dewfall. His Commonthroat name is rLPqsgrp /chuff, long rising strengthening grunt, huff, yip, short low weak growl, chuff, short high strong grunt/ which means "ring light", referring to sunlight reflected of of Yih's ring on summer nights. He's the odd man out among the yinrih who find Earth, as he's not a Wayfarer, or at least not a committed one. Humans might call him a doubting Thomas.

He's an average size for a yinrih, with mostly white fur with a few large black patches, including one around his left eye.

Historians studying the events of First Contact frequently compare Pascal with Firefly. They have shockingly similar life stories. Like the perpetual Partisan potentate, Pascal was hatched in the Outer Belt within the borders of Moonlitter. His sires and dams were very active in the missionaries, and Pascal was noted to be a very dutiful pup when it came to matters religious. Unlike Firefly, however, Pascal was quiet, bookish, and lacking in social intelligence. On the rare occasions he did speak, he could be rude, blunt, or even offensive, although almost never on purpose. He was just bad at reading the room, and he would apologize profusely when the inappropriateness of his comments were pointed out to him. He could also show surprising flashes of empathy. Once, upon hearing that a neighbor's pet had run off, Pascal spent hours searching for the critter in the pouring rain.

Also like Firefly, he took a mandatory customer service job as an adolescent (at a restaurant in this case). He noticed that his fellow Wayfarers could be just as rude, if not more so, than the average diner, which caused him to question whether the Bright Way was any good after all.

But it was an internal controversy within the Bright Way that cemented his doubts. The high hearthkeeper was once again entertaining the idea of halting interstellar mission work, rejecting the Great Commandment. This provoked a nagging question in Pascal's mind: "If the clergy doesn't care, why should I?"

Despite Pascal's ebbing faith, he didn't feel like he fit in with his secular peers, either. Most of his friends were still committed Wayfarers. Two of his friends, a pair of litter mates who attended the same lighthouse he did as a pup, even pursued religious vocations, with Iris becoming a hearthkeeper and Lodestar joining the Knights of the Sun. The three of them remained close even after the Partisan invasion of their planet and subsequent relocation of the population to a colony in the Inner Belt.

Pascal had suffered from depression in his youth, and without his faith acting as a bulwark against the darkness, he found himself drifting aimlessly through life as a young adult. Some time after he and his friends settled down at Wayfarers' Haven, the community decided to sponsor a mission to a newly discovered habitable planet, and Iris and Lodestar volunteered, and suggested that Pascal do the same.

Pascal protested, saying that it made no sense for a non Wayfarer to go on a mission, and at the end of the day, even if they did find other sophonts it wouldn't prove that the Bright Way was right. Iris countered by saying that his entire circle of friends was going on this mission, so he'd be alone once they left. He had shown no interest in joining a childermoot and hatching pups, and he wasn't exactly in a hurry to start a career. "Besides," she said, "The Light believes in you, even if you don't believe in the Light. Let's say you're right and the Bright Way is nonsense. You will have lost nothing by obeying the Great Commandment. But if I'm right, you will have gained everything." This persuaded him to join the mission.

Iris had an uphill battle getting the local overseer to approve Pascal's presence on the mission, as it was unheard of for a non Wayfarer to be a missionary. Iris managed to convince her superior by quoting the old missionary maxim "what healer does not abide among the sick?" So, along with Tod, Stormlight, and Sunshine, Pascal and his friends embarked on the mission that would, after a hundred millennia of yinrih history, finally make First Contact.

Upon landing on Earth, Pascal ends up lodging with one Fr. Shaheen, pastor of the local Maronite church and brother of one of the hams that first encounter the Dewfall. The priest originally offers to host Iris, as he wants to compare notes with the alien cleric, but Iris insists Pascal lodge with him instead, not because she's not equally interested in what sort of faith these hairless bipeds have, but because she hopes the priest will rekindle some sort of faith in the wandering yinrih.

Upon relating his reasons for coming on the mission to his host, Fr. Shaheen gives the yinrih his human name, "Pascal" as a reference to the French philosopher.

-----

Here’s a random factoid: Blaise Pascal was born in 1623, and given the average age of the missionaries of about 150 plus the 250 years of suspension, that means Pascal was hatched 3 years after his namesake was born.

[[Category:People]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

The Birth of the Partisans

2026-06-24T23:27:08Z

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During the centuries that the missionaries were making their way to the exoplanet, the Outer Belt saw a period of quiet, with the Bright Way regaining control over much of the region. The clergy’s little PR stunt painting First Contact as an inevitability seemed to work. The secular insurgents were holding their collective breath. Perhaps Cloudbearer was wrong after all. The traditionalists within the Bright Way were hoping that First Contact would reorient the wider clergy back toward their original goal of finding and befriending other intelligent species, abandoning their monopoly over the system’s infrastructure that had distracted them for nearly sixty millennia.

But you know what they say, no, not “All toasters toast toast”. “Nobody gets in trouble for lying. They get in trouble for getting caught.” When the missionaries arrived at what turned out to be another lifeless lump of rock, and the news made its way back to Focus through the ansible network that the hierarchy had lied, all hell broke loose in the Outer Belt. The hierarchy lost in mere days what they had spent centuries building back up. Not just the territory in the Outer Belt, but what little good will they had left, even from the traditionalists among the missionaries and on Hearthside. The clergy were expelled from the Outer Belt, and the region balkanized into a patchwork of warlord states consisting of competing secularist factions. The missionaries, hitherto tolerated by the secularists thanks to their shared enmity with the corporate arm of the Bright Way, now found themselves the targets of harassment and violence. The secularists blamed them for being complicit in the hierarchy’s deception, knowingly or not. The missionaries are what gave the hierarchy legitimacy, and their servile obeisance to the hierarchy could only stop with their eradication.

The mission control team managing the now disgraced mission found themselves especially targeted. Protests escalated to death threats, some of which were followed through on. For the next several centuries, the team had to move from safe house to safe house, relocating when their new base of operations was discovered and attacked. Their fellow traditionalists on Hearthside made several offers to give them a place free from persecution where they could monitor the returning womb ship in peace, but Firefly and the others would eventually have to cross the Outer Belt once they entered Focus, and the control team thought it best that they had a safe place to dock upon their return.

This decision would be their undoing. After centuries of dodging bullets both metaphorical and actual, the control team’s latest safe house was raided by a cell of secular insurgents. While the team itself survived the encounter, their management computers and the ansible connecting them to the ship had been stolen. Worst of all, the tailstone monocrystal connected to the womb ship’s own ansible, the single most precious object to the entire mission, was also found and taken. They could lose their management computers, they could lose the ansible itself, but as long as they had more of the tailstone connected to the womb ship they could rebuild. Now they didn’t even have that. The little craft was flying blind.

Here’s where the history slips into speculation, with urban legends, propaganda, and guesswork being the only guideposts. This is the version of events that most historians think is most plausible. With no warm bodies monitoring the logs coming back from the amnions aboard the womb ship, and with years passing in mere seconds for the travelers themselves, system errors and hardware failures slowly built up over the years until two of the three amnions failed, allowing the occupants to slip into unconsciousness, causing brain death. Firefly was the only survivor. Folk history among Wayfarers says that, given system control would have reverted to Firefly on the event that comms with mission control were severed, and knowing he wasn’t in the best headspace going into suspension, he killed the other two missionaries in a nihilistic rage. Partisan propaganda says that he struggled mightily to save his crewmates, making a final plea to The Light to allow them to survive. A plea that went unanswered, convincing Firefly once and for all that religion was a poisonous lie.

Meanwhile, the hierarchy had their paws full trying to hold on to the rest of Focus. The outskirts of the Outer Belt had collapsed completely, with the territory of Moonlitter forming a stagnant battle front between the disorganized secular forces and the considerable might of the Knights of the Sun. This remained the status quo until a few years before Firefly was due to return home.

Firefly found his subjective time perception pulled back into sync with the outside world years before he was supposed to reenter Focus. He was reborn. The fire in his soul was no longer fueled by faith, but by a burning hatred for those that had wronged him. His sires and dams were dead, his littermates were dead. The world he was returning to was utterly unlike the one he left. And all of it was for nothing, for worse than nothing. For some time after his time perception normalized, Firefly had only the monotonous diagnostic data pouring into his mind from the ship’s systems to keep him company, but soon that was joined by the voices of other yinrih. It seems the womb ship’s ansible had regained contact with its twin at Focus. The messages flooding the ansible were not from mission control. The secularists who had stolen the tailstone had used it to manufacture another ansible and reconnect with the ship.

At first the messages were cruel, mocking Firefly for his blind faith, but soon the insurgents discovered that the erstwhile pious missionary had become sympathetic to their cause. For the insurgents, this was a boon of colossal proportions. A former champion of the Bright Way was now one of them. At first they planned to use him as a figurehead, a symbol of everything false and deceptive that was the Bright Way. Firefly was to be a standard bearer around which the fractured secularists could rally to finally push beyond the orbit of Moonlitter. But Firefly proved more than just a figurehead. He used his charisma to climb the ranks of this particular group of insurgents, using his extensive knowledge of the missionaries and the larger Bright Way to strike where they were most vulnerable. He became a trusted leader, first to the little cell that had secured the ansible, and then as those insurgents proved frightfully successful at targeting the Bright Way, other groups of secularists gathered around him until he found himself at the top of an entire movement, and all before crossing into the Outer Belt, indeed without leaving suspension.

By the time he re-entered Focus Firefly had single handedly rallied the previously disorganized secular warlord states behind a single terrifying banner. They were the partisans, and he was their great leader.

[[Category:People]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

Firefly

2026-06-24T23:27:07Z

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Firefly was hatched on a dwarf planet in the outer belt in the waning centuries of the age of decadence. His sires and dams were active with the missionaries. Although none of them had been selected to go on a mission, they assisted in other ways like mission control and wayfinding (searching for potentially habitable planets to send future missions to.) It was their greatest hope that one of their pups would be selected to go on a mission someday.

By all accounts Firefly's puppyhood was a happy one. He was beloved by his parents and litter mates, and was especially known for his piety. He was seldom seen without a prayer ring, and attended liturgies daily, sometimes more than once a day during important feasts.

In addition to his strong spiritual life, Firefly demonstrated strong leadership skills, even at an early age. He could frequently be seen leading the other pups in his lighthouse in meditative prayers, and he helped run retreats for his fellow youth as he grew older. Even adults were inspired by the fire in his soul.

Surrounded as he was by fervent Wayfarers, he was shielded from both the less exemplary side of the clergy as well as the growing secular antagonism elsewhere in the outer belt. This all changed as he was approaching adulthood.

One peculiar custom seen in some parts of Moonlitter and the Outer Belt, even to this day, is a requirement that pups reaching adulthood must take a public-facing job for some time in order to instill empathy for those working in customer service. Firefly found himself working at the repair desk of an electronics shop. It was here where he was exposed to the "real" world. One thing he noticed right away was how rude the customers could be. He particularly noticed that his fellow Wayfarers, who he had grown up to regard as kinder and more understanding, were just as rude as the secular yinrih who visited the store.

This planted a seed of doubt in his mind. What good was the Bright Way if Wayfarers acted no different than their secular peers? This seed was further nourished by Firefly's first exposure to the rest of the Bright Way, those corrupt clergy whose only interest was maintaining their monopolistic grip over the system.

One day, while seeking absolution, he confessed his doubts to the hearthkeeper of his childhood lighthouse. A patient and gentle confessor, she encouraged him to see these difficulties as an opportunity for growth. "Faith is not a feeling," she said. "You were a very faithful pup, but much of that was your sires' and dams' teaching you how to live. Now's your chance to own that faith as an adult." Yet his doubt lingered even as he continued his outward devotion.

Around this time, the wayfinders discovered perhaps the most promising exoplanet in the history of the missionaries. It was not only overflowing with biosignatures, there were even rumors that long range imaging had picked up city lights on the planet's surface.

Every now and then, the wider clergy liked to parade the missionaries around in order to reinforce their rule by reminding everyone of their divine mandate to find other sophonts. This was one of those times. News of the promising new exoplanet was spread far and wide, to the point that it was almost a foregone conclusion that they would finally make First Contact. Cloudbearer the Heresiarch had made his famous repudiation of the Great Commandment not too long before, and the ruling clergy found their grip on power slipping, but the news that the yinrih might not be alone in the universe after all was the perfect opportunity to remind the public that the clergy were still relevant.

Firefly’s confessor encouraged him to apply to be a missionary to this new world, hoping that it would help him get over his doubts. Prospective missionaries are subjected to a battery of physical and mental health tests to make sure they’re fit for the rigors of long-term suspension. The sensory input generated by the amnion as the nervous system is plugged into the ship's network can be addictive, and some people can be psychologically harmed to the point of madness by the alteration of time perception required by centuries of suspension. Firefly did pass these tests, but only just. The mission directors were all set to turn him down, as they were extra keen to ensure this all-but-guaranteed First Contact went smoothly. Firefly’s confessor urged them to approve him, saying he was a man of great faith who was unlikely to succumb to addiction or madness.

And so Firefly was selected to go on the mission along with two others. His sires and dams were overjoyed that their dream of having one of their litter go on a mission was finally becoming reality. This joy was tempered by the sadness of knowing they would never see their little pup again, as they would be gone before the mission even arrived at this distant world.

As was the ancient custom, a living funeral was held for Firefly and the other missionaries so that their sires, dams, and litter mates could say goodbye to them one last time. A tiny sliver of bone was taken from each missionary and put in a reliquary, which was given a place of honor in the local lighthouse, as it was assumed they would spend the remainder of their lives on an alien planet, and it would be even longer before other Wayfarers would arrive and give their bones proper respect.

So with mingled joy and grief, Firefly’s family and friends bade their last goodbye to him as he climbed into the amnion aboard their little womb ship.

To Firefly and the other two missionaries, the next several centuries passed in a few days. In that time, their sires, dams, and even their litter mates reached the end of their lives, and mission control passed from one set of paws to another as crew grew old and retired.

What happened next is a matter of considerable historical debate, and accounts differ depending if you’re talking to partisan propagandists, Wayfarers, or Allied Worlds historians, but this much is agreed upon. The missionaries arrived in orbit around the planet and were pulled out of suspension, expecting a verdant garden of life, only to be met with yet another barren rock. It was even discovered that the little tidbit about city lights being detected was a crock of cloaca butter churned out by the clergy in a desperate attempt to hold onto power by making the prospect of finding other sophonts seem more likely. The missionaries had given up absolutely everything, and it turned out they were just chasing the end of the ring, just like every mission that had gone before them. On top of everything else, they had been used by a corrupt hierarchy to maintain their stranglehold on Focus.

While all three missionaries were sad at the absence of sophonts to befriend and angry at the clergy for using them, this was the final straw for poor little Firefly. Ever since his miserable experience in that shop as an adolescent, he had been staring into an abyss of nihilism. For years he fought tooth and claw not to fall in. He prayed, he fasted, he meditated, he sought spiritual council, but nothing could remove that doubt gnawing at his gut. He willingly gave up ever seeing his beloved family and friends again, and was all but promised that his difficulties would be put to rest by finally making First Contact. It was a lie.

No, not just the thing about city lights, the whole Bright Way. Those secular agitators were right. It was all a ruse, a deceit concocted by the clergy to gull superstitious masses into submission. That confessor of his was probably in on the whole thing, too, putting on a mask of compassion to manipulate him and the rest of her congregation. Damn her greasy fur! There was no Light, no soul, no free will. From the day you hatched you were just rotting away a little each day until your insane fluke of an existence was snuffed out. The universe would go on reeling forward, shoved inexorably toward heat death by the blind force of entropy as though you never were.

It was in this state of existential turmoil that Firefly had to re-enter suspension for the journey back home.

[[Category:People]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

Golden Hour City

2026-06-24T23:27:07Z

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Golden Hour city is a small village located on the terminator of Hearthside where the sun is frozen near the horizon. The city is bathed in an everlasting golden glow. It's notable for being the location of the clinic where the donated human cadavers were studied, and where the first living humans were examined by yinrih healers. It's also one of the smallest cities at Focus to get a dedicated mass router, installed next door to the clinic, so that the cadavers could be transported more efficiently.

[[Category:Focus]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

Yinrih Milk

2026-06-24T23:27:05Z

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[[File:2thksvd.png|thumb]]
Here's a spacer's canteen filled with yinrih milk. Their milk and their ink have similar origins, which is why the milk is blue, and why it is sweated from the palms of the forepaws. It doesn't have the earthy rain smell that ink has.

The milk has very strong antimicrobial properties to compensate for the fact that it's secreted from a surface in constant contact with the ground. Milk production is stimulated by exposing the palms to saliva. Kits lick their dams' paws to nurse. The "on-demand" nature of milk production is an adaptation to prevent dams from losing their grip when climbing, since constantly sweating milk or sweating based on a cycle would make for slippery paws at inopportune times.

Hearthkeepers collect their own milk by licking their paws and soaking the milk up with a sponge, then wringing the milk out into a container. The milk is then blessed and used like holy water. Hearthkeepers often sprinkle blessed milk via an aspergillum held in the tail.

The phrase "By the palms that nursed me!" means something like "oh wow" or "holy crap".

[[Category:Biology]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

Xenoergonomics: Spacer's Canteen

2026-06-24T23:27:04Z

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[[File:nl72nc6.png|thumb]]

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Sticking with the spacers, here's my solution for monkey foxes drinking in zero gravity.

Humans can use straws because we can form an airtight seal with our lips and rarefy the air in our oral cavity in order to produce suction.
Yinrih can't form a seal with their mouth, so straws are out. My solution is to have a piston actuated by a screw, similar to how some fountain pens refill ink. You turn the screw, pushing the piston into the chamber, exerting pressure on the liquid within. To drink, the person licks the ball baring at the end of the tube, and the pressure exerted by the piston causes water to flow out. These drawings are technically upside down. Being in microgravity means you'd probably hold the canteen upright with the tube at the top and the piston at the bottom.

There are two versions of the canteen: the one on the left is filled directly with water, while the other one contains a flexible bladder that contains the drink, allowing for easier cleaning.

Does any of this work? I have no idea. I only got 5 hours of sleep last night lol.

[[Category:Xenoergonomics]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

Interplanetary Ferries

2026-06-24T23:27:04Z

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The interplanetary ferry system is how yinrih got around Focus before the invention of the mass router, and it's still how bulk cargo is transported afterward.

It was formerly run by the Bright Way before the War of dissolution, but now operates as a series of independent but interconnected spaceports and spacelines similar to how the aviation industry works on Earth.

Ferries are strictly spacefaring craft, unable to land on a planet's surface. Spaceports exist atop space elevators, or in the case of Yih, an array of freely orbiting structures that are accessed by smaller shuttle craft.

Spacers like to joke that ferries have "accidental gravity" because ferries have a constant acceleration of around 0.88 g (or the same gravity as Yih). This allows them to get from one point on the outer belt to the opposite side of the system in about 84 Earth days. They can accelerate faster, and some spacelines offer routes that use an acceleration of 1 g, which cuts off a lot of travel time at the cost of a higher gravity.

They operate by accelerating for half the trip, and decelerating for the second half.

They're set up like Victorian era / pre WW I steam ships, with cabins of various levels of opulence as well as common areas and food service.

Passenger ferries persist for a time after the mass router is invented, but eventually they're used for just cargo and the occasional pleasure cruise.

[[Category:Science and Tech]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

Powered Armor Torso Jacket

2026-06-24T23:27:03Z

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[[File:i9locms.png|thumb]]

Here's a dorsal view of yinrih powered armor. The torso jacket is made of the same pseudosinew as the paw gauntlets. The helmet snaps magnetically onto the umbilical cable running along the spine. On either side of the spine near the shoulders are two drone capsules. The capsules act like the powerups from arcade scrolling shooters (I'm specifically thinking the force pod from R-Type), hovering near the operator and firing on command. They can also generate a retribution field around the wearer and any nearby friendlies.

Closer to the back legs are a micro fusion reactor, essentially a functional star lantern, as well as reserve tanks for water and O2.

The tail is covered in even more pseudosinew. It's used in close quarters combat along with retractable monomolecular claw blades built into the rear paw gauntlets. The most basic unarmed fighting style, used even by the tree-dwellers, is to rear up on the hind legs and attack with the front claws, which leaves the belly exposed. Powered armor addresses this strategy by allowing the wearer to shift his weight to the tail and thrust the rear feet forward with the claw blades extended to disembowel the attacker like a kangaroo kick.

And yes, Tod has a suit of powered armor, and yes, he brought it with him. Iris nearly tears him a new cloaca when she finds out, as it's considered sacrilege to bring weapons on a missionary journey. Tod points out (rather sensibly) that even assuming the local sophonts are friendly, there's no guarantee the wildlife is.

Why does a ''peacekeeper'' need this kind of powered armor? I don't know, military industrial complex I guess.

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Why do I keep accidentally posting these as separate threads lol

[[Category:Science and Tech]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

Underlay tunnel interface card

2026-06-24T23:27:01Z

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[[File:rn7ee9s.png|thumb]]

Here's a sketch of the underlay tunnel interface card: because networking infrastructure is what I think of when I think sci-fi worldbuilding.

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Now that I'm looking at it, it should have a face plate on the side opposite the pins. I did figure out how to do a bump map for the traces leading from the tailstone wafer to the pins, and the pins themselves are a texture mask mixing two shaders. I also had to UV unwrap the plane used as the PCB. While the piece itself isn't super well done, I'm happy I'm learning more about Blender.

[[Category:Science and Tech]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

Raw Tailstone Crystals

2026-06-24T23:27:00Z

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[[File:fxol6my.png|thumb]]
Here are some raw tailstone monocrystals. I haven't decided if tailstone can only be found naturally or if it can be synthesized. In either case, the best way to get tailstone currently involves going through the Partisans, since the Outer Belt has the highest concentration of tailstone (or tailstone components) in the system.

Maybe Earth, the moon, or other bodies at Sol are full to bursting with tailstone, which would have drastic implications for monkey fox geopolitics going forward, as the only reason the Partisans aren't a pariah state is they're a cheap source of tailstone, and a lot more besides, but tailstone is probably the yinrih's version of oil.

One detail I didn't work into the story above is that the giant monocrystals like you see in the image are fairly rare. Tailstone monocrystals are manufactured like silicon, where you have a small seed crystal that you get naturally that is grown in a bath to a single monocrystal. At some point in the formation process, the crystal structure "locks" and any wafers obtained from that crystal, or any smaller crystals broken from it, are interlinked via the underlay in the fashion mentioned in the story.

There are some big cybersecurity implications to this system. Say you ordered a batch of tailstone monocrystals from a supplier in Partisan terratory. The Partisan government could demand that the supplier grow larger monocrystals, and split them into several normal sized ones, offering half to the buyer and giving half to the Partisan government. Any communications made via underlay tunnels made with the half given to the buyer could be eavesdropped on by the Partisan government. There would be no way for the buyer to know the crystals were fractured before delivery, and as long as the Partisans don't send anything via their half, there's no way to know someone's listening.

There's also no way, physically, to verify the source of a message. All you know is the sender must have access to a wafer shaved from the same monocrystal you have, but there are ways of insuring nonrepudiation and message authentication that work as well for ansibles as they do on Earth. So yeah, lots of fun hacker shenanigans all around, especially when you put mass routers into the mix. You could poison the routing table and cause a whole freaking person to just show up somewhere they didn't want to go.

This concept probably won't be canon, but one idea I had was for "one way mass routers" that are used as oubliettes, just shunting people into the underlay with no way out.

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Time will tell how long my ADHD brain will be interested in using Blender, but I'm already happier with these 3D models than I was with the 2D drawings. They're pretty simplistic, but it makes me nostalgic for the times when stuff with this little detail was considered top of the line graphics. Anyone remember the show Reboot? Loved that cartoon.

[[Category:Science and Tech]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

The Outer Belt

2026-06-24T23:26:59Z

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At the time leading up to the War of Dissolution, the Outer Belt was a place of stark contrasts. Much like Newhome before it, the Outer Belt was an attractive place for misfits and ideologues, being as it was at the edge of yinrih civilization. Among these ideologues were militant secularists.

The Outer Belt was also the dumping ground for elements that the hierarchy deemed undesirable, including incompetent engineers and aging infrastructure, but also the missionaries, who, along with Hearthside, were a hotbed of movements and ideas that would later coalesce into the Pious Dissolutionists. The Outer Belt suited the missionaries just fine, though, as it was that much closer to interstellar space.

The hierarchy didn't exactly help their case by giving the Outer Belt the short end of the stick. Power delivery was sporadic, interplanetary communication was unreliable, and ferry service might as well not have existed at all.

So you have two groups who are ill-disposed to the "corporate" side of the Bright Way already, living in an area underserved by the Bright Way's services while still being expected to pay the same tithes as someone from the inner planets where things ran much smoother. It's not hard to see why the war began here.

The militant secularists were a disorganized lot of terrorists staging sporadic attacks against Bright Way infrastructure. Missionaries and other pious Wayfarers themselves were merely attacked rhetorically rather than physically... at first. The secularists got a lot more organized and a lot less tolerant after a strong leader rose to unite them. More about that guy in an upcoming post.

[[Category:Focus]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

Making the Galaxy Less Lonely

2026-06-24T23:26:59Z

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Before mass routers were perfected, interstellar travel was strictly the domain of missionary Wayfarers seeking other intelligent species. The logistics of setting up a colony on a barren world outside of Focus were just too costly, both in economic and personal terms.

While travelling via mass router isn't trivial (it comes out to about the same cost as an international flight) it's far, far easier than sealing yourself in a womb ship and entering suspension for centuries. Now, you can have a ship that is unmanned, but with life support and a mass router aboard, sent to promising exoplanets, and only send crew over around the time the ship lands.

Over the coming millennia, this enables the mass peopling of the galaxy by humans and yinrih alike. However, not everyone is OK with this. The traditional wing of the Bright Way is generally against colonizing exoplanets, as they believe The Light gave them the one star alone to conquer. They must leave the rest of the galaxy as fertile soil for other souls to spring forth as The Light sees fit, just as they did on Yih and humanity did on Earth.

[[Category:Focus]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

Broad Strokes History between Sapience and First Contact

2026-06-24T23:26:58Z

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The hundred millennia between the dawn of sapience and First Contact can be divided into three ages of roughly equal length. The first age, sometimes called the golden age of the Bright Way, is characterized by the expansion of both the Bright Way within yinrih society, and the expansion of the yinrih themselves, first throughout Yih, and then into the rest of Focus.

It's important to remember that, unlike humanity, which sundered into a myriad of different ethnolinguistic groups with sometimes drastically different cultures, the yinrih's culture remained far more monolithic and cohesive thanks to their innate ability to write. Different cultures do exist, but their differences are comparable to those between, say, French, Italian, and Spanish cultures. Distinct identities emerge and grow, but there's always a common baseline. The yinrih thus have nothing comparable to indigenous peoples on Earth. It is this cultural cohesion that allowed the Bright Way to settle in as a ubiquitous, powerful force in society.

It is also during this age that the yinrih take their first steps into the starry firmament, with the first permanent orbital colony being founded shortly after, marking the birth of the Spacers. Between this time and the discovery of tailstone and the Underlay, you see groups like the Mechanists pioneering ahead to found settlements on Newhome, with other ideological missfits following in their footsteps. The yinrih's true age of discovery begins after the invention of the ansible. The Mechanists and others on Newhome went there specifically because it was isolated from Yih, but the ansible made the system much smaller, allowing Newhome to simply grow into an extension of wider yinrih society. The same pattern of growth, establishment, and pioneering repeated itself many times for the other terraformable bodies throughout Focus.

In reality, there is no clear delineation between the Golden Age and the Age of Decadence, but most Wayfarers set the pivot point at the first attempt by the High Hearthkeeper to halt interstellar mission work. She was "persuaded" to reconsider by the missionaries, backed up by the considerable firepower of the Knights of the Sun, who at this time were among the most pious groups within the Bright Way (more on the Knights in a subsequent post.) Anyway, this is considered to be the moment the Bright Way lost its focus and transitioned from being a very popular religion that happened to control power infrastructure and interplanetary transport and communications, to a multi-industry for-profit monopoly that happened to have a religion that shared its name. Many people during this time may not have even been aware that the "Bright Way" delivering their power and handling their interplanetary messages was the same "Bright Way" that ran the local lighthouse.

The Age of decadence is when the yinrih finish their conquest of the system, ascending to Kardashev II status. It's also during this time that Yinrihcron gets built (still looking for an in-universe name). The City of Eternal Noon is also founded around the beginning of this time, and the city's corrupt foundress is in retrospect considered a harbinger of things to come.

Unlike the gradual transition between the first two ages, the third age begins decisively with the War of Dissolution. That's a big enough topic to get its own post some time, but the war and its aftermath sets up the current players in monkey fox geopolitics: Hearthside, now the center of the Bright Way, which is lead by the successors to the Pious Dissolutionists during the war; The Allied Worlds: consisting of planetary metagovernments of Sweetwater, Yih, Newhome, and Welkinstead; The Spacer Confederacy: a VERY loose collection of independent Spacer city-states in the inner belt; Moonlitter: a somewhat more cohesive group of semi-autonomous lunar colonies around the titular ice giant, with nominal authority over the part of the outer belt not claimed by the Partisans. Last but not least, we have the Partisans themselves, who were the original instigators of the war. They were technically the allies of both the Pious Dissolutionists and the Allied Worlds, but the relationship broke down after the war, as the Allied Worlds were willing to allow the Pious Dissolutionists to maintain their strictly religious institutions while breaking up and privatizing the Bright Way's worldly holdings.

The Partisans, however, wanted to see the Bright Way completely eradicated. If you wanted to be generous, you could say they wanted to make absolutely sure that nobody held the same level of power over the entire system again. If you were more cynical, you could say they had designs on being the next system-wide superpower themselves. Like most big movements, it was probably a little of column A, a little of column B.

The alliances boil down to this: The Allied Worlds (AW) and Hearthside are cordial but somewhat aloof allies. The AW have disestablishmentarianism as a core tenant, while Hearthside is of course an ecclesiocracy. The AW and the Partisans are politically opposed to one another, even as the Partisans put down deep economic roots in just about every supply chain in every industry in the AW. The Spacer Confederacy kind of fills the same niche as Newhome did before the Underlay was discovered. It's a home for everything from cult colonies, libertarian (u/dys)topias, anarchosyndicalist communes, and groups of people who just want to get by in peace--all of whom somehow hate each other just little enough to form a debateably functional government.

And then there's poor Moonlitter. Its government swings between favoring the Partisans and the AW, depending on who gets elected (or whichever of the two sides has better spies at the time.)

The refugees that formed Wayfarers' Haven, including four of the six crew of the Dewfall, were at least nominally citizens of Moonlitter before being evacuated to the Inner Belt and forming their own city-state. They could have just moved to Moonlitter itself, but they wanted to get as far away from the Partisans as possible while still staying together as a community, not to mention Moonlitter's notoriously unstable government.

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<blockquote><div>
[[./memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=4616|Visions1]] wrote: [[./viewtopic.php?p=327980#p327980|'''']]<span class="responsive-hide">2024-02-16T20:34:24+00:00</span>
Why not doggie doors?
</div>
</blockquote>
I mention vertically hinged doors, which are more or less doggie doors.

[[Category:Culture]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

Star Lanterns

2026-06-24T23:26:56Z

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[[File:bypndoo.png|thumb]]
Star lanterns are like miniature star hearths. As such, they're also micro fusion reactors. they obtain hydrogen to fuse by taking in ambient water vapor and electrolytically separating the hydrogen and oxygen. They're small enough to fit in the hand, but output enough energy to power an average human household.

Missionaries bring star lanterns as gifts to newly discovered sapients.

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I fixed the glass issue, a little bit. It still looks a little weird. It takes 3+ minutes for this to render, so making adjustments is time-consuming.

[[Category:Science and Tech]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

The Star Hearth in Lego

2026-06-24T23:26:55Z

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[[File:vz7pzrl.jpg|thumb]]
This one's unlit. Still working on making my builds more interesting. I'm learning the names of different types of pieces and their standard dimensions. Plates are 1/3 the height of a brick, and measurements are given in studs (the little pegs on the tops of the bricks). I'm glad I can render things in this CAD program rather than having to buy the physical bricks. Sure the physicality of building in real life would be more satisfying, but the stress of having to find a particular piece in a particular color would make it less fun.

[[Category:Science and Tech]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

More Lego: Retribution Field Generator

2026-06-24T23:26:53Z

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[[File:yxdifl4.png|thumb]]

Here's another take on the retribution field generator. Did I mention I love neon translucent plastic?

[[Category:Science and Tech]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

The Yinrih Can into Space

2026-06-24T23:26:53Z

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One might find it odd, given the yinrih's longer lifespan, that they were able to achieve spaceflight a mere five thousand Earth years after achieving sapience. This would be like paleolithic humans going from hunting and gathering with sharpened sticks and hand axes to manned orbital flight in a mere five hundred years.

One obvious contributor is that the yinrih had been able to write from the word go. Being able to preserve thoughts over time and space, allowing their collective body of knowledge to start building up over generations. The second reason they progressed up the tech tree so fast is that most scientific progress was done under the auspices of the Bright Way, which had (and to an extent still has) a strong martyrdom culture. Giving one's life while furthering the goal of finding other sophonts among the stars is the highest honor a Wayfarer can hope to achieve.

Combining religious zeal and scientific curiosity makes for a rather high casualty rate among yinrih scientists, engineers, and explorers, willing as they were to take greater risks in the name of fulfilling the Great Commandment. In particular, the yinrih didn't so much dip their paws into the starry firmament as hurl themselves headlong into it. It was less NASA and more Kerbal Space Program. Less than a score of humans have died while attempting spaceflight, but the yinrih have a litany of canonized martyrs (and ''cannonized'' martyrs, given their earliest attempts may or may not have involved shooting people out of a cannon in a vaguely upward direction), all of whom made the ultimate sacrifice while pursuing greater knowledge.

[[Category:Religion]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

Wayfarer's Prayer Ring

2026-06-24T23:26:52Z

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[[File:l7x0jxc.png|thumb]]
Here's a Wayfarer's prayer ring. It consists of two parts: a freely rotating gear nested in an outer ring. Just using a single piece would be uncomfortable because the dorsal portion of a yinrih's digits is covered in fur. The gear has twelve teeth, with one of them slightly protruding, acting as a starting point.

The ring is worn on one of the digits, typically the writing claw, with the outer thumb turning the gear as one counts out the prayers. Many different prayers use a prayer ring, most notably the traditional torpor meditation.

Yinrih generally don't wear rings (prayer or otherwise) as jewelry since their paws have to pull double duty as hands and feet. Prayer rings do make great fidget spinners though. Pups are often given a prayer ring to play with by pious parents.

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I made this in Blender. I got distracted from my attempt to make the yinrih minifig and actually started using Blender on its own. That's ADHD for ya.

[[Category:Religion]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

The City of Eternal Noon

2026-06-24T23:26:51Z

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The City of Eternal Noon, located at the substellar point of Hearthside, is the center of religious government of The Bright Way. However, it didn't start out that way. It is famous for its hospitality, offering free lodging and food for a week (12 days) to any traveler. Their not luxury accommodations, just a small area to store ones impedimenta and a quiet place to pass ones torpor period, but the facilities are clean and well cared-for. The story behind this legendary hospitality is an interesting one.

There once lived a simple man renown for his sanctity, a holy fool, one could say. He touched the lives of many with his straightforward faith. Word began to spread that miracles were wrought in his presence, and his fame grew all the more. He was supported vigorously by the local overseer (a clerical office roughly equivalent to a bishop), and pilgrims flocked from all over Hearthside, and even from the homeworld, to see this living saint. Over time, the nearly baron desert that was the substellar point of Hearthside became a thriving holy city.

However, upon the overseer's retirement, the miracles that had accompanied the fool mysteriously stopped. The new overseer had always been skeptical of the miraculous phenomena that followed in the man's wake, although she did not believe the man himself was to blame. He was lacking in understanding, and never used the signs to draw attention to himself. The same could not be said for the old overseer. She had spent a great deal of effort promoting the fool as a wonder worker, and the new overseer thought it rather convenient that her predecessor had also profited immensely by buying this worthless track of land, and then raking in the profits as the city grew.

Upon the old overseer's death, the new overseer uncovered evidence that her predecessor had forged the miracles attributed to the fool. Shocked at her predecessor's actions, the new overseer had the old overseer's bones removed from display and buried in the desert, already a harsh condemnation, but there is even a legend that she personally crushed her skull before burying it, which is just about the worst thing you can do to a yinrih's remains.

But what of the fool? What about this new thriving city? Was it all built on a lie? Well, the miracles may have been fake, but the man was genuinely holy, in an innocent childlike way. A great many men and women, holy in their own right, claimed this man as their inspiration. While many were scandalized by the revelation, the new overseer didn't want to see the man punished for the sins of his patroness, and she didn't want to let this outpouring of faith go to waste. She also didn't want to be seen profiting from these wicked deeds, so she established the rule that any traveler, pilgrim or not, would have a place to stay in the city without cost. Over time, limits had to be established, as free room and board for anyone for as long as they want is a pretty unsustainable proposition, but the spirit of the rule remains.

The city remained a strong religious center throughout the Time of Decadence, and was the stronghold of the pious dissolutionists, those who wished to rid the Bright Way of its corporate monopolies and return it to its original mission of seeking other sophonts. After the War of Dissolution, when the Bright Way was expelled from its former seat of power on Yih, Hearthside, and specifically The City of Eternal Noon, became the de facto new center of religious government.

[[Category:Religion]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

The Hard Problem of Unconsciousness

2026-06-24T23:26:50Z

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The yinrih are incapable of fully losing consciousness, even during torpor or when in suspension. It is impossible to break a yinrih's stream of consciousness without causing brain death. Fortunately, it's REALLY hard to do this, thanks in part to the yinrih's heavily redundant neurology.

Naturally, this has a huge effect on the yinrih's theory of mind. While it's entirely possible some animals on yih experience unconsciousness as Earth animals do, the yinrih can't possibly know this due to the subjective nature of personal experience.

When they meet humans, who, as you know, lose consciousness for 8 hours every night, a huge debate erupts around the implications. Is the person who wakes up in the morning the same person that went to sleep last night?

This only adds to the yinrih's perception that humans got the short end of the stick, adding the fact that we spend a third of our lives unconscious to the facts that we live so much shorter lives, and we had to invent writing rather than having it built in from the start.

[[Category:Humans]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

3D Steadtree Fruit

2026-06-24T23:26:48Z

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[[File:xwdommb.png|thumb]]
Here's a low-poly steadtree fruit. I'm probably going to keep improving on this one since it's already so close to how it looks in my head. I'm particularly surprised I was able to get the violet sheen on the skin.

[[Category:Ecology]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

The Mechanists

2026-06-24T23:26:48Z

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The Mechanists were a group of Neoshamanists who formed the first group of colonists on Newhome. At this particular time in yinrih history, the Bright Way was still on the rise. It wasn't yet a cyberpunk-esque megacorp, but it was very much an "established" religion on Yih. Minority faiths were not actively persecuted, but pride of place was given to the Bright Way in public life. Its holy days were national holidays, the deaths or accessions of political figures were accompanied by Bright Way ceremonies, and many countries' education systems explicitly or implicitly taught from a Claravian* perspective. There were some who chafed under this system, and saw an opportunity to found their own polities as planetary colonization became technically and economically feasible.

Neoshamanists subscribe to the belief known as Panpsychism: the idea that consciousness is a latent property of matter itself, or of the very fabric of the universe. This is in contrast to the doctrine of the Bright Way, which professes mind-body dualism. The Mechanists in particular believed that consciousness can manifest in any system of sufficient complexity. In their new home, which they dubbed, uh, Newhome, the usual fonts of consciousness were missing--no living matter, no complex meteorological phenomena, no geological activity. The only complex systems besides the colonists themselves were the machines they brought with them.

Frontier life is hard on both yinrih and machine, and the colonists' equipment frequently broke down. Combine the flakey machinery with the colonists' particular flavor of animism, and it's not hard to see how this little cult got going.

The following are some highlights of their beliefs and practices.

Fabricators were believed to possess particularly temperamental spirits, and it was customary to hold a screwdriver in the right front paw when submitting a print job to the fabricator's leasemind, as a warning to the spirit that consequences would follow should it misbehave.

Small figurines were placed in engine rooms to keep the generators company when engineering personnel weren't on duty.

A brief canticle would be chanted when booting a computer to appease the spirit within, often while a particular key was held down. The key did nothing apparent, but it was believed to make the machine spirit more biddable, or even make it run faster.

Particularly powerful shamans were said to be able to resolve mechanical issues by their mere presence. Lesser techs would toil away at a particular problem, only for the problem to resolve spontaneously when the shaman entered the room.

Red cabling was believed to be spiritually efficacious, probably because the material needed to manufacture the red polymer used in the cable jackets was hard to come by, so only the most important network links were made with red cable. The claimed benefits included less jitter, fewer dropped packets, lower latency, and even increased throughput.

The most sacred of this sect's rites was the sacrament of Percussive Maintenance. It was reserved for those occasions when even the wisest of shamans was unable to get a misbehaving spirit to cooperate. It involved repeated whacks of the errant machine with a ceremonial wrench. These wrenches would often be lavishly decorated, and are prized cultural artifacts today.

As the Mechanists got the terraforming ball rolling, more and more colonists began making their way to Newhome. At first these were people from other minority sects and fringe political ideologies, but eventually, the normies showed up, gradually diluting these odd practices by simple cultural inertia.

The first wave of "mainstream" yinrih to arrive on Newhome largely consisted of military personnel representing governments from the homeworld seeking to establish claims on swaths of virgin territory. Since the Mechanists were still somewhat active at this point, some of their quirky rituals were passed on to the grunts stationed there.

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* Of or relating to the Bright Way. From Latin ''clara via'' a calque of Commonthroat ''sGKqg qCb'' /yip, long rising strengthening growl, huff, short low weak growl. huff late low weakening whine/

[[Category:Culture]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

The World Engine

2026-06-24T23:26:47Z

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If Partisan Territory is the China of Focus, than the World Engine is their Great Wall. It is a dwarf planet that is considered by most to mark the boundary between Focus and interstellar space. However, it didn’t start out where it is now.

The dwarf planet was originally located much further inside the Outer Belt, but the newly established Partisan government wanted a big project to show the rest of Focus that they were a force to be reckoned with. They decided to one-up the missionaries by embarking on an interstellar mission of their own, not to obey the Great Commandment, but to people the empty skies that were theirs for the taking. However, womb ships don’t scale to the size of a colony, so they decided to mount propulsion engines on a terraformed dwarf planet to create a generation ship that would travel from star to star to establish a Vulpithecine, and more importantly Partisan, presence outside of Focus.

However, while the engines ''did'' work, it was soon discovered that the planet itself could not sustain a livable environment without an existing logistics network to replenish various supplies, so the planet was parked in its present orbit at the far edge of the outer belt.

It is rightfully considered a supreme monument to mortal hubris and a marvel of Vulpithecine engineering. It’s a massive tourist attraction, likely the biggest in PT, both for its history and for the fact that it represents the edge of colonized space.

The planet isn’t named ''world engine'', but a flowery Outlander phrase meaning something along the lines of ''daring embarkation''. Humans just call it ''BoldlyGo'' (where no man has gone before).

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Atavists and Writing

2026-06-24T23:26:46Z

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OK, so I've established that what appear to be uncontacted yinrih tribes are actually descendants of Atavists who drank Ted Kaczynski's cool-aid and went off to live primitive lives in the wilderness. The problem with this is that yinrih are ''innately'' literate. A written language will eventually emerge even if pups aren't taught to write, just as sign languages have emerged spontaneously in deaf communities.

What might happen is that the founders forge founding texts like scriptures and the like, in a conlang as often as not, and that becomes the basis for the new society. This may mean that Atavist tribes don't last long in vulpithecine terms, as the ability to preserve knowledge across generations combined with, ya know, being surrounded by a K2 civilization, will eventually mean they find out what's what and want to leave. Even the titular village from ''The Village'' that I based this idea on only lasted one generation before one of their kids found out they're living on a plot of land in the middle of a preserve.

I also have a possible explanation for Primitive Wayfarers like the one's Stormlight's family left. The Bright Way sees technology as "the offspring of sapience", and to reject technology provided it's not intended for evil ends is seen as a rejection of the gift of sapience. You also can't help fulfill the Great Commandment if you're living on a dirt farm in the middle of nowhere.. So it would seem that Primitive Wayfarers are at least heterodox if not outright schismatic.

Primitive Wayfarers may result from Dativist missionaries preaching to Atavist tribes but [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8k8HXf-T0k only effecting a partial conversion]. From the Primitive Wayfarers' point of view, they may be like "you know, you have a point and all, but don't you think living as a faceless nobody in a sea of billions of other faceless nobodies, grinding away your whole life, being bombarded by meaningless distractions and softened by modern conveniences is kinda depressing? We think we'll just hang out here, thanks." Alternatively, cradle Wayfarers may look at Atavists and express the above sentiment.

[[Category:Atavism]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

Light Sculpture

2026-06-24T23:26:46Z

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Hearthside is a tidally locked world, meaning the sun is frozen in the same place in the sky, with its elevation determined by latitude. This lack of movement makes it easier to incorporate sunlight into art and architecture.

Hearthside is famous for light sculpture, which uses reflected, refracted, filtered, or diffracted sunlight in interesting ways.

One of the more common examples of light sculpture is a dark room with a single skylight. Placed in the path of incoming sunlight is a surface covered in tiny mirrors that may be stationary, moving, or may even have several parts that move relative to one another, reflecting tiny patches of sunlight onto surrounding surfaces. These mirrors may be colored, and prisms may be used instead of mirrors to create a rainbow effect.

While humans instantly recognize this as an analog to a disco ball, this is the main attraction rather than a bit of ambience.

Such dark rooms are meant to give people a break from the endless bright daytime outside.

[[Category:Culture]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

Amnion Rendered in Lego Bricks

2026-06-24T23:26:43Z

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[[File:xisowt4.jpg|thumb]]

So apparently there are CAD programs for building in Lego bricks. Since my drawing skills will inevitably be capped by my blindness, I figured I'd try a different medium. Here's another take on the amnion. It's pretty simple. There's a glass dome where the traveler is harnessed in, and a reservoir in the back that holds a supply of neurogel. The gel is constantly circulated and filtered to keep it clean. Since metabolism is halted while in suspension, there's no waste to get rid of per se, but I imagine a living body will have some stuff like dead fur that needs to be filtered out.

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[[File:vgtsk0b.jpg|thumb]]
Here's another whack at it. The monkey minifig looks pretty spot on as a yinrih except for the head and neck. Unfortunately you can't put anything in the tail. This program can import custom models, so I might try and take a wolf head and stick it on the monkey body using Blender or something.

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[[File:qsadano.png|thumb]]
Here's another angle. I could get the wrench in the tail by disabling collision. I really need to see if I can tweak the model to make it look like an actual yinrih rather than a monkey. The paws should be grayish black instead of yellow and the head needs to be canine, and the tail should be longer and more muscular.

[[Category:Science and Tech]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

Leaseminds and Fabricators

2026-06-24T23:26:43Z

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Fabricators are what you get when you take a really fancy 3D printer and stick an AI art program inside.

Yinrih have a form of machine learning algorithm known in Commonthroat as <sfBqbcg> [yip, early falling weakening whine, huff short low strengthening whine, short low weak growl], or "leasemind". ("lease" is used here in the archaic sense of "false"). While it's probably used elsewhere, the most frequent use for leaseminds is in fabricators.

You can give a fabricator general commands and it will try and build what you ask for. However, fabricators usually have preloaded schematics with exact instructions on how to build something, and the leasemind is just there to troubleshoot small problems that arise during the building process.

The Dewfall is equipped with a fabricator, and its leasemind is used more extensively than usual. The missionaries try to adapt their technology to human ergonomics by feeding the leasemind data on humans and asking it to make normal yinrih tools adapted for human use. Just like real AI art programs, it often messes up. This usually takes the form of assuming humans have various yinrih features, like a muzzle, whiskers, a tail, extra thumbs, or prehensile feet.

The fabricator can't just replicate matter, you have to keep it topped up with raw materials (think metal powders that are melted and molded, silicon ingots cut into wafers, petroleum for making plastic, and so on.)
<div style="background-color:#c1dae6;border-radius:4px;border:1px solid #3b8db7;padding:4px">
'''Edit:'''
A hasty edit to address some pretty glaring economic implications: general purpose fabricators like you see on the Dewfall, for the most part, can only make commodities. More specialized products require more specialized fabricators. I'd be happy for anyone to poke more holes in the idea, or perhaps suggest ways this would effect how the economy works.

Let's assume a fabricator can produce a keyer and HUD specs, which are a pretty ubiquitous form of portable computer. This would imply that, when you needed a keyer and HUD specs, you wouldn't go out and buy them directly. You'd instead buy the raw materials needed to make them. If you wanted a new ''model'' of keyer and HUD specs, you'd purchase a schematic license like you purchase a software license in addition to the raw materials.

hmmm... Writing this down has forced me to consider the ramifications of such a device. At the end of the day what I need from an external perspective is a way for the missionaries on Earth to be able to produce a mass router without needing to know exactly how a mass router works. The missionaries aren't geniuses. This is probably Stormlight's wheelhouse, but he's not going to know how to turn raw aluminum and silicon into a mass router, although he's skilled enough to understand the principles of operation once they're explained to him and could operate one with some coaching.
</div>

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More Subfactions of the Atavists

2026-06-24T23:26:42Z

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Radical Atavists (the ones who reject sapience) are further divided into two factions: the Atheists and the Misotheists. The Atheists are straightforward: sentience is a random fluke of the blind purposeless process of evolution, one which they find undesirable and wish to correct.

The Misotheists are a much more interesting lot. They believe The Light is evil, and that it cursed them with sapience. Many Misotheist Atavists seek to kill The Light. The means by which they try to accomplish this goal are legion, and may or may not involve spiky hair, giant swords and long-winded speeches about the power of friendship.

[[Category:Culture]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

Perfumes

2026-06-24T23:26:42Z

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Here's a topic I've needed to elaborate on for some time. With the exception of healers, yinrih don't wear clothes. While they do use things like backpacks and pocketed leg bands, the communicative function of clothing is filled by perfumes.

Yinrih produce pheromones, both as an ambient musk and via their ink, that other yinrih can use to gain information about them. Approximate age, gender, emotional state, and whether or not one is currently in a childermoot can be determined readily by these natural odors.

Artificial perfumes are an extension of this form of olfactory communication. Perfumes communicate things like occupation, social status, and rank. This can get surprisingly detailed. Different military ranks use different scents, managers and floor staff at stores have their own odors, and hearthkeepers have different perfumes that serve as clerical vestments.

Perfumes are sometimes used to advertise stores, assuming the store's wares don't have a unique smell of their own, such as the rubber and grease smell of a hardware store or the smell of organic solvents common to electronics stores.

The good news for humans is that yinrih olfactory tastes largely overlap with ours, so most yinrih perfumes smell pleasant, if a little unorthodox. Clerical perfume, for example, smells like the faint note of cigarette smoke that has permeated the walls of a Motel 6 from the 90s. Perfumes used by veterans like Tod smells like the sulfury discharge of fireworks or model rocket engines. While healers use their lack of fur as the big indicator of their occupation, there is also a traditional scent used by healers that smells like lavender. While these perfumes can be smelled at a distance by other yinrih thanks to their ridiculously powerful noses, humans only catch a whiff now and then because yinrih don't use the same amount as a human would.

While not very common, some machine indicators use olfactory signals rather than lights or sounds to indicate warnings or states of operation.

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Reject Yinrih. Return to Tree-Dweller

2026-06-24T23:26:41Z

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The Atavists are a diverse collection of related ideologies that encompass the idea of going back to nature. The original, and most extreme, Atavist group believes that sapience is a curse and wishes to be rid of it. This group is opposed to the Bright Way, as they reject the Bright Way's belief that sapience is a divine gift. Their reasoning is pretty simple: animals aren't gnawed by existential dread, and they don't set up impossible moral standards for themselves and then beat themselves up for not living up to them.

Neo-shamanism also falls under the Atavist umbrella, and they in turn have a number of subdivisions. Some Neo-shamanists still consider themselves Wayfarers, but lead a primitive lifestyle, often living in steadtrees as hunter-gatherers as the tree-dwellers do, while their hearthkeepers tend open bonfires rather than star hearths. Others see themselves as radical traditionalists, rejecting the monotheism of The Bright Way and attempting to reconstruct the primitive animism the yinrih practiced before the Theophany. It's possible that one of these groups ended up as the Machine Cult that formed on Newhome. But the majority of yinrih who self-identify as Neo-shamanists merely put on the trappings of primitive religion as a lifestyle choice without considering the strict personal moral code imposed by the yinrih's primal religion. In particular, intoxication was severely punished in the early days, as a drunk yinrih was at best dead weight to the rest of the group, and at worst actively dangerous. Modern trendy Neo-shamanists not only ignore this rule, they incorporate drug use into their rituals.

[[Category:Culture]] [[Category:Megathread Uploads]]

What Lighthouses look like (other than all the bones)

2026-06-24T23:26:40Z

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I posted this on the wiki but don't think I've posted it here yet

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A hearthkeeper's duty is to bring physical and spiritual light and warmth to her congregation. This is accomplished through lighthouses, places of worship of the Bright Way. They evolved out of the open bonfires tended by shamans prior to the Theophany. These bonfires grew into sheltered hearths as the yinrih's society advanced. With the discovery of electricity the hearths evolved into small power plants distributing electricity to the homes of the faithful. These plants burned fossil fuels at first, with a ceremonial bonfire located in the sanctuary and the loud and smelly power generation equipment located elsewhere on the property.

As research monasteries continued investigating space, the nature of stars as sustained fusion reactions was eventually discovered. Efforts quickly began to replicate these icons of the Light on a smaller scale for liturgical purposes. Thus was born the fusion reactor, or star hearth. These too were at first located away from the worship space, but as miniaturization proceeded, smaller hearths that resembled stars inside a glass cylinder were able to be incorporated directly into the liturgy.

Between the fossil fuel era and the perfection of the star hearth there was a period where fission reactors were used, with the sanctuary and nave built around a small reactor pool.

Whatever the means of power generation, the hearthkeeper takes the lead role in actively maintaining the equipment and transmission lines. This is why hearthkeepers are both priestess and engineer. Claravian seminaries are centers of theological and pastoral training as well as technical colleges. Helping the hearthkeeper in these tasks are several acolytes. Acolytes can be pups of a certain age, though they must be female. Adult laywomen are also frequently seen as acolytes, and seminarians serve as acolytes as part of their training. Males are permitted to assist in a less technical role as pages--essentially gofers.

The most striking feature of the lighthouse from a human perspective is the presence of bones lining the interior, and occasionally exterior, of the building. A lighthouse is not just a church but also a cemetery. A belief common across yinrih cultures, in and out of the Bright Way, is the idea that to properly honor the dead, one should make good use of their remains. This usually takes the form of using their bones as architectural adornment. The fact that the yinrih are canine and they build things out of bones is a frequent source of comment by humans.

Lighthouses are generally dome-shaped or otherwise incorporate domes into the architecture. This is to mimic the vault of the heavens. Ceilings are painted to resemble the sky, with stars or clouds on a blue background. The bones extend from the base of the wall up a certain height, usually low enough for Bonekeepers to easily maintain. Floors may be decorated with natural scenes such as rivers and flora, or in the Outlander tradition of sacred architecture, be painted with icons depicting the lives of saints and martyrs. Support pillars are usually designed to resemble trees as a reminder of the yinrih's arboreal origins. In general, the inside of a lighthouse is meant to resemble Creation in miniature.

The nave of the lighthouse is round. Perches are distributed around the area. The sanctuary is either located in the center of the nave or on the eastern wall. The star hearth is concealed by a shear sanctuary vail outside of liturgies and certain feasts.

Back when lighthouses contained actual hearths, there was an oculus open to the sky that served as a flue for escaping smoke. This became a decorative window after the transition to star hearths. On inner planets where Focus is more prominent, this decorative window takes the form of an arch stretching across the domed ceiling of the worship space. The width and angle of this arch are designed such that the sun always shines into the room as long as it is above the horizon. Take every azimuth and elevation where the sun can appear throughout the day and over the course of the year at that particular location, and connect those points into a solid arc. This represents the size and shape of the window.

Further away from Focus the window is a mere circle above or near the sanctuary. The window is usually stained glass, depicting a yinrih missionary greeting a sophont out of frame.

On orbital colonies, the lack of gravity means that instead of perches, tail bars are used for floating worshippers to anchor themselves in place.

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Torpor alcoves

2026-06-24T23:26:40Z

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I've moved the wiki off of Cloudflare. It may take a bit for me to get it back up. The wiki itself isn't going anywhere. I self host it on a 15 year old laptop. What's moving is the reverse proxy server that's open to the internet.

I've mentioned before that homes on orbital colonies are transportable modules that are semi-permanently attached to the colony via an airlock. Homes on Welkinstead are condominiums or apartments, integrated into the structure of the city and either rented or purchased, probably leased long-term from the city rather than bought outright.

Yinrih don't have bedrooms. They pass their torpor in closet-sized alcoves. In large families of 12 parents and upwards of 20 pups, there is a separate quiet room or hall with torpor alcoves lining the walls. the entrances aren't directly accessible from the ground, they're on a narrow mezzanine or simply float off the floor and are accessed by climbing or leaping. More modest homes simply have the alcoves lining a hallway. Others may have the alcoves in a larger common room which may have attached bathrooms and showers. Because yinrih are both shorter than humans and excellent climbers, this pattern of public space below and more private space above is seen throughout the home, even in what humans would call a one story house.

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Mitigating solar wind

2026-06-24T23:26:39Z

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[[File:https://constructed.world/images/3/34/Sun_shield.png|thumb]]

I read an article that proposes deploying a really, really strong magnet at the first Lagrange point, between a planet and its star, in order to shield the planet from solar wind. It occurred to me that you could create a mini sun with a magnetic field and provide naturalistic daylight as well as protection from solar wind.

Of course, the further away the mini sun is, the more powerful it would have to be to approximate daylight on an inner planet. Even in low orbit (about 500 miles up on Earth) it would have to be in the petawatt range. But I'm sure the hearthkeepers are up to the task. This would be part of the infrastructure owned by the Bright Way during the Age of Decadence. Since this sort of stuff would be extra necessary for Moonlitter's moons and dwarf planets in the Outer Belt, I can see the mismanagement or abuse of this infrastructure by the Bright Way as a major contributor to the unrest that leads to the war.

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The sun rises on the just and the unjust, if they pay of course

2026-06-24T23:26:38Z

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[http://www.orbitsimulator.com/formulas/LagrangePointFinder.html http://www.orbitsimulator.com/formulas/ ... inder.html]

Following from my earlier post. This website will give you the Lagrange points for a two body system given their masses and distance between them.

I used Pluto (or a pluto-like dwarf planet with no moon) and the sun as examples, and I got about 6881688.874956055 km for L1, which is where the mini sun from my other post would have to go.

If I wanted the insolation from the mini sun to equal the actual sun on Earth, it would have to put out 810 zettawatts. That’s a lotta watts.

But we’re not talking about Earth. Yih has a solar constant (focal constant?) of arount 860 W/m^2, so we can shave the power output down to about 511 ZW. If we wanted it to equal the insolation at Yih’s pole during the summer solstice which is 430 W/m^2, we get 256 ZW. Now that’s the equator of our dwarf planet getting that amount of pseudo sun, the poles would get much less.

At this point I have to wonder, why bother with the lagrange point? Surely if I put the thing in LEO any savings on fuel provided by the lagrange point would be more than made up for by the lower power needed to get a reasonable amount of insolation, so we’re back to my constellation of close-orbiting satellites. That’s not quite as dramatic lore-wise though.

As unrealistic as this is, it has tons of lore potential. These mini suns would be built, owned, and managed by the Bright Way during the age of decadence to make dwarf planets in the outer belt habitable by providing light and a magnetosphere. the BW doesn't own the planets, they're contracted by whatever entity is settling the world, a government or some other corporation or private group. But the mini suns require upkeep, and that requires money. Planetary authorities didn't pay the tithe? Looks like they're losing their sun privileges until their account balance is cleared.

I can see the mini suns being targeted by partisan rebels during the war. Maybe the technology to build new ones and maintain the ones that exist is lost along with the Bright Way's corporate interests, or rather, the plans are destroyed by the Preservationists out of spite. Maybe in modern times there are hearthkeepers that specialize in their upkeep and are highly sought after like COBOL programmers. The Partisans would be natural clients for this type of service, and I can see friction arising between PT citizens who hate the Bright way so much they refuse to work with them no matter what and others who just want their sun to work and don't care who fixes it.

Maybe the tech to make them is still around but they're so emblematic of the ancien régime that planetary PT governments refuse to maintain them and build inferior satellite networks to replace them.

So yeah, hardly realistic but bursting with lore potential.

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