The Ascension attempt to overcome these imperfections by upgrading their bodies, adding cybernetic enhancements to overcome human limitations. Eyes are replaced with multispectrum arrays augmented with echo-locators and magnetic imaging. Brain chemistry is controlled with artificial and well modulated drug regimes, programmable and instantly reactive to their surroundings. Uncorruptible steel replaces perishable flesh.
Ethnically, most of the ancestors of the Ascension hail from eastern Africa. Speaking a dialect of Swahili as their main language, they are a tall dark-skinned people with naturally dark curly hair. Very few live without cybernetic modifications however. The most common sort is a full sensor replacement, where the eyes, ears and much of the top of the skull are replaced with a metallic dome sporting a series of small depressions and protrusions. Some members show their devotion to the Ascension by undergoing a full body replacement, becoming little more than brains inside of unliving (and perfect) machines.
The brain is the one organ that their society values. They ironically look down on digital intelligences like AIs, feeling they lack souls. For them only human minds are truly conscious. Thus they oppose mind emulation, seeing the results are soulless copies and not real people.
By virtue of their impressively augmented senses, fashion and style have considerably different forms to the citizens of the Ascension. Each of them is acutely aware of every micrometer flaw in their surroundings and with the entire electromagnetic spectrum to play with vibrant reds and blues become relatively limited. To normal human senses then, the garb of the Ascension appears fairly drab. Clothing consists of simple black overalls, built for easy use in EVAs (Extra-Vehicular Activities). Makeup sees little use beyond protective creams. Even their cybernetics seem to consist of bare steel. But those with superior senses and tied into the local web see a different image, one not easily translated for those of limited perceptions.
Aspects
- Function Over Form
- Cybernetically Enhanced
Glare
One of these worlds has become a pet project of the Ascension: New Africa. On this wet tropical world, life never developed. Still nestled beneath an atmosphere of nitrogen and carbon dioxide, it resembles earth in terms of air pressure and ocean coverage. But here the oceans remain thick with iron and the air is poisonous.
Thus the colony on New Africa lives much like one in space. Space suits are necessary to survive and cooling systems crucial to maintain a comfortable environment.
But the plan to convert the atmosphere is under way. Trading terraforming information with the bioengineering Mythweavers, they have introduced plant life able to survive in the oceans, turning carbon dioxide and sunlight into oxygen. The process will take centuries, perhaps millenia, which is why vast machines have been set up on the desolate continents to artificially create oxygen. Still the process will take time. Time to oxidize the iron out of the oceans, time to bring the oxygen levels to breathable levels, and time to build an ozone layer to block the copious amounts of UV radiation from two suns.
But the Ascension is patient. This world will be theirs.
Aspects
- Lifeless Ocean World
- Industrial Terraforming
System Details
- Glare Alpha: a G2V class star 5.9 billion years old.
- Glare Beta: orbiting 20 AU out, this star floods the system with more light and energy.
- New Africa (Glare 4): a mostly lifeless world in the process of being terraformed.
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