This is a Claravian* womb ship, so called because it contains amnions, which are metabolic suspension capsules that allow missionaries to survive STL interstellar travel.
This is a port-side view of the craft. It’s forward end is covered by a polymerite impact shield, with small multi-sensors dotted across it. A ring of four force projectors encircle the craft providing forward motion.
The pressure vessel (the orange capsule-like structure covered by the impact shield) is roughly the size of a shipping container. A single airlock is located at the aft end of the ship.
Missionaries of the Bright Way use womb ships to carry out the Great Commandment, to find other sophonts dwelling among the stars.
Because yinrih are incapable of fully losing consciousness without dying, they cannot sleep away the journey. Instead, amnions work by speeding up the missionary’s time perception while presenting a simulacrum to their nervous system while suspending their other metabolic processes. Missionaries in metabolic suspension are still aware and able to interact with the ship’s systems through a Matrix-like interface.
The handles along the sides of the craft asist in maintenance EVAs performed by one of the suspended missionaries using a remotely piloted micro mech.
This particular womb ship is named the Dewfall. It has the distinction of being the first and only womb ship to actually encounter sapient life after dozens of millennia of fruitless searching.
*A human coinage meaning Of or relating to the Bright Way. From Latin Clara Via
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Having your sense of time perception altered is a great storytelling device. Also really dig the idea of these creatures who cannot lose consciousness. What’s going on there, are they just hypervigilant, or is their life in some way dependent on remaining wakeful?
The Partisans (space tree doggo Commies) in particular play with this time perception thing in a few ways. The leader of the Partisans is an apostate missionary who has permanently sealed himself in a suspension capsule called the Eternal Womb. Because his metabolic processes are halted while in suspension, he’s been alive for over 33 millennia, since the War of Dissolution. This is already an unfathomable age even for a species that lives for over 700 Earth years on average, but he has also slowed his subjective time perception so that from his perspective he’s been alive for millions of years, and may no longer be sane by the time of First Contact.
The Partisans also use this slowed time perception combined with the amnion’s ability to present arbitrary sensory input to the suspended person as a form of torture, drastically slowing the victim’s time perception while withholding any sensory input, including proprioception, so the victim experiences a thousand years of utter isolation while a mere six minutes pass outside. The amnions used for this purpose are called Oubliettes.
As for the inability to loose consciousness, Yinrih have two brains, the main brain located in the head, and a caudal ganglion whose original purpose was to control their prehensile tail, but has gained a secondary use as a hot-spare for the main brain should it be damaged or inactive. Yinrih do not sleep, but experience a 24 hour period of torpor every 12 days that serves the same purpose. Torpor is much like the unihemispherical slow wave sleep experienced by birds and marine mammals. A torpid yinrih is still conscious, but experiences dulled sensation and a feeling of detachment. If you’ve ever had cataract surgery, it’s like that.
The fact that yinrih can’t loose consciousness has forced them to get really creative when it comes to invasive surgery. Many surgeries can be performed by a tiny remotely operated micro mech that enters the patient’s body Fantastic Voyage style to operate without invasive incisions. But some procedures, such as amputations, have to resort to hallucinogens to send the patient on a wild drug trip so they don’t experience the trauma. These medical hallucinogens frequently find themselves on the streets as drugs of abuse under the street name mind candy, and it is common for medical professionals to go from healer to dealer.
The simulacrum generated by the amnion is necessary to keep the suspended person from going insane from a lack of sensory input. However, the sim itself can also be addictive, and potential missionaries must be rigorously screened and undertake a regimen of prayer and meditation while in sim to keep their minds anchored in reality.
You’ve definitely taken the premise seriously, it shows in the range of applications. My usual gripe with cool ideas in worldbuilding is when it’s only used once and never extended - like those two giants in the Misty Mountains in The Hobbit (what was JRRT thinking, I asked myself earlier today).
When we speak of a fictional leader who lies in stasis for interminable lengths it is tempting to compare and contrast with the Emperor of 40k, but I find yours more intriguing. What could they be doing in there that takes all these millennia? Could they have any covert communications with the outside world? Maybe he’s sped up so fast so he can read all the news and write important messages to secret agents who do his bidding. It’s fun to guess at what degree of agency they maintain in the story.
I’ve often wondered at the fact that even we hemisphere-brained creatures are so disjointed in our minds, so far from the unitary beings we imagine ourselves as. Even then we remain humble next to our distant cousin the octopus, who have more disparate grey matter than you can shake a tentacle at. It would be intriguing to see the subtle differences or unexpected similarities in self-perception multi-brained beings experience. Maybe they too have the illusion of being unitary, or perhaps each one contains such multitudes that they had never heard of loneliness until they met us.
Loving the work you’ve put into this, and thanks for taking the time to write!
I didn’t even get into the fact that amnions are also abused for recreational purposes. Abusers are called gelheads (or gel-heads, gel heads, etc), since the suspended person is completely submerged in a substance called neurogel that acts as an interface between the nervous system and the amnion without any implants.
The Partisans also recruit addicted gel heads and plug their amnions into mini mechs, slowing their time perception so they can react with lightning speed to incoming attacks. Since their nervous system is seamlessly intigrated into the mech’s control suite they make for scary good pilots. These soldiers are called immortals, both because they don’t age while in suspension and because they’re legendarily hard to kill.
The reason why the Partisans use amnions so much is that the Bright Way regards them as sacred instruments of their holy work, and regard their misuse as sacrilege, most especially their use as oubliettes.
Firefly’s (the Partisan leader) similarity to the Emprah is actually a coincidence, but I’ve run with it after noticing it. The idea of an immortal leader was a reference to the Civilization games, and the the idea of an atheist regime ending up worshiping its leader is a reference to North Korea.
Firefly is in many ways a sci-fi lich, indeed, his detractors refer to him as the Lichlord. The Eternal Womb is his phylactery. His consciousness is still inside his physical body, but since the amnion can present whatever to his sensory system and since he can control connected electronics while in suspension, he can “project” himself into robotic avatars or plaster his likeness on vid screens. Ironically, he has forgotten the location of the Eternal Womb over the millennia, only knowing it’s squirrelled away somewhere in the capital complex, which takes up the entire surface and a good chunk of the interior of a dwarf planet.
Regarding yinrih psychology, they’re surprisingly relatable for humans with a few outlying exceptions mostly stemming from their reproductive strategy. The caudal ganglion isn’t actively involved in higher brain functions, but some neurological disorders or physical trauma that cause the partial or total severing of the connection between the two brains may cause the tail to move involuntarily. Amputation is usually the only resort in this case. The Dewfall’s mission controller, Lightray Lacktail, lacks a tail for precisely this reason.
Great stuff! Can I ask what’s your goal with this work, a story, a game, just building for the sake of it? It feels like a great setting for a really dense wide scope novel along the lines of Consider Phlebas. How are you organising all your work? I bounce between Scrivener and Kanka.io over the years, still haven’t found the sweet spot.
At first I was imagining Firefly as a sort of mystery box character, but they’re more of a one-man panopticon state. Charming that they’ve misplaced their body though, disturbingly relatable somehow. What does Firefly want, and why haven’t they got it yet? Has anyone else done the same sort of high speed lichdom seeking immortality?
I’m beginning to get a sense of the larger themes of the setting, sounds like you think a lot on ideology and utopias. What kinds of stories are you interested in telling with this?
Can I ask what’s your goal with this work
This is a playground to get lost in while daydreaming.
It feels like a great setting for a really dense wide scope novel
I have some stories set in this world, but the narrative and characters serve the worldbuilding and not the other way around.
How are you organising all your work?
I use Obsidian.
At first I was imagining Firefly as a sort of mystery box character, but they’re more of a one-man panopticon state.
While he does have a degree of direct control over the capital complex, in the vein of a genius loci, the low data rate of the ansible network means he can’t directly observe everything that’s going on in Partisan Territory, though the government would very much like to tell everyone that the Great Leader is always watching. He’s a deliberately ambiguous character. Did he initiate the genocide of Wayfarers, only relenting at the plea of his advisors? Or did the genocide start with the disorganized secularist warlord states that Firefly united under the Partisan banner, and Firefly put a stop to the atrocity after returning to Focus from his failed missionary journey? How did the the other two missionaries die during the time their womb ship was incommunicado? Did Firefly kill them in a nihilistic rage? Or did he make a final prayer to the Uncreated Light to save them as their amnions failed, only turning his back on his faith after the prayer went unanswered? Did he also die along with the other two missionaries, with the Partisans propping up his corpse a la Weekend At Bernie’s in order to have a unifying symbol to rally behind? Did he die some time in the intervening millennia? Surely sheer entropy would get to him eventually, suspended metabolism or not? If he is alive, is he sane, or have the millennia worn away his mind? Is he still a wanderer (apostate) after First Contact, or has he reconsidered his beliefs in light of the existence of other sophonts among the stars, and now wishes to embrace the natural death he’s fled from for 33 millennia? You get the picture.
sounds like you think a lot on ideology and utopias.
The Partisans are just my sink for all my grimdark ideas. The Lonely Galaxy is actually meant to be much more upbeat. The Partisans are mostly in the background. As far as ideologies go, there’s also the hyperlibertarian Spacer Confederacy, the capitalist Allied Worlds (which currently enjoys a degree of cultural and economic hegemony in the system), the unstable middle man between the AW and Partisan Territory that is Moonlitter, and the politically ecclesiocratic and economically distributist planet Hearthside.
The main thrust of this setting is that the yinrih are all alone, just like humanity, crying out into the blind uncaring cosmos. Our First Contact is also their First Contact. Most sci-fi involves a galaxy-spanning meta-civilization of countless alien races. Some works have humans all alone, but none I’m aware of have just one other species, just as surprised to meet us as we are to meet them.
What kinds of stories are you interested in telling with this?
Low stakes slice of life stuff, believe it or not. A human has to negotiate a yinrih bathroom, a yinrih and the human she’s lodging with have to deal with a broken air conditioner, a yinrih tries Texas BBQ for the first time, etc.
I love it. I’m also the sort to do world building as a daydreaming thing, but I’ve fallen off it in the last year or so. Trying to spend less time on distractions so that the creativity has more room. Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed reading House of Friendship!
Much appreciated! Been thinking of looking for a writing community to have my work critiqued. I know I said on the Neocities page I’m not an aspiring author, but it would be nice knowing whether and how much I’ve improved over time.
