Starseeder

Codex introduction

Full Item Description
A full seventy one kilometers from end to end, the Starseeders, of which four are known to exist by Humanity, are their creator’s symbolic gesture of defiance against the laws of nature.

Roughly ovaloid in shape, the Starseeder does not sail, or streak, or fly through space, but rather, it majestically floats, a ponderous, implacable progression, giving the impression of a slow thing, even at the highest speeds. It is also truly slow, for the sheer mass is difficult for the creature to push through space-time - Nearly any superluminal drive can out run it. The metallo-organic skin of the Starseeder pulsates with life, the red and violet hues of the creature disturbing for many other sentients to look upon. A dozen eye clusters dot the thing’s exterior, along with a myriad of various orifices and strange, pustule like pods and apparent parasites, with little obviously apparent pattern, rhyme, or reason. More than one human has looked upon one on the view screen and promptly vomited, so sickening are they to look upon.

In one case, a man obviously driven mad by its appearance once cried out, ‘Ia! Ia! Yog-Shoggoth!’ Removed from the bridge, he was quickly removed to the sanatorium, and few understood his reference.

In the first stage of building a Starseeder, a fungal sack, twenty five kilometers in circumference, is grown on the ground, and then lifted to orbit, to the great ‘shipyards’. There, it is filled with salts mined on one of the planets of the Regar system, and the center is seeded with an engineered creature of Thoronic origin, as well as the future pilot of the ship. The young bud is taken into the sack by the pilot, through a tunnel in the salts, where together, they enter a prepared chrysalis structure. Through the influence of the chrysalis, the two are sedated, and their growth and fusion begins. Outside, the fungal sack is heated until the center begins to melt around the hardy chrysalis, providing the creature the energy and nutrition it needs to begin. For decades, this continues, as the fused creature grows and bursts from the chrysalis, the body of the Kel’Regar long consumed, the mind merged with the Thoron. While this combined thing is capable of communicating with the hive mind of the First One, it is recognized by the First One as a thing apart, a thing separate, and is thus not subject to its whims. In the end, it will be approximately thirty five kilometers in size, nestled comfortably within its hot salt bath, tendrils sneaking out to grow through the fungal ‘egg sack’, allowing the unborn ship to begin to interface with the pieces to be hung from it next.

Against the external egg sack, the first layer of growth is begun. This is the ‘engineering’ structure of the ship, where food and ‘fuel’ for the crew and ship is stored, where the systems to maintain the salt bath at temperature are made, and where the Wombs of Creation for the ship are stored. Next to the center, this is the largest of the layers, the two together nearly sixty kilometers in size. Most of this is food storage and food recycling for the creature.

The second layer from the core, then, is the hibernation rooms. Row upon row of Kel’Regar are found here, each within their own special chrysalis that keeps them asleep, alive, and unaging, waiting for the time when they might be released into the world. So too, here, are stored a second generation of Kel’Regar men and women, though unalive, they are stowed as pure information, along with many of their engineered creatures. Upon colonizing, a portion of the sleepers are revived, and cloning begins within the Wombs of Creation, of both Kel’Regar and their tools, a quick seeding of a world.

The third layer, then, is the male’s layer, for the male portion of the Starseed’s crew. Here, command decisions are made, here, the information from outside is processed, and science is done. It is analogous to the bridge and crew quarters of a human starship, though here, as everywhere, there is no metal, only organics, the very floors and walls pulsating and moving with life, pumped by a million hearts embedded throughout the creature. The air throughout the ships ‘living’ quarters is thick and moist, pungent with the smell of the creature’s pheremones. It is the smell of the deep jungle, of things that eat and devour and grow, of strange and exotic herbs. The perfume has been known to overcome guests to the ship from time to time.

The fourth layer out is the female’s layer, holding the combat crew of the starship. Still, this huge layer, nearly two and a half kilometers thick on each side, is sparsely populated, so that the thousands of females that inhabit it may maintain their ‘nomadic’ life style, even within the tangled structure of the ship-creature.

Outermost is the interface layer, composed of chitin, fungal ‘bark’, and mucosal membranes that hold back the chill of space. Here, also, is where a fleet of fighters ‘docks’, the tiny creatures literally tick like parasites hanging from the greater ship-creature. These parasite-fighters are the first line of defense of the ship, and can launch with or without the female pilots that live within.

The Starseeder has been classed by humanity as a ‘Super-Dreadnought’, the largest class of ships fielded. In combat, it can more than hold its own, though its ponderous size and relative vulnerability means that it will never enter combat by choice. The creature itself is capable of using the Thoronic part of its heritage as a gravity-weapon, tightly focused tidal pulls tearing apart the foe, while the parasite-fighters provide a swarm of destruction. It also carries a limited number of ‘lamprey missiles’, a horrifying weapon that latches onto enemy ships and eats its way through the hull, only to disgorge a pack of hungry, poisonous creatures within.

The essential mission of the Starseeder, however, is to establish colonies, and to spread the parts of the Regar biosystem required to sustain them, throughout the universe. It is hoped by the Kel’Regar that the five (one has been placed on a mission to leave the galaxy!) creatures will never need to return to Regar for resupply, instead fully recycling its own wastes and scavenging what little else it needs through the parasite-fighters.