Technology

There's a fair bit of technological gadgets and gizmos available on Imperion. These pages go over varying types of technology that have arisen in Tyrrhenia since the Republic's rise. Many are attributed to the Dae, but a few are from modern Tyrrhenian technology or designed by a Psionic.


Airships

Airships were designed by the Dae, not that they claim it all that often, and the prototype designs expanded on and turned into today's airships. Airships come in several classes; the fighter, the light cruiser, the cruiser, the heavy flagship, and the dreadnought. Dreadnought class airships are almost entirely exclusive to the Republic — these lead an entire fleet. There is one Dreadnought class airship that is known to be in the Outlands. But it was built out there by an Outlander. Rumours suggest there is another non-Republic Dreadnought hiding somewhere, but none have ever found it.

Many airships have an AI system that helps man the various functions of the ship. Despite this, many airships need a full crew in order to fully function, but smaller ships may be manned by a very experienced individual. Airships run on a system of power cores called hydrocoils. These are a combination of plasma energy mixed with water, hence the hydro — the coil part comes from the internal power mechanism. It is a coil, shaped a bit like a strand of DNA, that spins on the inside, mixing the water and the plasma and causing powerful reactions that generate power.

The specifics of airship technology is understood by very few, and the technology of hydrocoils and how to handle one is even less well-learned. Only three people are known to be able to repair a hydrocoil, rather than merely replace it, as an idea.


Airship Classes

Fighter
The fighter class airship is not meant for actual combat, despite the name, being more akin to a scout ship. They usually have very light armouring and small gun turrets and that's about it. Some are used solely for transport.

Known Fighters:

  • None

Light Cruiser
Light Cruisers are the stealth ships, most being capable of high speed manoeuvring and cloaking. Their weaponry compared to the Fighter class is much better, though their armouring is about the same.

Known Light Cruisers:

  • None

Cruiser
The Cruiser is much more suited to actual combat than the aforementioned classes; they have much heavier armouring and advanced shielding technology, as well as a lot of cannons in their arsenal. Most use laser powered cannons, some use plasma powered.

Known Cruisers:

  • None

Heavy Flagship
The Heavy Flagship has much stronger armouring and top of the line shielding technology, but no weaponry to speak of. These are used solely for transport, either living or inanimate.

Known Heavy Flagships:

  • Giratina, built by Suyis Lucain, part of the Har'zaref's fleet.

Dreadnought
An all-round battle ship, the Dreadnought Class is engineered for combat. Its armour is impossible to penetrate, and its fire-power is unmatched. This class of ship is usually in charge of an entire fleet.

Known Dreadnoughts:

  • Charity, built by The United Republic.
  • Har'zaref, built by Suyis Lucaiin.
  • Shal-Hazar, built by Seth Antares.

Artificial Intelligence

Over the decades, artificial intelligence has seen quite a surge in sophistication. From the Daeni, to the airship auto-pilots, to the AIs and other mechanical tanks with control programmes, to the surveillance machines that typically take the form of a bird or flying insect, Baseti and Anubi, artificial intelligence plays a large part in life in the Republic, and to some extent, the Outlands.

The Dae perform and fill many different societal roles, and depending on their environment, and their owner, if they have one, Dae are the first type of AI, and currently only type of AI, that has ever displayed the ability to evolve, learn, and develop. Certain Daeni can feel emotions, with one even supposedly falling in love. In more recent years, Daeni technology has begun to be used to save those that are chronically ill, or terribly injured in some way, and some individuals may be partially Daeni and partially organic.

Airship auto-pilots tend to have personalities, and will respond in interesting ways. One could think of an airship's AI programme as a slightly more advanced version of Siri or Cortana; it has generally a small array of potential responses, but it does have some semblance of humour, and will learn more responses as it interacts with sentient beings.

The AI tanks are very limited, but it can communicate with Dae and airship auto-pilots. They are directive, meaning they are programmed to really perform only one task, and while they seem to communicate with their partner, they have trouble really communicating with other humans. They tend to try charades, with varying degrees of success.

Surveillance machines fly around the Republic and keep an eye out for troublemakers, Outlanders, and problems. Often they relay visual and audio data back to Dae in the Republic headquarters, which will sort out what requires a reaction and what does not. They, like AIs, have limited programming, but they will begin to learn what sorts of things to look out for the longer they attend their duties.

Baseti and Anubi are robotic furred animals, designed after domestic cats and dogs, which are somewhat rare and expensive nowadays. They operate much like their organic counterparts, but will learn to operate in the way that a child needs them to — they were designed to comfort children, and act as a safe companion. Many are equipped with programmes and chips that will enable them to identify and fight off threats to the child they are assigned to. While most children will grow out of their Baseti or Anubi, some never do, and many Psionics and Demonicas still have theirs, whichever they got, well into adulthood. Some may be given one after splicing or capture, if the Republic believes they need one. Which one they get is determined by which one they react to the most. When a child no longer has need of one, the Republic erases the robot's chipset memory, and reassigns it to a new child. Baseti and Anubi cost nothing, and are gifted to registered children at birth by the Republic. They are classed as Demons now, and appear in the Demon Database, and it is possible to find a stray, older model of Anubi or Baseti and contract it.


Biotechnology

Demonicas, and organic Dae, are two examples of biotechnology advancements. Through copying the genetic materials responsible for a Demon's resistance to the Outlands, the Republic can also create humans that have a higher tolerance of the Outlands' insanity. This discovery was a bonus side-effect of splicing Demons and humans together to create Demonicas, which allowed them to study the genetic patterns in both, and learn which patterns contributed to this natural resistance.

Daeni modifications allow the Republic to replace lost limbs, damaged organs, and quite often, outright save lives, by preserving a human life in a Daeni casing. These do not tend to have side-effects — rarely, an organic Daeni may attack its mechanical parts. The most common side-effect is a stunting of emotional response, but it is usually not too severe, and the base personality remains in-tact.


Communications

Originally, the Republic was unable to replicate, at least immediately, the massive global network that is known as the Internet to us. For obvious reasons that are probably pretty obvious, the Internet as the Republic knows it does not extend beyond the Republic — it is instead a network confined to the boundaries of the Republic, and telephone technology, including mobile phone, was mostly lost after the End, and has been left in the old world. Radio waves were copied to some extent, but it doesn't extend too far beyond the Dome.

As such, communication technology needed to evolve, in order to allow communication lines with those in the Outlands beyond the Dome that were allied with the Republic. The Dae, once again, came to the rescue, and devised a system that ran on plasma rather than signals that could be interfered with. Unlike the signals, plasma flows right through whatever may be in its way, and is generally undetectable. This was the start of the Whispering Tower.

The Whispering Tower is a broadcast tower, in its simplest explanation. Citizens of the Republic can connect to the Whispering Tower using devices that look like coloured visor screens that manifest over the eyes. Despite being coloured to observers, they do not obstruct or colour the user's vision. These devices are called the InVisor, which allows the user to connect through the Whispering Tower to any other InVisor they know the serial number of. Messages are sent instantly, however they are not spoken. Think instant messaging, via telepathy. Some people are far more comfortable utilising the Whispering Tower to communicate, and may have their InVisor active at all times, using it to communicate telepathically with others they meet.

InVisors are also capable of recording what its user sees, audio, take messages if the user does not answer, monitor vitals and alert the Republic's emergency services automatically if one's vitals drop below a certain "safe" level, as well as the ability to silently alert the Republic's police force in the case of emergency, as well as perform basic first aid on ailing users, it has a calendar function with appointment scheduling, event tracking, and holiday and birthday lists, auto contact lists (stores up to the last eight InVisor serials you've connected to as temporary contacts, with the ability to save serials as permanent contacts), note taking function, and has a neat version of Tetris and Bejewelled on it. InVisors are thought-controlled, and will only respond to the plasma signature of the person or creature who first activated it, which is also used to grant InVisors access to higher level contacts and communication lines the military and police use. It takes some adjustment, but most get used to working it fairly quick.

Outlanders tend to stick to radio communication — they have a rough cellular phone style communication line set up, and most will destroy an InVisor if they see one. Unfortunately, they're too scattered to bother working on a more sophisticated form of communication amongst their groups.


Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology has expanded and grown over the last several thousand years. The most notable example of current nanotechnology is the nano-pill, designed, in fact, by a Psionic. Nano-pills contain very tiny microscopic nanomachines, that, when the casing around them is dissolved in the body, escape and scan the body they are in. From there, they fix whatever internal problems they can detect, and then exit the body in a safe, unnoticeable manner, typically through a sneeze, and disable themselves until they are collected by the Republic and re-activated in a new pill.

Nano-pills have sidestepped the need for many different types of surgeries, capable of detecting and killing cancerous cells, destroying tumours, repairing internal bleeding, clearing blood stream blockages and artery constrictions, and more. To call them useful would be kind of an understatement.


Plasma

While humans have no name for this substance, the Dae call it 'plasma' — if you've ever seen a plasma lamp, the globe with the red ball on the inside that shoots lightning at your fingertips when you touch it, you're familiar with the concept of plasma. Humans do not call this particular substance plasma, because it does not have quite the same qualities as the plasma they'd already known and named, but the Dae suggest it is the same thing, or at least similar enough to be called the same thing.

In the world of Imperion, plasma is a powerful and malleable substance; you can think of it as aura or mana. It seems to be generated and given off by most of anything that's alive, naturally, without any interference necessary. It has been suggested that the presence and harnessing of plasma energy is what enables Demons to use their special skills. The Dae first figured out how to collect and then harness plasma as living creatures gave it off. These methods later were put into the design for airships, which are designed to gather and use plasma that living creatures give off, and in the Republic, there's a very high concentration of it.

Certain rifles and handguns, even blasters designed for Dae and airship cannons, can fire plasma as a damaging weapon. It feels a bit like being hit by lightning.


Transportation

The Dome is actually quite large, as is Tyrrhenia. Getting from one place to another can be somewhat difficult, and take quite a long time on foot. As such, it shouldn't come as a surprise that there are quite a few different transportation means in and around the Dome. Much of the Outlands is too technologically disadvantaged and scattered to harbour too many of the same technologies, but airships are more common as use for transportation than they are in the Dome, somewhat making up for it.

Republic officers have the use of airship ferries at their disposal. These run at least once an hour, and there's one that goes to and from each city in the Dome, barring Pyxis. These can get you from one city to another in about an hour, so going from Eridanus to Pavo should only take about two hours, instead of the week and a half on foot.

Registered citizens have use of the teleporter points. These use the same technology that COMPs do, wherein your physical makeup is stored instead temporarily as digital data. It is then shot across a series of fibre-optic cables within a few seconds to perhaps a minute, and then reformed at the new location. In these instances, it only takes about a minute at most to get from one city to another, no matter the distance. However, this does come with some minor troubles, and if any part of the cabling is damaged, you may not reform with quite the same physical makeup as you did before… but this is a very rare occurrence, thankfully. There are always Daeni maintaining the teleportation lines. It is said to tingle.

Everyone else must use the bullet tram line. While not as speedy as the airship ferries, the bullet tram system can cover the distance between Eridanus and Pavo in about four or five hours. It also tends to be more commonly used by criminals, and other individuals that don't want to be noticed by the Republic, but it does go directly into Pyxis. The bullet trams cost money to use, but only a Cap per mile ( about 1 cent USD; thereby, a 700 mile trip would be 700 Caps, or about 6.50 USD ).

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