User:GreytideSkye/Sandbox/Lore:Moths
 Mothman |
Denonyms: Moths |
Moffs
Mothfolk are gregarious, communal driven people set on a forever pilgrimage from a dead solar system that collapsed itself into a nova. In the earliest years of First Contact, they survived in rusted generation ships drifting aimlessly in space under skeptical conditions, with the constant threat of dwindling supplies and an uncertain future hanging over their heads.
Moth Anatomy and Medicine
Moths have additional extremities, organs and considerations that humans and most other species do not. When a human gets burned, hair regrows, skin can be healed through cryogenics or surgery. Organs can be replaced.
When a moth gets burned, and this is likely due to the focus on engineering, antenna burn away. Wings are ruined. Moth (the main eyes at least) eyes are immobile but multi-faceted, partial damage is partial blindness. (Moths actually have four eyes by default, they have ocelli, or simple eyes in addition to the obvious ones. Those two spots near the eyes? Those are also eyes. We are a race of nerds.)
The thermal tolerance of moths is harder to regulate due to an exoskeleton body underneath the ‘fluff’, but the tolerance is wide enough to cover for this usually (due to having come from a planet with extreme environmental stresses) but adaptation to fleetlife might have changed this for better or worse.
First thing that the GNF proper would have that NT/human-centric medicine does not, would be wing prosthetics and a rapid means to reconstruct wings without having to do slow manual flesh reshaping surgery. Because moths would have wing templates mapped out already. (Get your wings scanned today, be free from misfortune later!)
Carbon fiber wings -- which would be easier to print out with lathe and printing technology being this far advanced in the future -- are an option for moths in the fleet. Lighter, durable, and more importantly doesn’t ignite like traditional moth scale. (At least until you hit temperatures in excess of 400C/673K)
Mothroaches
Mothroaches are an engineered species, grown specifically to organically produce compatible organ structures to transplant into an injured Moth. While Limbgrowers exist, they require precision mechanisms, electricity, and flesh. A mothroach requires a fistfull of cloth to survive the day. While the organs of the mothroach are not immediately transferable, they serve as enough of a template for surgeons to graft and further develop, coaxing the body’s natural healing to accept and expand them into fully functional replacements.
That they are cute is not entirely incidental; encouraging other species to keep them means there are simply more spare parts in the universe.
Moth Diversity
It’s most likely a combination of multiple factors.
Mutation rates in humans have been estimated to be of the order 10^-4 – 10^-6 per gene per generation. The rate of nucleotide substitutions is 1 in 108 per generation, leading to 30 expected nucleotide mutations. Moth mutation rates might simply be higher, which can explain the resilience of the mothfleet’s genetic diversity even while being isolated to fleet vessels for long periods of time in addition to just introducing material from other insectoid species or humans as a means of further reinforcing the genome.
That would be the clinical explanation. From a cultural standpoint, since First Contact went well for the moths they probably see no reason to change what works: hospitality and inter-racial relations could lead to the obvious.
Genetic engineerng and NIF polymorph tech is most likely acceptable, if not encouraged. The survival of the GNF matters greatly, and adapting to one’s environment is a facet of that. Changing one’s shape, size, features or even gender and sex would not be as taboo as in early human cultures.
Mothic Language
The modern Mothic language is a memetic cypher.
It basically has to be, considering it’s a second generation language that evolved from the GNF rather than on Va Lumia, and more than that, it was developed as a means of faster and reliable communication adapting to life in the fleet rather than on a planet. It would have had to had referenced ideas, idioms and memes from an ancestor language.
Think about how you would prioritize word construction if you needed to communicate to your fleetmates quickly about something important to the Fleet, as you are developing the language:
[Danger in (3D direction)], [Repair Electrical], [Repair Atmospherics], [Repair Mechanical], pathfinding instructions, [Internals On], [Suit On]: would all become single words, contractions or compound words for simplicity’s sake. This would be reflected in the phonology of the Mothic sign language too. It would still mean what it means, but to an outsider it would be incredibly confusing to learn because it’s almost like Mandarin Chinese, a single letter/symbol/word communicates a concept. And these words can compound into more advanced concepts:
[Danger in (3D direction)] + [Fire Weapons] = [Attack/Defend from (3D Direction)]
[Danger in (3D direction)] + [Suit On] = [(3D Direction) is space/spaced]
The ethos of how the language works reflects the mentality it takes to leave one’s homeworld to embark forever in a nomadic lifestyle and engineering within the maints of a mass of ships. One does not hold the ancestor language sacred like the Clans of KerenskyMilitant linguists who are in no way related to Battle or Tech. If you were wondering why it took SolFed so long to develop Sol Common, they're no small part of the problem. do.
“We do what we must in order to survive and persist, and so we leave behind the formalities of the old and create a more efficient new in its place.”
To a modern moth, the ancient mothic language would be lyrical and convoulted. Taking so much time to communicate in words what they actually mean.
Va Lumia
Va Lumia, is a bigger planet than TerraBy about 1.2x. but has a lower gravity due to core density (0.5g-0.8g), completes a spin in 16 hours, and has an extreme axial tilt and a larger atmosphere leading to intense storms lasting months instead of weeks, and prolonged storm seasons.
Moths became the dominant species due to being flight-capable on their homeworld and were the first to develop more complex brain structures due to the need to shelter and anticipate stormfronts. The need to move together, socialize and build communities becomes crucial under severe conditions.
There is less room for factionalism under ecological stresses and more need for welfare and cooperation. Competition is frowned upon because everyone is fucked if a storm rolls in by the time you decide you have the biggest dickIt seems that any culture with genitals views their size and shape as a source for competition. and deserve whatever you fought for.
There are still exceptions, but this forms the early foundations of modern moth culture. “We are brothers and sisters in our crew, department, vessel. We stand together, because we will fall together if we do not.” Aped by fleet propaganda to try to convince people not to become Strays.
Permanent settlement begins in less severe bands of fertile land between the fast-moving equator and the poles with conditions more similar to Europe and Argentina. From there the moths would achieve economic maturity sooner than Terra/Earth due to having a planet with lower core and material density than the humans. The moths would exceed the maximum population that the planet can support even with vast resources being poured into the ecology (and terraforming technology nor the energy to support it would not mature soon enough) -- so the moths are left with one option with the timely arrival of bluespace anomaly science.
Exodus. The establishment of the GNF. The first generational ships are constructed.
The Grand Nomad Fleet
The Shatter Drive
Modern FTL drives are akin to blimps: carefully crafting exquisite shapes with folds that follow aerodynamics, and respect the gentle breezes it will delicately sail upon. The Shatter drive is violence, clawing the fabric of reality with fundamental hatred and forcing your will in a path forward, overcoming air resistance with sheer force until the air itself melts against your rage, its natural inertia not submissive enough for your indignant haste, too slow for your impatient journey. What is left is a violent trail of fused atoms and burning air, with you somewhere near your destination and your starting point in cinders.
Effectively an upscaled Bluespace Anomaly, the Shatter Drive consumes raw bluespace crystals to force against the metaphysical veil between Bluespace and realspace, asserting a firm, constant strain against reality until the concept of “location” snaps, and anything physically connected to the drive is rejected from locality.
The Feast
Over the process of hours, the Shatter Drive screams against the fragile nature of peace, resonating abhorrence to anything remotely attuned to Bluespace. For the Grand Nomad Fleet, every single jump is nearly an entire day of total war, besieged on all fronts by countless waves of space carp, every form of anomaly and every color of slime, uniting as one against the cosmic injustice shredding all that can be considered and all that could dream of a tomorrow. With a gun in one hand and a wrench in the other, every Moth aboard fights with calculated passion, taking control of their fate, the fate of the fleet, the fate of their species.
The Famine
And then, silence. The Grand Nomad Fleet is gone. Banished from this locality, aimed at their next destination. In one last cosmic retribution, the Shatter Drive is not precise, it is not expedient, and it ejects the GNF into reality about 1 full light year from their destination. One year of sub-light travel to their new home, one year before the very light of their arrival can warn anyone nearby.
Even in modern times, being a light year from civilization without FTL is a death sentence. Spacers have a small prayer they’re known to utter, wishing their loved ones an easy time mourning them, and hoping for a rescue fast enough that they may meet their yet-to-be-born grandkids, before they power their distress beacons and crawl into cryosleep.
In contrast, the Grand Nomad Fleet endures. An entire year of isolation, famine, and scarcity; a year of mourning those lost in the fight to arrive; a year to study and prepare for the trials ahead. Stranded with nothing but hope and a direction, the Grand Nomad Fleet reorients toward her destination and accelerates. Soon, they will descend upon their target star, their victim, assess its suitability as their new homeworld, and when it fails to meet impossible standards, strip it for all it is worth and chart a new course.
Given the steep cost of transit, the fight and the famine alike, and the totality of utility extraction, the Grand Nomad Fleet has no value in returning to a prior jump, not while they still used the Shatter Drive. It would not be until the modern Ballistic Drives were developedA Mothic/Saturnian collaboration. that transit could be considered “casually,” with investments of only a few days. It would not be until the 2300s, upon leaving Sol, that the Grand Nomad Fleet would become aware of the grievous wounds left in their wake.
The Fallout
Left behind, as the Grand Nomad Fleet winks out of reality to distant parts, floats the inevitable conclusion to such elaborate carnage: thousands of dead carp and hundreds of living, gnawing on anything somehow untethered at the moment of removal. Both the dead and soon-to-be flutter their last in the bleak desolation as even the cosmos bleeds freely. And what bleeds, scars.
For weeks, reality around the exit wound fails to cohere properly, with effects seemingly disjoint from their causes, with fundamental forces repelling sanity. When truth finally settles and causality scabs over, regional space coheres again but never fully heals right. What we consider “anomalous” reigns at easily ten times the rate of even the weirdest pockets of space, and veins of plasma congeal around the edges of the wound.
Even the smallest of modern Ballistic Drives are sufficient to mitigate a Shatter Drive’s effects, both tearing and transit. The Ballistic containment field, no matter how aerodynamic, is enough of an outlet for the Shatter Drive’s gargantuan force to redirect and contain, sputtering out across Bluespace as little more than an irritation. Just as a flood cannot topple a dam with adequate drainage, so too can the Shatter Drive fail to ignite with just a small Ballistic bubble to leak through. The metaphor holds, in that yes the hole will be torn open further, and the ballistic drive will likely explode should it not be sizeably charged and prepared, but reality will hold strong and no party will be flung across space.
In terms of weaponizing this effect, the power investment required to force a Ballistic drive to detonate far exceeds the cost of simply exploding an entire region of space.
The GNF Now
The Grand Nomad Fleet still floats in space, commanding billions of Moths on a never-ending journey through space. Their mission: simply to progress. Over the centuries, the original inten and countless memories have simply been lost, forgotten. Some believe that the GNF is on a voyage homeward, seeking the lost system of Va Lumia so they may settle back on their homeworld. Pessimists suggest that the initial launch of the Shatter Drive may have rendered this quest impossible. Some believe that the prior is a misinterpretation, that the GNF is seeking a new place to settle down, a “new Va Lumia” of sorts. None of this confusion and contradiction help the GNF in deciding whether to finally dismantle and permanently settle down in a region, as the voters hardly understand what they vote forThe ones who believe they are seeking the original Va Lumia strongly question why they even bother voting, as it should be self-evident that their current system is not the Va Lumia of myth. It doesn’t help that records of Va Lumia are scarce, and contradictory. Even if one group genuinely believes they have arrived at the original Va Lumia, no majority of these Lost Planet believers has ever voted to settle..
Here’s another question: Where’s the GNF now? Even though they’ve since transitioned to the safer, less costly Ballistic Drive for FTL, nd I’d reckon they have, moving an entire Civilization-Sized Starship Fleet is a massive cultural shift, with exceptional historical precedent“still a huge-ass Endeavor, plus it’s culturally been a Huge Deal.” and gravitas. Also “recently,” a large cultural divide in light of the capacity to put FTL drives on smaller ships, questioning if it’s okay for a few ships to split off for a while because they can regroup with the GNF later. When so much of your upbringing has been final goodbyes, how can you possibly trust a “see you soon?”
With more independent scouting arms, the Grand Nomad Fleet sends exploratory vessels into less known space and unclaimed space, investigating new sites more thoroughly than their historic radio telescopes could. On the Fleet itself, engineers continually attempt to push the boundaries on what the Ballistic Drive can do, for further jaunts, faster treks, one day dreaming of cross-galaxy bounds. Because you have to understand: in terrestrial life, nomadic hordes went around in circles, following fertile lands and adapting to the seasons and where the good grazing grounds are.
While space is big, the Admirals of the GNF have to realize that the cycle of jaunting and reassessing isn’t sustainable long term. The only logical conclusion is to focus the entire civilization’s research and development into ever more powerful FTL, and go into deeper and less explored space, with the eventual goal of simply being able to leave the galaxy.
Speculative astrocartographers believe they’re attempting to bridge from Perseus to the New Outer arm as a dry-run test of going into deep space for cross-galaxy into Andromeda. Possibly to Vela and Crux side.
As an alternate plan, some of the fleet may be bargaining with SolFed to lay claim to black holes in the galactic center, or gathering the resources and bargaining power to do so. With the idea of permanently settling around them.
Deriving power from gravitational singularities is an already known concept, called the Penrose process. Distinct from the radiation collected from a station-scale Singuloth, the Penrose process effectively sails on the rotation of a black hole, in relativistic ways that gain more power than is lost from resisting gravity. Moths might eventually want to develop ringworlds around black holes as a means of sustainable long term settlement. Other civilizations have proven this to be a possible, if unpreferable, means of survival.
Some Mothic idealists suggest that the Grand Nomad Fleet could sustain itself off of the charity of numerous permanent Mothic civilizations, jumping from ally to ally akin to early nomads following fertile fields. In theory, these civilization-scale outposts would amass a surplus and charitably supply the GNF until it becomes a burden, at which point the GNF moves to the next. By the time it returns to the first civilization, dozens to hundreds of years will have passed, and the surplus will have been easily renewed.
Detractors believe that splitting the Mothic culture is abhorrent, but also that these splintered civilizations may grow tired of hosting the GNF, turn them away to wither and rot. While some stationary Mothic outposts have begun to sprout up, especially alongside other civilizations, none to the scale (or intent) of hosting the GNF are even on the path to blossoming.
Why doesn’t the GNF settle down?
Economic reasons. When you’ve mobilized your entire civilization into a nomadic fleet, it sort of becomes a war economy. Manufacturing, logistics, engineering sectors are all economies that relies on the GNF existing. If they permanently settle, you have to demobilize and restructure everything, would could lead to a collapse of jobs, and be an economic nightmare.
If you have to do this, you better damn well be sure that you’re settling somewhere GOOD.
Like, back on the Shatter Drive, you’re making a big decision to leave, so you’ve basically exhausted the area of resources and decided that a year of drifting is better than sticking around, so there’s not much reason to go back, and there’s super not a reason to spend a year drifting back to where you already drained.
Once the Ballistic Drive comes into use, and travel is much less risky and cheaper, there might be a cultural shift, might not, but I’d guess it’d still be a hard sell to take the GNF back to somewhere already drained.
Yes, the primary impetus of the where and why of the GNF is all down to socioeconomics. The GNF cannot settle for just anywhere, it has to be virtually limitless (exploiting a black hole), really good (Class I paradise worlds with more than enough resources for everyone to stabilize with after suffering the shock of demobilizing the mothfleet) or they just have to keep moving (onto another galaxy entirely if they have to).
Culturally, there’s also the sunk cost fallacy to contend with. Any viable setting has to live up to the expectations of 300+ years of travel, has to be good enough to retroactively justify waiting this long. Cynics predict that only three places in the universe could possibly satisfy this irrational desire, and that no matter where the GNF settles, a majority of the populace will feel like they’re “settling,” and could have done better.
GNF ship design and evolution
There are probably three periods of evolution in the design of mothfleet vessels:
Early mothfleet designs
From their homeworld, the Mothic people designed mothfleet vessels for their initial Exodus. These ships, and the ships built mid-transit to supplement the GNF, were built with a sole focus on finding a new planet and settling. Designers got any ship they could space worthy for a long voyage, with redundancies, and left. Nothing else, not comfort, not sustainability, not population growth mattered.
The early GNF acted as a parasite, leaping into a new system, evaluating it, and when it failed to meet high standards, stripping it of everything they could carry and leaving. Historians postulate that the GNF, at least twice, deemed a system worth settling at, had they not yet pillaged it into uselessness.
New ships joined the fleet primarily from salvage and theft, using on-site metallurgical facilities to repair and bootstrap until the vessel was worthy enough to benefit the GNF. Several of these vessels were simply native factories dug out of the ground with engines strapped to them.
Post-SolFed formation
Having been introduced to Humanity in what would have otherwise been the catastrophic end of the GNF, Moffic engineers collaborated with humanity on early Bluespace Ballistic drives. GNF ship design shifted to accept the reality of long-term nomadic life.
Post-SolFed they would have introduced sustainability functions, hydroponics, life support recycling, materials recycling, standardization of parts so as not to repeat the issueDespite this being a well-documented catastrophe, every Moth has a different account of the incident, usually something that had they been there, they could have single-handedly prevented using their personal experience and training. that forced the GNF to make First Contact to begin with. This would be the era that caused the GNF to evolve into a nomadic fleet proper, capable of moving out of choice, not necessity.
During this time, food standards evolved from reproducible rations to a diverse, morale-enriching spread of plants and meats grown in wasteful-but-diverse mobile farms. In this period of heavy human interaction, both were pleased to discover that historic Moffic plants and recipes synergized strongly with Terran-Italian cuisine, and the addition of several Earthen plants to the Moffic palette enhanced their cultural identity, instead of diluting it.
War economy begins, and the industrialization of fleet vessels starts.
Post-Sagittarius Accords
Fueljacks of this era adopted many doctrines established in the wake of the Terran-Tiziran War. Just as SolFed had not faced a foe as sizeable and fierce as the lizardfolk, so too had the Grand Nomad Fleet failed to consider hostiles who could pursue them, establishing permanent consequences and possibly genuine threats. While the Tiziren were not this persistent foe, not to the GNF, the mere act of negotiating a peace between them and SolFed distressed the Moffic people enough to grandly change their architectural standards.
New fueljacks strongly emphasized defensive strategies: shielded cargo holds, offensive scanners, redundant engines, and hardened crew quarters with personal defense weaponry in every bed. Rather than permitting some areas to be unpressurized for efficiency, every new corridor was considered to be a possible final stand against overwhelming odds, and pressurized with breathable air accordingly.
Developing the Ballistic Drive
Prior to the arrival of the Grand Nomad Fleet to Sol, the IAA had slowly built tiny prototypes of a FTL engine, first creating unmanned drones that can use it, and eventually building up into manned spacecraft that can easily reach into the Oort cloud to collect more bluespace dust. These early ships are still really just prototypes, but are building towards mass production and are right on the cusp of it when the GNF arrived and SolFed formed.
Those prototypes soon lead to the first mass production bluespace drives, potentially aided further by moth engineers aiding the human ones. Human FTL soon reaches to the point where it seems pretty feasibleEnough for investors to dump everything into expansion. to reach nearby systems, which compounds into exponential advancements. The FTL range of these early commercial Ballistic Drives was still limited, and you need a really high mass % to go long range, but most exploration craft could get fuel in-situ, arriving at a destination and having the ability to move freely in that small area. Eventually the existing technology stalls out, as neither speeds nor range increase fast enough to fuel perpetual expansion.
The primary goal of the GNF’s military arm is to ensure the survival of the mothfleet, and as such, the GNF’s combat capable vessels are geared towards an escort fleet doctrine. Great emphasis is given to light, fast, screening and picket vessels like frigates and destroyers. However, this isn’t to say that the GNF commits to Jeune École (read: French 19th century naval doctrine). They aren’t going to swarm big ships with small ones.
A large mixed force of light vessels is an awful lot of resources to lose against a proper force of heavier vessels, which the GNF can ill afford. Rather, the escort fleet is composed of really fast vessels able to disengage without taking egregious losses, able to serve as scouting tripwires for the GNF so that a heavier taskforce can arrive onscene (less likely, unless the contested space is absolutely vital), or the area is simply avoided entirely (more likely, GNF is inclined to cut losses and go).
It doesn’t take much to lose your force of light vessels in a pitched battle if it comes down to it, so GNF military vessels are designed for shoot and scoot with standoff range weaponry. Think small vessels with large long range missiles or railguns. The GNF has no incentive to take pitched battles unless absolutely necessary and so would not arm their lighter vessels for a sustained fight, opting to leave after.
The typical light task force of the GNF would be something like four frigates or destroyers, able to alpha strike a detachment of one or two scouting vessels and deny the enemy intelligence on the GNF’s fleet movements, or able to cover each other long enough for at least one to exit interdiction and report back to the rest of the GNF if they encounter anything tougher. With oversized longer range weaponry for their class, the hope is that they will bloody the nose of anyone they encounter even if they lose.
Armnament
Nukes? It’s not that the moths would be reserved about using weapons of mass destruction it’s that it’s simply a terrible idea longterm. Like, why would the mothfleet expend resources to obliterate an area that they intend to contest? There is no net gain, it’s just a net loss. And again, economics rules what the mothfleet does.
Unless it’s wartime, or in special cases like the cold war, it’s also a burden to constantly maintain superweapons, most specially not the GNF for said economic reasons. If anything, GNF would prefer more surgical weapons meant to incapacitate enemy vessels so that the whole thing can just be salvaged. EMP warheads/payloads and possibly fractional speed flechettes, the latter designed to puncture vessels and de-crew the vessel but leave most of it intact enough for salvage.
Possibly drones“Red Alert 2/3 terror drones” designed to board and turn crew into chunky salsa, then strip the vessel of usable parts thereafter. With NIFs and nanotech rapidly maturing, even the bodies can thereafter be recycled as carbon.
As befitting their engineering nature, Mothic weapons rely heavily on massive amounts of power over any other resource. Railguns, electromagnets, lasers; anything that can be powered to 11 and sustainable desustain a foe.
You’re asleep in your bunk. With surgical precision, a single point on the ship’s hull heats up, no bigger than your thumb. Infrared radiation from kilometers away. A tiny hole, barely enough to singe the insulation. A quiet whistle is the only thing you hear, as air rushes out. You go to get out of bed to investigate, but your legs fail you. A tiny hole in your bed clothes, behind you. A tiny hole in your spine, sealing your fate as biomass.
Composition
While the majority of the fleet assets“If were talking a game of Nebulous, then the GNF would definitely lean towards the design and feel of OSP/Outlying Systems Protectorate vessels. Possibly complete with hiding a ton of rockets/missiles or strike craft in cargo containers.” of the GNF would be composed of light, fast vessels in the vein of littoralDon’t think it, don’t say it. or escortDON’T THINK IT. DON’T SAY IT. vessels. Heavier taskforces in the GNF would exist and these would serve as both the hammer to the anvil, and last line of defense for the nomad fleet.
The very first hostiles the nomad fleet would encounter are carp, from the first activation and use of the Anomaly Drive. As such the initial weapons development and ship design of the GNF would gear towards an interlocking, enveloping fields of defensive grid pattern fire (autocannons, sandcasters or scatter lasers) supported by strike craft, able to engage and chase down light targets. Minelaying frigates would also be employed, tasked towards covering weakspots or blindspots in the fleet.
This implies the development of screening light cruisers and picket line frigates and destroyers, able to throw up walls of grid area fire into space to intercept and destroy mass amounts of carp or other targets unfortunate enough to go on an intercept course for the nomad fleet proper.
The second hostiles the nomad fleet would encounter are pirates, solidifying the need for carrier task forces as flexible defensive and offensive heavy taskforces, surrounded by cruiser and destroyer screens. The name of the game is speed and intelligence. Deck space and weaponry can be given up for better engines, lighter construction, and sensors suites powerful enough to sweep vast regions of space in an eyeblink.
Space is big. In order to fight someone, you need to find them, and this is especially true when dealing with pirates, who would only prefer to take down easy targets and melt away into the vastness of space when confronted with anything bigger.
This might also lead to the development of Q-ships. Merchant vessels that look harmless, but then fire up a strong shield generator and unfold rows of guns (or hide fighter craft in cargo containers!) to ambush incoming pirates.
GNF Economics
This covers a broad range of subjects that highlights in detail what it means to run a mobile civilization. Unlike the nomads of the steppe, there is only tiny scraps of land between oceans of nothingness, but like the nomads of the steppe, they always took everything with them and that includes:
Shipbuilding
The GNF cannot have static shipyards for what they do. They always move, therefore this emphasizes the need for capital class foundry vessels explicitly geared towards building and maintaining vessels. Mobile anchorages, engineering and shipbuilding gantries with scores of drones and engineers in EVA suits tasked with building and maintaining what the GNF needs.
Unlike stationary civilizations who can focus on JIT manufacturing and lean production methods, the GNF have to cover for the shock of sudden demands due to travel times between resource sites and so will always build surplus, which echoes into other manufacturing industries outside of shipbuilding but focusing back on topic: this means that there are more hulls waiting in mobile anchorages that the moths know what to deal with leading to entire crews of moths whose sole job is inventory operations -- a similarly punitive alternative to crewing a fueljack.
Merchant marine vessels centralize resources into these vessels tasked with manufacturing everything the GNF needs and consequently distribute everything out towards the fringe elements of the GNF, and so the foundry vessels themselves would become part logistics center, part port authority and part admiralty office.
This does lead to a style of fleet composition and structure not unlike Homeworld, where motherships, shipyards and carriers are the centerpieces of the fleet: constructing, maintaining and deploying vessels into the field.
Merchant Marine
The pride and joy of the GNF.
The sheer volume displacement required for a civilization to exist entirely in the space between the stars is staggering, requiring logistics efforts that the MECU would envy to have. The GNF cannot exercise autarky by design, and attempting to make every single Fleet vessel truly self-sufficient leads to high inefficiency and reduced specialization as manpower and resources are diverted to systems and infrastructure best found in vessels designed for the task.
(This is not to say they can’t try! Some self-sufficiency and redundancy is a strong facet of nomadic life, however in order to maintain efficiency -- which mothic engineers do prize -- they have to concede that vessels have to be designed for a purpose and create strong specializations within the fleet.)
And more to the point, considering the GNF mediated the Sagittarius Accords, the Admiralty would not be inclined to give up foreign trade and influence. Political and socioeconomic suicide is not in the cards for a civilization that enjoys the benefits of good diplomatic and trade relations with other polities. The moths aren’t isolationist. Far from it, mothic culture packbonds with crews of other species and backgrounds, gaining strength from diversity and unity.
So it is, that the military and civilian logistics arms of the GNF are it’s most numerous and powerful asset, moving freight at staggering volumes across vast distances. Government vessels would be tasked with infrastructure like buoys and navigational aids at large, and GNF Merchant Marine inspectors are tasked with ensuring the quality of escape pods, deck equipment and cargo handling gear.
The GNF admiralty also uses the governmental arm of the merchant marine to set down Fleetwide laws responsible for salvage, working hours, wages, escape pod availability, and language. They also have to adhere to international conventions set down by solfed and others.
The Nomad Fleet Vendor and GNF agriculture
And we come back around to what I said about GNF economics. That the GNF would shy away from lean production methods and model itself after the WW2 American war economy, building surplus to cover for shock demands caused by travel and losses from piracy. This is true for shipbuilding, for agriculture, for manufacturing and for every sector right down to the methamphetamine gum sticks you find from the Fleet vendor.
In order to prevent economic output from languishing into waste, surplus is sold off which finally leads us to why the Nomad Fleet vendor even exists. The lack of branding or commercial naming conventions leads me to believe that GNF agriculture is in a sense, nationalized, or a government-run industry. Possibly by design: unlike most other sectors agriculture is the foundation of all economic activity, and strict controls over it ensures the continued survival of the Fleet. Literally as the vendor says it does.
This tells me that agricultural efforts in the GNF cannot possibly be commercialized, which leads me to believe that GNF agriculture is held firmly by admiralty elites who own the vessels that the lion’s share of hydroponics trays are on. The Fleet vendors do not have Ma’s and Pa’s shop style branding, which mean ownership by homesteading is ruled out, and collectivization is impossible if “land” and manpower cannot be concentrated. (Sorry, no communist moth option for you.)
From this alone, we can start to see how GNF politics play out. The admiralty is strong and oligarchical in nature. Political power is concentrated in the officer cadre, who have to represent the interests of their vessels’ crews, which can lead to a mismatch of political ideology between the captain of a vessel, its officers and the crew. Which makes sense: the GNF does not appear to be a democracy“Yes, all this I’ve inferred from just how the Fleet vendor is designed. Fun times.”.
GNF Resourcing Operations
If the logistics arm of the GNF is it’s pride and joy then its resourcing and salvage fleet is the tip of a long spear, carving through planets, moons, asteroids and vessels to supply the needs of the Fleet. Its tools a far from unwieldy. They are surgical, and extract every last crumb of ore and scrap off a resource site, leaving virtually nothing behind.
Recon/expedition vessels, fueljacks, junkyard dogs (salvage), and mining vessels as well as their escorts make up this fleet, representing the frontline interest of the GNF: resource acquisition to sustain the fleet.
The GNF would make heavy use of drones and resonator technology in order to extract resources.
Resonators makes sense for the Fleet: instead of carving through specific areas for ore with PKA explosions or creating long lines with plasma miners, the goal is simply to stripmine the entire area using resonator mining toolheads (possibly using ARC long ranged resonator tech depending on if Tarkon sold the tech to them in the past or not), and gather the rock and ore all at once using a local artificial gravwell. (If you’ve ever played Space Engineers, a fun way to move loose rock and ore into the funnel of your ship to be pulled into storage is to use artificial gravity to pull them in. Same principle applies.)
Fueljacks, mining vehicles and mining vessels would have blast-resistant plating or shielding for deflecting gibtonite explosions as the vessel moves forward without interruption and carves through whatever its in path in preplanned grid outes to stripmine an area.
The most common type of rock observed so far is C type (Chondrite) asteroids consisting of carbon, clay and silicate minerals, which are useful for ceramics and glass manufacturing, both of which would feature heavily in GNF designs and manufacturing. (Ceramic composite armor?). Nothing is wasted, everything is used.
Salvaging
Similar affair, but more methodical. First a vessel or wreck is scanned down for lifeforms using similar technology used in MOD Sonars, to which a grace period is given for communication to or rescue of any possible neutral or friendly survivors, before the long range surgical laser array is fired up to disable or kill with minimal force, any possible hostiles in the area.
After that, biomass recycling and sterilization of the vessel or wreck. Particularly interesting finds are picked out into biohazard containment to be given to medical research hotlabs while the rest is churned down into base elements, recycled into synthflesh or simply burned out for sterilization.
Then the drones are deployed to disassemble and/or recover valuable internal components, artifacts and loose items to be taken back to the vessel, while the vessel’s crew start planning on how to go about shipbreaking the hull into pieces for recovery and recycling. It’s at this point structural meson scans are made and compiled for review by onboard ship architects to make an action plan on how to disassemble the vessel.
On the crew chief’s approval of the plan, the moths commit, cutting the vessel apart using the same surgical laser array previously used for organics, now used to ‘dissect’ the vessel for disassembly.
And there we go, the vessel is picked clean and again: nothing is wasted, everything is taken or used.
Grand Nomad Fleet, Demographics
The Grand Nomad Fleet is a federation of fleets whose identity is based on the cardinal directions of the Milky Way galaxy, and their roles. With its largest constituent fleet, Nomad Fleet Perseus and its flagship the Va Lumia, namesake of the mothic homeworld being the seat of the admirality regime in nominal authority of the Grand Nomad Fleet. In practice, this is not strictly enforced: the GNF only centralizes its power in times of great duress, like active wartime or famine.
All other states possess a fleet. The Grand Nomad Fleet is a Fleet posessing a state.
The Perseus Fleet, at 17 million hands and officers, contains the lion’s share of the total population of the GNF sitting at 35 million. This is the administrative fleet, and contains the original generational vessels that came from the homeworld. The size and sprawl of the population is strictly controlled by the amount of available functional and crewed deckspace, which makes extensive use of automation and technology to cover for manpower shortfalls.
The other three fleets are administrative arms of the GNF with strategic aims and mission statements, with the admiralty hedging their bets on the future of mothkind:
Nomad Fleet Auriga, at 6.5 million hands, tasked with pacification of pirate held territory, allowing room for the GNF to relocate into and exploit.
Nomad Fleet Vela, at 4 million hands, tasked with development of the Andromeda bridge, either a stable gateway or development of a means of intergalactic FTL.
Nomad Fleet Sagittarius, at 7.5 million hands, task with diplomatic and merchantile efforts with humanity and the other polities in order to purchase and secure entire worlds and suitable locations for ringworlds for demobilizing the GNF into permanent settlements should the worst come to pass.
Why leave Sol?
GNF would leave Sol aside from diplomatic and trade efforts by simple virtue of the fact that the moths probably see the writing on the wall with regards to joining the Sol Federation, because by 2300s most of the Sol system and possibly surrounding systems might have been thoroughly exploited and the main driver of GNF staying at all is demobilization and a transition period towards repopulation.
Simply put, not enough vacant room to demobilize the fleet here, nevermind that by 2250-2290 they’d have been witness to the civil wars and formation of cliques. Any efforts to lobby support for sapient development index aid would be smothered by the politics of varied interest groups.
I think they would leave by 2320-2325, during the Second Great Migration.
TLDR: You need humanitarian aid if you want to unload everyone from ships and give them homes and jobs, and the existence of cliques kills that.
Because Sol Federation would have it’s hands full with the civil war and fragmentation of political blocs
I think this also gives context as to why the moths would broker the Sagittarius Accords too, because they can already tell by 2300s onwards that humanity will be driven by conflict, and both the GNF and high level politicians would realize that someone other than humanity would need to do the talking
GNF Politics
The outward appearance of the Fleet of harmonious and diplomatic nomads largely reflects true in internal politics, but there is still some internal division in the political makeup of the Fleet. After all: people have different criteria and definitions for what is necessary for the survival of the Fleet. The admiralty may have the final say, they still have to appease their political supporters and peers.
The incumbent political force governing the Fleet are the Old Guard. Descendants of naval officers, navigators and politicians dating back from the homeworld, Va Lumia. They represent a strong philosophy of moderate and liberal conservatism. This bias to the leftward flank of conservative ideology arises from the belief that individuals cannot be thoroughly depended on to act alone; therefore, they believe that a strong state is necessary for the survival of mothkind, while maintaining liberal views in other affairs.
Economically they see the need for export restrictions, interventionism and protectionism. The Old Guard needs the economic apparatus of the Fleet to be able to provide for the needs of the Fleet at all times, seeing individual and corporate wealth generation as a secondary concern to social welfare programs. The Fleet were one of the original proponents of the UBI system currently in place in the Fleet, Sol Federation and Nanotransen stations.
Opposition politics stem from industrialists, merchant marine and a conglomerate of more independent vessels of the Fleet ranging far from the core mass of the Nomad Fleets.
A generation of self-made individuals whose views on how the fleet should be governed is more individualist and materialist: believing that the only real way forward to to leverage the Nomad Fleets’ strength is to invest in the merchant marine and permanent industry to gain the resources to buy permanent settlements in the Pegasus arm like Nanotransen or choice planets from closer to the galactic center.
This is a rough approximation of the two major ideologies present in the Fleet, but in actuality every single vessel has it’s own political environment, adapting and changing to the concerns and culture of the vessel. There are consistent themes to the vessels however: that is to say, independent politics and opposition to the dominance of political parties is commonplace.
This creates a tenuous control between the admiralty and every individual vessel which is a more equal terms agreement formed only from the need for cooperation for the survival of the species. This has directly led to the creation of the Fleet arms: Perseus, Auriga, Vela, Sagittarius. Each representing a divergence in opinions between groups of vessels on what would be best for the species, tolerated by the fact that it makes sense to diversify one’s portfolio, allowing for endurance through adaptability.
The strong sense of community and cooperation in the mothfleet is not diminished by this. If anything most would believe this is an expansion of the idea that ‘everyone has a part in the fleet’s survival’ and that survival comes in many forms, becoming stronger through diversification.
Grand strategy through consensus is still grand strategy, after all.
Work in Progress: Footer subject to change at a moment's notice. Do not take a red link's presence, struck-through or otherwise, as confirmation (or denial) of their canonicity.
