Machine People By Imperator-Zor Watch

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A thousand years ago, The First Ones awoke. Sixteen two meter tall mechanical beings. Around them was an expanse of reddish brown Regolith and tall mountains of reddish stone under a pair of moons and a bright sun. The one thing that set them apart was a square kilometer covered in solar collectors, which fed into a central structure at it's core with a hopper on one end, a hatch on the other and a set of charging stations. They knew how to walk, plug themselves into charging stations, the First Fabricator. As the sixteen of them fumbled around, picking up objects and exploring their surroundings they eventually began feeding rocks in one end and to their surprise slag came out and eventually new solar panels, pivots, collectors and cables. To their surprise they knew how those fit together. They expanded the solar panel fields slowly as they began to work out how to use their radios to communicate for a few weeks before one of them before the first set of components. To their surprise they knew how those fit together. And so sixteen became seventeen.



As the years went on their numbers steadily increased, even as a few were lost to accidents. Spare parts were also produced. Gradually their radio transmissions refined themselves and signals became words and eventually images, which aided them as they assisted the newly created. After completion of the 498th new Machine Person, the Fabricator began making components in crates. When they saw them the Machine People knew what was to be done with them. They carried them five kilometers to the south and assembled them. Over the next two months a new Fabricator arose, which they set up solar panels around to power it up so it could make solar panels of it's own and eventually more Machine People. The process would continue as time went on, resulting in new fabricators and new people being made at an increasing rate.



All the while the machine people began shaping their own tools. They began to experiment with rocks and components of panels and spare parts for themselves. First they made crude hammers, chisels, picks, satchels of covering material and carved out buildings. Then they began to make use of batteries and motors from solar panels to assemble new machines such as conveyor belts and drills. As their numbers increased the number of machine People working on problems increased as well. Four centuries into their history the machine people began to smelt their own ore independently using collectors and begun to use it in crafting their own tools, among them weapons.



Machine People are all made from the same master template body and mind, but are programmed to grow and learn from that. As a default they are social, helping each other along the way and making connections as they go. At firs there was what could be thought of as a naive assumption of good intentions. More Machine People meant more friends. But as time went on things happened which would break this. More distant groups became more removed from each other and thus ideas diverged. A few of the Machine People acquired more artifacts made by the oldest of Fabricators emerged as leaders with stores of tools that they traded, the service of longstanding alliances and hordes of trade goods. As they gradually wore over a century or two they were replaced either by one of their former allies who'd take their mantle or occasionally by an heir that they selected and groomed. All the while newly made Machine People and those outside of these circles became impoverished laborers. Finally there were the Defectives: those rare individauls that by some quirk of their emergent software or by damage developed odd behavioral ticks. Often these were simple ticks or a tendency to get stuck in a loop on things. But occasionally it meant that a few of them would attempt to dismantle their fellows. The latter was enough to scare the majority of their society to create specialists to incapacitate or dismantle defectives, which caused a lot of disagreement and further exasserbated issues. There was the fact that resources were not distributed equally along the surface of their world and that the older groups towards the heart of this civilization felt pressured by the surrounding upstarts. Finally there were misunderstandings. All of which lead to violence. First at an individual level, then scuffles with groups and eventually clashes of mechanical armies. Solar farms were destroyed to deny power to foes, Fabricators were destroyed, fields were littered with the broken bodies of fallen soldiers. Some of the defeated were fortunate, as their conquerors showed them Mercy and accepted them as vassals. In time new political blocks arose. Wars would eventually become less common, but more intense.



As the continued to explore their world and spread across it, the nations of the Machine People became more sophisticated and scientific. Cities rose to house the vast population that was being produced, home to factories, chemical plants, workshops, markets and administrative facilities linked by railways, roads and airports. Their understanding of science progressed as well. New sources of power were tapped, including wind, geothermal and eventually nuclear power. This area is a rural one, providing energy by the old fashioned power sources while ore is brought to a Fabricator to make new panels and new people. Even if many of those they make end up going to the city in time, there are a core of farmers who live most of their lives on farms, only occasionally going into the city. They are as a rule conservative and often think that cities are a source of the evils of this world. Solar farms and Fabricators was the state of affairs that the Creators desired when they built the First Ones.



They do not know that above their world float satellites which monitor their world, listen to their radio chatter and keep track of their affairs. They are a Great Experiment of a race of Water and Carbon and Calcium, seeding an uninhabitable world with intelligent machines to see how things progressed.

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