Through the cold of interstellar space floated a gas giant that would be known as Warmhub, quietly orbiting the galactic core every hundred million years. Around it floated over a hundred moons, one of which would be known as Greatcake*. It's surface was an airless expanse of glacier not far away from absolute zero, however there was more to this world than a mere inert lump, for tidal forces provided the moon with a steady source of geothermal energy. Beneath it's icecaps was a vast pitch black ocean warmed from within and in this sea life had arisen and found away. Eventually one species emerged with considerable intelligence and a set of mouth mounted manipulators. Their communications were sonic and in their way musical, but well removed from anything a set of human vocal cords could make. They had many names for themselves, but for sake of simplicity they are known as Darksirens.





They eventually worked out how to farm and make sophisticated tools from the bottom dwelling creatures which were the foundation of the biosphere, thus beginning their long history of Civilization. Never the less without fire their ascension was a slow one drawn out over three hundred thousand years involving complicated husbandry of the various fauna of their world to meet their needs. They had a working understanding of DNA before they produced their first metal knife. Never the less, by the time of the Seventeeth Empire of Greatcake they had accumulated the knowledge and the equipment to begin their most ambitious project, the exploration of the surface. The previous empire and several prominent nations beforehand had made attempts, but these had failed. Never the less they were able to bore through the kilometer thick ice sheet above their world and send forth their explorers. First were specially constructed null pressure bio-mechanical probes which established their presence topside and established basecamps. Sensor towers discovered the long Theorized Warmhub. Using specialized electromagnetic receptors, they took notice of the millions of distant Radiants, vast spheres of fusing gas lost in the immensity of the incomprehensible sky.







Following their workers came the first Darksirens to leave their home. To survive in this alien enviroment free of medium in which to swim, the explorers had to be extensively surgically and cybernetically modified, permanently encased in a polymer suit in which flipper bases were modified into locomotor pillars ("legs" as other species would refer to them) to drag them along in a largely two dimensional enviroment. Living in domed structures they toiled, studying and collecting reports of their small planetary neighborhood, these beings were the Topsiders. Eventually components were sent up to the surface and assembled into test beds. Their brothers and sisters beneath applied theory to design craft powered by the rapid combustion of chemicals which allowed them to reach beyond Greatcake and fly to other moons. Eventually mining stations were established powered by fusion reactors, which supplied Topside factories with raw materials and provided products to those beneath them. But this was only the beginning of their efforts. Eventually they established gas mining stations in orbit of Warmhub and large orbital factories produced scaffolding and components for a mammoth construction project. Using high pressure containment vessels largely unmodified Darksirens were taken topside and loaded into a spherical habitat module over 200 meters across, part of a craft which included habitation bays for Topsider technicians and engineers.





Less than 200 terran years after the first bore pierced Greatcake's worldspanning ice cap, hundreds of thousands of Topsiders turned their heads to the sky and with them their optical sensors. Said information was processed differently for them than it would for species to whom vision had evolved naturally. Never the less they observed as a drive plume illuminated their dark world, propelling it's payload of settlers to a Radiant a light year distant. Their astronomy had detected a rocky world orbiting a distance in which the Radiant's energy would melt ice, but not boil it away which had deep seas rich in oxygen. A world warmed from without rather than from within was an interesting concept to them, but regardless they would make it their own.











*A rough approximation, the notion is was that the world was composed of strata like a vast food object to which "Cake" is the best linguistic fit.

