Patchy

A big ole WIP. Getting there tho

general The Second Age

Grand Reactor: the machine that blew up and made the Arcanist. It was the most advanced reactor the second age people made, and would have allowed them to power their entire civilization and then some.

Nether Reactor: another, much larger power station located under what is now the sunbeam ruins. This one is a couple centuries older than the Grand Reactor, and thus much less advanced. It uses a different, less safe/clean method of power generation. It was slated for decommissioning once the Grand Reactor was online; the models predicted that if it was kept running for another century or two it would start causing damage to the area. Of course, that was 8000 years ago....

This magical reactor - and its lack of maintenance - is the root cause of all of Clan Goldwood's problems. The thing is tearing a hole in the barrier that's keeping the Shade out, making the whole of Goldwood's territory Shade-touched to varying degrees. Ichor was highly sensitive to this and it drove him mad in the end; Goldwood and Mizar were both affected by it too. It's even the reason for the unusual aggressiveness of the local Talonok flock.

• This reactor is the power source for Acadia - and the majority of functional ruins in the whole of the Sunbeam Ruins for that matter. The reactor's support structure is so massive that it reaches clear across the region, and Chroma is still well away from any obvious indicators of its existence.

builders The Builders

The Builders are a constructed magitech species, made near the end of the Second Age and designed as maintenance workers for the reactors that powered their civilization. After the meltdown of the Grand Reactor, the species is basically extinct - of a population once numbering hundreds, only Reese and Chroma survive.


Physical Traits
• Each individual follows the same general physical design - bipedal, around 1.8m tall, 2 arms/legs/eyes, and so on. They are all physically unique though and individuals can vary wildly within those parameters.
• Covered in a mixture of fur, feathers, and scales. Some will have more of one or another, or be lacking one type entirely.
• Tail is generally long and flexible. Primarily used for balance, and secretes a nanite repair fluid used to fix/heal things. Occasionally the tail will be fully prehensile.
• Usually have wings, which are intended mostly for slowing falls and gliding across short gaps. Actual flight is generally not possible, and on the rare occasions that it is it's only for brief bursts.
• Both ears and tail have signal lights; they may also be found on the wings and occasionally elsewhere.
• Builders are completely sexless, lacking both sexual organs and hormones. By default they are thus genderless.


Senses
• Their vision in general is fairly mediocre - most dragons have better visual acuity. Excellent low light vision however.
• Poor sense of hearing. Regular speech from about 20m away is nearly inaudible.
• Excellent sense of smell, though it's very different from how non-Builders experience it. They don't have much of a feel for "good/bad smells", so eg they'd smell garbage but not have the instinctual revulsion of it that other creatures do. The result is that they can detect things as subtle as new cancers and slightly worn machinery simply because of the slight change in their scent.

• The Builders really shine when it comes to their multitude of extra senses:
• Can precisely detect magical energy, magnetic fields, the composition of air, air pressure, humidity. Extremely sensitive to vibrations, allowing them to feel subtle seismic activity and even footsteps.
• Using their extra senses, a Builder can calculate their exact position on the planet in seconds. Even the worst mazes are no match for their ability to keep themselves perfectly oriented. (Their ability to actually navigate the maze is... Less consistent.)
• They were able to connect to the Second Age communication network - they possess a kind of inbuilt wireless transceiver. The Builders themselves had their own private network as well, where they could basically share thoughts. Of course, the main Second Age network is long gone and the Builder network has been down for millennia.




Abilities
Aside from their many extra senses, Builders have a number of abilities designed to help them in their tasks:
• The ability that gives Builders their name is their control over subspace. They do it instinctively, and their whole body is designed around it.
Each Builder has their own personal subspace pocket they use for storage. Specific hand movements withdraw/deposit/organize this storage.
They can craft objects that have their own storage pockets as well, like chests. Other species, like dragons, can't properly interact with the subspace storage due to their inability to manipulate it.
The Builders are thus called such because they can build anything in a fraction of the time it'd take anyone else, since they can carry around their entire inventory of materials and place any of it wherever they like.
• Most builders have a limited ability to manipulate local gravity. This generally manifests as carrying heavy objects or compressing things for more efficient storage; some can use it to extend their reach or make themselves lighter. More impressive feats like hovering are almost universally out of reach under normal circumstances.

• Builders draw power from the reactor they're assigned to - without this link most of their abilities are absent and an unlinked builder will eventually either go dormant or die. Their bodies can't make enough energy on their own to keep them functioning.
• Builders do not need to sleep, and only require very minimal sustenance if any at all. When the reactors were working properly they could easily go weeks without food and not experience any issues. Now, though, Reese needs to eat every other day or so and Chroma more often than that.
They do require air, though less of it than other species of their size. Many gases that would be toxic to other species are either a minor irritation or unbreathable but not necessarily harmful in and of themselves. Most gases containing oxygen are convertible by their lung-equivalents into breathable air - ones without are more problematic. Like starvation, Reese and Chroma have less of a resistance to suffocation than they used to, with Chroma in particular needing to be careful about underground gas pockets.





Injuries, Healing, and Death
Builders have a potent self-healing system and can survive catastrophic damage to any part of their body, damage that would kill any other being with their level of complexity.
• A builder can lose limbs or even their head and continue working - in the case of damage to their cognitive functioning they work on a simplistic autopilot. They will eventually die if they're not able to stop working and heal properly though.
• Builders will always prioritize fixing damage to their linked reactor before their own health. This can result in things like an injured builder working themselves to death in the case of, say, an explosion on the other side of the continent that damaged the Nether Reactor....
• If a builder survives severe injuries, they can wind up with bizarre "scarring" that's the result of the self-repair trying to keep the builder alive but prioritizing basic functions above all else. The best example of this is Chroma, who got their face pretty much obliterated in the Nether Reactor meltdown, resulting in their amnesia, muteness, missing nose, and erratic "markings" (scars). The self-repair prioritized keeping them alive and working, but not in good health, and so eventually the injury became the norm.



- can die, but will be "respawned" from an assembly tank. There is usually memory/inventory loss alongside this (backups are taken but not constantly). So despite death not meaning much they still try very hard to avoid it due to the memory loss especially
--- if the assembly tank or pattern storage is destroyed they obvs can't be respawned. Assembly tanks can be crafted but if the pattern (memory) is lost then that's it.
Reese and Chroma survived because the assembly tanks/pattern storage was destroyed, but neither of them died during the meltdown. Later both of them crafted their own assembly tanks so it's not a concern anymore.
Sleep realization, builders don't have much of a concept of perma death. So that's why so many of them died, they forgot)didn't fully internalize that dying would be permanent for that period. Or didn't even realize that the beds were destroyed




Overcharging


- draw power from the reactor. Can "overcharge" to have temporary extra power (creative mode)
• Able to teleport to specific locations that they have visited before. This is referred to as setting home and relies on their ability to calculate their exact position. Disruption of their extra senses disables this ability.















dumping ground for unsorted stuff....

Enchanting tables: bookshelves are extra computing power, allowing the table to craft more complex and powerful enchantments. Most of the table's ability is directed towards actually making the enchantments so on its own it is weak

- idea: endermen as shadeling things somehow?? reese befriends some of them? they help him do the work to keep the reactor from meltdown?
-- reese was in the End and avoided getting hurt that way? on purpose or accident?
-- the end is subspace basically...? do a thing where the second age ppl didn't really know what the hell they were doing but it Just Worked so they went with it... so the subspace/end stuff also causes issues...? shade connection somehow? helps weaken barrier?
- endermen don't care if you look at them but they have an instinctual violent reaction against magical scans? so reese just has to carefully rein in all his magical feelers when physically near one.
- from a shattered timeline like sigma n ace??

random note to self: idea that maybe the anthropocene ppl didn't expand out that much bc they expanded inwards instead - ie virtual reality. only some particularly adventurous sorts stayed out of the simulation for various reasons.
otherwise, why would it have taken them so dang long to get to mars and then they kinda stopped??