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!moot/UIi/o 06/14/08(Sat)23:19 No.1998091>Northern Space (Coreward)
Fairly well populated and civilised. Two-thirds of the populated space is controlled by a conglomerate of varied corporations, who have a lot of influence but ultimately are kept in check by the Watchman, a insanely powerful rogue AI construct with a quantum tunneling camera and a starkilling wormhole gun of almost infinite range. Basically, play nice or it's nova time. The Watchman's coverage is not perfect, but it's not worth the risk. Most of the time. There's a bunch of cults and minor religions springing up around the Watchman, too, trying to alleviate the bowel-knotting terror of having everything you ever loved exploded at the whim of a nutcase computer. Oh, and any system harbouring components for or completed AIs is instantly nebula'd.
The rest of it is dead. Radiation from the gamma ray burst intiated by the Watchman three days after activation killed everything living in its path. The burst is centred on the Watchman's location, and the area of effect is growing at light speed. If the corporations could send anyone into the burst without them dying or being obliterated, they'd find out about it and evacuate the systems in the way. Shame about that, really. Oh, there might be a few surviving AIs hiding in the systems scoured by the burst, avoiding the Watchman by the radiation confusing its sensors, and one or two might even have a working wormhole creator so they can venture outside, and let some properly equipped and shielded adventurers into the slightly less lethal space behind the burst wavefront. But that would be pushing it. |
