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The word "Fakuva", the name the Theians gave to their own species. Depicted using the symbols of the Theian universal alphabet. Accurate phonetic rendition not possible.

The world of the anomalous has known for quite a while about special objects made of unbreakable stone and crystal, whose creators are not known to anyone except a few insiders who are silent on the subject. What is known is that all of these objects were found in regions where volcanic activity was or still is occurring. Despite their rather simple-looking components and materials, the objects have remarkable anomalous properties that are employed by those who know how to use them or suppressed by those who fear them.

Opinions about the creators of these artifacts vary widely. Some say it was a civilization that perished. Others believe they came from some kind of lifeform living inside the Earth. And still others think they are the work of extraterrestrials. The funny thing is, they are all right somewhere.

Before the Earth existed, there was a planet called Theia orbited by two moons in its place, but it was destroyed by a calamity and replaced by our planet. Theia, at the time of its demise, however, was home to an advanced silicon-based lifeform that perished along with its planet. Some of its artifacts, however, survived inside the Earth for eons until their reemergence, in the age of humans.

And with them, an ancient threat stirs between the stars, trying to come home…

Biology

The typical theian was composed of silicone compounds that performed similar life functions to carbon-based substances in terrestrial life. There were two sexes, with males averaging 2.50 meters and females 2.10 meters in height.

Anatomically, Theians possessed a massive, humanoid form with four arms, six fingers on each hand, and no discernible neck between the head and torso. The skin of these beings was white-gray and rubbery in texture, the jaws extremely strong, with tusks on the upper and lower jaws, and the eyes had developed similarly to those of humans. However, it should be mentioned that the spectrum visible to Theians extended to a wide range of infrared because there was no conventional light in the depths of Theia.

Due to the physical properties of their corporeal components, Theians could only survive in places where temperatures ranged from 1530 °C to 1610 °C, which meant that they had to be directly in Theia's crust, where the rock began to glow and magma occasionally broke through. Otherwise, they would have either burned or frozen to death. The same was true in regards to the ambient pressure. On the surface, Theians could not survive without aid due to the vast pressure difference, as their blood vessels burst open.

Despite these peculiarities, Theians, as well as all living beings with whom they shared the planet, possessed the same basic needs as carbon-based life forms. They had to eat food, sleep, and breathe, though not oxygen, but gaseous sulfur, exhaling silicon disulfide. Theian food consisted of native flora and fauna, however Theian life had to do without water due to the temperatures, instead life there used a special silicon compound with a solidification point of 1560 °C, which formed due to the geological makeup inside Theia and was abundant in large areas.

A more detailed description of theian anatomy was recorded in SCP-261-DE.

The tusks that Theians have in their dentition are of special significance. Their canines are strongly pronounced, more so in males than females, and protrude from the mouth even when it is closed. These are their only teeth that do not have nerves in them, so Theians do not immediately notice when they become victims of decay or break off. The tusks are therefore an indication to Theians of how well a Theian takes care of themselves, much like head hair in humans. Well-groomed tusks are an attractive feature in both sexes, though men prefer smaller tusks in women, while women find larger tusks in men attractive. A Theian who is missing one or more tusks is very strange to look at for other Theians and is often pitied by those around him. For this reason, it is also not a good idea to remove a Theian's tusks, such as by hitting them hard enough on the jaw, as this is considered by them to be the ultimate act of humiliation. Most Theians, therefore, even in a fight to the death, try to leave their opponent's tusks intact. Also, there is a fashion among male Theians to have their tusks engraved with different methods, the effect is similar to tattoos. Prostheses are also widely used, especially when the tusks begin to fall out due to old age.

Theians communicated with each other via low-frequency sound, which is rooted in their evolution. Most animals on Theia were able to hear infrasound, as it enabled them to sense impending collapses, eruptions, earthquakes, and similar phenomena in Theian caves and to prepare accordingly. Theians were able to add brassy-sounding infrasonic tones to what they said, which was the basis of their linguistics. Most Theian languages, and the ultimately remaining universal Theian language, were composed of a few basic syllables to form words that could be underlaid with various brassy sounds, similar to our musical scale, and thus given different meanings. The word "Fakuva," for example, the species name of the Theians, could also mean "king," "friend," "child," "victor," "triumph," "good" (in the sense of good and evil), "drunkenness," or "soup" with other tones on the various syllables. Their writing system was structured accordingly. Each syllable had its own letter, which to which various diacritics¹ could be equipped to indicate the brassy tone to be used. This resulted in alphabets with nine to 15 basic letters, each of which could have between five and eight modifications.

Community

In terms of housing, Theians preferred to live in the walls of caverns in which they dug caves. Often, entire cities were concentrated on one wall with caves on top of each other, and the caves could be reached by steps and elevators. The reason for this was the greater amount of work involved in building freestanding houses. On the surface, the Theians built furnace cities, heated to the temperature they needed to live, with the necessary pressure, and unlike the underground cities, they allowed a maximum of three dwellings on top of each other. They even managed to establish space stations at the edge of the solar system, where living space was limited depending on the construction of the station.

As far as descendants were concerned, Theians proved to be extremely cold-hearted from our point of view. They practiced historically grown eugenics, where children with deformities, mental limitations, or weak bodies were unceremoniously discarded. Theians did not do this out of malice or fanaticism, it was simply the way of things. From their point of view, humans appear to be negligent and cruel because they, in full knowledge, keep children alive for whom existence is hell on Earth. Moreover, the long tradition of selection had created a fear and downright disgust of degeneration that ensured that no one questioned this method. Children who survived this selection process were raised not only by their parents but by the whole community and placed in "children's homes." Cohabitation with parents alone had been rare among the Theians, since newborns were immediately capable of eating solid food and therefore were not breastfed². Most Theians considered all children to be their own, in a sense, and provided them with proper protection and education. Trained professionals supervised their education and ensured that there was no malicious influence. There was no such thing as family ties among this people, and such concepts are considered confusing and unnecessary by most Theians today. Born children were sexually mature at sixteen, but were not considered adults until they were twenty-five. As a rule, Theians lived to be about one hundred and fifty years old, with women usually living longer than men. Regardless of gender, however, their teeth usually fell out at about one hundred and twenty years of age. The age record, not counting cryosleep, is currently one hundred ninety-eight years.

The parents of Theians rarely stayed together, because in the course of eugenics combinations between man and woman were selected, whose offspring would survive the selection procedure with high probability. This, too, was simply a custom on Theia and, except for a few people, no one was bothered by it; after all, there was no need to keep the children, only the pregnancy was annoying, for it lasted an average of 75 to 82 days. At this point it may come as a surprise, but Theians also voluntarily formed cohabiting communities, but only with people they got along well with. These communities could include two to twenty people, who did not necessarily have to be related to each other. Within these communities, it came to offspring then and when, which had to undergo the same selection procedures as the rest and had no legal consequences for their parents. In this case, however, their social standing fell rapidly, especially when the child was disposed off, since the parents were accused of opening the door to degeneration.

Unemployment and invalidity had Theian words as equivalents, but only meaning in a historical context. Theians viewed unemployment services as inefficient, which led the government to assign laid-off Theians to Citizen Protection, where they performed simple community service jobs such as street cleaning until they found new employment. Invalids had to continue to be employed by their companies, albeit in a different position and only if their degree of disability still allowed it. Otherwise, they could apply as test subjects for medicine. Medicine always needed someone to test, as the Theian government spent a lot of time and money on medical progress to prevent invalids and degeneration, be it by devising safe working conditions, biological upgrading of Theian bodies or cybernetics. Test subjects seldom had to face death in this process, as the medics did not want to lose their test subjects, unless they could cure them, in which case a reward was due to the medics in question. It should be mentioned here, however, that Theinans who were used for cybernetics experiments were rarely fully satisfied with their augmentations, as the materials used were very heavy. Cybernetic prostheses were therefore considered a last resort in Theian society when all else had failed.

The mathematics of the Theians was very advanced and differed from that of Earth in one important aspect. Their basic number was the number six, after the fingers on a Theian's hand, or the total number of their limbs. Thus, they counted: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, … There were also systems to the base twelve or even 36, but these were eventually supplanted by the senary. A theian calendar, for example, looked very strange. However, that was only one reason. Since Theians could not see the sky and did not experience seasons, they never invented units such as month or week. Only the term year emerged after the Theians began to colonize the surface, with each year consisting of four hundred and two days. To find out how long a day lasted, they used a Foucault pendulum during their time below the surface to determine the time it took Theia to make one full revolution. Of course, at that time they did not know that Theia was rotating; in an environment without sun or moon, the Foucault pendulum was merely one of the more reliable timekeepers by which the first clocks were set.

The "modern" Theians placed a high value on natural sciences, fine arts, sustainability and efficiency. Religion and philosophy were known to them, but most Theians could not do much with them, the former because most of the teachings of the last leading religions had long been disproven or were outdated, and the latter because Theians generally believed that only data collection and provable theories could be a basis for meaningful progress. Accordingly, Theians were taught from an early age to keep the morals, customs, and traditions that had been in place until then and to change them only when more effective versions of them were found. Theians dealt with philosophical questions, but only in the rarest cases for the sake of philosophy.

The Theians, because of their environmental conditions (no free oxygen and no combustible materials), did not discover fire until they colonized the surface and came to processing metals quite late in their development, using them almost exclusively on the surface. Instead, they discovered geokinesis and various other anomalous methods of affecting earth and rock. The result was a technology that relied almost exclusively on rocks and crystals. The materials were exceptionally durable, as Theians placed a high value on sustainability and reusability. However, the devices could be easily updated over time, as all of their components could be shaped and altered by appropriately skilled workers.

Theians discovered fairly early in their history how to bring matter and energy from places outside the universe, or even to create it out of nothing. While they used energy freely, they soon had to limit the use of matter generators because there were many cases of misuse. It took decades to eliminate the waste created in the process. They used stones and crystals as mediums for the use of these phenomena, as they did for almost all their devices. No matter if construction machines, means of transportation or eating utensils, even space ships and stations were made of stone and crystal. They even managed to make stone-based computers with conductive crystals and created worker and battle drones.

The theian technology was also capable of controlling temperature, which allowed them to create very high as well as very cold temperatures for various applications. They were also able to override gravity or create zero gravity, an achievement that was especially useful in air and space travel. They were also able to produce various other effects in stone, such as the control of electric charges, selective magnetism, explosiveness and many others.

Examples of Theian Technologies (Warning, Spoiler)

After Theia was formed, oceans formed on its surface, but life never developed in them. Instead, it evolved inside Theia in lakes from a liquid silicon compound. How it really came about, the Theians never found out, however, they had different theories and creation myths.

The evolution proceeded similarly as on earth. Single-celled organisms combined to form multicellular lifeforms, these formed organisms, some of which eventually left the lakes. Places without silicon fluid were vast wastelands inhabited only by creatures that could go a long time without fluid. Plants usually reproduced by means of flight seeds, which could be carried by the gas currents prevailing underground to other oases and then instinctively grew in the direction of the nearest body of liquid. These were either lakes or rivers formed by evaporated silicon liquid condensing on the cave ceiling and flowing back down.

In the forests that formed around the largest lakes and rivers, the first specimens of a later world-dominating species emerged after some time. The first Theians were hunter-gatherers who lived in and on trees. Due to the limited supply of food and habitat in their area of origin, there were repeated fights between individual tribes and the banishment of the losers. Most of them perished in the wasteland, but some managed to reach other oases and build a new community there. Over the millennia, the Theians thus populated the entire planet.

Most of the time, the Theians formed oasis-encompassing religions, according to which they oriented their technical progress and way of life. Many of them noticed that the gift of geokinesis lay dormant in them, with which most could move small amounts of rubble, but the most powerful could move entire mountains. These gifts, later augmented by various forms of magic and thaumaturgy, allowed the development of advanced technology where religion permitted it.

One faith in particular deserves mention here, as it would later dominate the world. Its followers believed they were in the heart of a god whose name cannot be correctly rendered here. Humans can read his name, but would only be able to pronounce it as "Kumavatu." The followers of this god were convinced that they were actually a foreign body in his heart and made him sick. Accordingly, they tried everything possible to "cure" their god and put as little burden on him as possible, so that he could get well again without the Theians having to be wiped out. This belief drove them to strive for extreme efficiency in their technology while minimizing resource consumption and waste production. They strived for sustainability and created the first ectoentropic technologies for this purpose. This gave them two decisive advantages over their neighbors. They always had resources up their sleeve, even if their opponent had lost everything in the meantime, and they recovered faster from wars and natural disasters. These advantages enabled the followers of Kumavatu to repel and exhaust all attackers, allowing them to take over their oases and further expand their religion until they eventually began raiding other oases themselves or otherwise bringing them under their rule.

This was fortunate for nature on Theia, as some other peoples, much like on Earth during the Industrial Revolution, were mining resources without regard and polluting their environment. Under the reign of the followers of Kumavatu, formerly cleared lands flourished again and species that were thought to be extinct returned. Unfortunately, the religion also stipulated that the population be kept at a certain level so as not to overburden Kumavatu. This meant that unwanted offspring was simply killed as a form of birth control. Military, police and fire departments did not exist at that time in the form we know, but the believers introduced the so-called "Citizen Protection", whose departments performed exactly these tasks. An additional area of responsibility of this organization was nature conservation, since the Theians were very attached to their environment.

Given the good that the religion had brought them, most of the peoples turned their eyes away from the bad sides, those who rebelled were wiped out by superior force.

The followers of Kumavatu finally came up with the idea that if they had to kill newborns, they should give preference to those who were too weak or deformed for elimination. Later still, they introduced that only couples should beget children in whom degeneration was virtually impossible. The believers were able to continue this practice for almost 3000 years, accumulating more and more power, until a group of revolutionaries, calling themselves the "Diggers", dug through the walls of the hitherto known world, finally reached the surface of Theia and saw the sky with its stars and two moons. They were assisted by benevolent rich people and provided with thermal suits so that they would not freeze to death in the higher layers. When this discovery became public, against all the efforts of the rulers, and people realized that they were obviously not inside the body of a god, a revolution arose by which the believers were overthrown and the popularly elected board of 36 was established, which from then on directed the destiny of the state.³ The 36 members enacted laws and were overseen by a court appointed by high ranking members of the Citizen Protection. This made the state a democracy, as all board members were elected by the people; unlike governments on Earth, when laws were changed, the board members had to provide projections of the consequences of said law change prior to enactment and were liable with their private wealth if the projections turned out worse or if conditions generally worsened due to their style of government. Most board generations were therefore very careful when governing, since the theian court found always something with which one could still be liable even in the case of personal bankruptcy. At the same time, they still had to make sure that the state continued to function, since a drop in the general standard of living meant that the responsible one was dismissed from the government position and had a hard time to find employment again.

However, some of the diggers' goals remained unfulfilled. Theia retained its only state, which placed anyone who insisted on secession under arrest, since the board, as well as overwhelming parts of the population, adhered to the efficiency and sustainability of the followers of Kumavatu. Eugenics were not abandoned either, since after three thousand years in which the citizens had hardly been confronted with weaknesses and deformities, they had developed a true disgust for it, by which the affected were only trash to them, even if spontaneously arising offspring was now given a chance to survive the segregation process.

Theia's economy was subjected to severe restrictions; as before, they had to work sustainably, but now they had to observe much stricter standards, since some businesses had been able to sell any junk in the past with the special benevolence of Kumavatu's followers. Violations could now result in fines for all, or even nationalization in extreme cases, with managements dismissed entirely. Banks were a thing of the past on Theia, as the government and especially the people had had enough after five successive financial crises and wanted to be responsible for them themselves in the future. There were now only institutions where people could store their money for a fee. The health care system had been completely nationalized and was financed by taxes. Anyone who did not work for the state as a physician from then on had a reputation for being pretty bad, so that only the desperate and those who could not report to public offices sought them out. Politicians and those who wanted to be one were forced to disclose all their financial transactions, even if they did not have to state what some actions were done for. Most of the time, people were more interested in who had been traded with.

One positive aspect, besides the now prevailing attitude of not wanting to believe anything unreservedly without relevant evidence, was that the Theians could now increase their population and thereby colonize the surface. They had become quite fond of art in this regard and decided to build their surface cities in geometric patterns as a final insult against Kumavatu, whose followers had used natural round shapes in their art. Planning for the cities took several years, and construction using working drones took several decades. At certain nodes, tunnels were dug into the interior of Theia to connect it with the underground cities. The surface cities were strongly heated, pressurized, and sealed off from the surrounding atmosphere because it was unbreathable to Theians. They were the starting point for the extraction of new resources, with Theians discovering metal for the first time.

About 90 years later, the surface cities started a revolution against the board, which passed rather quickly, as the state's forces could only take the previously constructed tunnels where they could be easily waylaid. After additional tunneling and attempts to starve out the surface cities also failed, the board realized that they were facing another state equal to theirs and gave up. As a result, they renamed their country "The Caves" for better distinction, while "The Surface" was established in the Furnace Cities. The inhabitants of both states were accordingly called "Beneathers" and "Abovers".

The surface adopted several practices of the caves, such as eugenics, citizen protection and large parts of the legal system, but they relied on strong indoctrination and, after some initial difficulties, actually managed to establish a technocracy that worked much more efficiently than the body of 36, if only because it had only 18 seats. Efficient in the sense of progress, however, not in the sense of the citizens. Those were the beneficiaries in most cases, but living conditions deteriorated steadily, so that rural exodus began. The surface government soon put a stop to this, however, which led to a huge uprising just two years later, centered on public servants. This was triggered by the beginning of the practice of no longer allowing natural offspring and artificially growing children in the laboratory for more efficient eugenics, which was considered immoral and questionable by the population, since under corrupt governments it would become possible to create will-less slaves. After citizen protection failed to prevent several public executions of politicians responsible for the misery, the survivors relented and, with input from the population, created more social structures, but continued to hold to the ideal of efficiency. Laboratory breeding was also discontinued, and Theians have not tried it again to this day because of moral concerns.

After some negotiations with the caves, the surface granted some surface areas to the Theians living underground, who were beginning to have a population problem thanks to the abandonment of birth control enforced by Kumavatu's religion, and together with them the Abovers began space travel to open up new habitats. At first, a few problems arose regarding the prolonged stay of a starship pilot in space, but these were solved rather quickly by the use of matter-generating technologies. Several space missions were launched, some asteroids were colonized as prospecting colonies and a considerable number of space stations were established. Bases were established in the depths of other planets, manned by the Beneathers, while habitats on the surface were run by Abovers. Theia thus solved its population problem and began to explore terraforming.

However, a schism occurred once again. Those who had gone to the stars did not want to share their wealth with Theia, which the planet had had no part in generating. It came to the first planetary war of the Abovers and the Beneathers against "The Beyonders". The latter were vastly outnumbered, but of all the factions were the best spacemen, since most of them had been born and raised on space stations. They kept in their element and tried to devastate Theia's surface. Terrible weapons and countermeasures against them were created, but even with the help of bases on other planets, neither side could force the other to surrender.

Those who were tired of the war set out to explore and flee to other planetary systems. But the war came to an abrupt end with a cosmic calamity. The population of Theia, unable to flee, was annihilated. The destruction of numerous pieces of equipment on the planet caused a planetary-system-wide fallout that affected all bases and ships and began to disrupt parts of their technology. It took a while to unfold, allowing the refugees to escape to Beyonder bases and stations in time, but it was inevitable. Calculations suggested that it would take millions of years for it to pass, and so the entire species decided to go into cryosleep until the effects of the catastrophe had subsided. The plan was to sleep for a few million years, but the fallout overrode reanimation protocols. It would take 4.5 billion years for the AI core of Kukavafa to be discovered by pure chance by a newly emerged intelligent species and to realize what had gone wrong.

Its signal would rouse the Theians from their cold slumber, that they might rise again to reclaim what was once their home.

Theians still have their three historical factions. They are all united under the ideal of efficiency, scientific progress and in the goal of conquering Earth, however there is disagreement on the means to be used and how to counter humans and other carbon-based life forms. This is being resolved at the moment with data collection. An alternate timeline suggests that the factions will quickly come to an agreement if enough information is leaked to them.

The Beneathers

The Beneathers are the oldest faction of the Theians. Their society is based on science, freedom, and questioning the status quo. They are excellent engineers and have created many objects that make life easier for their kind, such as tools, computers, and drones. They are the faction most difficult to observe from Earth, preferring to live beneath the surface of planets, moons, or asteroids. They are indifferent to humans, since they want to return to the interior of the Earth. They don't care if their enterprise leads to deaths and suffering among the Earth's population, because according to their research results they can't follow them beneath the earth and are obviously inferior to them in all other respects.

The Abovers

The Abovers are the second faction that arose among the Theians. The top priorities of the Abovers are efficiency and the welfare of their species, and as a result they look at the world with rational coldness. The Abovers are known for their rampant indoctrination, which, along with their ideals, makes them a formidable military power. It also helps that weapons and vehicles are a specialty of this faction. The superiors wish to colonize the surface, as they have done on many other worlds. They are aware that this will inevitably lead to conflict with humanity, which they regard as vermin, as they do all other carbon-based life. For these reasons, they aim to sterilize the planet before colonizing it.

The Beyonders

The Beyonders are the youngest faction of the Theians. They are hedonists and mercenary souls who only care about power and money, which is why they often clash with other factions, but wisely not to the point of large-scale conflict. The Beyonders are excellent spacemen and are proud of their stone and crystal spaceships and stations, on which they live and which they constantly develop. Because of this lifestyle, they have no interest in colonizing Earth, but do have an interest in exploiting its resources to scale new and further scientific and political heights. Since they control much of the space travel, it is easy for them to keep the other factions from launching a major attack on Earth to conserve its resources and assets until the Beyonders have worked out a plan. They have a scientific interest in carbon-based life. In their ranks, there are also increasing proposals and calls, to keep humans especially alive as a slave race.

The Enclave

This fourth faction, previously known only by rumor to the other Theians, is the result of extrasolar explorations undertaken by the Theian people before their fall. The Enclave's ancestors endured millions of years in cryogenic sleep aboard their spaceships until they were eventually discovered and reawakened by other alien races that would later form the Orthotanian Coalition. The Enclave lives on numerous planets that are not habitable to other life forms, however, due to lost knowledge and help from other alien races, their technology and society has greatly regressed and even today, after more than four billion years, is still only a shadow of its former self. The Enclave knows of the demise of their home planet only from legends and, due to the tense situation of the Coalition with the newly awakened Theians, sees them as gruesome ghosts from prehistoric times and avoids contact with them for fear of being hunted down and killed because of their lifestyle, which corresponds to that of the Orthotanian Church.

de hub oo theia

page revision: 7, last edited: 01 Jun 2024 20:13

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The Beneathers

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Biology

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The Beneathers

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