"Captain's log, Estimated year 2455.
We have come across a strange large mass in orbit around HyperStar 2533, it has vexed our scientists. I fear that I am not good enough at talking to begin describing what I see. I want to say it sorta looks like Jupiter, covered in gaseous storm clouds, but that's not the weird part. The clouds look sort of like the great mother earth's clouds, but they just cover...well the whole thing. But that's not the weird part, upon circling the planet we noticed it shined a certain way. Have you ever seen a bubble in the light? It kinda shines like that. I shouldn't really take credit for that, our scientists were the ones that said it appears to be encased in a bubble. We're gonna visit the planet soon. It may seem rash, but I, Plutonius McBartelone fear no bubble, and my scholarly inclined crew feel just as brave. I hope to bring great discoveries. Over and out."
-Last transmission from the S.S. Lunamore IV
Following the final transmission of S.S. Lunamore IV and her crew, there was a period of mass investigation led by the Terra Gov Marine Core. At the time, war with the Lizard Folk had barely ended, and both parties were on edge at the time, fearful that the other would pull a turnaround and break the treaty. The resulting catastrophe could result in the annihilation of the other's forces, or worse, both forces at once.
Hyper Star System 2533 was promptly probed discretely for a set of years, and the lost transmission was formally brushed away as a conspiracy by TerraGov. They had erased all personal information of the late McBartelone and his betrothed ship. Unfortunately it did not succeed. It had the opposite effect even, resulting in the boom of the adventurous venturing out to Hyper Star 2533 to investigate the incident themselves.
Regardless of it all, it failed, for the next 50 years the tale had become an urban myth, forgotten. This miserable incident was finally written off as a Captain's miserable dramatic misinterpretation of flying into a cloud of radioactive material, or worse, into a dimmed dwarf star. The people forgot, hell, even TerraGov had forgotten the tale of the missing Captain. In the end, it was simply written off as a stain on TerraGov's reputation.
That is until a TGMC warship received a transmission from McBartelone once more.
The year is 2506 in the bleak edges of the Lodossian Solar System came a visitor to the puny TerraGov Marine Warship. Or in a better sense, a traveller revealed itself to it's visitors.
A clear blotch in the stars slowly began to tear away and a pale glistening drop of silver had begun to manifest over the stars with an almost incandescent arrogance. This process began slowly and would take many hours, but that wasn't the only visitor to the Marines. A ship was headed in the direction of the warship from the general direction of the slowly revealing pearl. The commanding office of the warship attempted to establish contact with the unknown ship. And the ship gave its credentials.
S.S. Lunamore V.
This name danced on the lips of the onlookers in the commander's cockpit, no one could believe it. S.S. Lunamore IV, a research ship that had lost itself to the stars. A rather old and outdated ship, last of its kind even. There was not meant to be another Lunamore after the fourth, and yet. An unforgettable encounter that would rock TerraGov and Nanotrasen had arrived.
It was a marvelous ship. The hull, a once dated barely functioning metal brick had it's old plating replaced with sleek weapons grade plastic fashioned into a marvelous sturdy looking tube. The thrusters which once carried arrogant men across the stars were now lacking, and in their place were a glorious collection of sleek ropes, each one blazing at the end while they span in unison to propel the cockpit. The cockpit, oh the cockpit. What was once a metal coffin fitting a crew of 5 behind a thin piece of pathetic glass had been reimagined into a beautiful 20-sided structure, each side was a flat triangular panel of an unknown crystalline structure. Each triangle glowed marvelously, each a color unlike the others, as it got closer to the bewitched men they could see that each panel was actually the side of a triangular pyramid that bled inward towards the center. Each prism was a marvelous light that seemed to bring unnecessary yet well deserved attention to the cockpit. There were those that in its glory stared too long they had to look away. And in their after image of the lights, they saw that inside the prisms was none other than a humanoid figure.
It was a marvel to behold. Captain Payan dug his sight at the object with an enchanted stupor, and his superior, Major Windhealer was the first to break past his peers.
"Rainbow spirit of the sky, Grand Chief Windhealer greets you. From what tribe are you from?"
"We come in peace," Responded the voice in a crackling static stained voice, "you might no recognize me anymore, but do you recall a... Plutonius Mcbartelone?"
A few seconds transpired and the command room was tainted with a pertinent silence. They all wanted to ask it, but the ambience preceded them.
Windhealer riposted. "Our radio breaks. Please, join us so that we may celebrate your return and conquest of the pearl in the sky."
Upon lifting his finger off the radio button, he and his staff were the first to witness the beauty of the new ship. The sleek ropes that propelled it latched onto the plating surrounding the outside of the hanger,and the end of the tube shaped hull connected perfectly with the hangar entrance. Then, what was thought as the outer hull of the hull peeled itself to cover the 20-sided cockpit, revealing its treasure.
The tube was adorned with transparent orbs that glowed faintly and beautifully. When the onlookers inspected more closely, they saw that some of the orbs had faces on them.
Then, flashes of brilliant neon lights slid from the cockpit end of the tube to the hangar end. And at the hangar the men and women of the TerraGov Marine Corps met the beauty, the light, the Ethereals.
Major Windhealer was the first to step forward. He turned his attention to the one in front.
Standing tall and glowing a faint white, the recently found Captain McBartelone stepped forward. He faced Windhealer and opened his mouth, "Sir Major. You may remember me as a great Captain of the Marine Core but that is no more." As he spoke his voice cracked and cackled like one's would if they were talking through an old barely functional radio. Windhealer silently scanned the old Captain, still in his Uniform, seemingly untouched by time, but he was far from the man described in the database.
"I died long ago, and was reborn anew, thanks to the glory of the great mother. My name is now Plutonium I, and as decree of the mother we've been sent here bearing gifts and new acquaintances. Some reborn. Some new."
He gestured at the small party of silent incandescent humanoids.
"The mother wishes to understand the limitations of this form. Won't you please have us as a guest alongside you...humans?"
Before Windhealer could answer, one of the glowing folk walked forward with one of the crystalline orbs. Her face bore a simple blank expression, one unknowing of anything else.
"Do not worry," said the Captain, "these are merely gifts from the mother Gaia. Small lifeforms that float around in her majesty's plasma." He held his hand up towards a semi covered droplet of silver in the sky. "She thought you might be interested in studying them as she is in you."
McBartelone waved his hand at the expressionless humanoid. She then placed the orb on the floor, and brushed the apex of the bubble with her delicate glowing pink fingers. POP.
The crystal's contents did not spill like the liquid it should have. Instead, the cohesive gray droplet slowly bounced towards the Major and a cute unwarranted face formed to look up at him.
The first gift of the mother planet. Slimes.
The ever dazzling Ethereals. These creatures are as mysterious as they are mystifying. Following the Lunamore incident Nanotrasen took it upon themselves to induct these electronic phenomenons for fears that their opposition might do the same. The seemingly sentient planet that bore these creatures has provided strange but hyper efficient technology that is still being understood by NT researchers, creating an ominous glimmer in the eyes of competitors. For this reason, the symbiotic relationship between NT and the living planet are more than welcome by TerraGov as they fear losing them to the wrong hands.
Ethereals are a gorgeous phenomenon. At first glance they appear like glass sculptures crafted with interior lighting to appear as human statues, and yet, they live and breath the same as humans do. Their biology is almost mastercrafted down to the very amino acid. Their Gaia, as they call it, seemingly generated these creatures following an attack to it's plasma.
Not much is known about the planet other than its supposed sentience. Since the attack to it's cellular structure preceding the Lunamore incident it floats around shrouded in artificial darkness, none can find it, only it can find you.
The shape of it, according to Ethereals, is similar to that of a slime, but large and of varying plasticity all about. Accordingly, it is one gargantuan creature with its own self created atmosphere, recently deemed the largest of all known life. It is also host to a large ecosystem for strange fauna (slimes being one of them) and can host any type of lifeform on its surface. Many Gaia native Ethereals will often exchange creatures, taking up normal fauna from other planets and returning with modified specimen. Humans being one of them.
No probe has been allowed on the sentient planet, and any human that has attempted to probe it has returned mutated and silent about what they've seen ending in their newly found undying loyalty to the sentient planet. Not one human has entered Gaia's atmosphere and returned a non Ethereal.
Their biology remains the same in most of their biological systems, entirely different in others. They trade their capacity to survive by normal means for becoming, for lack of a better allegory, large sentient flesh batteries. They trade their blood for electrical fluid, and their pigmentation for a sequence of incandescent cells. They're still biological yet they illuminate like human shaped stars. Their once stranded keratin hair become strings of energy that flow like strings of plasma, still tethered to gravity. Organs replaced with biocrystals, ensuring their immortality. They become semi-androgynous and can change their biological sex at will, and yet they play coy of being fashioned to be humans modified by their creator. Creator who took invasive humans and dissected their blueprints, eagerly awaiting humans to arrive for modification. And if none come, rest assured, mother can make more.
Despite the origin of their race, not all ethereals are born from their mother planet, some are born alongside other races on colonies and with humans on sol. Those born from the planet have stated their intentions bluntly to humanity.
Gaia, the mother planet, was mostly insentient until the arrival of Lunamore IV. Once she got her hands on humans she adopted their curiosity and felt she lacked something these small creatures had: Limitations. In response, she rebuilt the crew she disassembled into a form she found more befitting, and created multiple more, with specific instructions. Live.
Because she is a near limitless mass, she cannot live as humans to understand them directly. She thus sends out Ethereals to live for her, and near their death they instinctively seek out the mother and either disappear near old age, or their brain disappears some time after their death (if it is found that is). Their structure and function is akin to neurons, and they return to the host to exchange information. That is their purpose, and only the natives know it well.
Those born off planet and without the influence are still subject to these instincts of return and retrieval, even those that die a normal death have their brains disappear in unforeseen circumstances later on. They still retain this instinct of living a varied and fruitful life to gather as much experience in life as possible.
There is a large spectrum of experiences one can live, and the same can be said of Ethereal personalities, though they seem to know what their goals are from the get go, those that don't act in the way they were predestined to, but just won't remember it.
All Ethereals have their life planned out during their creation, and remember their plans for anything they encounter, it is those who are "born" conventionally that forget after their birth. The planning is still there, it's just forgotten, but still acted.
This often leads to Ethereals pronouncing any action they take in response to any stimulus as predetermined by their "plan". For example, an Ethereal will go out looking for a spouse in order to marry them and live a long life with the aforementioned spouse, but once they get married they will have multiple affairs and let them be known. For humans this can be attributed to mistakes or changes in frameworks, for the ethereal it was planned from the get go, from the moment they were created or born they planned for the scenario to occur as it was, the main difference between a previously human ethereal and a natally born one is that the natally born one will forget their plan on birth.
Ethereals are a grab bag of personalities that can change at any time without warning, making them volatile and quite frankly to blame for the decision to make all staff heads humans on research stations for fear of loyalty aversion.
There is a common thing about all Ethereals, they all enjoy music above all, because of this it is hypothesized that at the end of their life their tale is told to the mother in the form of a song.
Ethereals follow loose methods of naming their offspring or naming themselves after human to Ethereal conversion. The most common methods for human converts are:
Human to Ethereal conversion:
(Their First name)+(Roman Numeral)
(Planet)+(Roman Numeral)
On the other hand, colony born Ethereals tend to be more creative with their names because of their disposition to be more adventurous. Here are two of the most common methods:
(Color)+(noun)
Examples:
Blue Lazarus
Red Amulet
Gold Ember
Golden Destiny
(Song Name)
Examples:
La Traviata
Clair De Lune
Malaguena
Kickstart My Heart
The technology provided from the living planet, Gaia, has brought upon it many mysteries and new methodology of science, commonly referred to as _Xenobiology._ It's commonly speculated and feared that the gargantuan god-like being has no need for maintaining its ties with TerraGov.
And why should it? It refers to the slimes we so carefully and meticulously study now as mere bacteria in the edges of its body, and the Ethereals as mobile neurons. Even the ships it provides to its denizens are spectacles, appearing as slow moving bacteriophages in the empty abyss of space. It has bridged biology with technology in methods never dreamed of. Even now it has provided prototypes for small mining ships in the form of bacteria, and robotic blueprints appearing like viruses. Roboticists and Scientists alike are marveled by the planet's method of maximizing efficiency by meshing technology with biology seamlessly.
It's no wonder that Nanotrasen has amassed so many bitter and resentful enemies.