Memorex
To: Prelate Chrydriik Guillurus, Macrotechnia Technographica Determinus
From: SubCadre Commander Uriel Vare
Re: Caluphel Ancient Tech: First Evidence
Date: 2 170 941.M41
Sir.
In light of the recent attack on Deculon Prime by the traitor Estebohr Bruton and his heretical and thuggish Night Lord band, I felt this uncovered archive should be brought to your immediate attention.
As you know, our loyal tech-adepts were unable to prevent the Reavers from stealing the data cores from Deculon Prime, which included a substantial slice of these data files.
If indeed Caluphel Prime is their target, then they might have this record as well. I have my own adepts at work to reconstruct related material to this attached report. I grow deeply worried at the implications of what Caluphel may house. As always, I await your instruction and guidance.
In the Emperor’s name,
Vare
System Report, 0.7.13, 2735 estimated.
Exogeologist Janen Peh Lyn
Jack,
How are you? I was delighted to hear of Xi’s pregnancy. It sounds as if the wedding was marvelous and I’m sorry not to have been there to toast you and yours. But I’m writing in the hopes you can do me a favour. I know the events after the landing on Caluphel have been in the newsvids, how could they not? A deathworld?! Truth is that after nine months, things have settled down somewhat.
You can be accustomed to anything, it seems.
But before I get into that, I should describe Caluphel a bit more in layman’s terms. It’s a tidal-locked Chthonian planet, diameter of ~10k km. A north-south mountain range called the Norse Ring loops the planet along the light/dark zone. The habitable zone starts about halfway between the Norse Ring and the sunward pole.
That leaves about 2500 km between mountains and desert. Massive rivers from the Norse Ring headwaters flow eastward through mountain ranges, foothills, lush grasslands before bottoming out in deltas and swamps. Both Saint Scythia and Jericho are actually on a massive plateau called Kasomir which splits the Kasomir River as it flows sunward. The Kasomir Plateau is dusty on the sunward side, wet on the rimward side and saturated with wetlands in the middle due to a vast uppushing of the water table there.
Landing and founding of the Starport was near perfect and then the Army supported the engineering crews to build a road westward (rimward) through the swamps.
Overlooking the vast plains beyond, they founded Jericho Station, which is now the capital city of Caluphel.
The wraiths (as we know call them) were first thought to be defending the swamp as the engineers moved through, but we now know them to be attracted to electrical energy, beam power and even the low-level neuro-chemical- electrical activity of a mammalian brain.
They are as terrifying as the fiction shows have probably made them out to be. They range in color from the blackest night to silver and blue. They’re vaguely humanoid, although vast behemoths have also been summoned. They can rend or wield lightning energy.
The death-toll amongst the Army units and engineers was horrific, as I understand it. But the road is now under auto-defense and the ion rail system doesn’t seem to attract the Wraiths as strongly. It’s an uneasy stalemate, but the Army has secured both Jericho and Scythia.
Meanwhile the settlers are expanding into the Great Canaan Valley below Jericho and stretching to the eastern foothills. The lower tech the better. . . less wraiths. Some of the farmers are tilling soil with oxen and plow, if I understand it.
It’s not just the fauna of this place however. The flora is pure death-world as well. Massive carnivorous creepers, trap-vice jug plants, moss that seems to secrete a protein-dissolving mucus and spore-clouds.
Why stay, you ask? I’ll save that for my next letter. But back to my favor.
This has been kept out of the official transcripts. But remember how I described the asteroid belt between Prime and the gas giant Secundus? Last week, we had an asteroid leave the gravity trough of the belt and head towards Caluphel. No causality found. The fleet still in orbit tracked it and obliterated it before it could impact.
That would have been the end of it, except 2 hours after we destroyed the asteroid, ANOTHER left orbit on the near exact same trajectory. It wasn’t going to impact near the settlements, so we let it go. It landed about 500 klicks north of the Kasomir Plateau in the wilds of the north-country.
I say “land” because that’s what it it. No impact. No explosion. It slowed and landed. I’m not kidding. But that’s not all. There was a massive energy spike emanating from the landing zone, which makes me think that “something” brought it down. Something or someone. Why?
It was a rare-earth fragment – with mineral wealth usable by any number of tech applications.The Army is sending a battalion north into the wilds to investigate. They’re planning on establishing a base up there and then trying to see what lies at the impact site. Outpost Omicron I think is what they’re calling it.
But back to my favor. I’m hoping you can send me all you can dig up on Seebeck thermolectric generators. It’s a wild hunch. But to bring down and slow an asteroid of that size would take a huge amount of energy. We’d have sensed anything fission or fusion or bio.
But what if there was a massive thermocouple running through the planet core? One input station at the “pole” facing the sun and another at the “pole” on the darkside. That’s a temperature difference of 1600k, and even with semi-conductor efficiency rates of 5%, we could be talking tetrawatts of energy. You think that’s a leap? A planetwide energy grid?
None of our probes have ever survived a pass over the sunside or darkside poles. Should be nothing there to create any interference, but not just that. They’re being shot down.
Something or someone.
If I can get the foundational Seebeck equations, I can start calculating on the energy capacity of what we’re facing here. I’d like to get my projections to the Army before they make contact. God knows what they’re facing.
All the best,
Janen
Comrade's Wargames 