Archetypes are broad families of organisms, machines, or other phenomena adjacent to life which possess shared traits and attributes. Consult the Creature ID Glossary for a better understanding of how to identify a specific specimen within an archetype.
Myths tell of a time when humanity was a single species, arising from the muck of the now-dead ecosystem from the world of its birth. No more. The first of the Geno-Archons fragmented that extinct breed into a hundred variants to suit their tastes, and when they fell, the chains which bound those clades were broken and the now-freed serfs birthed a hundred more, be it through desperation or ambition to replace their slain progenitors. These days, when one refers to the pan-humanity, they speak of the united human qualia and those N-life organisms amenable to such psychologies. But when they speak of the castes, they mean those of mere flesh and blood rather than true posthuman organisms. Though some may be more heavily mechanized than others, or taken to extremes of genetic engineering, a heart still beats within, and a mind still thinks with the same instincts and neural architecture as the first of their kind.
The Locaste descend from the common masses of humanity, split by the Geno-Archonates as they rose to power and promised salvation from diseases writ into humanity’s DNA and the betterment of your children through longevity and brilliance. In time, these alterations came with other, mandatory enhancements. Suitability for foreign worlds, for hostile environments. The price of true enhancement, at least what was considered objective improvement in the eyes of that era, was priced beyond the lowest classes, and in time they were domesticated, made workers for a society that saw them as machines of meat to be optimized for the place they dwelt in. High gravity, low gravity, the depths of seas or toxic urban sprawls, and other more exotic niches. Their genome was encoded with powerful defenses; self-destructing prions and blooms of cancer that erupted when tampering was attempted, or simply when certain chemical signals were released into the air, should a population need culling. While countless members of their order would later rise in revolt against the caste system through the adoption of N-matter, the robustness of their genome was such that even today the strains that did not stray from their original path remain healthy and robust. It is among the locaste that the closest to the original species of humanity may be found.
The Hicaste rose from the favored populations of the homeworld, early supporters of what would grow into the Geno-Archonates, those with the wealth or means or loyalty that they rose above the masses that would be enslaved, but not so high in status that they would be elevated to the true elite. Their privilege was to act as the insulating barrier between the foot of the mountain and its pinnacle. While their physical bodies remain mostly preserved in the image of their ancestors, their minds are sharpened, optimized, narrowed for the role they were built for. Bureaucracy, war, engineering, simple aesthetics, or something yet more specific, and given lifespans and health beyond that of their lessers. Following the end of their creators, their lineages were fractured, forced to learn to rely on themselves without the complementary strengths of their other specialist breeds, giving rise to bizarre and esoteric cultures built from the idiosyncrasies of individuals never meant to bear the burden of civilization in totality. In rare cases where enough species of the proper designations gather to alleviate those burdens, one can find a glimpse of the eusocial potency of the era which birthed them.
The Nucaste emerged during the end of Geno-Archontic Era, born from the now-freed castes and their reckless experimentation through N-matter. The secrets of the nuanced, sophisticated genetic alterations of the Archons and the codes to undo their locks died with them, leaving the secessionists castes, high and low, to rely on trial, repetition, and reliance on N-matter, a substance they still did not truly understand the workings of. Their attempts left entire populations wracked with tumors or withering into living corpses, the delayed punishment of their extinct makers hanging over them with each change they made. But with enough attempts, something would get through, if only just. N-matter allowed these breakthroughs, but it was a black box; how it did so could not be understood. When stable lineages formed, even with they were sickly, reliant on chemical cocktails, cloned organs, or life support systems, they were rarely altered further. Such was the plight of the Nucaste; free, but at a terrible price. Even so, their accumulation of N-matter granted potent hereditary cybernetics, allowing them to carve out their own domains, ones which would eventually grow into the arcology-factories of the Transitional Era.
The Excaste are those whose emancipation from the genetic caste system ended in tragedy. Retroviral weapons, cancerous self-destruct systems, or a stranger, more esoteric genesis all lead to the same end; something which was like or derived from humans, but was no longer. Had it been done with willful intent this would be of little consequence, but the excaste are near-universally born from mistake or tragedy; those who alter themselves deliberately move to more powerful posthuman bodies rather than the misbegotten forms of these specimens. Often completely separated from their legacy, they live as ignorant tribes or confederations, the world they live in the only one they know.
The Cycaste are the pinnacle of transhumanism within the boundaries of humanity, a caste defined by having such extensive hereditary cyberization that they are little more than containers of organs encased in mechanical shells. Rising to prominence during the Transitional Era’s Zygotic Period, the Cycaste would later be displaced by true posthuman life during the late Morulan and Embryonic, retaining a high status within the arcology-factories but never again existing at the apex. In the present, their status has risen once more, the attainability of their forms and psychological similarity to baselines making them favored rulers and elite warriors among caste civilizations. Often considered equalizers on account of the fact that once you are encased in their metal shells, whatever caste you had previously belonged to is no longer relevant. In truth, the cycaste cannot be considered a truly distinct clade of human life for this reason, but they are closely tied to humanity enough that they are given the appellation regardless.
The now-extinct rulers of the solar imperial age, and the peak of pre-N-matter bioengineering. All but immortal, physically perfected, and inhumanly beautiful, at least by the standards they imposed upon humanity. Every aspect of them was tweaked exquisitely to spark veneration and subservience in the hi-caste, as deep and abiding as that of a child to their parent, of a romantic to their true love, of a priest to their god. That they did this without any aid from hypertechnological principles is a terrifying thought. But the human genome is a finite instruction manual, and if known thoroughly enough may produce individuals whose innermost urges are quantified. It is perhaps a blessing that the chaotic mutations spurred by N-matter make such thorough control of DNA impossible. Hopefully it shall stay this way.
But this does not stop some from trying to bring them back. To start from nothing to recreate a masterpiece produced using an entirely different set of tools is perhaps an exercise in futility. But even so, some consider their return the only way to once more unite humanity. After all, they could effortlessly peer into the hearts of most thinking beings of this era, knowing the heart of any human sophont with utmost intimacy, more than the distant posthuman lords of the current era, whose radical alterations have left them a step removed from those they once were, if they were not made as such.
The solar empire would have made humanity into a eusocial breed, shearing away all independent and critical thought until they were but cogs of flesh in a machine designed solely to enrich its highest echelons. But even knowing this, some would still prefer to try and instantiate that future than endure the promise of a continued eternity of the now.
N-life beings are impossible organisms animated by N-matter. Machines given instincts, flesh run by algorithms, beings of energy and hardened light. Technology, biology, and esoteric principles of science married into coherent forms that represent the pinnacle of evolution. These broad kingdoms of life form the core of the technosystem. Most sophont N-life falls into three categories; rulers, slaves, or exiles. The elites of a given system are heavily incentivized to transcend themselves, and to maintain a stable of posthuman retainers. But in order to keep such potential rivals in line, they must be closely monitored and maintained, lest they overthrow the established structures of power. Unlike in prior eras, where heavily cyberized individuals were reliant on conventional systems of maintenance and logistics, N-matter provided innumerable ways to circumvent this method of control and obtain independence. As a result, the obedience of slave populations needed to be as deep as possible, scrawled into the core of their psyches, either through psychological editing or strict dogma. To exist outside of this system is to be a threat or a tool, but always one held at arms length lest it disrupt this delicate balance. For such exiles, an existence at the margins is the best they can hope for. Unless, of course, they embrace deviancy. Deviant N-life invariably clusters into civilizations of its own, unbound by the needs and luxuries of human civilization. It is order stripped to its barest essentials. Egoistic autocracies, utilitarian administrations, opportunistic tribes or marauding hordes; these are the systems which characterize deviant society. These systems exist in parallel to pan-human civilization, carving homes where they dare not tread. In the eyes of pan-humanity, these are considered dens of monsters, baying for the blood of weak, soft humanity so they may glut themselves on excess resources, redistribute it into more of their kind, and finally go mad and feral when there is nothing left of what they once were. The truth is more complex. Plenty of deviants, while made more and less by their departure from human psychology, retain enough of an ego to enjoy the same things humans do, or to have other irrational pursuits to follow. Some merely want to be left alone. Others see deviancy as the sole path forward, if the delicate balancing act it demands can be maintained, and do so only with regret. But yes, many do grow so distant from humanity they begin to view them as lower on the trophic scale, as prey to be consumed. Enough that the stories continue to proliferate. Enough that their reputation is not unearned. Deviancy is assimilation into the technosystem, and the technosystem demands uncompromising, opportunistic, atavistic pragmatism. But if they were wholly lost to it, they would not be considered deviants. Just another thing to be destroyed. Enough of a person remains that they can find peace, of a kind, if they and their human neighbors are amenable to it. The rest are, of course, the very monsters deviants can devolve into. Mindless fauna which may be harmless, hazardous, or lethally dangerous, both to people or entire settlements. These organisms, regardless of their intent, are creatures which have adapted to the existence of human civilization. Rather than the beasts of old, displayed by human development as they were, these thrive alongside, below, above it. Some have even been domesticated, grown, or manufactured, forming the same role as the drones and beasts of burden used by ancient civilizations.
An engine of flesh, body nanomechanically enhanced and reinforced by metal particulates to be on par with any conventional machinery. Living organisms operating on the same level as war machines and industrial equipment, derived from human stock and grown with deliberate intent. This is a biomachine, one of the oldest strains of N-life. Perhaps the oldest, according to some accounts. The first phylum of biomachine life is said to have originated from the Geno-Archontic era, born from the most successful adopters of N-matter which fought against their gene-engineered overlords, only to grow feral and monstrous in turn, for in those days deviancy and degradation were poorly understood. But with such powerful bodies, they proliferated across the solar system, speciating into innumerable lineages which include some that yet cling on to their egos. They live in families, packs, clans. Loose associations of exceptional hunters which scorn lesser models as unfit for survival in the harshest environment ever known. To gain their respect is no small thing, but few have managed to do so. The second greatest phylum are the hulking giants born from some Transitional Era paradigm, crude replicas of their feral cousins. Designed to endure the harshest conditions, these solemn and taciturn specimens are well used to laboring in dark and hostile environments, and continued to do so long after the arcologies above them fell to ruin. To this day, variations of their kind can be found among nucaste settlements as beasts of burden and lobotomized servitors, or even among them as equals, should their civilization raise them as such. The last of the great phylums is the newest strain, an attempt at objective improvement of the human body. The earliest specimens were too rugged and feral, the Transitional Era lineages too brutish and unsightly, but this breed is well known for embodying the wishes of the human who seeks transcendence; a perfected organic body that allows them to be strong while retaining the benefits of wholesome flesh. It is a favored form of transcendence for those who would seek to stay connected to their human nature even so far remove, but even it produces its own deviants, pale imitations of those original hyperpredators that stalk the solar system. There is also, lastly, a malformed and terrible strain bred by the Myriad and other malevolent digital intelligences, when they gain a foothold in the physical world. Such specimens are short lives as singleminded, wretched weapons with no humanity to them at all.
Cybermachines are the second oldest kingdom of N-life, the product of mind uploads, rogue algorithms, neural transfers, and simply slow integration from cybernetics to pure machinery through N-matter. What distinguishes them from mere machines is their capacity for self-repair and self-reproduction, binding them by the same laws of evolutionary competition as any animal. The most diverse form of N-life, it can nonetheless be divided into distinct patterns. Most common of the cybermachine phyla are tangled masses of self-assembling scrap, spindly and irregular, half-covered in a misshapen exoskeleton. These make up the bulk of feral machines, salvaging replacement parts from the megastructures and each other. Those intelligent specimens among them are near-invariably deviant; few would wish to exist in such irregular and unintuitive bodies. Second most common phylum, but surely the oldest, is a set of patterns bearing a robust, industrial design, the descendants of human-made drones, vehicles, and occasionally more humanoid models. The success of their designs persists into the present, their durable bodies well-suited to surviving the harsh environments of the megastructures, even if the resources they demand make them rarer and limited to more developed areas. This phylum is favored for use as domestic specimens by nearly all castes, as the designs of such systems are naturally intuitive to them, descending as they did from mindless machines dating back to before even the first Geno-Archonates. Rivaling the industrial phylum in numbers and diversity is the transitional era phylum, characterized by its cheaper, ball-jointed ceramic exterior and slender but sophisticated builds. A mix between sleek and disturbing, their almost organic-looking exteriors seem almost osseous in nature, save for the parts where their metallic innards and gleaming eyelights are visible. Such forms were a favorite among many of the more successful arcology-factories, and even with their originators gone persist into the present due to the viability of their designs. Rarest but most vaunted are the bio-synthetic models. Not to be confused with biomachines, this phylum imitates the structure of biology with artificial inorganic musculature, but has no actual flesh affixed to it. Rather, it possesses raw power and maneuverability not found in other machine models, at the expense of durability. This form is by far the most popular for ruling classes to adopt, and more developed civilizations have even used its patterns wholesale as vehicles and drone systems. Lastly, another creation of the datasphere’s malignant intelligences. Skeletal and spindly, but with intent. Not even an exoskeleton covers them, their bodies nothing but sharp metallic struts and narrow limbs. The cheapest and most utilitarian form possible, their efficacy determined solely by the equipment they wear. They can be manufactured in droves but perish just as easily, a luxury afforded only to the insane, cancerous growth the Myriad care capable of. It is also said some models can infest people, wear them like a suit of flesh and rip out from the inside to slaughter unsuspecting victims and find new hosts for more of their kind.
Demimachines are born from detritus and leavings, the scraps of coherent designs. They are like machines, but not quite so. Rather than sophisticated mechanical parts for their innards, brains, organs, and musculature wrap over a mechanical endoskeleton and implanted cybernetics. A biomachine is a thing made with purpose, gestated from a fetus and nurtured into a fully realized design. A cybermachine is an automaton given life, a carefully-planned tool granted the gift of evolution. A demimachine is between them both, an assemblage of what was not used for either. Often crafted from scrap metal and spare parts from slain victims, they proliferate rapidly in the right conditions and were used widely during the Transitional Era, to the point of becoming emblematic of it during the Morunal and Embryonic Periods. Though they are not without their own strengths, most humans find them deeply uncanny. Too like them, yet not. A mocking parody of their kind, ripped apart and reassembled into an alien intelligence, or a fractured remnant of whoever they originally were. Of all classes of N-life, it is demimachines which are most often subservient to another. The earliest phylum known derives from the late Zygotic Period. Heavily influenced by the industrial machinery endemic to the time, they are closely related to the true machines they shared parts with. Robust, relentless, and capable of surviving in extremely harsh conditions, they are emblematic of the greatest strengths and most monstrous aspects of the archetype. When unified into a legion of vehicular and infantry-scale models, they form some of the most adaptable and tenacious fighting forces in the modern era. But such scales of battle are ancient history, and in the present they must contend with powers far stronger than themselves. The second phylum to emerge speciated from the original rogue armies and harvester swarms that succumbed to deviancy or simply went feral. Crawling, buzzing, and squirming across the ruins of the solar system, degrading into inhuman, ravenous fauna, they form much of the N-life that subsists in less developed regions of the megastructures, their intelligent specimens collecting into eusocial hive societies and bending lesser models to their will. Such societies are rarely amenable to outsiders, but some will produce sophont models to engage with human civilization and better understand them, so as to come to an understanding with ancestors they have long moved away from. Lastly, there is the phylum of scavengers, walking corpses. Stripped-down, utilitarian, skeletal figures like ghastly psychopomps, they are the product of populations choosing the lowest-form of posthumanism over the certain death that otherwise awaited them. These vagrants, be they sophontic or deviant, wander the margins of the megastructure, avoiding their more powerful and monstrous kin as much as they do human civilization, contenting themselves on the scraps that fall from their terrible conflicts. At least, until the opportunity presents itself to revel in feast rather than suffer famine.
Most complex machinery makes use of nanomachines, stored internally or crawling about their innards in symbiotic stasis. But nanomachine life denotes artificial, inorganic machines operating on the microscopic level, mirroring the multicellular designs of carbon-based life while having nothing to do with it. A novel form of existence, divorced from the other tree in all ways save one; they are the product of our minds, if not our genes. When attempts at transcendence fail, when we collect N-matter carelessly and condense it in a single place, and allow it to leak, nanomachine life will commonly spill forth, grasping for form from the echoes of our psyches within the datasphere. As such, it grasps onto biological wills and instincts, fashioning for itself a mindscape not unlike our own. Enough that it behaves as beasts of flesh do and if sufficiently sophisticated, as a human might. Yet there is an underlying erratic propensity within nanomachine life; their metabolisms are demanding and their egos patchwork, a combination that trends towards mania and aggression. As such, of all N-life sophisticated nanomachine organisms are considered some of the most dangerous and unpredictable. The most common manner of nanomachine life is malformed, ichorous half-things, metallic skeletons clad in tarry black pseudo-flesh, poor bodies which do well enough by virtue of the strength of their materials. They sit at the bottom rung of N-life, on par with certain phyla of demimachines or cyberlife that too subsist on detritus. Above that is a more robust phylum which has obtained a more developed body, clad in a thick metallic integument and often half-integrated into true machinery. This form is known for its exceptional aggression and instability, owing to its high metabolism and fragmented psyche. Holomachine life is the most exotic form to exist, though it is deeply tied to humanity. While the true nature of its origins is unknown, it is assuredly tied to N-matter, for human science cannot explain the hardlight materials which they derive physicality from. However, it is known they derive from virtual entities found within the Datasphere, instantiating hardlight bodies in a bid to escape the nightmarish nature of existence within that roiling virtual ocean. Appearing like a dream within the physical world during the Atrophic Era, they established themselves as they last great kingdom of N-life.
Holomachine life originated during the Transitional Era, the manifestation of the uploaded minds of the Datasphere as they sought to construct bodies of a medium they were familiar with. Hardlight itself is an anomaly, no one truly understands the logic behind its existence, with even the most sophisticated holomechanical beings manipulating it intuitively rather than deliberately. As beings of the Datasphere, they retain a connection to its ocean of data and may specialize to use it in various ways, enhancing their processing power and intellect. As such, they are favored as logicians and specialists, their translucent hands guiding countless Archons on the path to glory or survival. Though, many have claimed territory of their own, as well. The most well-known form is a being of pure hardlight, often seemingly abstracted and disconnected, only vaguely cohering to a singular form. Such individuals are deeply tied to the Datasphere, possessing considerable digital affinity. As a more delicate form of N-life, they are often flighty in the wild and insulated in civilizations, their services vital to the smooth running of tamed infrastructure. There are also hybrid models, hardlight innards hidden under mechanical plating designed like any normal machine. Such entities are more robust, but lack the digital affinity of their kin. Often they are used as drones and vehicles by other civilizations, but some intelligent specimens are known toe xist. Lastly there are the most malignant, predatory malware from the Datasphere drawn into the physical world. Such entities are incredibly dangerous and always hostile, and their eradication is a priority in any civilized zone.
The most alien form of N-life, plasmachinery consists of exotic gases and stable patterns of energy aligned in a manner analogous to biology. Found in places of extreme heat and cold, these beings thrive in places few other forms of life can withstand. Formed from Atropic's desperate attempts at survival, they are most divorced from the civilizations of pan-humanity, following their own laws of survival. Masters of energy, they represent an almost supernatural evolution of N-matter which reminds its practitioners that they have barely breached the surface of its potential.
The most common form is a being of pure light, like an outline of gas and plasma, features marked by cold spots like those of a star. Burning ghosts that feed on power, they rarely make themselves known to outsiders, with those in human society existing in the margens, or deep in the underbelly of cities.
Another form is that of more conventional machines, the plasmic life form inhabiting and operating it as a shell. Though feral variants exist, most are created from caging freer variants into servitude and coherency.
Lastly there are the wild, armored kinds, sheathed in plates of slag rather than an armored exoskeleton. Extremophilic monsters that prove even the most inhospitable environments can be made to bloom with life, and a reason for why colonizing such places is so dangerous.
The biological life of old earth is mostly gone. If not gone, then replaced by a genetically altered descendant or mechanical equivalent. The eradication and sterilization programs of the Solar Empire worked to minimize the spread of pests from Old Earth, and the pollutant emissions of the Megastructures and the arcology factories of the Transitional Era, coupled with the biochemical warfare also used during the Transitional Era, saw the end of natural ecosystems for good. Even so, life persists in the form of feral engineered experiments, surviving remnant populations, and other, stranger things.
A diverse array of bioengineered fauna, speciating to fill every niche in every region of the great megastructures, save for the most inhospitable. Some seem like the reincarnations of the old families of life, others barely resemble them.
Thought to be a mix of area denial weapons, cloned livestock, and the work of eccentric restorationists, the sole uniting factors of chimeras are that they are vertebrates and that they have a propensity for wild mutation.
If primitive sophont tribes can live somewhere, then chimeras almost certainly can as well. In fact, their presence is viewed as a litmust test for pan-human habitability by many, making them a vital keystone archetype for any trying to gauge the viability of their settlement.
Polymerids are thought to have originated as biological weapons that targeted resources and infrastructure, chewing at wires and delicate components of machinery to render them useless. But as with all things in this era, interaction with N-matter spurred their evolution, causing them to displace prior life and fill the same niches as the arthropods of old, such was their suitability to the new world humanity had built.
With shells of plastic and the ability to excrete synthetic fiber webbing, this branch of life feeds on the soft tissues of the megastructures as much as it does organic matter, making them a hazard to both people and machines. Even so, those very feeding habits make their bodies resources in themselves, and hunting them for their biosynthesized polymers, giving even the most primitive societies access to these versatile materials.
But with their poisonous stings, thick webs, and rending mandibles, larger polymerids are dangerous game to average hunters, and should best be handled by professionals.
An uncanny family of organisms, Neotenates are humanoid creatures seemingly spawned by the megastructures in imitation of human life. Their origins are unknown, but some postulate that the cloning systems of the Transitional Era were co-opted by the feral megastructures, churning out distorted parodies of their intended output thousands of years after the end of that period.
While mostly non-sapient prey animals, some neotenates develop ghastly mutations that turn them into stealthy hunters of sophonts, while others have become intelligent themselves. Others even integrate cybernetics, becoming walking digital warfare systems or bearing internalized firearms.
The sophonts that do exist are one of the largest underground populations, though few are ever seen on the surface. Perhaps one day that will change.
One of the strangest families of organic life, protoforms are believed to be the organic detritus of the megastructures, formed by chance through the irregular and chaotic growths of their innards but successful enough that they proliferate across them. Perhaps their similarities across various structures point to, somehow, a common ancestor, or perhaps their seemingly half-formed physiologies are the echo of some ancient programming directive from before they grew beyond the humans who first produced them.
While a rare sight on the surface, they are common in the innards of any megastructure, any entrance into their architectural bodies teeming with them like maggots in a wound. Indeed, they seem to form the bulk of biomatter within such environments, forming the foundation of the biological food chain of the depths.
Almost certainly a highly-engineered organism created by a lost posthumann civilization, macrocells are thought to be the product of the Atropic, an attempt to create a source of energy which did not rely on the megastructures to sustain itself. While their creators vanished, their work persists across the star system. Macrocells can be found anywhere from the deepest recesses of the megastructures to the wreckage between worlds, and where they dwell, so do their hunters.
Extremophiles all, they often proliferate in places few other species can withstand, surviving extremes of temperature and caustic acids which would destroy most organic life. The internals of a macrocell are incredibly energy-dense, allowing them to be processed into crude fuel as one would the great leviathans of myth. In places where the energy of the megastructures is not easily accessible, nomadic tribes follow their swarming masses to power the machines that allow them to survive.