Centurions

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Launched in 2165, Project Centennial comprised a swarm of 100 exploration drones known as Centurions. The drones were designed and created by scientists from the University of Aglostarros, with the foundational support of Professor Argil Stroth and his thesis *On Adaptive Programming*, and launched from the planet Aglostarros in the Coreworlds. Each Centurion was set on a trajectory which would take it into the depths of unknown Space.

The Centurions’ purpose is to observe and report on astronomical, biological, technological and even sociological phenomena not yet accessible to manned expeditions. According to one-on-one encounters with the Centurions, their stated purpose is to ‘seek knowledge’. By necessity, the probes' programming is relatively simple, designed to endure decades of adversity, development and other conditions its developers could not foresee. Fundamentally, the Centurions have only two directives, around which their programming develops organically: survival and exploration.

The Centurions have been expertly engineered for sustained operation and designed to withstand a multitude of environmental dangers. The probes' "vitals" - data core, power centre and processor - are contained within a bespoke anti-extinction blackbox, protecting its contents from hazards up to and including the heart of a star. To prevent hacking attempts, scrambling or misdirection, Centurions receive signals through only one receptor, built into their chassis. The system's simplicity means that, though the probes can communicate verbally and via local comm systems, they cannot coordinate with each other and can only be controlled from one location: the Project Centennial command console in the Aglostarros University Museum.

Meanwhile, the Centurions' hardware is highly advanced. In flight, Centurions take the form of luminescent probes, but while traversing a planet's surface they resemble tall, sleek and minimal humanoids. Each Centurion is equipped with an inbuilt matter converter and malleable nano surfaces, allowing them to change appearance and build additional systems. This is most visible when the Centurion adopts the facial appearance of any sentient it encounters, as Queil keeflower farmer Arl observed of Centurion 13 on the planet Galeus. This transmutation and the imperfect rendition produced were uncanny enough that Arl found the Centurion hard to look at.

Centurions can also use these versatile "shape-changing" systems to rapidly regrow limbs, gain superior physical strength, deploy weaponry for self-defence, create flight systems and equip heavy ablative armour, which fragments to absorb impacts and then seals until fully intact once more. A red light has been seen to emit from within the chassis when the Centurion switches to a more aggressive stance.

Centurions are also capable of conducting scientific experiments and analysis while in the field. For this purpose, they are able to administer an electric charge and are capable of scanning entire star systems for data.

Despite every precaution, Project Centennial quickly lost contact with its Centurions, and historical reports claim that the probes simply stopped responding. The Centurions went quiet until 100 years later, in 2265, when they suddenly began sending large amounts of exploration data back to the command console.

The trajectory of the Centurions' journeys took many across the territory of the Empire of the Queil. Though the Empire voiced concerns that the probes’ encroachment on their territory constituted a security risk, with reports of military installations such as Kalere Roost coming under their scrutiny, AUM’s Curator Endelle Stroth reassured the Empire’s spokesperson Prince Aster that the Centurions came in peace and only wanted to explore. She conceded that there was still much the University was re-learning about the Project and its Centurions, a notion that the Queils found concerning.

Press reports suggested that the appearance of Centurions within the borders of the Queil Empire was one of the many threats to galactic stability to be addressed at a meeting between representatives of the Trifold Union’s member states and Curator Stroth, at the Threshold of the Ninth Plane on Andar Prime. Privately, Stroth speculated that the movements of the Centurions themselves, along with other expansionist projects such as the founding of resort worlds and the actions of the ARK Mandate, may indeed have invited the challenges and disasters now faced by the Union.

When Curator Stroth later visited the Galactic Liberation of Wonder movement at its headquarters beneath the Halls of Aneth on Kollian, she provided her guide, Challe, with a device which would give GLoW backdoor access to Project Centennial, including the Centurion probes. She insisted that this was only so that the movement could observe the Project’s findings and not interfere, or else risk raising suspicion. However, Challe’s response suggested that GLoW had other plans, and he was particularly interested in being able to control the Centurions.

In subsequent months, numerous sources within the Empire of the Queil reported observing violent and erratic behaviour from Centurions, including attacks on military assets and facilities. Among the Queils’ concerns, they noted that Centurions had intently pursued such targets as expierimental weapons, state secrets and black-box servers, causing destruction in their wake. Speculators believed that the probes may have been targeting those locations, and it is possible that GLoW may have used their Project Centennial access to direct Centurions to certain targets. Queil forces attempted to resist the Centurions encroachments, but to the surprise of University of Aglostarros personnel, the drones took minimal damage from the defence and responded with lethal and destructive force.

The Centurions’ continued attacks against targets in Queil space motivated the Trifold Union to issue an open warrant for the arrest of Endelle Stroth, whom they suspected of negligence or possible culpability in the attacks. Meanwhile, the Queil Empire confirmed to the AlTime News Channel that it had begun developing new weaponry specifically to combat Centurions. Combat between the Queil military and two Centurions in the Gordian Veldt apparently confirmed that these experimental weapons were successful in destroying the Centurions. Digital autopsies of the two destroyed drones confirmed that their software had been heavily patched by GLoW, using the command codes of the AUM Curator.

However, despite having been deconstructed down to only their central data cores, the two captured Centurions somehow managed to rebuild themselves using components of the research station in which they were being held. This prompted the Trifold Union to shift their tactics from attacking the Centurions with intent to destroy toward relocating sensitive targets away from the drones' predicted flight paths. AlTime News provided their readers with an extra-large map illustrating these predicted paths.

The Centurions ultimately passed through the Queil territories and onwards toward the Ele Dominion. Given the size of the Dominion, former Curator Stroth estimated that most Centurions would cross its borders at approximately the same time, within the space of a single week. She feared what would happen when the Centurions began transmitting their findings about the Ele Metanation back to the Queil Empire and Coreworlds Conglomerate. The Centurions' reports from the Dominion back to the Coreworlds piqued the interest of the public there, and allowed Project Centennial to avoid total shutdown at the hands of the Family Oramande.

Stroth later learned from the Ele Congregate that the Centurions who had entered the Ele Dominion were attacking its citizens without provocation. The Congregate committed to capturing one of the probes for analysis, as Stroth reiterated that they were only programmed for self-defence. To this end, an Ele Excision Team comprising the warriors El-Dreefi, El-Murth and El-Morior appeared to successfully capture an unknown Centurion on the conservation world El-Saire, by using an antipsychic cage. The team observed that, before the engagement, the Centurion had been observing El-Saire's biome as though it were in awe, though its movements had been hard to read. This Centurion was subsequently brought back to the Ele Dominion's capital world, El-Kera, for further study.

After intensive analysis of the captured Centurion, Ele analysts surmised that the probe's adaptive survival programming was rendering it increasingly suspicious of any outside communication, including the all-pervasive influence of the Ele Metanation, which perceived the Centurions' programming as "close enough" to thinking minds to attempt a connection. Stroth subsequently reported to the Ele Congregate that the Centurions intended to destroy the Metanation in order to complete their mission.

For more information about the trajectories of specific Centurion units, see the list below: