Nirai

> "*Every sky is full of stars.*"
> ― Nirai motto
>
>

The **Nirai** are one of the six factions governing the hexarchate in the Machineries of Empire universe.

Notable Nirai include Hexarch Nirai Kujen, False Hexarch Nirai Faian, Hexarch Nirai Esfarel, Captain-analyst Nirai Damiod, and Captain-engineer Nirai Weinat.

## Role

The Nirai are a low faction; their corresponding high faction is the Rahal. They are the hexarchate's technical faction, comprising doctors, scientists, engineers, and sometimes applied mathematicians.

They tend to prefer the other factions to leave them alone to do their research, but they work well with Shuos and Kel, whose need for better weapons, cryptology, and mothdrives is insatiable. Their relationship with the Kel in particular can be considered codependent. They also maintain ties with the Vidonas' medical branch and compete with the Rahal for mathematicians. Meanwhile, the Andan consider them easily manipulated and the Shuos find them naive about the implications of their research.

## Government

The Nirai seat of government is Station Mavi 514-11.[cite] Their emblem is a voidmoth scattered with stars and their colors are black and silver. A silver voidmoth insignia with chained wings signifies a Nirai seconded to the Kel.

Since the development of the black cradle, a series of false hexarchs has administered the faction on behalf of immortal hexarch Nirai Kujen. The most recent false hexarch was Nirai Faian. The Nirai are the only faction to have such an arrangement; the false hexarchs are selected and, on occasion, removed by Kujen, but most of the hexarchate, including most Nirai, are unaware that Kujen exists.

## Technology

Mothdrive is the most widely used exotic technology developed by the Nirai, who run breeding programs for voidmoths, construct the vessels' nonbiological components and weapons, and repair them after damage. A sufficiently good team of Nirai could potentially repair even a cindermoth hit by a carrion bomb and have it flying within a few days of the attack.

The Nirai also research gate-space, both mathematically and by developing substances such as fungal canisters from gate-space organisms. It would take a full Nirai decontamination team to deal with a bannermoth infected by a fungal canister.

It is widely said that the Nirai developed formation instinct for the Kel as an outgrowth of psych surgery, though few are aware of Kujen's deep involvement in it and every other Nirai specialty. Secretly, the servitors believed that Kujen's passion for mathematics and engineering, and appreciation for those with high abilities in those fields, was the only reason any Nirai ever voluntarily worked with him.

The mathematical abilities of Nirai seconded to the Kel are invaluable in situations involving heretical calendrical mechanics, though the Kel regard seconded Nirai personnel as researchers and engineers rather than soldiers. Nirai Medera's formation generator, later critiqued by Ajewen Cheris, was an important work in its field. While Nirai using composite technology can calculate formation mechanics with incredible speed, many Nirai are cantankerous enough to be ineffective in a composite.

Individual Nirai, as a faction ability, always know what the local time is, allowing them to check for calendrical rot by comparing local time to the high calendar.

Nirai stations have a reputation as strange places.

## Recruitment

The Nirai select for mathematical and technical ability, and tend to be heterogeneous and apolitical in their outlook. The faction recruiters tried to redirect Ajewen Cheris to the Nirai due to her mathematical skills, but she insisted on Kel Academy instead.

Heptarch Nirai Esfarel attended Nirai Academy Prime for a year as a Rahal cadet in order to study under one of its renowned mathematics instructors. In his last year, frustrated with the "overly legalistic" Rahal mindset, he transferred to Nirai Academy.

The theoretical work of Academician Sayyad Reth in the mathematics of gate mechanics, including the mathematical underpinnings of threshold winnowers, took place before the Nirai, forty-nine years before the broadcast of the revised calendar, stopped admitting high-achieving non-faction members to teach at their academies. A graphic novel based on her life uses analogies to explain the relevant theories.

## Culture

The Nirai are known for having odd senses of humor and many are informal. They approach games from a simulationist perspective. To outsiders, the Nirai have a reputation for being poor conversationalists. Their technicians can be superstitious about moths.

## History

The following content contains plot or ending spoilers. Read with caution!

The first mothdrives came into being under Heptarch Nirai Esfarel, due to Nirai Kujen, who succeeded Esfarel as Nirai heptarch. The introduction of mothdrives fueled a wave of expansion and prosperity in the heptarchate. When Kujen developed the black cradle, he introduced the custom of installing false heptarchs to administer the faction for him, surviving as the true heptarch -- later hexarch -- of the Nirai for over eight hundred years.

Most in the hexarchate believe that Nirai psych surgeons have spent hundreds of years trying to cure the revenant of Shuos Jedao, not knowing he was under Kujen's control.

Kujen selected Faian as the most recent false hexarch under circumstances suggesting his antipathy for her predecessor's embezzlement. Faian was almost immediately suborned by Iruja for the purpose of developing a new, safer method of immortality. Their experiments inadvertently allowed heretics to take over the Fortress of Scattered Needles.

The Nirai seconded to the null swarm played a significant role in the Siege of the Fortress of Scattered Needles. Jedao relied on Kel Ragath to keep some potentially problematic Nirai in line. Throughout the Siege, Captain Nirai Daimiod's cryptography team worked on breaking codes and injecting false messages for the heretics. Once on the Fortress, the Nirai developed a technique for tunneling through strands of invariant ice to reach the corrosion gradient generators, hanging gauzy material to catch toxic fibers to protect the lungs of the invading Kel. With a critique from Jedao, the Nirai also chose demolition targets to provide relief for the Kel affected by the amputation gun. When planning the assault on the Drummers' Ward, Cheris counted on confusion from Nirai explosives to assist in convincing the heretics that the attack was real, and their use of heavy-duty burrowers to cut a passage to the Radiant Gate Four Nirai engineering teams under Captain-engineer Nirai Weinat activated threshold winnowers in the Radiant Ward.

When Kujen disappeared, around the same time as the Hafn invasion of the hexarchate, Faian ascended to true hexarch. Iruja, along with Hexarchs Andan Shandal Yeng and Vidona Psa, traveled to Station Mavi 514-11 to undergo the new immortality procedure. However, all four hexarchs were destroyed along with the station by a Shuos shadowmoth at the same time as the destruction of the Kel Aerie, spiking the high calendar.

## Trivia

* On the Fortress of Scattered Needles, the Nirai are represented by the Umbrella Ward.
* Jedao first met Kujen on a Nirai station with "better amenities than most."
* In a drama watched by Cheris and several servitors, the heroine's sidekick was a Nirai, but the equations the sidekick supposedly wrote as the show progressed were terrible.

## References

1. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 2
2. ↑ Author's website
3. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 23
4. ↑ The Factions: Low Faction Nirai
5. ↑ Author's website
6. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 2
7. ↑ The Factions: Low Faction Nirai
8. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 4
9. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 2; Raven Stratagem, Chapter 4
10. ↑ The Factions: Low Faction Nirai
11. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 23
12. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 9
13. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 23
14. ↑ The Factions: Low Faction Nirai
15. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15
16. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 9
17. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 3
18. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 7
19. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 9
20. ↑ Author's website
21. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 4
22. ↑ The Factions: Low Faction Nirai
23. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 2
24. ↑ The Factions: Low Faction Nirai
25. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 22
26. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 21
27. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 4
28. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 13
29. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 16
30. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 23
31. ↑ The Factions: Low Faction Nirai
32. ↑ 4, 12
33. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 2
34. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 6
35. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 14,20
36. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15
37. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 17
38. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 18
39. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 19
40. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 21
41. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 8