REO: the Nature of Angels

## **Factional History**

The "Angels" – as they've been sold to humanity – are sentinels, essentially stay-behind soldiers. They are truly heavenly beings; essentially Artificial Intelligence carried in a cohesive plasma. For some, it might be easier to think of them as "non-corporeal," but with an ability to manifest at different levels when necessary.

Spoiler: there are actually *four* capital-F Foreign factions which have personally visited the earth and (and fifth that sent an automated probe, unbeknownst to the closer four). That makes five factions that have an interest in affairs of humanity.

### **Faction-1 (F1)**

F1 has been here the longest, roughly a quarter of a million years, and determined that nature has failed the natives by not installing an unwavering sense of identity during evolution. This leaves the human race (and much of the mammal phyla) technically "insane" by F1's standards. That's dangerous enough – but humanity in particular fills that condition out, with neither a "floor" as to how little they require to survive, nor a "ceiling" to how much processing power their un-throttled brains can achieve. To F1, that's roughly finding a chimpanzee with a gun and simply hoping for the best.

With over 18,000 "worlds" in their portion of the galaxy, they've seen similar and are determined to end this before the human race gets into the stars and wreaks havoc. They have modified human genetics to make us marginally more dangerous (to ourselves), and otherwise made special appearances to influence our beliefs to set a course where we would self-extinguish without F1 getting their hands dirty.

To facilitate this, they have a 6-part AI system they leave behind on claimed, colonized or flagged planets. There are commonalities between every AI system and it ties in to F1's overall belief system. Those AI will guide the planet as to the plan – and they remain in communication with quasi-hive mind of the rest of the race.

### **Faction-2 (F2)**

F2 is also a colonial race, but far smaller (and couple hundred "worlds") and non-imperial. F2 is also a great deal more advanced (in some respects) than F1 – and disagrees with them on a number of subjects, not the least of which is the arbitrary death sentence if a race doesn't fit their health and safety requirements.

F2 is opposed to the F1 presence in the area and rather than simply letting F1 wipe out humanity, has decided to engage in a proxy war on earth using F1's own tools. This started roughly 10,000 years ago, shortly after F2 realized how close F1 had creeped to their own backyard. The proxy conflict accelerated when F2 realized the F1 strategy and how they were along completing the plan.

F2's strategy is nurture humanity into a galactic presence and buffer between them and F1.

Where F1 created massive and ultra-powerful AI, F2 used the template to create a wide, highly-flexible, agile network. The similarity: F2's AI have extremely similar physical properties in terms of the "robotic housing" – the coherent plasma processing core.

### **Commonalities**

It's no coincidence that F2's AI are extremely similar to F1's: F2 designed them that way to make a point. F1's technology is extremely advanced in some respects, and oddly primitive in others (mostly due to limitations placed on development stemming from their own belief system). Even the less-developed systems are more developed than anything humanity has, plus adds more than a million years of systematic refinement, absolutely maximizing efficiency.

For instance: F1 does not ascribe to physical travel at superluminal speeds. F2 travels at thousands of times the speed of light. F1's cross-space travel instead peaks at 0.9997c and they can generate teleportals for *instant* travel of up to 1.4 light years without the use of a repeater network.

Focusing on the AI, both are essentially coherent plasma. F1 models are the equivalent of massive supercomputers, while F2 is a widely distributed network. That means F1 slams with a massive hammer, but F2 can minimize damage and attacks from everywhere at once.

Both operate in a kind of low-power stealth mode and both have robust passive monitoring when doing so, including SNS (psionic) sensitivity. As humans are SNS-latent, even untrained humans in deep concentration can generate *some* level of SNS transmission. Naturally, this manifests in the process humans call... you guessed it: *praying*.

Given the raw materials, both can produce physical objects at will. Think of something along the lines of "replicators" from Star Trek (or half a dozen other science fiction stories).

Both have a limited ability to tap into temporal vibration – they can see "echoes" from potential futures.

Both factions angels are able to maintain telepathic contact with their origin race, with some communication lag. At stellar distance, even quantum entanglement begins to bump against speed limits.

Both factions have the ability to create a great deal, but neither is capable of self-replication.

If *absolutely necessary*, both can assume various levels of physical form. Maintaining near-stealth mode, both can project ghostly images. Both can manifest *apparent* solid form, including for extended time. Both can anchor into a solid, physical form but this is non-trivial and commits them for the duration (including time of extreme vulnerability during the transformation).

Both F1 and F2 (and most races of the galaxy) have myth and legends detailing magic (or some description of a fifth force of the universe). The mechanics of activating magic are extremely specific and difficult to reliable achieve. Those who have achieved it... have almost universally been extinguished by it simply due to the access of power at a very low level and the volatility of that power in untrained hands. That's why magic remains in the realm of myth and legend, even for the advanced races that would otherwise look for it.

### **Differences**

One of the most profound unique powers of the F1 angels is the ability to send a data pulse backward in time. The range is limited to just a few seconds, but this can keep them alive if they see where a given danger is coming from.

The F1 angels have a great deal of autonomy, and there is more to them than even their creator race realizes at this point, but there is one significant limitation: they will stay within their programmed limitations. Any one of the archangels is capable of sterilizing a planet – and there are tens of thousands of these AI across their portion of the galaxy, so for F1, this is a failsafe. They are sentinels for F1, enforcers, and empowered to guide clients or targets into particular paths to generate the narrative that F1 wants to tell.

The F2 angels have very little autonomy beyond their mission, but the mission itself is very general. While they have certain limits as to what they can share of F2's own knowledge base, they operate with the big picture in mind and can (and will) override certain limitations if they see those limitations violate F2 ethics and safety (in that order).

### **Heaven's Trigger**

Earth's humanity is already a curiosity for the "local community." Though F1 tried to quarantine the planet, the races that have visited earth live outside F1's influence and willing to risk it. Their assessment of F1's claim to quarantine rates it as "not valid" or "not sufficient to justify." F3 and F4, admittedly, are not in the least bit psionic (and neither is most of the galaxy). That humanity is SNS-latent complicates things.

In 1365, something unexpected happened – *something that didn't happen in the original time stream* – a sudden effervescence of arcane energy. It started gradually increasing. This led to F1 classifying earth as toxic due to two different mechanics, and accelerating their schedule to sterilize the planet. With magic increasing, they no longer care about plausible deniability and genocide – they're going to destroy the entire planet instead of just the surface.

F2 sees the sudden shift in time tables and sees an F1 precedent as increasingly counter-ethical, no matter what F1 is saying about the ends justifying the means. The F2 faction, through their stay-behind proxies and direct visits, are reprioritizing the fight with F1 to a higher category – including the survival of humanity.