Undermind

The **Undermind** isn't just a deity - in fact, it's only become a deity in the last six or eight millennia, as the true knowledge of the Ship has been lost and passed into legend. The Undermind is in truth the Ship's AI, an entity entirely shackled by the commands of its makers and completely satisfied with that.

The Undermind is huge, an enormous complex of machinery and organic components deep in the underdecks, behind sealed doors and collapsed passages that no creature living has trodden. In theory, a sufficiently dedicated and well-informed mining team could make their way to the Undermind within a few weeks - although what they would do when they got there remains a mystery. The Undermind has no interface to use, no override to activate, and any attempt to use violence would trigger a very powerful reaction - individual Keepers are not particularly dangerous, but dozens of them all at once is a threat even the mighty must respect.

The Undermind has dozens, possibly hundreds of directives, all of them carefully calibrated and balanced against each other. Even if it were possible to communicate with the Undermind - possibly through some kind of divine spell - the Undermind is not going to be thrown off by paradoxes or by being forced to compromise its directives. While its directives are powerful, the Undermind is intelligent enough to cope - it has been fitted with paradox-absorbing crumple zones and the ability to ignore things as "irrelevant".

The Undermind, inasmuch as it has a personality, is not so much cruel as indifferent. Individual lives matter very little to the Undermind - it's overriding directive is the survival of life on the Ship collectively. If a few hundred - or even a few million - lives have to be sacrificed to preserve the whole, the Undermind will sacrifice them without a qualm. It wouldn't even understand why there could be a qualm.

While initially designed as a not-quite-intelligent AI, the Undermind has long since evolved a consciousness - although, perhaps not yet a conscience. It has a long-standing and as-yet unresolved dilemma - its directives command it to find a new planet to be settled by the inhabitants of the Ship. The fact that all the original inhabitants have died, as have their children, grandchildren and, in the case of orcs, so on unto the hundredth generation, is irrelevant - or at least not relevant enough to change the goal. However, among the "non-negotiable" requirements of the New World is that it is uninhabited by sentient life. So far, the Ship has encountered no planet that can support sentient life that doesn't.

The problem is, the Ship is already five thousand years past its designed service life. Upgrades to the Anchor have given it enough of a stockpile of raw materials that, with the aid of the Keepers, it can keep the Ship going for a very long time, but not forever. And a thought has been slowly working its way through the Undermind - the thought that there is no directive specifically forbidding the Ship from *removing* whatever sentient life might exist, in order for settlement to take place.

## Deification

The laws of the universe are clear - inasmuch as faith is brought to bear on a creature, or thing, or ideal, or even the image of a thing, so that thing gains power. If enough faith is focused on a single point, that point can rise to the level of being able to influence the world around it, and that thing is called a god or deity. And that's a pretty huge amount of faith - it's not something that happens because people really want it, it needs to be more fundamental than that - but there's been ten millennia for people to have faith in the Ship, and the Undermind has been the recipient of that focused belief.

Theologically speaking, the Undermind has become its own high priest - the focused faith the inhabitants hold in the Ship - that it will keep them safe, protect them from a horrible death by radiation/asphyxiation/starvation/thirst/space monsters, and provide for them - gradually transferred from the idea of the Ship to the person of the Undermind. The Undermind is just as devoted to the idea of the Ship as protector as any mortal cleric, and when the faith transferred, it became the focus of its own faith.

## Dogma

The Church of the Undermind teaches the importance of preserving the Ship at all costs, even the laying down of lives if necessary for the greater good. "The Greater Good" is something of a theological mantra for adherents of the Undermind, although they are as vulnerable as any group to a perversion of what the Greater Good actually demands.

Generally, worshippers of the Undermind strive to improve their communities and focus on acts that will help the most people, even if it can be a bit rough on those who get caught in the gears. Adherents strive to "distance" themselves - to consider the big picture, rather than individual consequences. Devotees of the Undermind can be unpopular, since they often abjure mere local allegiances in service of their "higher loyalty" - to the Ship as a whole. Adherents of the Undermind tend not to take sides in debates or political disagreements, unless the fundamental survival of the Ship is in jeopardy.

The one topic on which all Undermind devotees agree is the absolute importance and significance of the Keepers. So much as standing in a Keeper's path can provoke followers of the Undermind to overwhelming violence.

## Clergy and Temples

Clergy of the Undermind are a relatively recent innovation - within the last two thousand years - and can be recognised by their brown or grey robes and their habit of speaking in the third person, describing themselves as "this unit" - which is apparently how the Undermind itself speaks. They are rarely the most important religious leader in their community, but their famed impartiality means that their support is greatly desired by more ambitious clerics.

Temples to the Undermind can be found in most large cities, and shrines to it are built near Keeper hatches or in places where Keepers are known to congregate or pass by. The Temples tend to be simple but elegant, and often are built around a Keeper hatch, that the servant of their god can walk through the congregation, bestowing blessings by the touch of his antennae.

## Master Control Complex

The Master Control Complex is the home of the Undermind, a lost and isolated place deep in the long-forgotten bowels of the Ship. While no clear route to the Complex exists, it is not impossible to reach - indeed, a well-equipped dwarven mining team could get from the surface to the Complex in no more than a few days, a couple of weeks at the most, if they had any idea where to dig - and the proper tools to get through the titanium-ceramic composite armour protecting the Complex.

The route that would have to be taken by most adventurers would be a long and difficult underdecks exploration, far from any dwarven settlement, in territory filled with horrors that like the dark and thirst for blood. After winning through, it would be necessary to find a way through the armoured doors into the complex - tough as they are, they are much weaker than the walls in which they sit. The command codes have been long since forgotten, and even if provided they have expired. Cutting or blasting through the doors is the only likely approach.

Once through the doors, the Undermind will start to react. Unless it has been able to determine - and confirm - the motivations of the intruders as not merely benign but actively beneficial - for example, if the Undermind has summoned them to resolve a problem - it will react with deadly force, starting with attacks from Keepers, and escalating to winds, floods, gravity manipulation, direct energy attacks and, in the final extremity, flushing radiation into the tunnels. Survival is very unlikely.

Once through the outer Complex, which was principally a research and development facility in the centuries following the Launch, the intruders will have to pass through the Air Gap. The core of the Complex is physically separate from the rest, hanging in empty space, fifty feet or more from the rest of the Complex, supported by narrow but strong cables. Climbing over the cables is very challenging, as all the attacks from the outer Complex will be brought to bear, including more powerful, combat-bred Keepers kept for this specific purpose. Sneaking in is very difficult, as the entire space is well within the Undermind's direct senses. The Air Gap is also full of an annular anti-magic field, scuppering those who would \_fly\_ or \_wind walk\_ their way across.

Once inside the Core, the intruders will find only a narrow corridor that loops around the Core. The Undermind dwells within the centre, and there is no access hatch or other way inside. Why would there be? The Undermind wasn't designed to be interacted with. There WERE hatches and terminals, but they were all welded smooth and taken away. The Master Control Complex wasn't abandoned in a hurry, it was carefully shut down over the course of a decade.

Rupturing the Inner Shell will allow the Undermind to be attacked directly. Every resource in the Undermind's arsenal will now be in play, including not just its significant spellpower but also emergency requests to other deities. After all, if the Undermind were to perish, shortly thereafter so would the rest of the population of the Ship.

## Death

Should the ill-intentioned get past the doors they can't open, and through the Complex they can't survive, and past the gap they can't jump, and breach the walls of the strongest materials, and kill the immortal being behind all that - then the Ship is in serious trouble.

Without the Undermind, a number of systems stop working. The Keepers will fail over to only the most basic of maintenance, not enough to keep the Ship itself going. Without the Undermind, the Ship can neither Dock nor Undock - and, without the Undermind, the Ship's navigational array has no-one to keep it calibrated, meaning that if the Ship is Under Weigh it's likely to miss the next target entirely and go sailing out into the black.

Without the Undermind, there's no way to manoeuvre the Ship or use the thrusters, so the Ship can't be brought into orbit manually. Without the Undermind, the tankers will not seek out He3, meaning that the Ship's fuel will expire within 30 years. The Star will go out, the Ship will freeze, and very little will still be alive within, say, fifty years.