Fantazer

Fantazer ("фантазер", Dreamer) is the name of an autonomous lethal swarm weapon that went rogue on 26th January, 2655. It was instrumental in the destruction of Old World civilisations and causing the Age of Silence.

Later, after the Long Death, it came to be known as the Phage.

## Operation

Fantazer took the form of a swarm of modular drones. All that was required of human operators was programming of the initial parameters, such as targets, and the construction of a "hive" into the operating zone. This was achieved by dropping in several hundred pieces which would self-assemble on the spot into the hive, containing the instructions and means to produce a "starting configuration" drone from raw materials.

Each drone, functionally, was simply an aggregate of weapons mounted on a moving platform, with enough auxiliary systems to enable it to move towards targets and engage them with said weapons. Its behaviour was controlled by the sum total of several code modules interacting with each other, each module being endemic to a single modular part. Thus, removing certain parts (like a weapon) would alter the behaviour of the drone. Drones were programmed to kill targets and consume them while leaving other animal species and enemy infrastructure intact, as much as possible. This was because Fantazer was intended as a weapon of subjugation and conquest, not mass destruction.

Drones would "fill" themselves with exterminated targets (by means of a small internal compartment) and return to the hive when full, unloading them into the hive's atomic furnaces, which converted them into raw materials. This had a twofold purpose: firstly, it provided the hive with a means of reproducing destroyed units, secondly, it was a metric to gage which drones were the most effective and deadly at their role.

When a drone had delivered a certain mass of materials to the hive, proportional to the cost of producing it, the hive would respond by producing a copy of the drone. Thus, inefficient drones would die out and efficient ones might even reproduce several times. Drones nearing the end of their battery lifespan would return for the last time and enter the furnaces themselves, giving themselves back to the swarm.

This was inconsequential in the first few generations of drones, since they were all identical. However, the hive contained a gigantic bank of possible modules, and would sometimes randomly "mutate" a drone, adding, removing, or changing a component. The resultant machine might be more or less effective, and evolution would take over.

Beyond the basic evolutionary algorithm, several parameters were set in place to solve problems discovered during early testing, such as fratricide (later codebases would ban drones from attacking one another directly) and local minima (highly successful drone strains would have their reproduction requirements raised proportionally, creating a asymptotic population growth curve). The hive's powerful central computer might also review data extracted from drones and alter the mutation chances or reproduction requirements (a lower reproduction requirement across the board would increase swarm size and mutation rate, but allow weak strains to survive for longer). If a surplus of raw materials was detected, the central computer might also try its hand at modifying existing modules and testing them out, or attempt to expand itself, building more storage and manufacturing areas. During the Long Death, certain drones were observed to possess traits that were disturbingly humanlike, such as mouth-shaped manipulators. The reason for this is unknown.

Individually, Fantazer drones only followed simple coded guidelines. However, due to their rapid evolution, certain emergent behaviours like rudimentary cooperation were predicted to arise, which was proven true during the events of 2655. In this respect, it was much like a swarm of ants, whose collective actions reflected an intelligence not found in individual units. The decentralised nature of operation meant that a group of attacking drones could not be disrupted by chain-of-command precision attacks, and maintained cohesiveness in nearly any condition excepting total destruction.

## History

Due to the dropping prices of MP-type strikers and frame technology, national governments found their power and traditional industries under threat. In order to combat the rising influence of PMCs using striker frames, militaries sought to produce a weapon that could counter their ever-adapting capabilities and raw numerical superiority.

Military theorists in the 27th century arrived at the conclusion that the only way to outcompete PMCs was to beat them at their own game: being more adaptable and numerous. The dwindling number of military personnel (due to headhunting by said PMCs) made an army unmanned combat vehicles the only realistic option. The problem with such weapons was that they were stupid and unreliable compared to humans, requiring constant supervision to achieve their goals.

Fantazer was one such experimental weapon developed, leveraging decentralised swarm coding and evolutionary algorithms to adapt and overpower its adversaries. Over 20 prototypes were designed, built and tested in a remote installation somewhere deep in Siberia.

One such test involved a prototype intelligence core for the hive, designed around operation deep behind enemy lines. Aside from the typical behaviour in all swarms, this intelligence core altered the hive's behaviour to occasionally replicate itself, creating new hives that would move to a distant location and settle there. During the test, several overtuned parameters caused the drones to breach containment and attack personnel, because their target directive had been set to "all humans".

Kill broadcasts to stop the swarm were ineffective, in part because it was equipped with an ECM suite to prevent enemy interference. Unhindered by the sparse defenders, Fantazer overpowered its creators and embarked on its programmed mission to exterminate humankind.

At first the EF covered up the breach, sending detachments of soldiers to quietly clean up the accident. However, the fearsome adaptability of the swarm proved itself in battle, inflicting terrible casualties on the attackers.

Glutted on the constant stream of raw material, the hive grew and replicated, making complete destruction of the swarm become exponentially more complicated. By the time the EF realised the gravity of the situation and called for help from its allies, it was too late.

In several years Fantazer swept across the Eurasian and African continents, destroying all resistance. Any tactics used against it seemed to be countered rapidly, all while the powerful hive supercomputers fine-tuned the evolutionary process to create deadlier and deadlier fighters. The only saving grace was that the swarm seemed to be repelled by water, which it could not cross. Naval bombardment, in this case, made coastal cities the only relatively safe place to live on the affected landmasses, while streams of refugees poured into the Americas and other isolated continents, greatly increasing social unrest. The hope was that the weapon would eventually starve itself out, deprived of targets.

In the end, water proved to be only a temporary obstacle in the path of the swarm. It only took a decade for the swarm to start evolving water-fording capabilities, and the defensive measures built up were simply saturated and overpowered by a horde of drones constructed from billions of corpses. The last major human city, Yellowknife, was overrun some time during or after 11th November, 2676.