Tanathian - Culture, Places, and Technology

The Tanathian origin world was called "Vola" (also known as Dhust). It was on this world that the Tanathian race - a human civilization - grew from infancy to greatness. We know little of this world, or what it was like. In fact, even the name won't appear often in the story, there are few who know it or have uncovered much of anything about the Tanathians, so consider much of what is in this section as reference material that won't be revealed in the novels (or at least not for a while).

The Tanathians weren't perfect. They didn't have a utopia, but they worked hard to come close. Their government structure was semi-democratic, involving the election of an Emperor by representatives elected by the general population according to districts. The Emperor served a term of five years, and was typically re-elected. The rest of the government was separated into Ministries, each with a specific duty, and each ruled by Ministers appointed by the Emperor.

From the perspective of the story, the most important thing about the Tanathians Empire is their technology, specifically skeins. The Tanathians had no spacecraft, per se.

Ard and the Stavelgaev
I have a mechanical golem made by an ancient group of mages who transferred their souls into the bodies of golems to become immortal. They built more machines and sent them to wipe out humanity. (Note - this is not Earth and these are not Terminators). To construct each golem, they enslaved warriors and took the minds of one hundred apart (mentally) to built the personalities of their killing machines. Then then infused them into rune-stacks and placed them into the bodies of these machines and sent them out. Eventually, the mages fell to fighting among themselves, and betrayed each other, causing their downfall. Most of the battle golems were destroyed, and the lore that created them was forbidden.

The use of mechanical golems (robots) plays a key role in parts of the story, specifically the first book and the continuation trilogy. There was once an organization of SpellBinders in Metrian history (many Obliterations ago) called "The Ascendant." There were nine of them, and they wanted to rule the world. Good intentions and all that. They wanted to end the warfare between the kingdoms and establish an organized world rule where everyone could live in peace. They built golems for themselves first, and put their minds and souls into these machines, becoming essentially immortal. Afterwards, they came to the conclusion that human life was inferior, and decided to bestow the "gift" of their existence on the rest of humanity. Of course, the other humans weren't so much interested in giving up their bodies, but that didn't matter to the Ascendant. They understood the reluctance, but knew their transformation would be accepted eventually, so they forced it upon humanity and built an army of golems called the Stavelgaev. Because the Stavelgaev were intended for war and had to be brutal, they took from the cities they captured the most deviant murderers and killers from the prisons and rendered their minds and souls, using them to construct the Stavelgaev mentalities. They then set these machines on the remaining humans.

Fortunately, for humanity, the Ascendant disagreed on certain points - mainly the complete annihilation of all living humans, and also the suffering they were imposing in their attempts to transform humanity. They fell to fighting among themselves, and the Ascendant fractured into factions. In the end, they weakened themselves enough for the human resistance to beat them down. Ever since then, it's been a law in almost all the governments of Minth that golems will never be created for war. This is all history, of course, and backstory, but it's the origin of the one remaining Stavelgaev named Ard who shows up in the first book.

Fifteen thousand years later, I have one stored in a royal armory. It was modified by some SpellBinder at some point so that it must obey the orders of the person that reads a key set of ciphers. And, in order to stop an indestructible enemy, the Constable that guards that armory is convinced by a Militia Colonel (who can't get there in time to engage the enemy himself) to reactivate the golem and use it to stop this "indestructible enemy" from escaping.

Now, due to the manipulations of another entity, there are another set of ciphers that were created. These ciphers free the golem from the first set - allowing it to function on its own again. And these ciphers are now in the hands of an arrogant noble that has taken charge of the situation from the Constable. Obviously, he's going to read these ciphers to the golem, thinking that they will give him control over it (which is what he was told by someone else).

Now, once the golem is free, I'm wondering at its motives. What I want it to do is kill everyone, and that makes sense when you consider that it's previous function was to wipe out humanity. But its creators are gone, and it's not just a machine - they couldn't make something this complex from scratch, so they built it out of the minds of people. What is the motive for this thing? If freed, why not just leave? Why fight the humans at all?

Building Ard

The process of extracting the minds was intended to be painful and horrifying. Although, up until now, the creature has been very lucid and rational, although also arrogant and disrespectful. It obeys, but it obviously doesn't want to. And it's started asking questions - obvious ones - like who is in charge of this world now, how does this country defend itself, what are the borders, what weaponry do they employ, that kind of thing.

So far, it seems like one mind is in there, but with the skill of a hundred warriors, so I wonder about the personality constructed from them. A combination of interests and motives, perhaps, all that have to mesh. Maybe there's a governor of some kind that forces the pieces to work together?

One of the things the Ascendant did was to give their creations an intelligence and awareness so that it would be tormented by its actions.

I don't see the 100 being "whole" minds, but rather fragments. So, say, the talent for acrobatic skills is taken from one person, the talent for axe throwing is taken from another, the talent for sizing up an enemy is taken from another, the talent for instinctively dodging in the right direction is taken from another, the talent for projectile accuracy is taken from another, etc... etc...

Other aspects would also be aggressiveness, bravery, self-reliance, verbal communication, and any of the emotional balance the creators of creature would have wanted. They didn't have any problem creating the machine, and they could piece together the mind, but the mind itself was too complex for them. They couldn't make it, but they could take many of them apart and build one - like Frankenstein's monster, but not physical, psychological. The resulting composite personality was constructed through extraction methods, combined, and then burned into rune stacks using a three-dimensional binding press. This isn't something the people of Minth could do today - the technology was far more advanced in the past.

Yes, it may want to be obliterated. I thought of that, and I like the idea, but it doesn't fit the story line. I kind of need it to kill everyone. The thing is, this one wasn't destroyed for a reason - which I never explained in the story - so it's left open ended. But, originally, the reason was that the SpellBinder tasked with destroying these golems found this one to have the potential to grow into something more than it was - it had a shred of compassion left in its personality. So the SpellBinder didn't destroy it, but instead altered its rune stack. And because he wanted to give the golem a chance, eventually, he created a second set of ciphers that would free it entirely.

Now, I have this entity that is fighting a war with my ArchMage across time. She could very well have gone back and tainted the SpellBinder's work. So that's an option - although how I'd fit that in the story at this point is beyond me. I guess I could give the golem a flashback scene when the second set of ciphers is read to it.

I assume that a certain percentage of the warriors used to construct the mind would have been psychotic to begin with - chosen for that very reason. I'm also thinking that a governor system would have been in place to maintain obedience. When the second set of ciphers is read - freeing the golem - that governor would be eliminated or deactivated or suppressed in some way. The SpellBinder that modified the stack had that in mind - to allow the golem to evolve on its own once it was ready. What were his reasons for doing that? I originally thought it could be pity for the mentality, mercy on his part, and perhaps some faith that a mind such as this could grow beyond what it currently was.

Once freed of the governor, the psychosis would be unleashed and no longer constrained to obey anything except its own desires. At the same time, there will be rational portions of the mind that are going to be thinking about the future, trying to determine what it wants to do. It has the chance for a clean start at this point. If it chooses not to kill all the guardsmen, it could find a place in this society and work for them as a free agent - bargain with them. There would still be opportunity to kill, but it would be the enemies of its allies. Right now, it has no allies. But if it slaughters everyone and takes off, it will be hunted, and it would know this. Maybe the psychosis is too strong to overcome, and it succumbs to its desire to slaughter. Or maybe it kills first, slaughtering those closest, and then halts to consider and is willing to bargain? If it is willing to bargain, what will it want? A place for itself, perhaps? Allies that it can leverage? Or will it want to leave through the skein? There's a way off this planet right there waiting for it. It could go anywhere. Would it bargain for that?

Controlling Ard

At first, Ard can't do anything it isn't told to do by the character that read it the first set of ciphers. But it is a battle golem. It was made to kill humans, and when asked about how many it had killed in the past, it gave a number in the 200K range. It's already armed with thermal, spacial, ectoplasmic, and sonic weapons, so is quite capable of obliterating an army all on its own. It doesn't need to be subtle.

The Constable was told to use it by a Colonel who wants to stop a man that appears to be indestructible (a traitor that has attacked a couple different cities, and used to be a General in the King's Air Corps). Believing that the traitor was trying to escape this world through a skein, and unable to get there in time to stop him, the Colonel ordered the Constable to unlock the royal armory in his town. The armories are caches of ancient weaponry placed there by the ruling family of this kingdom several generations back. The Constable's job is to guard the armory, not use it, but the Colonel convinces him that it's the only way to stop this indestructible traitor (who isn't actually going there, but the Constable doesn't know that). So now the Constable is there with the golem and three platoons of his guardsmen, which his when the son of the Regent shows up and takes over. He has another agenda entirely - stopping the mage that he thinks has beguiled his girlfriend from leaving through the skein and taking her off planet. He has the second set of ciphers, and if the mage refuses to give up the girl he loves, then he'll read the ciphers to the golem intending to unleash it on the mage, while he grabs the girl and runs.

Of course, the ciphers don't actually give him control over the golem like he thinks it will. Instead it frees the golem to act of its own volition.

The plot is pretty layered right now. There are multiple sets of characters who all believe different things, and the mage is the only one that knows everything that is going on because he's done this before many times in other timelines. But the golem is a surprise - something new that he's never encountered before, and he's going to know the second he sees it that his enemy (the big-big bad) has intercepted him here.

The stack is stored in a metal cube that's also the main power source. The golem itself (the body) was found without the cube. The Constable and his sons had to put the cube into the golem, which was at that point something like a big pile of metal leaves with a cube-shaped indentation on top. It's not like a normal mechanical golem - it was built using technology from the past that was very advanced. Once the cube was in place and the ciphers were read, it was able to self-assemble back into a human-shaped form (albeit one of metal and glowing lights). It then informed Laird - the one who read the ciphers - that it was constrained to obey him until he died, at which point it would hibernate again until someone else read it the ciphers. (A fact that was very interesting to Laird's corrupt older brother).

Ard's History

Agreed, there are always a lot of variables in my stories, which is why I seldom complete them and why I've been rewriting this trilogy for the last three years (and trying not to give up so that I'll actually complete one).

How much does it remember of the war? I would say everything until it was deactivated. How was it deactivated? Now that's a good question - I haven't even thought about it. The machine is lethal, but its creators must have had some control over it. I would guess that the humans that defeated the Ascendant also learned how they controlled their machines and used that to shut them down. After that, most of them were destroyed, but you know how humans are. A few greedy monarchs, hungry for power, will have stored the Stavelgaev (that's the name for this type of battle golem). Additionally, SpellBinders would want to study them and learn from them, so I would imagine a few more may have been kept around and taken apart.

This one, in particular, found its way into the hands of the Metrian monarchy and was kept by the King about three generations back. (The Cordvins established this kingdom about eight generations ago, and one of the Metrian Kings was worried about invasion from other worlds, so he established the Royal Armories and horded ancient weapons in case his forces needed them). The armory that this one existed in was close to the skein - which is like the gate between different realms that's managed by the Wu. When the son of the Regent discovered this, he revealed his suspicions that the Cordvins stashed the Stavelgaev here as a last-ditch measure. It wasn't intended to save them from invasion, but rather to avenge them if there were no other hope left. It's something that could be unleashed on an enemy, and even though it can be controlled through the first set of ciphers, that wasn't the Cordvin's intention. The second set were left there so that if the Kingdom were wiped out by invasion, they could plague their destroyers with the golem.

So far, since it's been reactivated, it's been fairly passive and willing to obey orders, but it obviously considers humans to be lesser creatures and refers to them as "mortals" and speaks with something akin to pride when it talks about how it killed so many of them. It's also insulting at times, inferring that whatever tactics its new owners might consider in deploying it, they will be primitive and rudimentary in comparison to how it would operate on its own. And it's asked questions about its new environment - the ones you'd expect. What has happened while it's been deactivated? (It refers to that as hibernation and "retirement."). What kingdoms now rule this world? How many other Stavelgaev remain? That sort of thing. It also told them that another set of ciphers existed that would remove impediments preventing it from using its full arsenal and give it greater power to strike against enemies. In short, I've included a lot of hints that reading the second set of ciphers would be a bad thing.

But I'm troubled when I think of its mentality. It may be a machine, but it has human psychology. Given that, I wonder if it isn't thinking about its own future. What purpose is there in killing humans? Its creators no longer exist. It faces a potentially limitless future. Did it ever have a reason to kill beyond the orders of its master and the instincts of those minds that were used to construct it? Is there a piece in there that's thinking about what it's going to do? Is it lonely? Does it want something more out of its existence?

Maybe thinking about this is a moot point. I do plan on it attacking them, after all, that's why it's in the story. That's why I've prefaced it with such foreboding. But I wonder what will happen to it if it's not destroyed. And sometimes I think some of these questions are also one's that Laird should be asking. He's the "scholar" of the family. He should be thinking about it.

Ard's Technology

The technology used to build Ard was designed to last for hundreds of thousands of years. Some of that technology (such as the skeins) is still in use. But it can be corrupted under the right circumstances. Tanathian rune-stacks, in general, are pretty static objects and built with a lot of redundancy, but they can still be damaged by lightning or intense heat.

Given that the golem's mind is operating as a neural network that was originally biological and mapped to algorithms that control Ka flow in bound metal, there will certainly be repair mechanisms built into them. I would suspect that's what's kept much of the Tanathian artifacts operating all these millennium. It's more about the "software" than the "hardware." The hardware might become flawed, but the software contains instructions for repairing it. This wouldn't be possible with mudane technology on our world, but Ka can alter physics - that's what it does. So having routines for checking for damaged sections and restoring them is probably why Tanathian artifacts are still around and in operation. Few cultures have figured out how all of it even works, and only a couple of races have learned how to build their own skeins.

But the Stavelgaev weren't built by the Tanathians. They were built by the Ascendant, and though the Ascendant knew much of the Tanathian lore, they didn't know anywhere close to all of it. So the potential for corruption is still there, and I may use it if the situation warrants, although I'm not sure what form it would take.