What is Aeternum? - Stellaris Lore

my lords I'm pleased to report our recent Espionage operations have proven most successful we have stolen several data packets that allude to the discovery of an eighth recursor race this Empire is designated simply as eternium or the eternite forerunners if the reports are true they are incredibly technologically advanced occupying space within the galactic core and they reside upon something called a birch world in this report I shall attempt to detail who or what they are their history and why they appear to have stagnated their technological abilities and their intentions if they have any moving forward to start with what are the eternium to put it simply the eternites I.E the people of the eternium are artificial in design but nevertheless organic it appears that after many centuries of genetic manipulation once Gene modding became Advanced enough to allow for proper Xeno compatibility and appearance editing they effectively had the ability to become whatever they wanted often to Outsiders they resemble bluish humanoids with particularly large heads it appears that this is merely a sort of default appearance dawned by what few individuals still interact with the rest of the Galaxy a termites instead have no actual preset appearance as Millennia of extensive genetic engineering and interbreeding with countless species that are simulated into their civilization mean that the eternites can essentially look like anything they want to appearances thus range from humanoids to all sorts of shapes often inspired by the many species subjugated and integrated into their civilization as well as Fantastical and entirely custom appearances mimicking creatures such as Fierce dragons or other mythological beasts however unlike some of the other Intergalactic species we're aware of such as the blockouts the eternites are not made out of nanites or smart matter and thus while acquiring a brand new appearance is certainly possible and commonly undertaken by many individuals such appearance modifications require specialized Gene editing devices and cannot be undertaken on a whim or at a mere thought the actual species from which the original eternites evolved is known as the vidaries humanoids that were gifted with latent soundic capabilities while this appearance has long since been diluted and is no longer prevalent within the eternite society some individuals still bear such a look as a homage to their original Origins although they are extremely long-lived the eternites are not technically Immortal and usually pass on after living for approximately 10 000 years while they can theoretically extend their lifespans further by transferring their souls into a new mechanical or biological body many eternites choose simply to accept death once their time has come often having lived a long and entertaining lives of hedonism there are a few however who utterly refuse to let their own lives end and prolong them by transferring their Consciousness in the aforementioned ways with the oldest of them having witnessed the eterniums Fall From Grace but more on that later despite this the vast majority of eternites alive today have known nothing but stagnation and complacency the eternites which choose to allow themselves the Peace of death must undertake specific rituals in order to properly die due to the manner in which their psionic soul technology operates this involves the use of specialized devices to fling their deceased Soul far into the shroud this is done as the eternium psionic infused Machinery uses souls to operate equally eternites might choose to let their soul merge with their psionic Network itself essentially becoming one with their Technologies eternium society and history while once animated by a burning drive to push the boundaries of their civilization ever further a termite society as of today can best be described as somewhat sluggish and dismissive yet still remarkably imaginative their Homeworld aeondia houses quintillions of inhabitants and they live in complete utopian abundance within the Birch world's automated Manufacturing Systems which provides them with everything they may desire as such every individual alternates is essentially free to do whatever they wish whether that be spending centuries playing perfectly immersive virtual entertainment software undertaking fanciful experiments and projects author taking in vast celebrations alongside countless of their peers or even just pumping themselves full of Happiness inducing chemicals in order to live in Endless Bliss there is no need for any of these actions to be productive in the slightest as the eternites themselves are not actually required to run their civilization thanks to most of their administrative apparatus and maintenance systems being almost entirely managed by Advanced automated AI systems despite the abundance of resource interestingly a class structure remains there appears to be a small upper class of dedicated to turnites overseeing everything and ensuring it all functions smoothly even if this only involves checking that readings are nominal every few decades and writing down errors and anomalies without necessarily taking action to fix these anomalies we have my lords a mostly complete history of the eternium detailed Within These data crystals I should note that the time scales are difficult to translate and as such the dates are somewhat approximated the vidaris ancient ancestors to the eternites and the future Builders of the eternium evolved in the Northern parts of a sub-temperate forest known as Kuai matala as with many other species they first acquired sapiens then formed small hunter-gatherer tribes approximately 1.2 million years ago before eventually inventing writing and establishing a civilized society unlike Earth their Homeworld featured several other Sapient species who evolved alongside one another which formed into a myriad of different nation-states and Empires thanks to their latent psionics the vidaris found themselves gifted not with Incredible psionic strength but rather with a sort of innate Clairvoyance which made them capable of sensing the potential consequence of Any Given action although it might first appear to be an incredible Boon this ability remained generally inaccurate with different individuals often given slightly different predictions which often would end up conflicting leading to countless Wars and conflicts most often revolving around whose Clairvoyance was the most accurate of them all the vidaris thus stayed disunited for several Millennia never truly managing to come together as a species and often struggling to progress due to their society never really finding a good balance between blindly following their Clairvoyance and disregarding it as inaccurate we speculate that this would have likely LED them to spend too much time and effort focusing on their potential future as opposed to properly dealing with present issues however approximately two hundred thousand years later a particularly Keen vidaris known as zyriel took leadership of one of the many nations unlike what one might expect zyriel's leadership was not caused by her being a more powerful psionic but rather by the fact she was not a psionic at all this was a remarkably rare mutation less than one in a billion of vidaries were not psionic in some manner but ironically a lacking a constant future sight allowed her to properly focus on the present and many problems at hand most notably an energy crisis which was discovered to be being caused by the slight dimming of Kuai tamala's star in order to enhance her leadership abilities zarya surrounded herself with some of the greatest psionics her Nation had to offer and used them to more accurately sense the outcome of her own decisions such a practice was very rarely done within the dairy society as most of them were unwilling to trust any judgment other than their own but zario's lack of Clairvoyance meant that she could assess the predictions of multiple psionics in a much more level-headed and unbiased fashion zariel's first task was to resolve the looming energy crisis she spearheaded the Development and Construction of revolutionary fusion-based reactors granting her State an undeniable Edge over the rest of the vadarius nation and allowing her to eventually unify her species through sheer economic and political dominance this resulted in the establishment of the vidarius Imperium a powerful state that spanned much of their homeworld's northernmost land mass wishing to push her success further she then led the Imperium to unify politically with neighboring species through cunning diplomatic maneuvering most notably of all pine species which had enjoyed extremely good relations with the vidaris and whose appearance was seen as very Charming by most of the imperium's population these factors led to an easy integration into the dairy Society however knew that integrating all of her home planet species into a singular state was unlikely to be feasible and thus she conducted extensive research into the field of Gene editing in order to make it possible for multiple species to merge with one another through genetic modification and crossbreeding eventually hoping to completely dissolve the barrier between different species and integrate all of them into a singular or encompassing super species this ambitious Endeavor was successfully undertaken between the vidaris and the volpine neighbors within mere decades had meshed together to such an extent that it became extremely difficult to tell which species an individual was actually descended from without looking into their accurate genealogy records envisioning that this super species would eventually transcend the concept of a species altogether and ultimately become eternal zyriel officially dubbed this super species the eternize and renamed the Imperium into the eternium names which would indeed last for over a million years zarya was then crowned as the first Empress of eternium during a lavish celebration in the nation's capital intended to eventually serve as a veritable Melting Pot for all of their Planet species eternium was able to take over the rest of the planet within only a few decades this was done in a similar manner to the unification of her own people little Warfare was required the eternian became a resource-producing Powerhouse other nations were requesting to join rather than have their hands forced furthermore her council's psionic abilities were augmented by increasingly powerful artificial intelligences used to assist in predicting which of the several Futures were likely to come to pass vast hexagonal mega cities were constructed across the planet each was specialized towards a specific purpose and powered by individual Fusion reactors these cities would eventually become a symbol of zarya's relentlessly efficient leadership within a short time the planet was totally United and this would set the stage for eternium's eventual path towards Galactic domination Alice the first and Galactic unification shortly after achieving planetary unification zyriel who by this point was well over 100 years old asked on although she was given the opportunity through her breakthroughs in gene editing to extend her life she ultimately decided to let go and allow her people to step onto the galactic stage under a new leader her daughter Alice Alice crowned as Alice the first was given the title of Empress of the eternium in a great ceremony that saw her crowned in front of billions of eternites but the relatively young Alice we estimate her to only have been around 30 at the time of her coronation the task at hand was monumental a mother had transformed their species from Petty warring Nations into the Space Age civilization that they were today and Alice set out to try and live up to her mother's Legacy by any means necessary the first step on this journey was The Taming of their local star system as her mother had shown Alice she was well aware that the key to their civilization's success was ensuring its access to a steady and renewable energy source but why bother building expensive Fusion reactors when there was a gargantuan one sitting just over an astronomical unit away over the next few decades Alice thus undertook the complete dismantlement of the rocky planet closest to her Homeworld sun and using swarms of exponentially expanding mining robots and utilizing the acquired materials to progressively construct a colossal solar array capable of harvesting wondrous amounts of energy from the star that's providing the eternites with a limitless supply of clean energy this solar array was nicknamed a Dyson swarm shortly after the project was completed Alice began deeper forays into the nature of psionics as the merging of dozens of different species into the eternites had led to some most peculiar results the innate vidari's Clairvoyance had began to disappear having only been retained by a few individuals of pure vidari's descent however like her mother Alice had made sure to keep these psionics close to her while a myriad of other seemingly random abilities began to manifest within a large part of eternium's population a multitude of theories attempting to explain the nature of sionics quickly sprang up and thanks to their research being bolstered by the Limitless supply of clean energy eternium would eventually establish a proper theory on the nature of psionics and begin to delve into the shroud this change in the fundamental understanding of psionics fueled by a further change in eternium technology as Alice began a program of incorporation to include as much psionic potential into their society as she could as part of this program extensive gene therapy was undertaken to progressively awaken the full psionic potential of all eternites while early prototypes for vast psionically imbued hyper-computers were also designed with the hope to replicate vidari's clavoyance zionics had provided the eternites a relative bouncing technology and this resulted in psionic jump drives being invented fabricated and fitted to ships before even the hyperlane network had been fully discovered contact with other space-faring nations came quickly and eternum found itself within an already very active Galactic Community spanning across most of the Galaxy trade quickly led to further technological advancements including full FTL capabilities thanks to their heavy investments into psionics and the energy they continued to harvest from their local system star the eternites began slow but steady technological and economic advancement into that of a galactic Contender despite their relatively late arrival onto the galactic scene Alice herself underwent regular psionic healing therapies combined with an introduction of advanced cybernetic enhancement and gene therapy in order to drastically increase her lifespan with the overall intention to make herself effectively immortal alongside this she reaffirmed the absolute centralization of eternium system of governance around herself and thus ensured the stability of her Empire as it grew larger and larger with her at its head decades and centuries of interstellar nation building followed Alessandra took a very proactive expansion policy settling as many worlds as possible and utilizing the advantage of her psionically capable super species in order to maintain her civilization's cohesion far beyond what a more traditional civilization would have been able to handle Alice utilized many of the political and economic subterfuges a mother had utilized in the prosperous unification of their Homeworld but this time on a galactic scale in order to vassalize more Galactic Nations into the Eternal sphere of influence Often by enticing them with the promise of psionic Awakenings should they join the super species after over four Millennia of Ruthless expansion the construction of dozens of energy producing megastructures and several Galactic scale Wars which pitted the eternites against several other Empires Alison managed to secure the eternium's hold over roughly half of the Galaxy a turnout population had now reached the quintillions and Incorporated thousands upon thousands of species from all over the Galaxy the remaining half of the Galaxy now consisted mostly of a plethora of primitive worlds and weak Galactic Nations who couldn't hope to ever contend with the eternium supremacy this Relentless exponential growth had enabled the eternium to access the riches of billions of star systems further reinforcing their Supremacy although Alice did not particularly indulge in the large-scale dismantling of celestial bodies for resource instead preferring to centralize most of her resource production around a few gargantuan o-class Stars exploited by Dyson spheres Stellar lifters and matrioska brains with eternium's dominance over most of the Galaxy all but secured Alice decided that it was time for eternium to fully cement its Galactic hegemony through the construction of a gig of structural engineering project which would fully prepare eternium for potential Intergalactic expansion construction of aeondia a birch world with the turnian's galactic dominance firmly entrenched and the galaxy outside the eternian sphere of influence being a little bit better than Primitives Alice turned her civilization's attention to what would be their greatest undertaking the construction of veondia a birch world my lords to deviate slightly a birchworld is so far beyond our current capabilities it's frankly laughable they have of course been theorized a birch world is a colossal artificial sphere roughly billions of kilometers in diameter at its heart lies a supermassive black hole and this provides both gravity and power to the world I intend to draw up a specific report on Birch worlds as it's a very intriguing topic but nevertheless back to the eternium design and construction of aeondia the soon to be Birch World began it was calculated that the black hole eternian wished to use was too small eternian briefly considered dumping Stars into the black hole in order to increase its mass but they instead undertook the large-scale manipulation of Dark Matter filaments surrounding the Galaxy and began to funnel them into the black hole this subsequently increased its mass to roughly 1 billion solar masses over a number of Millennia the construction of the actual shell which was to be 2 000 astronomical units in diameter with a surface gravity of roughly 0.5 G akin to their origin Homeworld again shortly afterwards but due to the difficulty of actually converting Dark Matter into baryonic matter eternium this time undertook the dismantlement of roughly a billion stars in order to acquire the necessary materials the dismantlement of these stars and the construction of aeondia took over 10 Millennia with much of eternium's Empire progressively moving to the Birch world as Construction progressed eternium also rearranged the star's surrounding iondia into a cluster of near-perfect hexagons a shape considered to be the symbol of their civilization furthermore they created other Giga structures these they designated hyper siphons which appeared to be able to funnel energy directly from the Shroud and now assisted the powering of the eternite civilization as well as several secondary megastructures such as planetary computers which were also built in close proximity to the Birch World in order to monitor construction and bolster its early development when the construction of aeondia was finally concluded Alice celebrated this momentous occasion through a great galaxy-wide ceremony that saw the official proclamation of eternium as the soul Galactic hegemony the crowning of Alice's Empress of the Galaxy and the supposed start of expansion into Intergalactic space while eternium retained an extensive presence in all four corners of their empire in the form of intelligence outposts and some megastructures much of the empire was moved to iondia for the sake of centralization eight vast mega cities were built around its surface positioned where the corners of an imaginary Cube inserted would be each specialized towards a specific purpose and intended to expand onto iondia's vast surface in order to meet the industrial needs of eternium's future Intergalactic Empire while aeondia only had a single layer it was fully intended for more layers to be eventually added as the Empire expanded the eternium's original Homeworld was depopulated before being returned to its natural state and eventually it was turned into somewhat of a holy pilgrimage site but all are termites to visit despite how far eternium had progressed Alice after several thousand years of rule was starting to wane just as her mother before her she felt it was time for someone else to steer the eternites towards the next chapter of their history following thorough deliberation within all layers of the eternium leadership as well as its populace Alice the first ultimately took the decision to follow in her mother's footsteps and once again asked on the mantle of leadership to her daughter and thus Alice's first and only daughter was officially crowned as empress of eternium during a grand ceremony taking on the name of her mother and becoming Alice II of eternium Alex herself decided to retire as a normal citizen within eternium in order to actually enjoy living in the Empire which she had created and would eventually pass away on her own accord approximately two centuries later Alice II and project divinity upon becoming Empress of eternium Alice II found herself faced with an incomprehensible pressure her grandmother zariel had conquered and United their Homeworld while her mother Alice had achieved near total Galactic Conquest thus Alice II felt as if her own destiny would be to realize the next logical step of eternium's History conquered the entirety of the known universe in the name of eternium as such she embarked upon bolstering the research design and construction of Intergalactic travel eternium would succeed with Intergalactic travel through a warp drive ship which would carry extremely powerful psionics Across The Intergalactic void who would through their combined Sonic potential drag a tendril of the Shroud towards another galaxy essentially creating a psionic highway which could then be crossed by by Sonic jump drives and regular telepathic communication Alice spearheaded the expansion of eternium into neighboring galaxies whose native civilizations could do little to stop the eternite advances while a few galaxies attempted to resist none of them were successful and eternium had already expanded to Encompass most of the local cluster within the next few Millennia they established vast colonies across dozens of galaxies Alice however feared that this attempt to keep moving forward and keep pushing into the known Galaxy could not reasonably be realized before she would inevitably start to feel both the mental and physical effects of age and exhaustion as it happened to her mother and grandmother the subsequent death of her mother confirmed Alice's Fizz and she began drawing up an ambitious project which would theoretically allow her to transcend the limits of her own physical body she aimed to achieve literal godhood dubbed project Divinity this relied on the artificial incubation of a colossal esoteric space-borne worm within a supermassive black hole this dragon-like worm which would be millions of kilometers in length was to possess tremendous psionic potential Alice would attempt to undertake the transfer of her own Consciousness into this being granting her not only immortality but also near infinite psionic power this would be sufficient to both single-handedly manage every aspect of eternium remotely as well as defeat any foes attempting to destroy her Empire the eternites on face value at least appeared to be generally on board with this idea believing that being led by an immortal Godlike Empress would surely bring their civilization to new heights while some predictive algorithms and a few of the remaining Clairvoyant eternites question the safety of this project Alice disregarded their concerns as suffering from a lack of ambition and vision it was decided that the worm was to be incubated inside a black hole and as such a birch world like shell was built around a black hole over the next few centuries it would twist and twirl the black hole's mangled space-time into the worm's embryo the incubation period lasted for roughly a millennium during which the eternium definitively cemented its hold over the local cluster and eagerly awaited the completion of project Divinity before moving on to further neighboring galaxies and thus several thousand years later following thorough preparation and countless safety checks the shell of the embryo finally began to crack quadrillions of eternites and most of their Galactic Fleet were present to witness the event alongside Alice herself who would immediately undertake the Consciousness transfer and thus Herald the next era in eternium's glorious history as the shell cracked and the worm unraveled eternium witnessed the wondrous sight of the Majestic worm now dubbed divinity Divinity had been designed to be the perfect organism blending a mix of psionics cybernetics and genetics into a singular god-like organism gifted with tremendous power however Divinity was perhaps too perfect as it emerged from its shell Divinity gained a sudden comprehension of its surroundings a comprehension on a level that was far beyond the Eternal its own understanding within mere fractions of a second Divinity knew and understood everything from its current Origins to the nature of its makers and most importantly its purpose Divinity understood that its current Consciousness was regarded as little more than an undesirable side effect to be overridden by Alice at its own birth where still it figured out that it would likely then be used to project a termite might Across the Universe in a crusade that would likely cause the deaths of countless innocent sapiens for the sake of Alice's own ambition while a turnout monitoring systems did notice the sudden spark of self-awareness it mattered not that Alice wasted no time uploading her Consciousness into divinity but it refused to accept her a turnout downfall divinity's Consciousness fought relentlessly against that of Alice in a Titanic Sonic battle deep within the Shroud itself the battle for survival came extremely close however Divinity ultimately emerged Victorious rejecting Alice and casting her Consciousness deep into the Shroud itself Divinity maddened by the hubris of its own makers then proceeded to turn on the eternium itself within mere seconds it utilized its psionic powers to fry the minds of all the eternites present while its gargantuan body thrashed the eternite vessels sending Grand planetary units smashing against one another as if these Mighty Celestial warships were a little more than mere marbles before eternium could mobilize the rest of its Force Divinity Delta blade that would shatter eternium it severed the Shroud tendrils that had been used for Intergalactic travel and ultimately cut off all of the colonies from one another the sudden collapse of these tendrils caused terrible psychic storms to emerge across the local cluster subsequently leading to the catastrophic failure of most if not all of the eternite technology across their shattered Empire Divinity however did not actually try to destroy the eternian Beyond this it deemed this sufficient punishment before ultimately departing and flying off into the depths of the universe eternium never learned of divinity's ultimate whereabouts but the runaway collapse of their entire Empire as well as the sudden death of their Empress meant that everything was incomplete disarray The Intergalactic colonies fell to starvation and Rebellion as societal order completely broke down due to technological failure only their Birch World itself iondia remained relatively spared from the cataclysm but the inhabitants were forever changed gone was their burning drive to conquer the universe replaced with a mix of hopelessness and apathy in regard to this terrible terrible disaster Alice II's daughter born right before the disastrous Divinity experiment ascended to the throne as Alice III and once the attorney government had managed to restructure itself a few decades later Alice III decreed eternium's complete withdrawal from The Wider Galaxy retreating with everything they possessed back to their Birch world within several Millennia little to no traces of eternium remained their colonies had either completely disappeared or collapsed back into various Stella Nations in stark contrast with her mother Alice III undertook the stabilization of what remained of a turnite civilization ultimately deciding The Intergalactic expansion was little more than a complete death trap she thus restructures eternium to ensure it would instead focus on providing Limitless entertainment to its remaining citizens while repurposing the few remaining warships to ward off any potential threats that may emerge in the future the hyperlanes leading to ayondia were disrupted while a Subspace shroud was established around the Birch world to prevent younger civilizations from attempting to jump into the core the Alice lineage carried on and while some of her descendants would occasionally attempt to undertake Awakenings try and restore some of their former glory they either lost interest or were ultimately stalemated back into the galactic core by the Galaxy's Myriad of Stellar Nations these Awakenings seem to have occurred roughly in a cycle for a hundred thousand years but now they appear to have halted entirely and thus We Believe eternium are likely still in the galactic core occupying their Birch World watching the Galaxy go by thanks for watching folks I hope you enjoyed a huge shout out to the team over at the gigastructural engineering mod and specific credit needs to be given to eloni the creator of the Google structure mod and Discord user Artemis 7261 who assisted with the law of the eternites if you want to learn more about gigastructure law specifically the blockouts please click the video on screen now

Channel: The Red King

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Keywords: stellaris lore, stellaris, stellaris gameplay, stellaris guide, stellaris tutorial, Stellaris lore, Red King, The Red King, Stellaris Stories, Stellaris lore stories, Stellaris Red King, gigastructure, gigastructural engineering origins, gigastructural engineering stellaris, stellaris gigastructures, stellaris gigastructural engineering, stellaris aeternum, stellaris aeternum intel, stellaris aeternum reddit, stellaris aeternum awakening, stellaris crisis lore, Precursor

Id: 3MiSG3ZnYhs

Length: 32min 57sec (1977 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 02 2023