Brought to you by FF14 6.0

[yvannairie]

(Now available on Tumblr)

The more I think about it, the more the shape the way the Cybertronian species has developed and is still evolving emerges as three quarters software service development, one quarter "intelligent design by an unintelligent designer".

Mecha are a part of the self-repair and self-management systems of the planet-sized being known as Primus -- they serve a variety of functions alongside other bodily functions, but primarily they're intended to maintain their own population and living environment, as well as help with the circulation of resources like specific metals and Energon, in more fast-acting ways than the geological timescale of Primus' other bodily functions. Unlike mechafauna and mechaflora, which are fairly simple in construction, mecha themselves need to be able to self-evolve and get better at their duties, especially since many of them pertain to the well-being of the whole planet, which is why the glorified white cells/gut flora of Primus are sophisticated enough to be sapient and have their own society.

Naturally, Primus needs a method to correct for misbehavior. The first one is just straight-up communication -- everyone involved being mechanical, there's plenty of electromagnetic radiation going on. Primus can straight-up listen in to what is going on om Cybertron, although mutual communication is complicated by the differences in scale and comprehension. Mecha figured this out very early into their existence, seeing as sometimes praying about things affected change on the world.

The second way is through spark migration. Energon is an exotic material that has a variety of phases and states, including an ability to encode information in its internal structure. This information is used by mecha frames to fulfill a multitude of functions, but it's also used to retrieve more granular information back to the source as a part of their life cycle, or through the management of spent Energon on a societal level. By examining the retrieved Energon, Primus can analyse the state of the mech's systems and mental state and their evolution over time, and use this to selectively introduce or reintroduce traits into the next batch of sparks it produces. This ways innovations added as upgrades on living mecha may end up natural features of future sparks, sometimes even during their lifetime.

Primus and the species can sometimes even work cross-purposes. A good example is how the total amount of war frames had been steadily going down as a percentage of the population post-Quintesson War, which led to the societal emergence of the enforcer class as a way to bolster the security forces of the government.

Comments

[sexytronians]

Ooh! I like this it’s a really interesting concept and I love Cybertron being one big organism like that.
So is there something specific mechafauna and mechaflora do for Primus/Cybertron as a system?

[yvannairie]

Yeah, Cybertron vacuums up space debris as it moves around the cosmos, and a lot of the automaton species exist to manage the buildup and convert it to useful materials, as well as manage the populations of other automaton species. The majority are also powered by Energon, like scraplets and their bigger, subterranean tunneler cousin species (actually, the kind of scraplet that primarily eats living metal is a hostile mutation, and usually scraplets will only go after deactivated Energon or poor-in-Energon mixture metals) as well as dust grazers that pulverise non-metal materials to release trace Energon from them.

There's also lots of filter fauna like skyfish (clear air from dust to keep the static electricity around the planet from getting out of control) and various mechanical plants that draw resources from the soil to purify them. Some of the oldest Energon crystal deposits are basically the corpses of absolutely huge automaton flora that have completely sucked up all the Energon from all around their root system and grown dense crystalline "flowers" from it. A minority of species are also living generators where they'll make new or enrich spent Energon thanks to their own turbines or solar panels.

[sexytronians]

This sounds awesome and I can really visualise what Cybertron could look like. So is the hostile mutation a naturally occurring thing like the planet equivalent of an autoimmune disorder? Or did the society of gut flora decide to mess with things they shouldn’t?

Just out of interest have you heard of Wayne Barlow’s Expedition? Not saying ‘this idea reminds me of X!’ In that way but whenever folks world build alien planets I wonder if they’ve heard of this book.

[yvannairie]

I've heard of Expedition! You're not the first one to recommend it to me through comparison, which I should probably take as a sign XD there is a kind of worldbuilding through logical inference that forms a niche in SFS that I really enjoy, but I always feel like whenever a thing is billed as an example of it, they're never... quite as satisfying as I want them to be. I want to be immersed in foreign rules and come to understand them through exploration of their ramifications.

Also, there has probably always been some scraplets that are specifically carrion eaters, targeting dead or grievously injured mecha, that have been used for body disposal in areas where constructing sufficient foundries has been impossible (or, y'know, if you're doing crimnal activities). I think, though, that most of the "official" breeding of scraplets was focused on producing more beneficial starands, like ones that could be used to strip paint, clean rust and other corrosion from severe injuries, or to clean fresh welds from slag in a gentler way. It's entirely possible that medical research also produced the hostile strands, but it would take a very mad scientist to create flying piranhas that specifically like living metal, y'know?