Difference between revisions of "Delver"
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
→History: Added information on the ancient delver
(→Safeguards: apparent typo fix, 'proscribe' means prohibit.) |
(→History: Added information on the ancient delver) |
||
| (7 intermediate revisions by 6 users not shown) | |||
|
|books=[[Skyward (series)]]
}}
{{spoilers|sky3}}
{{update|sky3}}
{{quote
|Ancient things stirred. And in that moment between heartbeats, they not only saw me, but they '''knew''' me.
}}
Delvers are incapable of most emotions; rather, they reflect all that they sense outside.{{book ref|sky2|44}} This being said, they can hear and perceive any intrusion into the [[nowhere]]. It appears to cause them immense pain; as such, they utterly despise cytonics, and grow more hateful the longer one holds their attention.{{book ref|sky2|31}}{{book ref|sky1|48}} Extreme and prolonged cytonic "screaming" can and will cause them to transition to the physical world in an attempt to quiet it down.{{book ref|sky2|40}} [[Superiority]] scholars speculate that a species needs to develop particularly skilled or powerful cytonics for delvers to pay attention.{{book ref|sky2|10}}
Once delvers leave the nowhere, they can also hear radio communications, which causes the same hateful reaction in them. They perceive both types of signals as noise, making them grow aggressive and go after the strongest source in vicinity.{{book ref|sky2|43}} When they are done, or otherwise run out of targets, delvers will roam outer space for anywhere between several years to several decades before fading back to nowhere.{{book ref|sky2|10}}
The chief safeguard, maintained both by the people of [[Detritus]] and by the [[Superiority]], is to abandon all but the most crucial cytonic abilities and technologies, and surrounding inhabited spaces with '''cytoshields''', which clamp down on and limit cytonic activity. Cytonic communications have likewise been abandoned, and radio usage is greatly limited, with cables replacing it where possible.{{book ref|sky2|10}}{{book ref|sky2|11}} Artificial intelligence has been banned, and in the present times, AIs are regarded with fear by the people of the Superiority.{{book ref|sky2|45}} However, it seems that, much like few scattered cytonics don't pose a threat, lone AIs are capable of functioning without drawing the delvers' ire.{{book ref|sky2|55}}
The one cytonic technology still widely in use is FTL travel; to maintain it without delvers coming through, the Superiority uses [[taynix]], a non-sapient species of cytonic slugs, as a distraction.{{book ref|sky2|34}} However, in the years since the last delver had vanished, places such as Starsight have come to once more rely on wireless communications, posing a major risk when one reemerges and targets them.{{book ref|sky2|42}}
It is unclear how effective many of the safeguards are against delvers. FTL travel and reckless use of AI are known to ''summon'' a delver; however, cytonic and wireless communication may only attract a delvers presence once it has entered the physical universe.
== History ==
===Ancient Delvers===
According to Spensa's second vision on the Path of Elders{{book ref|sky3|24}}, an alien species with access to advanced technology created a "beast" which wiped out the majority of the pre-Write cytonics before being defeated, causing a long period of isolation that cut off most races from each other and causing humanity to forget about the existence of cytonics until their rediscovery by Jason Write. In the vision, this "beast" appeared similar to a delver (shining white eyes in a featureless blackness), but it is unknown how similar it was to modern delvers.
=== First appearance ===
}}
Delvers are artificial intelligence that went into the nowhere and evolved to a higher form. However, many of the AI at first only experienced emotions over a period of days when their creator, Jason Wright, died. With the pain overloading the mind and not understanding how to deal with any sort of emotion, they expelled all memories and personality to copy themselves over and over to avoid any sort of pain whatsoever.{{book ref|sky3|41}}
The first known appearance of a delver occurred during the second of the [[
In total, thirteen delvers emerged into the physical world. They rampaged throughout the galaxy for the next few decades, destroying world after world, before eventually fading away one by one. From then on out, however, they were a constant presence in the [[nowhere]], observing all visitors. For this reason, [[Superiority]], as well as human enclaves, drastically cut down on the use of cytonics and wireless communication, so as to avoid drawing them in again.{{book ref|sky2|10}}
== Notes ==
<references />
{{
{{Skyward}}
| |||