Eye of Hathor Seeker of Ends and Beginnings

The Ancient Ones

The story as they tend to tell it is that they are Divinities that came to existence out of nothing and have always been.

In reality, the Ancients (or the handful of what’s left of them at least) are a warmongering species focused on having large empires and rivaling each other.
The parasites look like Gerridaes (TW: insect) and were originally creatures that lived in hot springs.
But with time and through parasitic means of influence, they extended their reach far beyond, and by stealing progress from other civilizations of their home planet they developed outside the bounds of it.
The name of the species that they used then and the name and place of their planet has been since long forgotten, and carefully erased from any of their memories.

The Modus operandi of those expanding empires is to use slaves as soldiers and workers.
They conquer inhabited planets and replace their lost slaves with new ones.
Another defining feature is their attachment to antique Egyptian imagery.

They share a species and a culture, but they tend to keep apart and interference often leads to conflicts.
Besides that they mostly expand on other civilizations and replace them with theirs.

Hathor

They/Them/She/Her
Hathor is part of this species, but she doesn't like the idea of slaves.
It’s not for moral reasons, she isn’t “the good one”, but worlds under her influence are often pushed to think they should be happy not to be treated as cattle like in the other empires.
In reality she thinks slaves are inefficient, weak and prone to rebellion.
She thinks that the other ancients rely too much on them and have to compensate for those things by conquering only inhabited worlds, make a lot of armors and weapons not to loose too many slaves, and in case of rebellion have to put on lots of efforts because of the same equipment they gave to them.

So, even though it’s the reason she’s shone by the others, and that she’s one of the most isolated of Ancients, she decided to rely on clones.
With time she developed her technology towards that, and her empire is a crazy bioengineer’s dream.
With every new species she encounters she creates and upgrades specialized clones.
And with a system of imprints and relays, she extended herself and became a hivemind.
Now Hathor is every one of her clones and every one of her clones is her.

She tends to conquer uninhabited planets, landing gigantic structures meant to terraform and serve as breeding pods, relays and everything needed to start using the planet’s resources.
Once the planet meets suitable conditions it’s one more source of clones for her, some of them staying there to develop more and more until they reach a point of equilibrium they will try to maintain as long as possible. The rest joins the ranks of her army and continues the dance.

She doesn’t shy away from assimilating inhabited worlds though, but when she does she likes to keep the culture and people around. Though, it’s still more for her own enrichment than for moral reasons.
When she conquers a planet like that she tends to overwhelm with sheer numbers and a relentless army.
When the control is assured she installs temples that act as meeting places with local representatives, where one of her clones assumes the role of Hathor as a ruler, leader and close to the people hedonist.
This way anyone could come to her temple, bathe in her baths and have a tangible deity to believe in.

Of course worlds assimilated change a lot, and this illusion of liberty is still just that, an illusion.
People are free to work on projects they want to if they want to.
Clones do all the necessary work.
And when someone invents something interesting, she might have a use for it.

A lot of her ideas and ways could be seen as good and benevolent, and while she isn’t inherently bad, she doesn’t care much in a human way.
She uses mainly if not only sustainable energy sources, because it’s the most productive on the long term.
She doesn’t force anyone under her reign to work, while giving the resources for those that have projects, because it’s the best way to foster cultural and scientific advancement, while at the same time preventing a lot of rebellions.
She uses river symbology a lot, as a bringer of life.
And the temples she builds tend to revolve around public baths and baths as meeting places, while being powered by water if able. Be it from river currents, or through geothermal energy.

In short she conquers uninhabited planets to use as clone production
And inhabited ones as culture and science production.

She is one of the only Ancients to care for uninhabited planets because of their differences.
And because of the efficiency of her protocols she also tends to expand far more and quicker.
So she decided to travel farther from her kind, and is lately researching means to extend her reach even further.

An ongoing project for a long time was to send research teams composed of clones on relatively small scout ships (compared to the more noticeable gigantic ones).
Those research teams are each tasked to scout for worlds to expand to.
Lately though, following some new breakthroughs some new teams were sent to test means to travel “elsewhere” that is, out of reach of the other empires, and maybe even further, to expand without annoyances.

Some of the previous expeditions were successful in establishing long range communication outside Hathor’s empire's original light cone (the only potential places she could be when limited by light speed) for at least the next hundred years, using space time surfing shuttles. Communications used waves at first, then later expeditions used entangled particles arrays as tunnels when the travel means were reliable enough.

Thanks to that, Hathor is now composed of multiple fractions that should rejoin at some point by continuous expansion.

But the oldest parts are near other Ancient empires, and so Hathor decided that this couldn’t be a definitive answer. Ultimately she wants to be free from them, and find a place to call her own and hopefully expand without never hearing from them ever again.
She’s curious and considers her kin are destructive bigots and she’s tired of all the missed opportunities for cultural and scientific breakthroughs.

But also, she wants to create her own kin, one free of the tarnished influence of the other ancients.
She knows she cannot do that where they exist, so she’s been trying to push the limits of her reach even further.

And due to scientific breakthroughs she believes it might be possible to navigate through a theoretical extrauniversal void.
They have yet to confirm there’s anything to find out there, but she’s determined to try and expand sidewards.

After a conclusive test from many iterations consisting of making a shuttle exit and reenter the bounds of this universe she decided it was satisfactory and that the next steps would start using fully equipped shuttles even though risks were great.
A few expeditions have been sent, though none came in contact yet, though it was expected as they have yet to develop adequate means of communication.
The math was done though, and there is only a slim chance that any made it through to another place, but this slim chance is enough. And as time passes she will refine means to go further.
And hopefully solve the uncertainties of this type of travel.
Even the best material they could use would only endure so much of the void.
She continues her research, but this is out of our reach now.

Eye of Hathor Seeker of Ends and Beginnings

One of those shuttles lost contact with the rest of herself.
Though it was to be expected it was still a very uncanny sensation.
The shuttle didn’t make it through traversing the void and entering the universe’s confines intact though, so they had to land in extreme circumstances.
The ship is now in dire condition, and most of the clones didn’t make it.
And they don’t even know if they really made it to another universe or if they just crash landed back in the same one.
Two clones survived though injured and managed to put back their relay and connect again.
Most of their equipment is non responsive so they started gathering basic ressource, following their protocols.
- Repair
- Analyse
- Develop
- Explore

At first they had hoped to have landed on an untouched planet.
But maybe they could find a way to take advantage of the situation.
Building connections, getting information on this place and hopefully being able to establish an outpost to start expanding and maybe develop means to communicate with the main swarm.

But in this diminished state they are not used to anymore, maybe they will evolve differently, who knows ?

[WIP]