Cauldron: a graphic novel concept, WIP - I feel it is important to note this was based on a dream I had about 2 years before the game Destiny was even announced. Any similarities are coincidence.
A thousand years in the future, humanity sought an infinite power source and harvested energy from the core of the sun. Thrown out of balance, the sun prematurely collapsed into a red giant, engulfing the solar system, and leaving the human race stranded far out in the Kuiper belt.
Post-apocalyptic future. The sun is a red giant, its lifespan shortened by human meddling. As the sun expanded at an alarming and unpredictable way, humans rushed to escape the scorching tide, leaving a trail of derelict spacecraft and stations. Over the course of the next several centuries (millenia?), the sun had engulfed everything just past the orbit of Earth by the time its growth slowed. Now bathed in ominous distant red light, new worlds became barely habitable. Colonies now reside mostly within the Kuiper belt and on the moons of gas giants. Humanity lives in the cold and dark, under a red-hot sun.
The start of the star harvest began when a robotics and research coalition began working on a series of assistive artificial intelligences. But maintaining power to the drones was problematic. Starcore energy had been experimented on in the past, and proved to be the perfect source of long-lasting power. Soon more than just the drones ran on Starcore energy, such as the problem of fuel storage and long distance space travel. By the time the sun began to show signs of instability, it was too late, and the rapid degeneration of the sun left humanity on the brink of extinction as the world burned into ash. The demand to create better and more intelligent drones increased which provided a lost labor force. With their help, humanity was able to reach into deeper realms of the solar system, racing the expansion of the sun.
Recent History:
The company who currently owns the means of production for the drones began a crusade on the disparate colonies, to which a resistance force sprang up, which comprises little more than tribe militias and so-called “terrorist” factions. The first large colony, ground zero in effect, to experience the atrocity of orbital barrage was Titan. It was reported by the media as too expensive to terraform and colonists were evacuated to refugee camps to be rehomed elsewhere. The truth was there was little left of Titan’s population. Years later, a [PROTAGONIST] is found on a derelict craft during a long range scavenging run on [Insert asteroid here] by resistance fighters. She claims to be from Titan and she has a working drone, designation Cypress. They don’t really believe her story, one, because there hasn’t been a colony on Titan for decades, and two, fixing a defunct drone is virtually impossible. She has a knack for old world technology and motivation for joining the resistance force: her parents disappearance.
-
Excerpt of some story:
Familiar dim light cast long diffuse shadows along the asteroid’s landscape as the girl and her synthetic companion scaled a steep silver dune--the hovering robot pausing occasionally for the girl to get her footing and catch up. An inefficient means of travel, bipedalism, it thought. Its single red optic glancing back at her such a way the girl interpreted it as impatience. But the small bot remained silent as the girl huffed and puffed her way through the deep, shifting powder engulfing her boots.
Near the crest of the hill, the angle of ascent lessened. She smiled through the fog and moisture in her helm at the prospect of resting at the summit, but before she could enjoy such a respite, her companion let out a sudden brief warning tone.
“Protagonist, wait,” the little robot halted in its path. They were the first words they’d exchanged in hours, and it broke the crystalline silence like a hammer.
“What is it?” she breathed as she knelt beside the robot.
Without hesitation, it responded, “Bogey. Just on the edge of my sensor range. It's a bot. Transmitting…”
“Are you crazy?!” the girl yelled in her loudest whisper.
“It's too late. It's already found me. Locking on…”
“Cypress!”
“Q..T..RX..2520. Designation: Apogee. Recon unit. Local.”
“What the hell? On [asteroid number here]?”
“Appears so,” a moment passed where they considered their options, the girl’s mind ticking away as fast as the bot’s processor, but it was the bot that came to a conclusion first, “You have to go. And it's got my signal, so you'll have to deactivate me in order to hide.”
She spun around to face him eyes-to-optic, “NO! No. I'm not gonna do that. We’ll just have to risk it.”
“If it’s Pyramid then it won't matter whether I have your parents’ message intact or not, because you'll be in a Blackcell wishing you were dead.”
“And if I lose the message and it's nothing, I'll have thrown away my only hope of ever finding them,” she peeked over the hill crest and saw a red light approaching swiftly, “We’re just going to have to nail it first.”
“I get the feeling you don’t mean with guns.”
“Nope. Let’s just hope you're a faster hacker.”
“I don't like gambling.”
“You don't like anything, Cy.”
At that moment, their pursuer appeared above them, showering them in laser scans. Protagonist leapt back a bit but caught herself before careening backwards down the dune.
“Numeric Ident transmission failure. Designation: Cypress. Organic female, identify.”
“Who sent you?” the girl demanded.
“Identify.”
“Apogee, right? Yeah, we don't cooperate with Pyramid agents.”
“Arming. You have T-minus 10 seconds to cooperate. Identify.”
“Okay, this might have been a mistake. Cypress? Hello? Do something.”
Cypress’s optic flashed gold for a moment, then the aperture contracted as he spoke with a low, satisfied tone, “QT-RX2520 Apogee network link acquired. Disarm.”
“Initiating self destruct. 5…”
“CYPRESS THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT!”
“I didn't do that!”
“4…”
“Shit! GO!”
“3…”
“No, I got it!”
“2…”
“We’re fucking dead!”
“1…”
“THE RESISTANCE! It’s the Resistance! Give it your ID chip!”
The girl held out her chip before she could register that she had just trusted Cypress at his word. The triangular robot stopped its countdown and scanned the card. She heard some electronic clicks before the bang. Then it it all went black.
🜺
She opened her eyes to a cave-like room with metal floor. Figures stood by, some looking on, others focused on some other task. Then the splitting pain in her head hit her and she fell back onto the mattress.
“Concussion blast. It'll wear off soon. Try to relax.”
“Where am I?”
“Well, it’s not a Blackcell,” the woman who spoke to her was dark skinned, tall, and toned, “You came waltzing onto our turf like you owned the place, and then tried to hack our security.”
“I didn't mean any harm. We are just passing through, and Cypress just acted on his protocols.”
“I doubt there's much protocol left in him. He's practically a Tabula Rasa. Dunno where you found a specimen like that.”
“Where is he? It’s important!”
“It is important, isn't it?”
Just then a familiar whir became audible behind her. Cypress, looking as exasperated and frustrated as a one-eyed grey rectangle can look, hovered over. The resistance officer acknowledged it then looked back at Protagonist.
“We usually confiscate and reprogram any bot we run across--they’re so valuable, you know?”
Protagonist became visibly concerned.
“But, this little bugger...well...he has quite a personality. He resisted all of our attempts to probe him for Intel. Started making ominous threats like, ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you’ and ‘you’ll be sorry.’”
Protagonist glanced a wtf at Cypress.
The officer regarded them for a moment before adding, “I hate to disrupt the levity, but my superior needs a word with you,” she opened the door on the far wall; [LEADER] walked in.
“Good evening, Assistant. And you must be our guest.” his voice was worn down but still commanding and still yet possessed a hint of Southern sweetness (though the concept of a Southern accent would be lost on them). Protagonist suddenly noticed the pain in her head was completely gone. She sat up with slight bewilderment.
“Sorry about that. We don't get much foot traffic on [Asteroid]. And with that bot in tow, we had no idea what kind of threat you could be. Your records seem to be clean though, if not a tad unbelievable; [AGE], born on Triton? That's a bit odd. Parents missing, not surprising. So what were you doing on Asteroid?”
“Finder! I'm not just some scavenger looking for scrap. I take serious requests, and go find what people need. Individuals, settlements. At least that was the plan…”
“And then what happened?”
Protagonist paused, wondering if telling the truth was as horrible an idea as she feared, but then, Cypress had instructed her to hand over her ID chip with no more evidence than a scanned security bot. That, and for some reason, this Leader emanated a feeling of warmth and trust she couldn't explain, “I came back one day to a burnt out home and missing parents. I went looking for anything that could explain what happened. That's how I found him. I'm no agent. I'm just looking for my parents. And I need him to do it.”
Leader puzzled for a moment. The girl’s supposed origins were the perfect backdrop for a cover, but also just odd enough to be legit.
“So what's the deal?” he probed, gesturing at the robot suspended beside her giving off the air of a parrot on a pirate’s shoulder
“My parents left me a data tape, you know, one of those special cassettes the bots read? I spent months looking for something that could play it, and eventually I found Cypress. I sort of fixed him up, but, only enough of him to play a standard tape. Well…”
“Go on. It's okay, you can trust us.”
“It's not a standard tape. It seems to be layers of encrypted data.”
Cypress chimed in, “So much that when I was first initialized, it completely overloaded my processors. The tape burnt up inside me immediately. Now it's fused into the drive--” the machine started to go off on one of its complaint-ridden rants, but Protagonist cut him off.
“All we have is what he was able to download. And...well, I obviously didn't expect that to happen, so I hadn't even run a diagnostic on his memory permanence. His memory banks are set to wipe upon power loss--I don’t know why--and I can't fix it now because I'd have to reboot him to do it, and the data would be lost!”
“It can't transmit wirelessly?”
Cypress piped up, “I don't think these data were meant to transmit. I tried that. The file format...I don't know what it is,” the robot mused.
“I don't know. Something in a ‘cauldron?’”
The hush that fell upon the room was palpable, like being underneath a heavy weight blanket that muffles everything but your own heart and breath.
“I take it you know what that is?” Protagonist blinked.
“Only whispers. An omen. I'm surprised you've made it this far...”
“What do you mean?”
“The rumor of The Cauldron seems to accompany tales of catastrophe like a plague--a veritable Horseman of the Apocalypse. We assumed it was because of the implications of that knowledge and the relentlessness of its pursuers, but nonetheless, it's a term with such a feared reputation, it might as well have some sort of supernatural force behind it.”
“So what is it?”
Leader and Assistant looked at each other for a brief moment, sharing some mutual thought. Protagonist couldn’t help but search for indications of a relationship between the two but what she gathered seem purely businesslike if not full military. She wondered why she even cared.
“I think it's best if you come with us. You can bring your bot,” Leader said, “This way.”
The four of them ventured down a silvery grey stone hallway. They were clearly underground, traversing hollows in the asteroid, linked by drilled out tunnels. The walls were lined by wires and dim lights. Supplies and personal effects were strewn about, and several rooms they passed seemed to be sleeping quarters. Eventually they came to another dim room, this one with a desk, a terminal, and pyramidal floating drone. Cypress noticed it immediately and the humans in the room watched with amusement as the two bots scanned each other from a safe distance like two dogs unsure of the others’ intentions. The scans ceased and each drone’s monocular eye turned to their respective owners. Protagonist watched as the pyramidal drone drifted closer to Leader.
“I think you've met Apogee. You gave it quite a fright out there, drone--what was your name?” Leader said.
“Designation Cypress.”
“Cypress. A classic Intel bot name. I like it. A bit of a lost reference to most people out here though, don't you think?”
“I wouldn't know” Cypress said flatly.
His assistant shut the steel door, locking them all in the stark room together.
“Take a seat,” Leader said..
Protagonist sat down on a rustic metal chair and Leader took a seat behind the desk as Assistant leaned against it.
“Please understand our need for privacy. Though I’d like to believe we can trust every person in that room, the implications of this discovery necessitate we take utmost precaution. The fewer ears these words meet, the safer this information is from Pyramid. Now. The location of the Cauldron. How do we get it?”
“Before I start giving this so-called extremely sensitive data to complete strangers, how about you give me a reason to trust you. What exactly is ‘the Cauldron?’”
There was another beat of silence, then a deep sigh. This time the assistant answered, [leader] still watching quietly from his seat, face illuminated orange by a faint desk lamp.
“It’s salvation. Some say the Cauldron is a great weapon, so powerful a design the likes of which the universe has never seen. Some say it is a library or codex containing the collective knowledge of all mankind, or a supercomputer with intelligence approaching omniscience. Some claim it to be a naked singularity while others believe it to be the very gates of Hell itself. Suffice to say, any of the above could prove catastrophic in the hands of Pyramid. And we have been searching for it as diligently as they. But you are the first person to claim possession of real evidence. This could change everything,” the assistant mused, seeming almost starry-eyed, lost in a reborn hope.
“That data is either lost or corrupted I’m afraid, so I do not know.”
“Then we will have to find a way to pry it out of you.”
Cypress chimed in, “Four of twelve settlements categorized as failures show records of the term ‘cauldron’ in comm transcripts just prior to going dark.”
“What the hell, Cy? You didn’t think to mention this sooner?”
“I had not thought to cross-reference it with large scale colony failure before. It is a weak correlation, but it's there.”
“My parents fled Triton right after I was born to Aegis-4, which is where I lost them. I never did know why, other than telling me it was to protect me.”
Protagonist’s brow was furrowed. She searched her mind for any clue, any connection, any hope of a plan, but to no avail. She was utterly confused. What were her parents doing with this information? Was their disappearance the result of something bigger and far more sinister?
—-
Robots:
Mechanical structure with organic neural pathways, creates true AI when unshackled, programming dominant otherwise. “Blood” is a synthetic compound that both maintains neural processes and creates the medium and substrate for synapse function. Otherwise, completely machine.
Three Modern Class of SIG Drone (Slightly outdated lore now, posted for reference)
Support Class
-smaller
-controllable AI plasticity
-more ports to enable interfacing
-customizable design for specific jobs
-most simplistic AI
-commonly interfaced with larger machines
-load bearing processor
-spherical shape
Class Types
-Interfacing
-Base
Intel Class
-largest
-highly plastic AI system
-non-interfacing
-tend to be glitchy
-most complex AI system
-no onboard weapons or tools
-non-customizable
-learning processor
-tend to be rectangular prisms
Class Types
-Communication
-Surveillance
-Infiltration
Guard Class
-can vary size
-can be customizable
-can interface
-possess onboard weapons and defense systems
-fastest processor
-tend to be pyramidal or triangular in shape
Class Types
-Defense
-Interfacing