131533 > In the heat of battle they can give themselves a Cardamine booster with a flick of the wrist. Maybe that's why they're such awesome pilots.

131612 > You have really strange hallucinations with heavy doses -- flying across alien landscapes, seeing creatures and places that you can't imagine. It's truly an amazing trip.

131772 > The inhaler masks aren't a long term substitute for the Cardamine-infused biosphere of Malta, and the concentrated Cardamine doses we sell to the Rogues and Hackers aren't suitable for us.

132338 > Taking an extreme dose of Cardamine raw from the grass is almost always fatal, but it's a gentle way to go. It was also a curse, as we became dependent on Cardamine to survive, though we don't get a high from it anymore.

132698 > Some of our scientists ran an autopsy and discovered that they differ from regular human beings on a genetic level. Their cell reproduction requires Cardamine to build RNA.

132752 > The Alien Organisms found on this world and elsewhere in the Edge Worlds, there is no doubt about it, they were engineered. Just like Cardamine. There is no chance that either the Cardamine grass or these alien organisms evolved naturally.

132765 > We know that there is a link between the Alien Organisms and Cardamine, because they both affect RNA and DNA molecules in the same way. Most likely the Cardamine plants were mutated when Alien Organisms came in contact with them - a process similar to what happens when Cardamine comes in contact with human DNA.

132766 > Aside from the narcotic powers of the drug, we believe that it also has anti-aging benefits.

132769 > Test Subject 04227986 escaped from her containment area a few nights ago. She managed to kill several guards between the subject area and the communications center. Once inside the communications area she continued her slaughter. She wasn't discovered for twelve minutes. We were able to recapture her alive, though she injured three more of us in the process. I'm told her wounds have already healed. Remarkable regenerative capabilities, which might be another Cardamine side effect.

133099 > Have you ever tangled with an Outcast? I and two other police interceptors engaged four of them a few days ago. It was a mistake to go against them with fewer numbers. The other two interceptors got cooked.

133150 > An Outcast just seems to understand how a ship should look and run, like it's a part of him.

133164 > Somehow the Cardamine also had a negative effect on our birth rate. Fewer and fewer Outcasts are being born, though we live much longer.

133237 > An ancient race of beings developed the orange grasses on our planet. The codes within the genetic structure of the grass transform the user slowly. We are not human because we have been given a gift and can see further into truth than any man. Human beings are infants dabbling in the loam of an expansive ocean that stretches beyond the horizon. The Cardamine has let us see this.

134302 > Sure, their Cardamine mutations give them greater stamina and quicker healing, but that just means you have to punch them a bit harder.

466012 > Individually, our pilots are more than a match for anything they will encounter down here. Cardamine has sharpened our wit and improved our reflexes, well beyond anything the Corsairs or GMG are capable of.

475469 > Our own researchers, and those at Sendai Research Complex in the Okinawa system, believe that Cardamine was originally engineered by the Daam-K'Vosh for the Nomads. All I know is that it has increased my already fine intelligence and given me a much greater lifespan than I might otherwise have had.

475515 > Have you heard of Hisako Takahashi? She is over a hundred and seventy years old. Surely an amazing age to live up to, isn't it? We believe it to be a result of DNA mutations caused by Cardamine.

478747 > Use of the drug causes euphoria and induces a trance-like dream which gives the impression of being in contact with beings from a higher plane of existence. Side-effects of prolonged use are slower aging, immunity to disease, and lower fertility.

" > The Cardamine drug-trance is found to enhance design and invention abilities.

Cardamine grass was engineered by the Daam K’Vosh to serve as stable source of organic compounds for Nomads; it would be easier and much-less energy intensive to incorporate these into their anatomy than to assemble the compounds from scratch. Distinct enzyme co-factors are synthesized by Cardamine grass that assists in a Nomad’s physiological mechanisms, and the plant itself is capable of extracting and concentrating trace elements from the soil to be used in higher-level functions.

Though the plant matter itself is indigestible to humans, extracts of the enzyme co-factors act on their molecular receptors in beneficial, and adverse, ways. The enzymes are capable of acting as a genetic template within an adult stem cell, modifying telomeric activity to yield stable chromosome structures that will not fall victim to replication degredation; they also tend to show a high affinity for specific gene promoter sequences, upregulating the synthesis of RNA strands that lead to proteins involved in regenerative functions. When consumption of Cardamine ceases, though, the rapid decrease in the levels of gene expression lead to a cellular ‘crisis’ as a negative-feedback mechanisms force apoptosis and cell death; a massive flow of cancer signals generate a severe auto-immune response that causes a human’s immune system to attack its own body.

One critical drawback to Cardamine use in humans involves inhibition of gametogenic cells; meiotic division found in sperm and egg cells are prevented by the action of the co-factors in Cardamine grass, resulting in incredibly reduced birth rates.

One of these creations was the Slomon-K'Hara -- what would later erroneously be
named "the Nomads" by human beings. The Nomads were specifically created with a
high-degree of genetic adaptability. Possessing almost no fundamental genetic
structure of their own, the Nomads were able to absorb and decode the genetic
structure of other organisms; they were in effect living machines, crawling analysis
tools that supervised the many different experiments of the Daam-K'Vosh. In some
ways, the Daam-K'Vosh were surprised and even delighted by their creations (if such
emotions can be applied to anything so alien), and gifted the Nomads with both
increasingly sophisticated intelligence and a larger degree of autonomy.

The Sirius Sector was intended as an elaborate school for the
Nomads, and the Daam-K'Vosh had left gifts scattered around it like toys -- the
cardamine grass on Ishmael with its life-prolonging genetic code (and unexpected
narcotic dependence when absorbed by human beings)