The Daam-K'vosh (DKV) are an ancient race of aliens that lived hundreds of millions to billions of years in the past. They are believed to have once had an empire that spanned the known universe, possessing technology capable of moulding space, time, and life itself. Despite this, they mysteriously and abruptly vanished, with the exact cause remaining unknown. The DKV and their creations are the only intelligent alien species humanity is currently aware of.
Humanity's understanding of the DKV is currently patchwork and limited, and significantly hindered by many discoveries remaining classified by House authorities or siloed in corporate research labs. As a result, it is very difficult for any one individual to assemble a complete picture of humanity's collective knowledge.
Despite this, prominent institutions of study across Sirius have established their own xenoarchaeology divisions to carry out academic - or applied - research into their history, culture and technology through the excavation and exploration of ancient ruins.
The general Sirian public first became aware of the existence of NHIs (Non Human Intelligences) in the mid 500s, through two main events.
- In 550 AS, Bretonian chartered explorers aboard the Fearless discovered Planet Pygar in Omicron Theta. While the expedition was lost soon after, the cache of Artifacts they uncovered were returned to Cambridge University by courier, sparking an announcement and the creation of the first public schools of xenoarchaeology and anthropology.
- Next, Freelance explorer Jim Brown successfully established trade relations with The Corsairs in 564 AS, bartering Food Rations and Consumer Goods for the Artifacts they scavenged from the wastes of Planet Crete in Omicron Gamma. Rather than academic institutions, Brown sells the Artifacts to Liberty's art dealers and elite, who parade the items as exclusive status symbols.
The mythos of mysterious alien ruins hidden in the distant Edge Worlds was accordingly cemented in the public consciousness, providing inspiration for explorers to set out and make their fortune.
The foremost centres of public research into the DKV can be found at Cambridge University, Hamburg University and Liberty University. Research bureaus and institutes are also maintained by most House authorities, and many private organisations, such as The Core, The Order, and The Technocracy.
Influence on Sirius
Alien Organisms
Alien Organisms is an umbrella term for related strains of extremophile microbial life found in the Edge Nebula and bordering regions. It is likely that Alien Organisms were first observed by the Outcasts in Omicron Beta, however their officially recorded discovery is credited to Gas Miners Guild pioneers after they charted Planet Kurile in Sigma-17. Alien Organisms are unique to the Sirius Sector, and are the only form of life known to be native to the vacuum of space.
Significant research has been carried out on Alien Organisms due to their unusual properties, which include metabolizing substances such as asteroids and planetary bedrock / regolith into Oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. Their extreme durability allows them to survive in inhospitable planetary conditions, acting as a foundational layer for developing ecosystems.
These properties were first harnessed by Samura Industries when they developed harvesting platforms on Planet Kurile, and began terraforming Junyo's oceans. This successfully oxygenated the sterile waters by 680 AS, allowing for the introduction of large-scale fisheries that used the Alien Organisms as feedstock, significantly accelerating fish growth and yields.
Generational workers on Planets Kurile and Junyo are renowned for their exceptionally long lifespans, with Kurile having the longest average lifespan of anywhere in the Houses. Cryer Pharmaceuticals scientists deduced that this was caused by Alien Organisms being incorporated into fish consumed by the workers, with alterations to their DNA compounding through generations.
The genetic structure of Alien Organisms bear striking similarities to Cardamine, with both affecting human RNA and DNA a similar way. Long term exposure appears to create a mild dependence on Organism-laced environments or food products, causing chronic illness when an individual is deprived for extended periods.
Further interest in Alien Organism research came in 740 AS when a damaged Kusari transport crashed on Planet Harris, releasing a cargo of Organisms into the environment. They immediately thrived, and began metabolizing useful Terraforming Gasses. Resulting research by Planetform, Inc. concluded that seeding terraforming candidates with Alien Organisms could accelerate the process tenfold, resulting in projects that create human-amenable atmospheric conditions within a single lifespan.
Studies into Alien Organisms' abnormal genetic structure, utility as the "perfect terraformer", and proliferation across multiple star systems have led to significant speculation that they may be artificial biomachines, potentially seeded by the DKV. This conclusion features heavily in the "Fine-Tuned Sector" theory, which argues that Sirius was meticulously and artificially designed by the DKV for a particular purpose. Proponents of the theory claim this explains the Sirius Sector's abnormal density of habitable worlds, many of which boast broadly similar, human-friendly atmospheric compositions.
To FTS supporters, this anomaly is explained by a primordial Sirius having been extensively terraformed by the DKV, long before their disappearance. Critics dismiss the claim as pseudoscientific, pointing to a lack of direct evidence. So far, FTS proponents have struggled to attract interest in funding proposals for expeditions to obtain the geological evidence they believe exists. Despite this, classified MND charting has discovered fossilised remains of Alien Organisms on Planet Weimar in Thuringia, which may indicate an ancient terraforming process.
Artificial Intelligence
Cardamine
Energy Field
Nomads
The Nomads, otherwise known as the Slomon-K'hara, were originally created by the DKV as artificial biomachines. Designed to have a great deal of genetic adaptability, and very little fundamental structure of their own, they were produced to absorb and decode the genetic structure of other organisms. In their native form, the Nomads resemble nothing so much as amorphous, wormlike entities, but their instinctual talent for genetic adaptability allows them to merge with the physiology of higher lifeforms.
Initially functioning as crawling analysis tools that supervised the DKV's many experiments in Sirius, their creators were surprised and delighted (if such emotions can truly be attributed to something so alien) with their creations' evolution over time. As a result, they accelerated the process, gifting the Nomads with ever increasing intelligence and autonomy. Despite this, the Nomads - as with most pieces of DKV technology - remained tethered to a sophisticated hyperspace power network for sustenance.
Even the Nomads' own recollection of the next phase of their history is fragmentary or missing - perhaps erased by the DKV to avoid prejudicing their great experiment. It is suspected that the Nomads rose in rebellion, waging war against their masters. Perhaps the DKV simply realized that the Nomads had matured to the point that they were now ill-served by the meddling of their makers. The DKV could not blame their children for desiring independence: it was a natural if unexpected outgrowth of their origins.
Whatever the case, the Nomads were sealed away into stasis hibernation in underground facilities and alien Hives. While the Nomads slumbered, the DKV scattered gifts about the sector. These included sealed technological caches the Nomads would be able to unseal to receive the wisdom of their creators once they had sufficiently matured and advanced.
Most significantly, within Valhalla One lay the secrets that would have allowed the Nomads to disengage themselves from the DKV energy field. This would have allowed them to leave Sirius, and become entities completely independent of the DKV for the very first time in their history.
It is unknown what trigger was intended to awaken the Nomads' from their stasis chambers. In reality, they were awoken prematurely by human explorers, a Rheinland expedition charting the alien ruins of Planet Pygar in 792 AS. They instinctually attacked, dominating the scientists, and learning Sirius' fate in the process. The DaamK'Vosh gone, their worlds overrun, their birthright stolen. Rage coursed through the Nomads -- they had been abandoned, worse, they had been left to the mercy of these aliens -- and they wailed like petulant children screaming to hide their anguish.
But the Nomads, although immature, were not children in any human sense of the word: they were intelligent and devious. Realising that humanity was both numerically and technologically superior thanks to their pillaging of the DKV's legacy, they decided to bide their time. The Nomads spread through Rheinland and the Omicrons, awakening their brethren and infiltrating human society. The Colony Wars were now inevitable.
Jump Holes
It has long been assumed that Jump Holes are natural phenomena, manifesting at weak points in real-space where gravimetric and magnetic perturbations in hyperspace can bleed through.
Actual academic study of Jump Holes is sparse, largely due to the proven track record of Jump Gates, and the location of Jump Holes in regions that are typically remote, dangerous, and populated by criminals or other undesirable elements. The sole exception of this trend is Gallia, where the use of Jump Holes formed an important element of their early colonisation and economy.
There are currently no records of Jump Holes being encountered outside the Sirius Sector. This is based on records from Sol, and reports from the Crayter Republic confirming that there were no Jump Holes present in the Crayter system that they fled to Sirius from.
While this is a limited pool of evidence to draw from, it has bolstered the "Fine Tuned Sector" theory, which argues that Sirius was meticulously and artificially designed by the DKV for a particular purpose. According to this theory, Jump Holes are an artificially created means of Faster Than Light travel, intended to direct travellers along pre-determined routes, controlling their expansion and development.
Order researchers in particular have made the strongest claims that Jump Holes may be artificial in nature, following probe exploration of the Earhart anomaly, in collaboration with the Bundschuh of Thuringia. Longitudinal probe observations of the evidently DKV Pylon structure have recorded significant energy pulses that correspond with Jump Hole phase alignments or collapses elsewhere in the sector.
Wreckage scattered throughout the system also strongly indicates that the system is at least associated with integrity failures of jump tunnels, perhaps acting as an overflow buffer when errors occur. Due to this, The Order suspects that the Earhart Pylon may also be responsible for the 831 AS Blackout Crisis, and is therefore capable of exerting direct control over man-made Jump Gates. This implies control or influence over the underlying physics governing jump mechanics.
Theories on Disappearance
There is very little evidence on the cause of the DKV's disappearance, leading to much speculation in academic circles and popular culture. Many of these hypotheses are little more than academic thought experiments, or the products of the lurid imaginations of holoviral creators. Despite this, significant effort has been expended by organisations such as The Order and Technocracy to try and understand the DKV's disappearance, and its implications for humanity's future.
Ascension theory
Ascension theory is a newly revitalised disappearance explanation that applies a maximalist interpretation of the DKV's powers and capabilities. This assumes they had hit the limits of science itself, bending space and time to their will. This theory describes a civilisation that had reached the "end-state" of the scientific method. They pushed their technology to the point where there was no further to go, boxed in by the fundamental laws of our universe's reality.
Similar to Migration theory, Ascension argues that the DKV are simply somewhere else. Rather than a physical location in our or another galaxy, Ascensionists boldly claim the DKV instead grew beyond the spatial confines of our reality, moving as god-like beings into the uncountable dimensions that lie beyond or beneath it.
For centuries this view has been treated as fringe pseudoscience, espoused as dogma by spiritualist kooks rather than trained xenoarchaeologists. The first tentative evidence for the theory emerged unexpectedly from researchers affiliated with The Core in the deep Omicrons. Leaked claims alleged a translated cache of Nauru Artifacts had provided the hint of an implication about dimensional ascension.
The Core refused to comment on "superstitious nonsense", while also resolutely refusing academics access to their Artifact catalogues for peer review, claiming "commercial confidentiality." Following the internal schism that resulted in the birth of The Technocracy, Ascension theory was again stoked on as its senior ex-Core leadership claimed to possess secretive insider knowledge on the matter.
Ascension theory has since taken on an entirely new character as an ideology rather than a simple attempt to explain the fate of the DKV. Now, proponents argue that ascension was not enabled by any innate characteristics of the DKV themselves, but rather a technological path they pioneered, that humanity can follow. This has resulted in extreme technological accelerationist positions, arguing in favour of unfettered AI, human augmentation, and the pursuit of progress at all costs.
It is unclear whether The Technocracy genuinely believes in this ideology, or is simply using promises of secret knowledge as a means of filtering or controlling potential assets. Ascension churches see the DKV as self-created gods to be venerated, and their Artifacts holy relics to be obtained and protected. The Liberty Security Force have already noted several examples of Manhattan art dealerships being burgled and vandalised by Ascensionist radicals, with the stolen Artifacts being "tithed" to The Technocracy for "protection".
Extinction theory
Extinction theory posits that the DKV were wiped out, although the precise mechanisms through which this would have occurred remain speculative. Popular suggestions include disease, civil war, a revolt by a creation / subject, or a targeted extermination by a second, as yet unknown, alien species. This remains a deeply controversial position in academia, particularly due to the complete absence of any fossilised DKV remains that might provide further insight.
It is hypothesized that the scattered fragments visible on the surface of Jericho in Coronado could be the wreckage of a DKV vessel - the first ever encountered if so. Unfortunately, attempts to study it for further evidence of this theory have resulted in failure, as an extreme, short-range electromagnetic and radioactive field surrounding it has consistently destroyed approaching probes. Longer range visual inspection has been uninformative.
This theory gained a significant boost in the late eighth century, when Zoners and explorers from the Houses began to more fully chart Omicron Theta. The Sabana Fragments are believed to be the remnants of a destroyed planet, while the ominous crystalline formations of the Napo Cloud have been described as "architectural" in nature. Speculation about cataclysmic "system destroying" battles immediately ran rampant.
The supposition that this "asteroid field" was in fact be the remains of a ruined DKV facility appeared to be further bolstered after free-floating Artifacts were retrieved within. Despite the scientific community's interest, further study of these anomalies has been extremely limited. This is owed to the extreme hostility of the Corsairs to outsiders and trespassers, and their jealous protection of Artifact sources.
While this position has a number of influential supporters in modern academia, it is not shared by those possessing secret knowledge of DKV caches, such as Valhalla One or the Mennecy Vault. This includes the governments of Liberty, Gallia or The Order. This is because the seeding of technological caches to guide a successor's development would seem to preclude the DKV being exterminated in some cataclysmic conflict.
Migration theory
Migration theory describes the possibility that Sirius was little more than a remote colony or worksite for a vast and distant pan-galactic empire. Whether for economic reasons, as part of a cyclic mass-migration, due to conflict, or mere preference... the DKV abandoned the colony and withdrew to their core territories.
This theory was initially popular among academia's more optimistic (or at least less fatalistic) xenoarchaeologists, who assumed the DKV continue to exist elsewhere in the universe (and perhaps harboured hopes that they might one day return to answer questions).
This is an enticing idea to pop culture, demonstrated by the countless holovirals and interactive media depicting a DKV return to Sirius. This notably includes the popular "Phantom Hunter" franchise, which sees the DKV manifest to grant humanity weapons to fight off an invasion of fictional aliens known as "Crathygtans".
Migration Theory is often combined with the Fine-Tuned Sector hypothesis, which states Sirius was intentionally engineered to particular standards. Supporters of the two theories may argue that the DKV acted as precursors who established the conditions to allow life to flourish, before withdrawing to allow it to develop and evolve naturally towards independent intelligences.
This is a particularly popular position among Cambridge academia, driving significant support towards The Gaians in defence of the unique ecology of Planet Gaia.
The Order has since abandoned Migration Theory due to their access to the Sinclair Artifact, which acts as a map of DKV Hypergate nodes across this and adjacent galaxies. This entire network appears to be equally dormant, indicating that whatever befell the DKV occurred on a significantly larger scale than Sirius alone.
Patron theory
Patron theory focuses on the motive for a DKV disappearance, rather than the specific mechanism. As a result, it is frequently combined with either Ascension or Migration theory, often alongside the Fine-Tuned Sector hypothesis. Patron theory suggests that the DKV departed from Sirius and / or the wider universe to allow successor species to inherit the garden they had created.
In some schools of thought, this refers to non-human species seeded on Sirius' worlds, that might one day evolve to exhibit intelligence of their own. To others, humanity itself is that successor, with some postulating Earth's own development may have been the result of DKV life seeding or uplifting.
To support this argument, proponents point to the alien fauna discovered in the Sirius sector, which is frequently carbon-based, metabolizes similar proteins, and often requires similar Oxygen-based atmospheres. Critics retort that this is not necessarily evidence of intelligent interference with humanity's evolution, but may indicate that there are common pathways to life that are governed by fundamental physical laws.
While this theory remains entirely abstract and hypothetical in the public eye, it is known to be objectively true - to some extent - by those governments and organisations that have awareness of the Valhalla-One or Mennecy Vault caches. The DKV did indeed seed Sirius with technological libraries that were intended to impart specific scientific insights on a successor at appropriate milestones in their development.
Awareness of this fact raised issues of existential security within Liberty and Gallia's governments: Were the DKV monitoring their project, or had they departed to allow matters to run their course? Were the caches intended for any worthy successor with the knowledge to open them, or were they designed for a particular recipient? Was humanity that successor, or was our intrusion theft? Would theft from the DKV brook a response in anger?
While passing centuries dulled these concerns - the DKV did not appear to react to humanity's plundering - they surfaced once more in the aftermath of the Colony Wars. It became clear to Liberty and The Order that The Nomads had likely been intended as the DKV's successor. With the DKV's pupils now awakened from stasis and reacting to their occupation of their creche, concern over potential DKV responses have returned once more to strategic planners.
Was the sophistication of the DKV so profound that they anticipated humanity's arrival in Sirius? Is tackling and surmounting this "challenge" part of the DKV's plans for the Nomads? Or conversely, are humanity an unintended "outside context problem" that are disrupting The Nomads' carefully guided development? Would the DKV intervene if the Nomads' war on humanity led them to the precipice of their own destruction?
Significant Sites
Valhalla One, New York
The first evidence of the DKV's existence was discovered in 15 AS, when Liberty explorers surveying Planet Manhattan's Pike Mountains encountered an artificial structure. The site was immediately classified by Liberty's military authorities, and code-named Valhalla One; it remains classified as a state secret under the Omega Protocol to this day. The object was undetectable on scanners and was impervious to all forms of destructive and non-destructive intrusion methods.
The following year, Doctor Wade Walker - a gifted physicist and musician - decoded a portion of the inscription surrounding Valhalla One. He found that it equated a polyphonous musical scale to basic chemical elements. The resulting "key" of musical tones unsealed the vault, revealing strange Artifacts and holographic crystalline matrices that appeared to be a form of document storage.
Decoding the table of contents of one of these crystals took almost three years. By 28 AS, Liberty researchers had concluded that the Valhalla vault had been designed as a "seed library", intended to impart a specific measure of the DKV's technology to their successors. At the time, there was no indication of who had been intended to fill this role - following the events of the Colony Wars, many concluded Valhalla had likely been left for the benefit of the Nomads.
The technology described in Valhalla One was far in excess of humanity's own, jumping forward scientific progress by centuries if not millennia. Ageira Technologies was founded to commercialise the practical applications of the cache, starting with an immensely strong and flexible Polymer material. This allowed the downsizing of Sleeper Ship engines to create the miniaturized "Liberty Engine" that revolutionised cross-system travel.
The Valhalla archives also provided the blueprints for developing Jump Gate and Trade Lane technologies, securing Liberty's position as the first among the Houses for centuries. Ageira led the pioneering research in this field, constructing the Dallas Research Station in Texas. Here, many prototypes were tested, with the first Gate "test fire" occurring in 130 AS. This succeeded in briefly generating a breach point, but failed to transport the target drone to a different star system. This validated Liberty's theories, and confirmed that a linked pair of Gates would be required.
The first successful jump between systems came in 180 AS, when a manned ship was successfully transported from Texas to a receiver Jump Gate in Alaska and back again. Elated, Liberty authorities carried out further tests before making a public announcement to Sirius as a whole in 185 AS: The vast span of the stars would terrorise the people of the Houses no longer.
Despite this, Liberty has always been keenly aware of the potential implications of DKV discoveries, understanding that the relative balance of power could be upset overnight by a chance find that fell into a rival's hands. Due to this, they have sought to directly or indirectly involve themselves in most fields of research in this sphere. Following the formation of the Liberty Security Force, one of its primary mandates became the monitoring - or even sabotage - of the DKV research efforts of other Houses.
The Mennecy Vault, Ile-de-France
Gallia first encountered signs of the DKV in 92 AGS (176 AS). During a routine mineral survey of the moon Mennecy in Ile-de-France, an artificial structure that did not appear on sensors was visually spotted. Gallic military authorities immediately suppressed the discovery and secured the site, constructing the Melun Research Institution in orbit soon after. Work on the structure fell by the wayside when Gallia's government was thrown into turmoil the following year, with the assassination of Supreme Commander Philip Chaloux.
Power was seized by his cousin, the self-titled King Charles Valois-Clermont, creating the Gallic monarchy. Gallic Royal Intelligence was formed late the following year, as both King Philip's secret police force and the garrison of Melun. Progress resumed, although no means of penetrating the structure could be found. In 96 AGS (180 AS), the structure abruptly "activated", with an entryway opening to reveal an interior antechamber marked with dense glyph-like inscriptions.
Progress was made on best-guess translations, however the fragmentary excerpts remained near-impenetrable. They presupposed existing knowledge of a range of technologies and concepts that were simply beyond the Gallic researchers' understanding. Activity on the project gradually waned as the King lost interest with the lack of results; Melun came to be seen as a dead-end assignment for occupying quarrelsome royal scientists. The pivotal breakthrough came decades later in 167 AGS (251 AS).
Gallia's expansion through space had taken a very different course to Liberty's, thanks to stumbling across a Jump Hole to Picardy in 48 AGS (132 AS). Fabienne Pirouet, a Solar Engineering field researcher, was transferred to Melun after raising the alarm about Jump Hole instability and phase alignment - an inconvenient truth for a kingdom reliant on them. She had spent her career studying the gravimetric and magnetic anomalies surrounding Jump Holes and soon realised that the Mennecy inscriptions must be rearranged according to the intricately warped properties of time and light around a Jump Hole's breach.
Within the year, a "key" had been devised using this cipher, consisting of carefully timed pulses of light across multiple wavelengths. The interior chamber opened, revealing Artifacts and crystalline matrixes similar to those found in Valhalla One. The Gallic researchers quickly came to the same conclusion as their Libertonian counterparts: this was a technological seed library, intended to test the DKV's successors. The reaction to this news by the Gallic crown was very different, however. In the eyes of the Crown, they were the DKV's inheritors, having now surmounted the set challenge.
Using the vaguely understood principles surrounding Jump Holes to backfill their missing knowledge, Gallia continued to decrypt the Artifacts. By 182 AGS (266 AS), Pirouet made another breakthrough, describing a theory of hyperspace "leylines" that connect star systems, along with weak points in realspace where an artificial structure could be deployed to facilitate a forced breach. A Jump Gate. The first attempt at constructing a one-sided Jump Catapult fails, however this paves the way for the creation of a pair of Jump Gate terminals to be successfully deployed between Ile-de-France and Orleanais in 190 AGS (274 AS).