#encyclopedia entry

Encyclopedia of Contemporary Anthropoids | Field Notes (Anthropologist’s Summary)

HOMO CAVICRANIUS (VERNACULAR: “CRO MAGANONS”)

ETYMOLOGY. From Latin cavus “hollow” + cranium “skull”; “Cro” used colloquially to denote an empty or hollow head

TAXONOMIC NOTE. Order Primates; Family Hominidae; Genus Homo; Species cavicranius. A contemporary, culture-bound morph of modern humans distinguished by behavioral, not anatomical, traits.

ERA: “Contemporary Pleistocene of the Internet.”

DIAGNOSIS (OBSERVER SUMMARY). Individuals exhibit a marked deficit in original ideation; novelty is typically outsourced to borrowed slogans or collective scripts. They are easily fooled by flattering narratives and easily offended by minor social friction, serving as fierce custodians of their own feelings.

• COGNITIVE ECONOMY: Original thought outsourced to tribal consensus; novelty triggers defensive postures.

• AFFECTIVE ARMOR: Feelings guarded like crown jewels; status rituals revolve around validation tokens.

• SOCIAL ENFORCEMENT: Minor norm violations can prompt full excommunication (“The Great Unfriending”).

• LANGUAGE USE: Prefers slogans to syllogisms; rhetorical volume inversely proportional to evidence density. Lexicon favors catchphrases, reaction tokens, and meme-forms over argument. Qualifiers and ambiguity are treated as contaminants.

HABITAT & RANGE. Dense in algorithmic echo-valleys ( Comment fields, group chats, migrates along recommendation currents.) Peak activity at dusk and during controversy cycles.

BEHAVIOR:

• FORAGING: Gleans from headline husks; high-calorie confirmation bites; allergic to qualifiers.

• MATING DISPLAY: Signal-boosting, badge-collecting, and ceremonial screen-captures.

• DEFENSE: Rapid offense on perceived slights; blocking/banishment as primary predator-deterrent.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION: High in-group cohesion regulated by emotion-first norms. Status accrues through demonstrations of loyalty to shared feelings rather than through evidence or craftsmanship.

COGNITION & LEARNING: Epistemology is testimonial: truth = that which validates group affect. Novel inputs are processed through an offense filter; dissonant facts are rapidly quarantined.

CONFLICT RESOLUTION: Sanctions are swift and performative. Even trivial infractions can trigger total social excision, described by informants as “cleaning the camp.”

MATERIAL CULTURE: Screenshots (“receipts”), reaction badges, and curated lists of approved sayings. Long-form texts are displayed as status artifacts more than read for meaning.

ETHOLOGY (TYPICAL SEQUENCE): Cue (minor slight) → Surge (affective amplification) → Chorus (group resonance) → Purge (removal of offender) → Balm (mutual reassurance).

The Reconstitution

Eledore’s famous, divinely inspired Imperial Code had stood pristine, untarnished for centuries. It guided the Empire, once the pinnacle of all humanity, in it’s glorious endeavors, keeping the horrors of the underworld at bay and ensuring humanity’s continued survival. Only minor amendments were made to keep the Code in sync with the shifts of society over time. But it’s fundamental precepts, guidances and governance of power always remained unchanged.

Until a hundred and fifteen years ago.

The Fourth Summit in Velcaria, undertaken just twenty years after the Great Secession ravaged the empire and carved two potent rival kingdoms out of it’s territory, met for a fateful decision in the Empire’s capital. High Lords and High Governors of massive Eledoran provinces had already wielded considerable power of their own for a while, of course, but it was the Fourth Summit when they finally codified their semi-independence into law.

Consider the dictionary articles on David by Bayle and Voltaire, the essays by Bousset and McKenzie, compose a sort of dictionary/encyclopedia entry of your own about David focusing on the issue of his character. Do not retell  the full story of his life, but offer a character sketch. Assume your audience knows the facts so that you can focus on interpretation. (At least 500 words) 

READINGS:

 ht…

A lush world with endless plains of verdant grass, dotted with woodland. This little slice of paradise is home to 6 terrestrial and 1 aerial species.

Agent H405 Note: Let it be on record that I strongly object to the declassification of this transcript. The only reason it is being released is that the judiciary committee discovered that there was an audience of around 350 enemy personnel in personal attendance of this broadcast, along with an unknown number listening in remotely. While this does mean it is unlikely to compromise our agent(s), the faction we are dealing with has demonstrated themselves to commit purges of their ranks in the mere hope of killing our agents before, as well as retaliatory strikes against Commonwealth targets, both civilian and military. Please refer to the “Shrike Incident”.

I cannot stop this transcript from being released, but I’ll be damned if it’s released without letting everyone know this was not unilateral.

Location: [REDACTED - Operational Security]

Time: [REDACTED - Operational Security]

[Begin recording]

Electronic Voice (EV) [Unidentified: Voice is virtually generated and has no biological origin]: Attention. Attention. General Tanz is now speaking.

Tanz [Identified: Voice pattern matches Gregory Syphon Tanz. See attached dossier for more info.]: Let me get straight to the point. Someone’s been acquiring us some shit shielding. Now, I know I’m not the only one mad about this. No one wants shit shielding, so allow me to educate anyone stupid enough to not know what shit shielding is.

Shit shielding is shielding that is shit. You see, when energy shielding is struct by any projectile, solid or plasma, it burns off some capacitor energy to form a field to prevent it from hitting your dumb ass. How much energy it uses depends on the quality of the shielding. The lower the quality, the more energy the capacitors burn as more is burned off as light and heat.

Yes, that’s right. The best quality shields you’ll find are the ones you’ll barely see when hit. The flashier they are, the faster they’ll burn out, and the faster you die.

So when you’re out an getting us some replacement equipment, it would do you well to test out the quality of the shielding thoroughly, or else you’ll end up like poor Mr. Johns here.

[At this point a holoprojector at the front of the room comes to life, displaying a grisly screen. A Felinus is stretched out on a rack with his hands stretched out to either side. The audience gasps as they realize that his chest is cut open, his lungs having been pulled out through the top of his rib cage and thrown over his shoulders in the typical “bloody eagle” fashion. “Mr. Johns” is clearly expired, even though another, unidentifiable figure can be seen moving in the background.]

Location: Pan-Special Medical Studies School, Felinus Arcturus campus

Time: 0830, 1-24 GM, 1335 A.C.

Class size: 315 in person, 3,242 remote

“-se be seated. We have what I think are some interesting questions to consider today.

“Now as many of us are aware, particularly those pursuing the fields of genetics engineering and mechanical augmentation, our society is running into a new problem to deal with: How to treat augmented individuals.

“You will all also be aware that mechanical prosthesis have been commercially available to more than 50% of known species for the past 300 years, but only in the past fifty have they reached the level of having one-to-one response consistent with that of the replacement body part.

“As with any technology, however, the field of bionics has lead to pure augmentation rather than simple bionic replacement. While expensive, restricted, and heavily enforced, we are starting to see more and more cases crop up of individuals voluntarily replacing their body parts with mechanical limbs to enhance their performance anywhere from a laboratory to the field of battle. Nowadays soldiers are not simply sent home upon losing a limb to enemy combatants; should they pass certain aptitude tests, they can be refitted with a new limb that is hardier than their original, and sent back into the field. While a bionic limb is expensive, it is even more costly to simply send the soldier home on a pension and train a replacement who may or may not survive their first combat experience.

“Certain individuals who are deemed of higher value than others are fitted with more high-tech systems generally suited to their task. Very often these are weapons systems and even full-body mechanical replacements; so-called ‘Metalheads’.

“The question we must consider when proposing to replace a limb with a mechanical one is this: What happens when we eventually do send the soldier home? We very well can’t allow a civilian on the streets of a major city to walk around with the ability to summon fifty centimeter energy blades from their arms at will, or fire micro-missiles at anyone they choose. These are obvious things that we can remove.

“However, there are other things to consider. Augmentations most commonly enhance the user’s strength and speed well above that they could ever naturally achieve. Can we remove these augmentations? If so, to what degree? In the case of the soldier we’ve already sent them into battle, where they were grievously wounded, and then we simply put a new body part on them and send them back into the fight. Can we reasonably take away a part of them that helped them survive? Something they relied on?

“Consider a case I’m sure many of you have heard about: That of Staff Sergeant Warren Krem, formerly of the 17th Alcott Ranger Battalion. After fifteen years of service Sergeant Krem was grievously wounded in a skirmish four years ago and required a full bionic replacement of his left arm. However, Krem was also a skilled combat medic, and was thus fitted out with an array of augmentations to aid him in his job. A year later he was credited with saving the lives of more than two-hundred fellow Marines while under fire, matching the previous four years.

“After his retirement last year Sergeant Krem dove into a burning building on the colony of Kildor-I and saved the life of an infant still trapped inside. First responders to the scene state that it was only the existing augmentations in his arm that allowed him to sedate and then perform an emergency surgery to remove a piece of shrapnel from the infant’s lung that allowed him to save the child’s life, despite being severely burned himself.”

[There’s a short pause, and a soft cough is heard before the Professor continues.]

“Two weeks later Sergeant Krem died of a drug overdose, a combination of morphine and several other commonly used painkillers. Autopsy revealed they were the same drugs that were left in his arm for use in the field, administered via telescoping needles from his mechanical arm.

“It could be argued that the arm’s medical devices should have been removed and the drug stores checked to ensure they were empty, but it is also certain that without them, the infant he saved would have died on the scene of the fire as well, even though he still would have been able to pull them from the fire.

“Aside from mechanical augmentation, we are seeing another rising trend in augmentation: Genetic. Gene therapies have likewise existed for years, essentially curing cancer and many diseases in every member species of the Commonwealth, but it is only relatively recently that the medical community has looked into optimizing bodily functions and physical actions through gene therapy.

“The process for this is... extreme, even more so than mechanical augmentation, with even moderate augmentations causing severe pain, and dysphoria is common. Undoing this process requires the same pain and mental disconnect, which would likely lead to one performing it on an unwilling subject.

Location: University of Xeno Studies, Felinus Arcturus campus

Time: 1405, 6-34 GM, 1334 A.C.

Class size: 243 in person, 2,542 remote

This information is from the primary Xenoscience Studies 401: Ethics in Influencing Alien Politics

“I’d like to make one thing clear in this presentation: We are living in an era of unprecedented warfare.

“I know that sounds odd to all our ears, including mine. The Commonwealth has been living in peace for hundreds of years! The first interplanetary war our government has ever officially fought was more than 1,400 years ago after the inception of the Commonwealth itself. The Commonwealth-Syndicate War involved more than three billion soldiers on both sides, hundreds of thousands of warships new to space combat, and claimed the lives of dozens of billions of souls. The Canis species itself was brought to near extinction, only surviving thanks to the war coming to an abrupt end after nearly three decades of conflict. The last war we fought was seven hundred years ago, and claimed another fifty billion lives.

“These numbers are paltry compared to today.

“Back then there existed a ‘mere’ two hundred billion Felinus, seventy billion Birons, and one hundred billion Canis pre-war, not even adding up to nearly half a trillion lives.

“Today there are more than fifteen trillion lives in the core worlds of the Commonwealth alone, with likely several more trillion in the outer colonies, though the precise number is unknown. It is estimated that by the end of 1340 our population will exceed thirty trillion as a combination of natural reproduction and the continued annexation of more species.

“This drastic difference in numbers has skewed our perspective. Yes, it’s true, the Commonwealth has not officially been in a state of war for almost seven centuries, but that doesn’t mean our armies have been passive.

“Currently Commonwealth forces are engaged in skirmishes with two other interplanetary bodies: The Skrrz Collective and the Jackallian Empire. These skirmishes have been mere ‘border conflicts,’ with fleets engaged on the outer colonies of the three powers, and have involved not thousands, but millions of ships and nearly half a trillion military personnel. We are near the end of Fastun, our sixth month, marking the second anniversary of these skirmishes. In the past two years the skirmishes have claimed an estimated forty-five billion lives, almost half of the Canis population before the beginning of the Commonwealth-Syndicate War. And all in a mere two years. That is more than two billion lives snuffed out every thirty days.

“Thankfully most of the lives lost have not been those of Commonwealth personnel, but this is still a grave situation we must face. If these ‘skirmishes’ continued to last for another twenty-eight years, the cost in life will end up exceeding that of all galactic conflicts waged by the Commonwealth combined.”

-Here the professor pauses. Murmuring is heard from the audience-

“This is why our field is so important. We have been in a state of, if not war, then conflict with multiple alien species for nearly two years, and we still know very little about them, aside from what we see from charred and burned battlefields. We don’t know their political structure, their culture, who their heroes are, if they even have any.

“Imagine if we did, though. Imagine if someone had been there to study and understand them before any of these skirmishes had happened, so someone could have trained the diplomats to attempt to broker peace.

“The first skirmish between Commonwealth and Skrrz forces involved two dozen ships and cost one hundred and fifty-three lives on both sides. The second was an engagement between the Second Home Fleet and a Skrrz fleet, involving more than five thousand ships and costed the Commonwealth more than fifteen million lives.

“I like to think that, if someone like us had been there, then perhaps all those soldiers and sailors would all still be here. That is why our work is so important. Someday you may all be responsible for such actions. You may end up saving countless lives.

“And neither you, nor anyone else, will ever know it.

“These border conflicts will have an end someday, heroes will be hailed, monuments raised, but first we will light dozens of planets on fire, and consume billions more in battle.

“Perhaps that hero will be one of us, raised up as a paragon of virtue and intelligence. But I submit this question to you: