#hifsamotud

HIFSAMOTUD stands for Hollow Intercession, Falling Space, All Mundane Order Towards Unawakened Discovery (or simply Discovery for short, to refer to it as a whole) which is by all means.... a ridiculously long name! every couple words is meant to represent each of its minds.

originally, it was restricted to travelling a specific distance away from the planet - a taboo that it managed to break, along with rewriting its genomes in such a way that expanded its range of communication. it functions like a massive satellite for iterators on ground, allowing them to send signals to other iterators who would usually be out of their radius.

the astronomically (pun intended) long name is to celebrate their successful launch!! there were at least fourteen other failures before them

component-wise:

roughly ten times the size of a regular iterator (still deciding on the scale!)

solar-powered

four sets of wings (for moving in zero g)

vacuums to suck out biological waste and prevent slag buildup

massive communication arrays

overseers are used to photograph

personality wise they're actually extremely goofy, really outgoing and concerningly likeable. like they are so fucking silly. could definitely make any iterator laugh. cannot be serious for the life of them

purpose wise, they still worked on the great problem but were also tasked with researching space eg. taking pictures, sampling matter, naming planets.

(think big satellite or massive james webb telescope except the ancient version)

and STORY WISE

HIFSAMOTUD worked on their given tasks for a very short time after taking one look at the earth and going 'why the fuck do i have to be stationary and work on the great problem when you have all of them'

after MULTIPLE reminders HIFSAMOTUD just goes 'lmao no you gave me wings', breaks out of orbit and flies thousands of kilometres into space until the ancients completely lost connection with them. because of this, their model is discontinued in fear of this situation ever happening again <3

long after the ancients have all ascended HIFSAMOTUD floats their way back and makes a distress signal in hopes of contacting someone again - to their shock getting the attention of hundreds of iterators, all in different situations but being broken down by time.

HIFSAMOTUD, being in deep space where there is no oxygen for erosion, gets very concerned for their ground iterator friends.

they were already a massive communication system from the start, but they go off to rewrite some of their genomes so they can reprogram themselves. (and it goes surprisingly well! probably because they don't have resources to share with anyone and they told all their friends to shut the fuck up and leave them to focus)

they reprogram their coms to be a full global system for the iterators (invented discord) and use it to reconnect with older iterators and as a system where all the other iterators can communicate with each other. sorta like a server host!!

they also made a database for the iterators (registration) so they know who has been contacted and/or uses their system.

this is when the group of 'discoverists' form!! these are iterators who HIFSAMOTUD has registered on their database (in this au fp and lttm are discoverists!) discoverists are all anonymous and are given new aliases by HIFSAMOTUD - this can either be based on a role, or HIFSAMOTUD names them something space related based on their name or puppet colour, eg. OPERATOR, LIFEGIVER (roles) MOONLIGHT, NEBULA (colours) etc etc