6 - Common Technologies

The Ñezyeki Empire, on the Extended Kardashev Scale, sits at a Kp (power generation) of 2.8 (not the entire galaxy, but most of it and its neighbors), Ki (capacity for information) of 3.8 (immense orders of magnitude above humanity), Kn (population) of 2.0689, and Kc (mass of constructions) of 2.85.

To put things in perspective, things that we might consider “far future” concepts (efficient space elevators, warpspeed travel, planetary scale mining operations, extreme data storage capacity) is everyday life for a Ñezyeki. Due to the species being in the rough equivalent of a space age for over one million Earth years’ time, they have had a long time to mature. Their past was riddled with petty conflicts and destructive wars, before a ‘commonwealth’ of the world finally took to space after thousands of years of Yiphran squabbling. Technological innovations exponentially began to grow since then, with warp drives being found extraordinarily fast due to the presence of suulolt (shoo-yolt), a vibrant green crystal which can be found crystallized beneath extreme quantities of soil, close to the boundary between a planet’s mantle and crust.

The development of the warp drive came as the suulolt samples were charged with two types of super-energetic particles, after which, during the first ever test of the compound, a hole was blown cleanly through the laboratory wall, and the sample was (years later) discovered approximately 8,122 light-years away from Yiphra. To create a sustained drag field, the sample is spun at any speed over 100 RPM, throttle controlled by the rotation, and charged with the aforementioned particles, achieving velocities from (at the lowest) 0.882 c, to (at the highest) millions of times the speed of light. The latter type of samples is only available to high-class ships such as cargo freighters and trade vehicles, civilians being limited to 500,000 c as a hard limit within warp lanes. Due to the nature of the drag fields, similarly to Earthly airplanes, interstellar molecules and dust are simply deflected around the ship, as if there was some invisible aerodynamic force to push them out of the way. This system of limited speeds and warp lanes did not last forever, though, and was eventually completely done away with.

Perhaps the biggest project ever undertaken by the Ñezyeki spanned about 28,292 Yiphran years, and involved the construction of a structure 0.5 light years wide, bound together by the strongest materials available to the Ñezyeki, which would allow them to control the effective speed of light within about 422 billion light years. Utilizing what was determined to be the brightest, but still longest lasting, star in the galaxy, the structure was built, and eventually activated, 732,119 (Yiphran) years after the Ñezyeki first left Yiphra, to the (Yiphran) day. The speed of light was brought up to be infinitely fast, meaning that the Ñezyeki warp drives, no longer limited in speed, were now only limited by their own safety, and so new methods of communication were brought into use after this drastic change in the universe. Quantum communication became the most widely used method, as, with no delay, the entire Empire theoretically could be connected, but there was one problem they did not account for- the colonial advisors being entirely unwilling to stay as a part of the Empire. Spurring new jumps ahead in military tech- both in offense and defense - the Empire continued speeding along, with its tributaries, breakoffs and enemies joining it rapidly.

This leads to the present day’s technology, where things such as personal hyperlight spacecraft, rooftop observatories, teleportation between galaxies, and even mining of entire solar systems is a common sight to see, whether the citizens enjoy it or not. The most recent efforts into pushing the limits of technology have led to the beginning of a process to revive every single race that the Empire wiped out, and, most of the time, giving their proper planetary systems back to them, and bringing the displaced Ñezyeki to other regions of the galaxy.