bluegargantua

Apex: T3 E2 R-2

The Apex system (along with Bellweather and Concordia) was once a part of the Confederation, a cluster-wide political organization that sprawled across 8 different systems. Apex, with its twin garden worlds and numerous space habitats was mostly devoted to scientific research and development. The theory was that cutting-edge science could be conducted within Apex and if anything went wrong, nothing too terrible would happen. The system's lack of material resources and the Confederation's high level of livable planets meant that Apex was the most expendable of the systems within the cluster.

Unfortunately, innovation can come from anywhere. Apex scientists still aren't entirely sure what happened, but based on the last news dump they received there was some sort of advancement in CyberCom technology. The current theory is that billions of people linked together via CyberCom may have formed some gestalt intelligence that sparked singularity. The outcome of this event was that the slipstream network connecting Apex, Bellweather and Concordia to the rest of the Confederation cluster broke up. The three planets were trapped in their own small cluster for almost a year and then the slipstreams re-aligned and now Apex is part of a new cluster.

Achieving Singularity has been a goal of many people in Apex. Advancing science and technology has been everyone's priority. Getting left behind while the rest of the Confederation moved on has stung them deeply. So they've thrown themselves into cutting edge research. Without a steady stream of resources from mineral-rich systems of the Confederation however, a lot of this work is still mostly theoretical. A great deal of effort is expended in simply preserving the technology they currently have. In this case, that means maintaining their starship superiority.

The Apex fleet, even with only a few dedicated warships, is the mightiest in the system. But it's old and while Apex still possesses the know-how to fix and maintain the ships (or even build new ones), getting the necessary materials to do the job is the problem. Analysts have concluded that Apex could probably wipe out the entirety of the Eigen space fleet, but would itself be destroyed in the process. If Eigen ever captures an Apex ship and manages to reverse engineer it, that would be the end of Apex dominance. The upshot is that Apex captains are very protective of their ships. It also means that Apex most valuable commodity, scientific and engineering information, must be traded away very carefully and for the highest of prices.

Aspects: