QUICK OVERVIEW
The Beems – or Biomechanoid Starship – is a sentient, fully independent creature with the ability to travel at velocities beyond the speed of light.
They achieve this feat by the use of terminals. The terminals are situated at the tip of each skid, and can produce a gravimetric lens that can either distort space for acceleration (distortion field) or warp space to multiply the speed achieved (warp drive).
Terminals: There are generally three terminals for each Beems, but this changes as they evolve generation by generation (see: Descendents and Puritans page).
Skids: Skids are either wing-like, extending out from the center of the ship and paralleling the ship in a crescent shape. Or tail-like, extending out from the back of the ship.
Gravimetric Lens: The skids will (on a healthy Beems), be two of the three terminals needed for a gravimetric lens. The third terminal will be directly astern, on the ship’s ‘tail’. With these three terminals, they will form a lens that can create a distortion field and do other wonderful things.
Distortion field: The distortion field simply distorts, creating a wake ahead of the ship that it ‘falls’ into. A continuous distortion of 1g would make the ship accelerate at such a speed until either the relativistic effects of high speed cancel out the 1g acceleration or until the ship no longer has enough power to maintain the acceleration.
So… what happens when the ship is traveling at the speed of light and can no longer accelerate? Well, it has two choices:
- It can warp. Now, instead of using the power reserves to create a distortion field, it instead uses the gravimetric lens to warp the space ahead of it, decreasing the distance ahead and multiplying the distance behind. The ship will literally ‘stretch’ towards (away from, if you want to get technical) its destination (harmless I swear, they barely feel a thing!). How much the ship can stretch without exploding into billions of Beems bits is the determining factor for the warp drive. If the ship can take a warp factor of 500. It can travel at nearly five hundred times the speed of light, the calculation being how close to the speed of light it is currently traveling (0.9999cx500=very close to 500, yes I hate math).
- It can beem (jump). If the ship has koveran reserves (see: Power Supply section). It can use a single chamber to create an interstice into Beemspace. Instead of bending space inwards to a certain acceleration, it bends space to an infinite acceleration, and then (this part is important) seals the interstice behind it. Using Beemspace as a bridge, it can pop out at either a Nodepoint (see: Navigation section) or deposit itself randomly in space.
POWER SUPPLY (NOURISHMENT)
So how does a Beems get the power to do all these amazing things? Well, it has a capacitor and a koveran chamber.
The Capacitor: The capacitor is very straight forward. So long as it holds a charge, it’ll be able to supply power to the terminals. Once the capacitor’s load is exceeded, it actually does its ‘capacitor’ job and tries to maintain the charge for as long as it can, or (if the ship is able) converts different forms of energy into the energy the capacitor requires, which I will now call ‘capacitor energy’ because I’m very creative. So long as the ship has capacitor energy, it can manipulate its terminals to warp space with the gravimetric lens, but it cannot create an interstice, for that it needs:
Note: This will only talk about how koverans relate to Beems, for more information on the Koveran Particle, see the ‘Koverans’ page.
The Koveran Chamber: The Koveran chamber is the life blood of the Biomechanoid Starship. It nourishes it, and allows it to maintain high cruising velocities when traveling through Realspace (Realspace is the space we bipeds ‘perceive’). It also allows the ship to enter Beemspace (subspace, the space we do not perceive and the tunnel to other sections of Realspace).
The Koveran Chamber holds koveran energy. Koveran energy exists in Beemspace. But Beems generally exist in Realspace, so they get the energy by ‘sniffing out’ koveran trace elements, and then naturally absorbing the koverans from Beemspace to sustain themselves. They will absorb the elements automatically, pretty much subconsciously. The only conscious effort the Beems needs is to make sure it’s in a place that actually has koveran trace elements (see Koverans page)
(Interesting religious tidbit: It is rumoured that Beems were creatures of Beemspace, but ‘fell out’, having been cast out by their Gods, which some call The Builders.)
NAVIGATION:
Beems navigate in one of two ways.
Via Realspace: This is very straight forward. They look at the stars, figure out inertia and things like that, and then fly in a direction, making sure they don’t hit anything, either by pushing it out of the way with the distortion wake or avoiding it.
Via Beemspace: This gets complicated, since they can only survive in Beemspace for a limited amount of time. They achieve Beemspace navigation with a system called the Nodescape.
The Nodescape is a chart of all the Nodepoints that ship can ‘see’.
And, finally, a Nodepoint is an area of Realspace that is visible in Beemspace. When a ship has been to a location in Realspace, it can equate that location to a Nodepoint in Beemspace, thus being able to beem/jump back to that location if the situation calls for it.
This is where koveran signature becomes important (See: Koverans), as places with a high koveran signature will be very visible in the Nodescape, and easy to jump to, whereas places with little or no koveran signature are almost impossible to jump to, and requires a very sensitive Beems.
Get it? No?? That’s okay!! 😛
Beems are very good at noticing things, and can go about figuring out where things are and where things are going with a level of ease expected of a spaceborne creature.
Passive Sensors:
Gravimetric: Objects with any level of mass (see: all objects) can be picked up by the amount they distort space-time. The sensitivity a Beems has to do this depends greatly on the individual Beems as well as the type of environment a Beems is in. For example, a Beems orbiting Zemoria in primetime wouldn’t noticed Mr. Stalker come up from behind, but a Beems out near the Outer Rims would probably complain at the proximity.
Ocular: Beems can see, and they can see very well. They have little strips of photon sensors that absorb light and tell the Beems what’s out there. The strips are generally triangular and are designed to focus on one object at a time.
A good rule when facing a Beems: If you can see all of its ocular strips – it’s probably staring at you!
Active:
Frequency based: Beems have a ‘radar’ of sorts. They can yell at things at certain frequencies and listen for returns. Other Beems can notice this very easily. For anyone neurally linked to a Beems (and for perhaps the Beems itself), an active radar would look like a ‘searchlight’, since it’s illuminating an area that generally results in a somewhat omnidirectional return from that area that other Beems can pick up and use.
Again – because of the fact that there is an ‘ambient’ illumination to there being more active sensors, a place with a lot of Beems scanning about merrily would increase the general signature of that entire area, and would make it harder for a Beems (or any radar, for that matter) to pick something up in the clutter.
Field based: Beems can extend things outwards to feel things. Be that their distortion field or a weak koveran field.
GENDERS/LIFE CYCLE/LINKS/ALL THE OTHER STUFF
Beems have two genders, and it is the females that give birth to the Beems offspring. The birth is very mammalian, in the sense that they are born alive and dependent (in some way).
Birth and Growth:
The Beemster: When the Beemster is born, it will either
- Stick around and live off its mother for a while: This is generally the ‘normal’ thing to do. The mother will use umbilicals to nourish the small starship as it learns to sustain its capacitor, live off koverans, etc.
- Run away, do an emergency beem sequence: It does this if it’s in a very very bad situation and wants to start life anew, however, if it does this, it has to:
- Live off something else for a while: Remember I mentioned the umbilicals? Well the Beemster has them too, and it can tap them into a concentration of minerals to keep itself nourished until its koveran chamber takes over and the Beemster can sustain itself (which can take as little as half a year to as long as four years).
Note: All Beems start their life with a special tier called Tier Zero. This is where most of what a Beems produces comes from.
The Four Types of Links
Once the little Beemster has done (or is in the process of doing) one of the above three. It has more choices. Four, to be exact, and while some of the choices are very time sensitive, others can be done and interrupted and changed as the Beems grows and lives its life:
- It can find an adolescent Raumenoid (see: Raumen) on the verge of becoming mature. They like this because they can piggyback the development of their own frontal lobes with the development of their partner’s, which will allow the Beems to become mentally mature far quicker than its non-linked counterpart. This is also called a Type-1 Link. The Coalition loves doing this (see: Coalition).
- It can pair with an adult Raumenoid. Beems have an inherent love of servitude, and enjoy being told what to do. Pairing with a creature that perceives space terrestrially and has its own adventures is interesting for the Beems and safe (as the bipeds generally control all the planets and their guns). This pairing can also extend to another Beems, which is then called a bond. Bonds can be long or short term, and generally result in Beemsters. While it is illegal (see: Heron’s Law) for a Beems to pair with more than one Raumenoid at a time. It can pair with a Raumenoid and bond with one (or more) Beems at a time. These would all be considered Type-2 links.
- It can grow up with a Raumenoid. This is a dual-infant maturization (I like making up words), and is generally decided for the Beems. However, there are cases where this happens accidentally. Eg: A crèche near a newborn Beems’ hideout. These pairs are generally life-long, and the identities (and genetics) of the two tend to meld into one individual. If the Beems is red and the Raumenoid is white. The Raumenoid will probably be white with red stripes/spots, and the Beems will probably be red with white stripes/spots. This is a type-3 link, and easy to spot.
- The final choice the Beems has is to choose nothing at all, and remain solitary for a while. It will grow without the guidance of a Raumenoid, and perceive the world in its own way. These Beems are called rogues or type-4’s and are usually chased off from ‘civilized’ space, as they don’t see things the way us Raumenoids do!
Maturity:
Once the Beems is physically mature, it gets to exercise its type-2 privileges with all the Beems of the opposite gender and hopefully sire a bunch of little Beemsters that will then grow up to make their own decisions and sire more Beems and so on and so on.
Death:
Eventually, at the age of 300 years or so, the Beems will reach a point where it can no longer sustain itself. At this point they will generally fly off to a quiet or a comfortable place and shut down (pass away). The person to last link with a Beems is responsible for its remains, which basically means: Make sure the dearly departed doesn’t crash into anything or implode into a singularity (singularities are bad).
There, you now know all the basics of the Beems species!