Ziort

Typical relatively spherical representative in a vacuum.

Ziort's volume is a community of creatures that evolved in space, consisting of electrically charged plasma, and inhabiting mainly interstellar spaces. On the planets, they are forced to wear special suits, or capsules, so as not to dissipate in the atmosphere.

Estimated life expectancy - Indefinable. It seems that Ziort cannot die otherwise except by violence. There hasn't been a single recorded case proving the opposite.

Brief History

No one knows how the Volume of the Ziort was born, not even the Ziort themselves. Before contact with Raharrs, the Ziort did not understand the need to store historical data, since they essentially had no history. They do not remember how or when they began being sapient. The Raharrs stumbled upon the Volume by accident - one of the wandering individuals had just stumbled upon a research ship and accidentally trapped himself in the ship's computer systems, getting in through the communications systems. This nearly ended in the deaths of the entire crew, as the newfound “shipboard computer” had no idea how to operate the ship and its systems. The crisis was eventually gradually resolved, but Ziort had to continue to serve as the on-board computer. Fortunately, they themselves were enthralled with what was going on, and accepted such a role. Effectively they were the first of their species to work with the Alliance. They subsequently led the research team to the area of space where the Volume itself was located, and formal First Contact was made with Ziort. The Volume occupies a fairly sizable portion of the sector ( roughly a couple of parsecs across), but 95% of the Volume is located in intergalactic space above the galactic ecliptic, away from stars and dense clusters of gas. Upon learning of the existence of an organic form of intelligence, Ziort's Volume enthusiastically accepted the invitation to join the Alliance, anticipating unique and new knowledge. Soon the first prototypes of atmospheric container suits were created, allowing the citizens of Ziort to engage with their new acquaintances fully.

There has been debate about their origin almost since their discovery - speculation ranges from theories of naturally occurring organisms at the dawn of the universe that eventually acquired intelligence according to the Boltzmann Brain theory, to theories declaring Ziort to be some extremely old attempt - perhaps even by the Ancients themselves - to create an unusual type of Artificial Consciousness.

Biology

There are no analogues of the Ziort citizen known to the Alliance. This energy-based intelligence is a unique wonder of the universe, and its structure is still a mystery to the Alliance scientists. It is technically established that their ‘anatomy’ consists of powerful electromagnetic fields and ionised plasma, but there is no obvious structure, and the plasma does not behave as it should under given conditions, and seems to be more a consequence of the creature's existence than a proper part of it, a kind of waste byproduct. The plasma is made up of 100% hydrogen and seems to be generated from nothing. Given the nature of Ziort's citizens, it is unclear whether this is a violation of the laws of thermodynamics.

Ziort in their natural state are unable to exist near large clusters of high density matter or gas, contact with solid substances triggers the so-called dissipation effect - the individual literally explodes with a powerful electrical discharge of several gigavolts. This happens when the centre of the individual contacts any matter of sufficient density, regardless of its aggregate state. The saturation limit of the area of space that can be occupied by Ziort citizens without dissipation has been determined to be 0.03 atmospheres. The only exception is purified metals. Because of their conductive properties, they act as channels that attract and ‘suck’ an individual inside themselves. If the physical volume of the metal object is not large enough, the process generates strong induction currents in the object that can eventually melt the object (which in turn provokes a dissipation effect), but if the mass of the object is sufficient, the Ziort is able to ‘fit’ there completely.

Containment capsule, standard non-specialized version.

In this state, the Ziort Citizen becomes capable of safely interacting with solid matter, but instead loses freedom of movement and becomes a prisoner of the metal structure. If the object that captures the Citizen is a mechanism instead of an inert piece of metal, the Citizen usually gains the ability to manipulate the electronic components of the mechanism (those that did not burn out during the entry process), ‘manually’ simulating the supply of power and control signals to the appropriate circuits. Ziort's citizens demonstrated the ability to operate highly complex structures without much concentration on effort. Unfortunately, over time it became clear that this ‘confinement’ leads to a fatal outcome - the exact time depends on both the abilities of the individual and the technical features of the occupied object (in particular, the expected energy expenditure to ensure functioning), but in general, sooner or later, after several years, the intensity of the currents observed in the occupied object begins to fall rapidly, the Ziort citizen stops responding to stimuli, and then all electrical activity disappears altogether. Attempts to maintain life have not yielded any results, and attempts to connect the body to power generators may have even accelerated the process, probably due to the increased volume of metal in the system. Apparently, after being imprisoned in metal, a Ziort citizen loses the ability to generate energy for his existence, by whichever means, and spends the rest of their life on accumulated reserves, spending them, among other things, on controlling their new ‘body’. Calculating the energy required to run some of the mechanisms for that length of time implies that the citizens of Ziort have truly gigantic reserves of energy..... .. but in that case the dissipation effect would have to be considerably more destructive, releasing energy many orders of magnitude greater than that observed. It's also not clear where exactly they store these enormous amounts of energy.

Even before the lethal property of absorption was discovered, developments were already underway for a more functional way for Ziort citizens to interact with the Alliance, leading to the invention of containment capsules. Inside them, the Ziort Citizen is contained in a vacuum, interacting with the capsule's systems through electrodes created from semiconductor composites that allow the citizens to interact with them without causing an ‘ absorption’ effect.

Nothing is known about the way the citizens of Zyort reproduce, as all attempts at questioning were not understood by the interviewees. From indirect and leading questions, a rough picture emerges that Ziort citizens somehow divide like protozoa, but attempts to find out the details run into the same psycholinguistic barriers.

Military doctrine

The volume of Ziort has no military structure or organization. This does not threaten their appearance, since it is impossible and simply pointless to wage war against them. However, those citizens who get to the planet in costumes are trained in basic knowledge of self-defense and control of small arms, which can be built into the spacesuit, because it is impossible to guarantee the safety of a citizen on the planets and he dies if the suit is severely damaged.

State system

Ziort has no analogues of the state system in the material world. The definition of “anarchy” is most suitable for them, but the energy mind is so different from organic that it means, in essence only among the Citizens of the Volume, there are no principal and subordinates. Everyone lives and develops on its own, and events affecting the whole species are so rare that meeting with Raharr and joining the Alliance is the only such event in the last million years.

Society (general mentality, special features)

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In Ziort, views are directed towards inert perception and observation of the universe, accumulating and sharing this knowledge as the only value available to Ziort. However, there are occasionally individuals who do not follow this philosophy and wish to actively interfere with the processes of the universe for the sake of curiosity, desire, or boredom. They are usually declared outcasts, sometimes even destroyed (Helping the Alliance in scientific research, however, is not considered interference, but rather as a new form of knowledge and information exchange). The number of such outcasts has increased substantially since contact with the Alliance, but even with this substantial increase in dissenters, it is virtually impossible to find a Ziort citizen who is not a scientist in a laboratory.

Interest in biological civilizations and the desire to cooperate with them is felt mostly by active and curious Ziort citizens, while the more experienced ones prefer to float in space far above the ecliptic, showing little interest in communicating with material beings.

Notable characters

• Virus - Special Agent for hire

Trivia

• Ziort were invented for the setting, based on inspiration from the Unreal 2 game character as well as the "Virus" and "Titan AE" films.
• Virus was the first character created as a member of Ziort