Cloudskimmer

"They appear out of the sky and then disappear. They're watching us, I know it! One day you'll know it too."
— A Seeing Eye telling others about a Cloudskimmer
c-65PT

Purpose

The Cloudskimmer was a small, manned craft which was built for short-range flights inside a planet's atmosphere. It was built during the Expansion Age on P'Ache Prime at a time when the Primians were exploring the P'Ache Solar System and looking to gather data on the other planets. It was designed for observing and recording information on both the planets and those who lived on them.

Capabilities

While it may not be capable of leaving a planet's atmosphere, the cloudskimmer was designed to be quiet and fast. It used Larite for its power and even the earliest models could travel as fast as up to 1,500 mph. It had stealth mode which became enhanced in later models which allowed them to travel unnoticed but only at speed. Later models also had an autopilot function.

Equipment

The Cloudskimmer had built-in atmospheric, geological, radiation, temperature, meteorological, light and sound scanners which recorded and transmitted data back to a pre-defined storage facility within range (250,000 miles). There were also 3D recorders (the same technology which was later used in the Digitiser) that were used for monitoring species.

History

Development of the Cloudskimmer started in -356 PT, but it took a lot of time and prototyping to get it to the point where it could be used on other planets. It became an essential tool of the Primians throughout the Expansion Age and the New Age. After the three other planets in the P'Ache Solar System had signed treaties with the Primians, the need for the Cloudskimmer diminished until they were officially decommissioned in 504 PT.

Impact

Seeing Eyes had been spotting evidence of Primian observation on P'Ache Micro for almost 100 years before the first Primian set foot on the planet. They had been mostly dismissed by other Macrans. However, when the Primians officially introduced the Cloudskimmer to the Macrans, the Seeing Eyes saw it as a sign of things to come and fled to the safe spaces they had been creating in preparation for this moment. There are those who blame the Cloudskimmer for the separation of the Seeing Eyes from the Macrans.

People	Primian, Macran, Seeing Eyes, Peacekeeper, Pachian
Locations	Peacekeeper Territories, P'Ache Solar System, P'Ache Prime, P'Ache Micro
Culture	Peackeeper Categorisation Planet Types, Peacekeeper Diplomacy
Technology	Larite