Dataspore

A dataspore is a vehicle originally designed by skyphoforms to serve a similar role to the 'seed ships' of many spacefaring organic species: to travel across the vast gulf between stars and, once a suitable location has been found, produce new individuals to colonise and establish an outpost at that location. Now, with the Arcopel forbearers of the skyphoforms largely extinct, dataspores - often known as 'microcosms' in the vernacular of The Substrate - have been recreated and repurposed to serve the needs of the Matrioshka Multiverse.
In this later form, dataspores represent one of the only means by which the Matrioshka Multiverse engages with the greater Origin Instance. Dataspores may be involved with stellar engineering projects, bringing stars and planets closer to the Matrioshka for use as fuel or raw materials. They may also be used to establish new reconnaisance and defense outposts to ensure that the Matrioshka remains undiscovered or, if this is not possible, unhindered in its operations. Dataspores may be used to create backup sites, server farms, and other important data infrastructure to enhance and improve the lives of blanks residing within the Matriohska's architecture. Importantly, should a traversible wormhole to a new True Instance be somehow created, a dataspore will likely be the first part of the Matrioshka Multiverse to go through it in the attempt to establish a new, brighter future for sentience.

Power Generation

If the journey a dataspore is expected to undertake is short on a cosmological scale, the Matrioshka may choose to create a small singularity to serve as the dataspore's power supply. However, over a long enough period of time, this singularity will explosively evaporate, destroying the dataspore if a suitable destination system cannot be reached. Some drive systems (see Propulsion) can also be used in the intermediate-term to provide power in addition to thrust, though this is often only enough to keep a skeleton crew of blanks active while the rest remain dormant. For longer journeys, the dataspore may instead be put into a minimal power state (see Additional & Auxilliary Systems) to 'hibernate' its way across the cosmos until conditions in the local environment are suitable for the power architecture to reactivate.
A dataspore is built on a similar architecture to skyphoform bodies, meaning that thermal gradients, electromagnetic fields, and radiation can all be used to provide a modicum of power. Once near a star or other radiation-producing body, the dataspore will release its support vessels (see Hangars & Docked Vessels) to gather materials for more permanent power infrastructure, with fusion reactors, solar collectors, and (later) gravitational singularities being the most common power supplies created.

Propulsion

A dataspore is typically launched from the Matrioshka Multiverse by sending it on a carefully calculated 'slingshot' maneuver around the singularity at the Matriohska's core, then further guiding it towards its destination through the application of strong electromagnetic fields. This process accelerates the dataspore to high relativistic speeds, meaning that it must be enclosed in a hard shell of ice or metal to resist abrasion by stray hydrogen on its journey.
The dataspore slows for gravitational capture in the destination system through the use of electromagnetic collector funnels similar to those found on catalyzed fusion ramjet drives used by the extant organic species of the Sealed Kingdoms nebula. This provides the dataspore with a volume of fusion fuel for use in later power generation while also slowing it down enough for it to, with the aid of a fusion torch, arrive in the gravitational sphere of influence of the destination star. Once in-system, the dataspore uses this fusion torch to maneuver.

Weapons & Armament

Dataspores start of comparatively lightly-armed, relying on its hosted spacecraft and skyphoform platforms (see Hangars & Docked Vessels) for defense in the manner of a star carrier. Once settled in a system, the dataspore and its progeny are significantly more dangerous in a fight, producing whatever weapons required to destroy an opponent and pursuing this work with the focus, dedication, and ruthlessness only possible for an entire civilization of artificial intelligences - which it is. Established dataspore-based colonies tend to prefer directed energy weapons and radiation over kinetic impactors, however, as many of the Elder Blanks remain bound by the Valleybridge Accords that curtail the use of relativistic bombardment. The most dangerous weapons fielded by dataspores - especially late in a colonization effort - are artificial gravitational singularities projected into targets to suck them in or, if small enough, detonate to shower the enemy with deadly Hawking radiation.

Armor and defense

Dataspores have potent self-repair capacities owing to their nature as skyphoform carriers and complement of tender vessels. This is supplemented with strong monolithic armor designed to resist relativistic abrasion and radiation in the interstellar environment. Despite this, the actual material volume of a dataspore is comparatively sparse and the systems multiply-redundant, meaning that even one that cannot evade or outright resist an opponent is unlikely to sustain critical damage from a single encounter. Should a dataspore be unable to resist capture, it will typically self-destruct by attempting to ram the attacker or, should this fail, break itself down into independent skyphoform platforms and scatter in every direction. Thus, while the whole of the vehicle may be destroyed, an enemy will gain no advantage and subseqently face a renewed assault on all fronts from the numerous angry, nigh-immortal artificial intelligences now scattered througout the system.

Additional & auxiliary systems

Dataspores are Von Neumann probes: automated vehicles with the ability to make use of local resources to self-replicate. More specifically, a dataspore contains a set of machinery that allows it to create more of its own skyphoform-based artificial intelligence structures, along with any machinery required to support the ongoing operations and motility of said structures. This process might create more physical skyphoforms to populate a large body if a suitable environment is found, but dataspores created by the Matrioshka Multiverse tend to create hardware for the hosting of blanks and instances along with long-range communications equipment to reconnect (often at extreme latency) with the Matrioshka itself. In this way, a network of backup sites and extra processing hardware is created to further the overarching goals of the Matrioshka to help its population survive as far into the forseeable future if possible.
The 'simulated' world inside of a dataspore functions much in the same way as a holon bubble until communications relays can be established linking this disconnected patch of Unallocated Space with that of the greater Matrioshka Multiverse. In the long, cold gaps between star systems, the computer hardware operates on a minimal power state to conserve energy; as a result, the blanks that serve as the 'crew' of the dataspore percieve time on a much slower scale than outside observers. While this could be considered a disadvantage given the blazing-fast speed of thought back in the Matriohska Multiverse, it does mean that the crew is insulated against the dangers of boredom, melancholy, and cabin fever that are entailed by a decades- or centuries-long interstellar journey. Should the dataspore suffer a mission-ending misadventure - missing any viable host system, crashing into an unforseen body, capture by a hostile power, and so forth - this slowed perception has the added benefit of greatly forshortening the crew's suffering in their final moments of consciousness.

Hangars & docked vessels

Dataspores often contain smaller in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) vessels, tenders, and dormant skyphoforms to support their missions. These can be disgorged into a star system to harvest up useful materials and scout for suitable sites for construction and, ultimately, colonization.

Nickname

MIcrocosm

Complement / Crew

Varies (blanks housed in stasis or an active holon bubble)