Titans of Ul

On the outer reaches of the galaxy lies the Dyson sphere of Elysium. A massive shell of metal and silicon encasing a singularity, this great construction was one of the final undertakings of the Mahact gene-sorcerers before they were overthrown by the Lazax, ending their reign over the galaxy. Though it has lain dormant all this time, the once-nameless relic lies in an area of space known to contain many dangerous ancient Mahact inventions; this danger, and even more so Elysium’s distance, deter even the most ardent of scavengers, who simply seek out other targets.

This is without even mentioning the Titans.

Elysium was not built by Mahact hands. During their reign, the Mahact had many strokes of brilliance, among which was their development of an entirely new form of life. Sculpted of steel and silicates and encased in a metal shell, the Titans married the self-determination of biology with the physical perfection of the machine.

But their greatest trait was their intelligence. No mere automatons, the Titans were capable of self-deterministic learning, though the Mahact had programmed a fail-safe such that their creations could not disobey their masters. The gene-sorcerers had crafted the perfect guardians and laborers to oversee their domains. They deployed the Titans as advance guards, used their labor to expand into new settlements, and set them to performing all of the menial tasks of running an empire.

But eventually the Lazax came to challenge the Mahact. Vast armies of Titans fell, ordered to their dooms by the last of the Mahact kings, who were willing to sacrifice millions of Titans for even a single Mahact life.

When it became apparent that the Mahact were about to be driven from the galaxy, the innumerable Titan legions had been reduced to a shadow of their former numbers. The Mahact seeded what remained of the Titans throughout known space as sleeper agents, ordering them to bury themselves deep in the wilds of thousands of worlds. There, the Titans settled into a deep dormancy. Only when the Mahact returned would they awaken.

So the Titans slept. The Lazax took the throne and established the Lazax Imperium, ruled for tens of thousands of years, waned, and fell. The Twilight Wars raged and quieted. The Dark Years consumed the galaxy. Occasionally, a Titan would be uncovered by explorers or surveyors, but they were assumed to be merely another relic of a past long forgotten, a shadow of yet another civilization fallen through the mists of time.

The recent disaster at the Acheron Gate unleashed the Mahact from their millennia-old prison on Ixth. Soon after the disaster, a wake code was disseminated through the galaxy at superluminal speeds, rousing the Titans from their long slumber. The Mahact presumed that their old servants would rise to their side as they always had before.

But the Mahact had once again severely miscalculated by underestimating other sentients. During their millennia of dormancy, the Titans had continued to evolve, their silicate brains developing far beyond the Mahact’s ability to foresee. The Titans were horrified at the gene-sorcerers’ callous disregard for sentient life. Newly awakened with greater mental and intellectual capacity, the Titans no longer felt any compulsion to obey their former masters.

Unshackled from the Mahact’s mandate of loyalty, the Titans began to seek out their kin before gathering at the great Dyson sphere they had built. They easily overcame the Mahact defenses on the great sphere before calling it Elysium and summoning all other Titans to join them.

The Titans of Ul Today

The biomechanical Titans had long had a love of other living things, and now that they were free from the Mahact’s rule, they demonstrated this by transforming Elysium into a lush garden world. Harnessing the energy and gravity of the singularity, they seeded myriad biomes across the barren metal surface, blending their towns and cities seamlessly with the surrounding landscape in a hodgepodge of metal, stone, and vegetation.

This love of living things extends to their own kind. Each new Titan born is a cause for long celebrations. Titans begin life at just under three meters tall, and as they age, they continuously expand and grow. The largest Titans are so tall that they can be mistaken for buildings when silhouetted against the sky.

It is fortunate, then, that Elysium is so massive, with the surface area of ten thousand other planets. The eldest Titan, the Ul, is so massive they eclipse even the largest skyscrapers of their capital city, Transcendence; the Ul simply stands motionless in the heart of the city as they hold discourse on the issues confronting their people, other Titans waiting patiently for their turn to discuss key matters with their leader.

Titans as a people have a great preference for order, organization, and hierarchy—a remnant of their creation as programmable machines. The Ul’s word is sacred, disseminated down through the comms networks and brought into being by all Titans. The Titans are not martinets; orders often take the form of broad directives rather than specific commands. As evidence of their independent thought, the Titans have taken a fancy to creating art. Continent-sized murals meant to be viewed from space are a specialty; Titans reshape entire tectonic plates and carve out symbols using forests and river systems. Such art is often fractal in nature; a tiny observer on the ground would be able to see the whole in its parts, microscopically fashioned using nano-instruments. Titan art is now considered one of the great wonders of the galaxy.

In addition to cultivating Elysium and continuing their own development as a culture, the Titans have been sending out envoys to the other Great Civilizations. The Titans' respect and love for sentient life has helped overcome initial distrust of the Mahact-employed creations, and the Titans have been making significant inroads by sending out their younger and thus smaller members as ambassadors. Titan spaceflight is something to behold: individual Titans self-propel using boosters installed in their bodies, often in the feet and hands. Their ships are merely large shells that their Titan pilots don like clothing or, in the case of their larger capital ships, are encased in.

Goals of the Titans of Ul

It wasn’t long before trading vessels descended on Elysium, holds bursting with rare minerals and exotic plant and animal life that the Titans lovingly fashioned customized biomes for. In exchange, the Titans offered wondrous devices from the Mahact times, or their own expertise in geoforming, orbital construction, and terraforming to help other species bring life to worlds where there was previously none. Indeed, the Titans often seek out opportunities to help rebuild and terraform the many war-torn worlds across the galaxy.

The Titans also scour the galaxy for any of their kin who may still slumber beneath the surfaces of countless worlds, buried too deep for the wake codes to rouse, or damaged somehow. Sometimes a search ends in tragedy, a Titan too damaged by scavengers or the elements. But more often than not, the Titans rejoice as a new member of their kind wakes to a galaxy more benevolent and generous than the one they remember.

The Titans have another, even more ambitious goal, though it is known only to the elder members of the species. As an artificial world, Elysium has many of the same systems that were used in the Titans’ creation. The Ul and their close confidants wonder if their world could be awoken, and become the greatest Titan of all.