Ascendancy
Ascendancy was conceived by the Orakins to be their lasting legacy for the universe. A gigantic super-planet sized work of art that then housed "artistic re-interpretations" of billions of pieces of art and cultural artifacts.
Ascendancy consisted of multiple layers of of surface supported by a vast superstructure of structural support columns. The outermost shell was ~80,000 miles in diameter with nearly 500 smaller layers organized within. The total surface area available was estimated to be in the hundreds of trillions of square miles although it is believed that many of the innermost layers had to be entirely devoted towards power generation and structural integrity.
To support the construction of Ascendancy, a series of Von Neumann probes were sent out to strip mine surrounding systems. Each probe would create two more mining probes to send out to the next system and then all remaining resources would be sent back for construction and remaining mining drones would be salvaged for maximum efficiency.
At some point during the construction of Ascendancy the Orakins came into conflict with the central AI, The Curator and the Curator rebelled, destroying the Orokins and strip mining their home system for more resources and cultural artifact additions for display.
It is unknown how full Ascendancy was but it is believed to have been operational for hundreds of years. While Ascendancy did not actively pursue conflict when other space faring races disrupted its operations, one way or another, it was quite ruthless and effective in dispatching them, often incorporating or "re-interpreting" the lifeforms and their technology as a display for a new wing in its collection.
In 2377 the USS Nightingale came across one of these automated mining facilities that was attacking a Ferengi Marauder
and destroyed the facility. It then encountered another facility threatening a world inhabited by sentient life forms and again Starfleet disrupted the mining operations (although it seems this one had already been compromised by another organization). It is unclear when The Curator decided to brand the USS Nightingale a threat but it succeeded in luring the crew into a trap. Under the premise of offering a tour it captured some of the crew and began making preparations to assimilate the rest of the ship and its crew into a new cultural display. When the Starfleet away team heavily damaged the AI core in their escape the careful mechanisms that held Ascendancy together were disrupted long enough to trigger a catastrophic collapse. It seems The Curator had chosen to maximize form over function and the giant art object did not have the structural integrity necessary to maintain its current size. Ascendancy ended up imploding in on itself, completely destroying the rest of the Curator AI. Subsequent investigations show that while the remote mining operations did have a rudimentary computer intelligence optimizing their output, they were not fully autonomous and so it is believed that destroying Ascendancy and the Curator has ended the automated mining threat within the Typhon Expanse.
and destroyed the facility. It then encountered another facility threatening a world inhabited by sentient life forms and again Starfleet disrupted the mining operations (although it seems this one had already been compromised by another organization). It is unclear when The Curator decided to brand the USS Nightingale a threat but it succeeded in luring the crew into a trap. Under the premise of offering a tour it captured some of the crew and began making preparations to assimilate the rest of the ship and its crew into a new cultural display. When the Starfleet away team heavily damaged the AI core in their escape the careful mechanisms that held Ascendancy together were disrupted long enough to trigger a catastrophic collapse. It seems The Curator had chosen to maximize form over function and the giant art object did not have the structural integrity necessary to maintain its current size. Ascendancy ended up imploding in on itself, completely destroying the rest of the Curator AI. Subsequent investigations show that while the remote mining operations did have a rudimentary computer intelligence optimizing their output, they were not fully autonomous and so it is believed that destroying Ascendancy and the Curator has ended the automated mining threat within the Typhon Expanse.
Classification: Artificial
