Aberrations
Aberrations are rare bio-technogenic organisms encountered in remote strata and uncharted regions of the Pillar Eucumene. They are living beings and technological constructs at once, built around external mechanical frames and connected through a shared ecosystem.
Records
Direct encounters are uncommon. Most knowledge comes from Breacher testimony, monastic travel records, scientific expeditions, and remote colonies where aberrations are a survival problem rather than a subject of scholarship.
The oldest indirect accounts appeared centuries after ship acquiring, when monks recorded wall growths, malformed silhouettes, and monsters in distant corridors. Credible Breacher contacts began in the ninth century AI; Orphan's description of the Cachalot in 890 AI is among the earliest surviving records.
Formal research began in 1022 AI when Philippus of Heraclea descended the Stairwell Shaft beneath Black Bridge Cape. His expedition documented five species and recovered a sample of iron moss. Later missions reached Void, the Nocturnal Sea, and other regions of the Pillar Eucumene.
Traits
Confirmed aberrations share five traits:
- they are biological and technological at once;
- they possess genotypes and mutate;
- they form producer, consumer, predator, and decomposer relationships;
- they generally favor darkness;
- their biomass grows around external technogenic frames.
Species
Researchers sort aberrations by how they move: mobile ships, swarms, and crawlers; semi-mobile settlers; and immobile growths. Recorded species include:
- Cachalots
- Horned Whales
- Rodion's Hair
- Gliders
- Tangles
- Centipedes
- Bearers
- Latchers
- Skeletons
- Crimson Gates
- iron moss
- balanuses
- cords
- wall tumors
Origin
The dominant technogenic theory argues that aberrations were engineered before the Derailment and escaped after containment failed. It accounts for their constructed biology, but not for their genetic diversity, reproduction, or the way so many independent species use functioning mechanisms as organs.
State of research
Research declined after the Credit Revolution and the collapse of institutional science. New information now arrives through frontier crews and colonies, often after the original witnesses are missing, dead, or unable to distinguish an organism from the machinery it occupied.