What is sentient on Delta Horologii?

The last post we talked about the planet of Delta Horologii. Well we did a worksheet of some of the basics about the planet. In the sheet is a reference to the Horo’s a native race of Organo-silica life. While they are going to get a writeup for sure. I wanted to talk about the sentience that Terrans dragged to this colony rock. They are the Synths, The Uplifted, AI and the Plugs. 

Created Sentience

So a short description of each of these is as follows. 

• Synth is short for Synthetic Human so yes they are fully artificial. Synths were designed and created to fill niches and work in places that are too dangerous for Terrans. Synths are strong and fast.
• Plugs are force-grown human clones. They insert a Stack Recorder to collect and backup the psyche of a person then the Plug the new persona into a general blank clone. 
• Uplifts are a few different things. What happens when you look at something like chimpanzees or octopi for their ability to start making use of tools and other things like a possible language. Well then you take those animals and you force evolution on them at an accelerated rate. You create Uplifts, a new race within a species. 
• Artificial Intelligence or AI for short is the final sentience. AI’s exist in the computer networks of starships or planet networks. They as a general rule see mankind and its physical children as things that they need to protect from themselves. Is this truly how they see things or is this a part of the coding that has given rise to these thinking machines. As of now AI’s are not self replicating which is a built in feature of their code. 

Terrans

Now a bit about the Terrans that have found this planet. They are highly diverse in the things that they have done to themselves. Developments in cybernetics and gene therapy are very wide. Mankind as a general rule live well in to their 150’s. The average terran is 2 meters tall and massing around 95kg. Then individuals will have modifications done to themselves.  Almost all Terrans that are over the age of 10 have at least one mod that lets them connect to the Mesh. Humans, after much upheaval and conflict, have come to understand that they are all the same at the molecular level. 

Humans created all of these other sentience. Is this a good thing for them? It is hard to say yes or no to that question. Mankind is far from a perfect species and is not the most understanding. While the children of Mankind are diverse they are also the children of Mankind. Which carries with it its own set of problems. 

So we have touched on the main forms of sentience that Terrans have brought to this world. What about the native race of sentience that has been here for a very long time? What are they and why have they been so content to stay on this planet? We will be touching on them a little bit here but having a much bigger post in the future. 

Native Sentience

The Horo as the Terrans call them just call themselves Tilliam which means “Folk”. They are a lifeform that has a shape that is different than humans want to think of as normal. Each Tilliam is a composite of a plant and an insect colony. The plant is a base structure that the colony lives on and in. Their form of communication among themselves is pheromones. But they had to find a better way to communicate with Terrans once they showed up. It took them a bit of time to work things out with the new aliens.

Horos are able to move because the plant structure is the inner and outer shell of them. The Callium is the plant that houses the colony. The colony is the way the body can move. The insect called a Till creates the inner workings. They are on average about 10 cm in length. A few hundred Till create a colony, and they have a hivemind of sorts. When they are in a Callium the two fuse to create a psyche and true sentience is born. The average height of Horos is 3 meters and the mass is about 120 kg. But more about them to come soon.