Quoted By:
Generation Ship
Immense celestial carracks designed for the conveyance of populations across the infinite span of the Astral Sea. It was said that the velocity of a civilisation increased over its history, from the pace of a mortal man, to that of a horse, a chariot, a windship or kytoon, the fusion rocket, and so on and so forth. Philosophers postulated that eventually some superluminary threshold would be surpassed; the ancient Navarchs sought in vain to engineer such an impossible vessel, or chart some loxodromic course amongst the empyrean charts of the portolan that would narrow the farflung reach of the Void.
Only the Machine Chrysalis revealed the Dreamsent Secret of the Void to mortal men: the short span of their lives could never encompass the ordeal of any astral voyage - even stretched through the fragile trees of descendants and heirs, Lowborn and Highborn. All civilisation was destined to end; there is no permanence, just as flies may sit upon the calm surface of the river, before it overturns and floods. Instead one should remain still, and beckon the destination to oneself in dreams. This insight led to the tentative creation of first the Shockburst Engine and eventually culminated in the transcendent revelation of discovery: the Starmetal Altar itself.
The old generation ships are now obsolete and languish. The ancient song of Utnapishtim spoke of three birds released after the flood.Those that have witnessed the hollow wrecks of these vast arks and their rotting hulks describe them as possessing the shape of enormous bird skulls, perhaps a raven or crow.
