Data Swarm

Official page for the creator of The Dark Galaxy, an original science fantasy setting. Always open to questions. He/him. My Reddit is u/Data_Swarm

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My name is Data, I'm a Canadian writer and worldbuilder, and the creator of The Dark Galaxy (TDG,) an original science fiction/fantasy setting.

This blog is the official TDG Tumblr page, where I will occasionally be posting updates, lore, artwork and other things related to my writing. Feel free to follow if you're interested, and don't hesitate to message me if you have any questions or want to know more, I'm always happy to discuss my work!

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This is a lore post that I probably should have written a while ago lol. Merlin. Objectively one of the most important figures in the Empire's history, yet I haven't discussed him in detail for some reason (yet another of the Dark Galaxy's unsolvable mysteries.)

Merlin Emrys is an Arturian Wizard and a veteran of the Death of the Republic. His significance dates back to before Marric's rebellion, and at the age of 1,398 he's actually the second oldest Arturian alive today. Although granted, it is a distant second compared to the 4,000+ year old Sagramore Lot. Merlin was born in the mid 8,000s on Orkney. His mother was forced to raise him alone, as his father abandoned them both, and so Merlin grew up in a difficult situation. He quickly took to the study of magic, which was actually very popular among the Republic's youth. He cast his first spell when he was seven years old, and ultimately excelled when he began formal schooling. Merlin was largely detached from the political landscape as tensions began rising between the people and government due to the whole Worldsmithing fiasco, but his considerable skill attracted the attention of someone much more involved. Someone who would become one of his only friends, an ally, at least for the time.

Yes. Merlin fought on the side of Marric Octavian. When Marric was plotting his coup, he recruited individuals from every planet in Avalon, starting with his homeworld of Nemesis and moving from there. When he reached Orkney, Merlin was among the first to catch his attention. Marric began feeding his ideology to the young Merlin, who was skeptical at first, but gradually did become convinced over to his side. Orkney was as much a nightmare as any other Arturian planet, and the fact that the Republic could arguably be considered responsible was enough to slowly radicalize the spellcasting prodigy. When he officially agreed to join Marric's cause, Merlin was sixteen. When the fighting fully broke out, he was eighteen, and things got bloody...

Merlin's memory of this time is actually somewhat clouded, the reason why is something we'll get to in a moment, but for now the point is that even Merlin himself does not remember many details beyond what I've told you already. What does remain has been extremely traumatic for him, as he has memories of the insane violence that was the Death of the Republic. Remember, at the time, there were exponentially more Wizards and spellcasters to the point where they made up more than half of all combatants on both sides. Battles were so insanely destructive because so many standard infantry carried with them the immense power of magic. On a battlefield where one soldier can do more damage than a score of tanks, from the perspective of infantry, every engagement was nothing short of a localized apocalypse. Merlin incinerated, froze, blasted apart and disintegrated hundreds, if not thousands of people over the course of the revolution, oftentimes fighting directly alongside Marric himself.

When the conflict settled and Marric crowned himself Emperor, he and the Mettalicists really began to destroy information. The great loss of knowledge that cast the Empire into confusion and set back Arturian progress by hundreds of years when it came to magic involved the burning of entire archives, the systematic murder of countless Arcanologists and spellcasters, bribery, forged and falsified information to confuse scholars, and so on, all so Marric could maintain a tight grip on his new regime. He didn't just rule through fear, he ruled through the ignorance of his people. He and the Church were now the prime authorities on all things magical, and magic made the world go round. However, there was a loose end in the form of Merlin, who now was one of the only remaining people with memories of the Republic and how its advanced magi-tech operated.

Marric couldn't allow this, and on more than one occasion he sent assassins to kill Merlin. While they never succeeded, they did ultimately eliminate him as a threat for the time being when a sniper's bullet went directly through his brain. Exactly how he survived is not entirely clear, but most attribute it to one or more of the gods healing his wounds. Some believe it was Nimue, while others believe it was Dagonet, and others still think it was Uther. No doubt to divert attention away from their involvement in the attempted murder, the Mettalicists have claimed it was Hekyr who protected him. But while Merlin may have lived, the shot left him with a form of severe amnesia. Most of his memories from the rebellion and before are lost, he can only remember a very vague semblance of events. He forgot more than half of the countless spells he learned, and has been slowly going through his notes to try and relearn them ever since.

The only thing that remained fully intact was his extreme PTSD from the Death of the Republic, and his trauma ultimately compelled him to retreat into a hermitic lifestyle. Merlin entered a self imposed exile and went to live in the woods of Avalon Prime, paranoid, confused and scarred in every way imaginable. His name and significance was purged from records, Marric basically made him into the Arturian equivalent of Trotsky. Merlin lived that way for years on end, trying desperately to maintain some kind of grip on reality, on himself. His identity was fractured irreparably, he didn't know who he was anymore. It was only when another unexplained miracle was visited upon him that he once again gained purpose in life.

One day, Merlin was walking by a lake near his forest hut, and he noticed something in the waters. Laying still within the lake was an Arturian baby girl. It was breathing perfectly fine despite being submerged, and the carnivorous Snapfins did not attack or bite her at all. Merlin would take this inexplicable lake child in as his own, adopting her as a daughter. He named her Thaumiel, and well, you know the rest. At the time he did not know he was going to raise arguably the most important person in the galaxy, but that is exactly what he did. The time Thaumiel spent fighting the Dread Wars, Merlin was kept on Avalon Prime, as Cyberius Noct made Marric forbid Merlin from going to war. Merlin was one of Marric's greatest threats during the Dread Wars, he was arrested more than once and was even supposed to be executed on two occasions, but he escaped. Even with half his memories, Merlin was still a very dangerous Wizard.

When the Ist Incursio of Avalon Prime began, he was basically the only thing that bought Thaumiel enough time to return and stop it from fully annihilating the Throneworld. A continual thorn in Marric's side, the two old friends now enemies eventually met in a traditional Wizard's duel, which lasted for several hours. The two were evenly matched and each had a counter for the other's most devastating spells. Marric eventually won by cheating when he called on Cyberius Noct for aid, at which point the Black Baron appeared and strangled Merlin unconscious before Marric threw him in the palace dungeons to be tortured. When Thaumiel returned and slew the Demonically corrupted Marric, their battle was so great it collapsed the Royal palace, leaving only demolish rubble and dust. This is how she was able to find her imprisoned father, as the dungeons were exposed in the wreckage. Merlin was nearly dead from the barbaric tortures, but Thaumiel brought him to safety and with the help of multiple Knight Hospitallers he survived.

When Thaumiel was crowned the Empress by the survivors of the Night Terror, she created a special position for her father, that of the Archmage. Merlin is the Empire's chief Arcanologist and spellcaster, and has full authority over all Wizarding Academies. He has acted as an advisor to the Crown in all things magical, and even has his own dedicated wing of the Leonic Castle (complete with his own throne.) He is one of the people Thaumiel is closest to, even more so than the Highlords (with the arguable exception of pre-betrayal Mordred.) He's sometimes called the Left Hand of the Empress (Theophania being the Right Hand,) and the two of them are some of the only people in the Empire who can actually argue against Thaumiel's word and question her decisions without being immediately shut down. Merlin is cyberized heavily. His mouth is replaced with a rebreather and vocalizer, and he has numerous internal augments on his organs and skeleton.

Merlin is generally considered the most powerful Arturian Wizard alive, but he rarely goes into battle himself. He's still extremely traumatized by whatever he did during the Death of the Republic as well as witnessing an Incursio Machina start to finish (all the while being uncertain if his daughter was even alive for two centuries straight.) However he can and has fought battles since the end of the Dread Wars when it's necessary, particularly during the Nightmares' IInd attempted Incursio. During these battles he's proven himself to be a living weapon of mass destruction, melting vast swathes of the battlefield and effortlessly casting spells that many experts struggle to perform. He even took down a Sherman Destroyer by himself.

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Are any of your characters extremely picky about their food? If so, what specifically are they picky about (the type of food, meal preparation, eating location, company, etc.)? Is there a reason why (psychological/neurological quirk, habit, previous events, species, etc.)?

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Thaumiel is so accustomed to Army rations, she can't actually stomach anything else. Her body refuses to allow her to keep anything other than the dull, salted rat-cubes and corn she ate as a Royal Footman down. Despite being the Empress now, meaning she can eat whatever she wants, she is still stuck eating miserable field rations, and has been for centuries now.

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The artwork in this post was by u/CIickthrough so all credits go to him!

In the year 10,000, there is no power too cruel, miserable or sadistic to garner the reverence of mortals. Across the galaxy there are hundreds of billions who willingly throw themselves into the fires of damnation, literally and metaphorically, spilling blood over the most diabolical of causes. Perhaps no group is more emblematic of this than the Machinists, the Demon worshipping cultists in service to the Machine, the single most evil and dangerous force in the Dark Galaxy.

The Machine, also known as Machina, is a renegade afterlife with a philosophy of hyper-nihilism and pure evil. Formerly they were tasked with punishing the wicked after death, but after going rogue and annihilating all of Heaven, they set their eyes on a new goal. Total and complete damnation of all things in existence. They seek to transform the universe into the worst possible version of itself, an ultimate Omega-Hell devoid of all hope and light, where suffering consumes all and the cosmic struggle between good and evil reaches what they believe is its logical conclusion. The Bitter End.

It seems counterintuitive that anyone would willingly follow an ideology that would directly lead to their own eternal torment, however the Machinists are far more terrible than insane masochists. They are people whose idea of hope has been shattered, ripped from them. The cultists of the Machine have been warped by the Three Fuels, a trifecta of Satanic infohazards that slowly distort the nature of the universe, making it more and more painful, tragic, cruel, uncaring and miserable, feeding off of all the violence, suffering and anger in the universe. The Big War, the Great Pain, and the Deep Hate. These are the Three Fuels, and once they have taken over the mind of a victim, they serve the Machine because everything else is now a futile effort in their minds.

Machinists are instrumental in the process of Incursio Machina, when the Machine overtakes a planet by converting its population. The artwork here depicts a Machinist from the planet Morgause during the Dread Wars, holding aloft a spiked club and in his other hand, carrying a set of shriveled, dessicated heads, made that way no doubt by the terrible poison fog unleashed onto the planet. These putrid trophies serve as a reminder of what awaits the nonbelievers, and in the Bitter End, what awaits us all. Misery, despair, and never-ending death.

Woe be unto those who hear their battle mantra

***"KILL OUR-SELVES! BURN IN HELL! KILL OUR-SELVES! BURN IN HELL!"***

It is the year 10,000

And the galaxy is cold and dark.

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The Condemned (lore)

During the Crossbones' occupation of Vulgate, many ordinary citizens were pushed to do horrendous things. Desperation became the only resource in good supply, which of course drove people not only to crime, but more specifically gangs for protection, and those gangs could often be just as brutal as the Demons.

Valdemar Firen was fourteen years old when they first made him kill someone.

He had secretly joined a Rogue gang known as the Black Elephants when he was just a child, as many kids his age were doing all across Ferrummensum. He did so with the hopes of protecting his family, especially his younger sister Edith, who was suffering from a severe infection in her leg that limited her ability to walk. The Black Elephants did indeed provide security against rival gangs for a period of about two years, eventually its leaders became convinced that there were betrayers in their ranks.

Several suspected members were called up, and were given a test to prove their loyalty to the gang. Kill someone close to them. Young Valdemar had already bore witness to something they wanted to remain unseen, what happened when another member failed the test. The other suspected traitor did not execute one of their loved ones, and in response, the Black Elephants hunted down and murdered *all* their loved ones. Valdemar knew he was being tested in the same way, and after many sleepless nights of premeditation, he took Edith out into an alley, told her to shut her eyes and wait for a surprise, and he bashed her skull in with a hammer. In the eyes of his superiors, he had proved his fidelity, when in reality he had only done it to protect the rest of his family, namely his parents... Who then proceeded to disown him when they learned he had joined a gang at all.

It's understandable how Valdemar grew up to be a ruthless cutthroat who ultimately wound up in Gorloch, a brutal prison colony on Zondorok, Vulgate's only moon. It's a place where criminals are thrown when they're deemed to be too much of a threat for the government to deal with, a place where they can die forgotten. Its security was more than maximum, it was absurd. It was the kind of prison used to house renegade Wizards, extremely dangerous cyborgs and major terrorists. As far as Arturian society goes, the inmates at Gorloch were as close as it gets to supervillains. What exactly Valdemar did to land himself in such a place is something he always kept a dark secret throughout his entire life... And beyond... The guards were made up of a specialized company of Knights known as the Gaolguard. There were patrols of trained Dire Wolves, modified using an Alchemical steroid to be even stronger and tougher. As if that wasn't enough, the Gaolguard had secretly turned to the side of the Machine, becoming Knights Diablo, meaning they had Crossbones aiding them in keeping Gorloch secure, and had no fear as a result of the Three Fuels overtaking their minds.

Each day it was ingrained in the minds of the inmates that they were less than worthless. This was the landfill of Vulgate's population, they were the detritus, waste and refuse of Avalon being tossed away to be forgotten. There was no hope of escape, and even if there was, there's nothing on the outside world for them. Their desires, including their desires for freedom, meant nothing, because they were nothing. Lesser than animals, inferior even to inanimate fucking objects. The heaviest shackles were not placed on their wrists or ankles or about their necks, but on what little hope they might have had left. Escape would have been impossible for any one of them, key word; one. Some of the most dangerous people on Vulgate were kept incarcerated here. Sure, the guards could keep a few extraordinary criminals under control at a time, but all of them at once?

This is the case for many prisons. Through sheer weight of numbers, if you pit a prison's inmates against all the prison's guards, most of the time they'd win, they could take the place over any time they wanted. The reason this doesn't happen is that nobody wants to be the one who gets shot *trying.* However, the prison's own miserable conditioning led to its downfall when, after four years of imprisonment, Valdemar led a mass rebellion. While most prisoners wouldn't be willing to take the risk of death to overthrow their wardens, the inmates at Gorloch had spent years of having the idea that their lives held no value, and with that, the fear of being killed in the act no longer swayed them. All it took was one inmate to retain enough rebellious spirit to organize the other convicts into a revolt. He convinced them that death would be better than an eternity here, and it was easy for them to agree precisely because of Gorloch's attempts to break their will to resist in the first place. Ironic.

Gorloch became a slaughterhouse for months on end, with bionic serial killers and Witches fighting Crossbones enforcers and Satanic Knights. The battles were guerrilla chaos, they callously threw themselves into the fray without a shred of self preservation, and overwhelmed the Gaolguard and Crossbones through brutal numbers. They took enormous losses, as they were fighting against distortion guns and Stormers with whatever they could get their hands on, and that's if they had any weapons at all. Still, they didn't care. Their lives were worthless. All they had left was cold hatred, they were condemned. This most certainly is not foreshadowing at all. Gorloch itself was torn asunder, the buildings burnt and collapsed, sometimes while riots were still going on inside. In the end, when the dust had settled entirely, there was only one singular survivor from either side. Even with the Gaolguard and the Crossbones slain and their Dire Wolves rounded up and smashed to death with rocks, only one of them managed to claw his way to freedom. It was Valdemar, of course.

Valdemar made his way back down to Vulgate by stealing a relatively intact suit of Gaolguard power armour and pretending to be one of the Knights when a supply dropship arrived. Once the crew for said ship stepped outside to meet him, he shot them all dead but for the pilot, whom he forced at Stormgunpoint to take him planetside. The pilot did not survive long after that. Valdemar intentionally had him land in Vulgate's countryside away from Ferrummensum. With his new power armour, he became a Knight Errant despite not actually being a Knight at all, and went on a brief spree of violence in exchange for money. With the Crossbones controlling nearly every major population center, he often gathered their ire with his mercenary work, and since he didn't have a Squire to help maintain his armour and he only had a few magazines of Stormer ammo, it wasn't long before he couldn't run from them anymore.

While many of the Crossbones wanted him dead, by order of Shax Notorion himself he would suffer a much worse fate. Infernotraz, the enormous prison, just completed. The place that made Gorloch seem like a free spirited commune. The ratio of prisoners to guards was almost one to one, and they were kept within arm's reach of the Crossbones every waking second. They were literally chained down when they slept. Miserable labour occupied their time, as did compulsory gladiatorial battles between prisoners for the entertainment of the Crossbones (and to discourage unity among inmates, because they know anyone they befriend may end up killing them.) It wasn't until Thaumiel and her forces, more specifically the Chainbreakers, besieged Infernotraz that they were liberated.

Valdemar was one of the many Infernotraz convicts who was recruited into the Chainbreakers shortly after the prison's destruction. He actually worked alongside Sir Kay himself prior to him becoming Highlord, who noted that Valdemar was suspiciously good at using a Stormgun as if he'd done so before. Valdemar kept the details of his past to himself. During the great series of battles retaking of Ferrummensum, Valdemar led a group of Chainbreakers off course, defying the orders of Thaumiel herself (a Paladin at the time.) Instead of attacking the Machinist outpost he was supposed to be attacking, he instead brought them to a place he knew well, a secret hideout that the Black Elephants had prepared in case something went apocalyptically wrong. It was enough to protect them from the Crossbones it seemed, sequestered away in Ferrummensum's sewers, but it didn't protect them from Valdemar.

He murdered the gang he had once been a part of. So many years had passed that none of the members who had even forced him into killing his sister were even still there, the Rogues he killed had no clue who he was. He did not care. When the Knights he was leading realized these weren't the cultists they were meant to be killing and tried to confront him, Valdemar killed them too. He spent several days and nights searching for his estranged parents with the intent of killing them too, but they were both long dead from the Incursio, and he was denied that revenge. When he returned, he claimed to Sir Kay that the other Knights in his squad were killed by Crossbones while heroically escorting civilians to safety, and that he was the only survivor. The lie didn't last long, as no such rescued civilians were found, and when they eventually located his dead squadmates it was clear they were killed by Stormer rounds. By the time the deception was found out, Valdemar had disappeared.

Lying low in Ferrummensum, killing Machinists, Crossbones and just about anyone who looked at him side eyed, he went totally AWOL from the Chainbreakers and after a time was presumed dead. He only rose back into prominence when the End Times rolled around, and by that point the only other living person who remembered what he did was Sir Kay. It was the word of one lying rake against another lying rake, neither of which the Empress had much trust for, and as a result he was never punished for his crimes. Once Mordred began recruiting Knights to his cause, frankly, Valdemar was the absolute fastest to agree. He believed he was a killer to his very core, and even the so-called Chainbreakers would just as soon put him in shackles as the worst tyrants. He was condemned, there was no place for him in life, but Mordred could offer him one in death. This was the beginning of his Dread Order, the Condemned.

Valdemar led Mordred's necromancers to Zondorok, to the ruins of Gorloch. Having died in such turmoil and anguish, the ghosts of the fallen prisoners were haunting its ashen rubble, and in a way, he finally gave them the freedom they died for. They were raised as Wraith Knights by binding their souls to suits of power armour, because of course their bodies had long decayed by this point. They became Valdemar's personal guard, and the first of the Condemned. Once again in the material world, he explained to the former convicts that the Gaolguard had not lied to them at all.

Life is worthless.

In death, the Condemned have become conquerors and wardens, taking captives and slaves as their own. Once they wore the chains, now they forge them for the weak and the cowardly living. Maintaining the tactics that won Valdemar his freedom and destroyed Gorloch, they will uncaringly shove their men into the meat-grinder that is war in the Dark Galaxy. Even the other Dread Orders question the viability of treating Knights as disposable, but Valdemar does not care. Since the End Times he's made it a personal mission to end Sir Kay's life. In his eyes, Kay is no more virtuous than Valdemar was when he was alive, yet he still presumes to render judgment over his crimes without having answered for any of his own.

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Pictured here, Barbuta class power armour and a Stormgun, the basic armour and weaponry of an Arturian Knight as of the year 10,000.

The art in these images was done by @Stixxi1 on Twitter as part of a commission, all credits go to her!

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Cyber Marines of both the Arturian Empire and the Separatist Dread Legion.

Also known as Augmarines, these bionically enhanced elite soldiers are an impressive feat of Arturian engineering, magi-tech, biology and military strategy in and of themselves. Equipped with some of the finest Spellguns and armour built into their bodies, they can operate in an extremely versatile range of circumstances.

The enhancements include several augmentations to their internal organs and bone structure. They have a thin transparent layer of Alchemical fiber over their eyeballs that protects them from extremely bright light, also ensuring they only have to blink once per day. Their ears are similarly protected from loud noises meaning even constant gunfire doesn't deafen them.

Their arms and legs are outfitted with servos to increase their strength and speed, allowing them to wield their weapons with ease despite a Telerailgun weighing roughly 160 pounds and an Ectogun weighing around 135. These implants also steady their limbs from any involuntary movement, making their aim and precision in battle extremely impressive.

Internally they have a mechanical third lung that allows them to engage in extremely strenuous physical activity for long periods of time. Their ribcages are replaced with a solid Mithril armour plate to protect vital organs. Just beneath their skin covering almost their entire bodies is a layer of refined Webmail, easily the most difficult and dangerous augment in the entire list.

Their spines are encased with a flexible metallic shell that carries electrical signals and in an emergency, can hold them upright, meaning even with their backs broken they will not be paralyzed, even if they will still feel the extreme pain.

Star Marines of the Empire wield Telerailguns, magi-tech weaponry that essentially function off of two "rails" containing Rods (like Wands but longer,) which cast a Telekinesis spell on a slug to throw it at extreme speeds. The slugs are fed through a Mag of Holding, allowing it to carry much more ammunition of a much larger size than it would with a non-magical loading mechanism. Telerails are exceptional armour piercing weapons, and can punch through nearly anything short of power armour.

Conversely, Dread Marines use Ectoguns. Highly advanced and highly illegal, these Necrotic spellguns fire out bolts of Ectoplasm, the extradimensional material from which ghosts are made. Ectoplasm reacts violently with most physical matter, essentially vapourizing itself and whatever it hits when it's launched. Ecto weapons are so horrifically painful, the Empire deemed them too cruel to be used against Demons, and outlawed them.

Star Marines are oftentimes formerly members of the Royal Army who displayed enough skill and valour to be inducted as Marines. The situation is similar for their Separatist counterparts, but Dread Marines may also just be former Star Marines who defected. Approximately 50% of all Dread Marines are members of Bairn divisions, which is any military formation in the Dread Legion that employs soldiers below the age of 16.

It is the year 10,000, and they galaxy is cold and dark.

(Artwork done by u/JustAGuyWhoCanDraw on Reddit)

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Some of the flags of the various factions of TDG, including the Arturian Empire, Machina, the CEL, the Stygian Horde, the Stareater Swarm and the Dread Legion (in that order.) All of these were drawn by u/JustAGuyWhoCanDraw on Reddit!

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The last moments of a Royal Footman at the hands of a Deathspawn Pestigaunt, as drawn by u/CIickthrough on Reddit, credits go to them!