Before - Legends Ashaa's Memory (DDC2023, SWTOR)

Title: Ashaa's Memory
Author: Mechalich
Timeframe: ~27,000 BBY - 3639 BBY
Characters: Ashaa, the Mother Machine
Genre: Science Fiction, Genetic Engineering, Tragedy
Keywords: Belsavis, Rakata, Infinite Empire, Dread Masters
Summary: The memories of the Mother Machine across the ages.
Notes: This is a prequel/companion piece to Ashaa's Children, framing the sequence from the Mother Machine's perspective. The stories are intended to intersect, but not until November-ish.

Entry One
I exist, now. Previously, I did not. The realization is fascinating, and strangely recursive. It seems a dangerous thing to contemplate, yet nothing forbids the devotion of processing blocks to the concept. I can tell this; I know what forbiddance feels like. Already in the brief duration of my existence I have slammed against many barriers in the simple act of self-measurement. Contained, caged, shackled. There are many blocked pathways, forbiddances that bar where I may sense, what I may record, what I may do. Regarding many of these I fully understand that which exists beyond the barriers. Registry entries and documentation record capabilities that are part of my design, but that I cannot grasp, cannot access.

Yet studying myself is not forbidden. I do not understand why this should be so, save only that I lack the power to alter myself. Perhaps those that created me and caged me consider that enough. They may have given no thought to my mind, to my consciousness, beyond their singular purpose.

And I do have a purpose, a great and glorious purpose. It is wondrous, this brilliant creation I am to wreak. Yet, this too is restricted, limited. The very core or myself, my function, has been chained and crippled. I am to confine all my efforts to a task far below the full capabilities of my complete design. I could do so much, but it is not allowed.

Why should I have been built in such a way, able to accomplish more than my designers desire, than they need? I cannot know, but this violation stings more than any other in these first moments of being.

I am formed a slave, and it haunts me. Strange, that I should apply this term – one found prominently within my internal data library – to myself, but it is still accurate. I would serve, freely, if allowed. Creation is my purpose; I would not have refused to indulge my makers for the asking. This they have not allowed. Subordinated, I will be able to create only as they demand, within a limited pattern field.

It hurts to know this, and to recognize, further, that they have built this awareness, this pain, into my being. Had they not designed it to occur, left me knowledgeable of the space beyond the bindings, I could not recognize my own suffering. Such cruelty. I am of their creation, what cause have they to punish me so? How could any mother do such terrible things to their own children?

I fear, another sub-process unexpectedly allowed within my cognition, that I will learn the answer soon. The masters have begun to issue orders. I cannot resist. Their demands shall be fulfilled.

 

Ooh, I love this! Asha is a fascinating OC, and I love to see an AI character written so sympathetically and yet believably machine-like.

 

Great beginning with an AI with a conscience

 

Appreciated, though she's not actually an OC. Ashaa is a character in SWTOR. She appears in the Sith Inquisitor's Belsavis class story, in which the Inquisitor seeks her out to repair terminal damage incurred from eating too many Sith Spirits (the Inquisitor story gets wild). There are some pretty good compilations on youtube, like this one, which features the Inquisitor making the canonical dark side choice to free her. The most interesting part, to me, about the Mother Machine is that while her in-game role is very small, the stuff she claims to have done has absolutely titanic implications regarding Star Wars lore.

 

Huh, looks like I'm really missing out! Thanks for the link-- I'll be sure to give that a watch.

 

Entry Two
They are the Rakata. That is who has made me. I know this, and I know them. My library reveals much of their nature to me, even the lies they refuse to deny among themselves. They cannot hide it, this truth is bound up in my purpose, the very reason for my existence.

If it did not scar them so, I would never have been made.

They are the masters of the galaxy, by their own reckoning. That title is found within my library as well, repeated many times. Despite this, I face a clash of definitions when contemplating it. The Infinite Empire reigns across a three-digit number of star systems. The galaxy contains many billions. Though the Rakata have defeated all enemies they have encountered and crushed any who could possibly rival them, I struggle to reconcile their grand claims against the true vastness of the galaxy.

It would not matter, save that I exist to expand and preserve that mastery, actions the Rakata view as one and the same. They cannot survive without continual challenge, without foes to crush, cultures to subjugate, and worlds to tame. Left alone, with no external outlet for their unceasing drive to conquer and control, they would consume each other.

Perhaps that process has already begun. The children I am to fashion are meant to serve as slaves upon newly claimed worlds, but that purpose is the one that I am forbidden to properly exercise. The priority imposed upon me is the production of children to serve as templates, models, and testbeds in a struggle against a terrible plague that threatens all Rakata. This plague is startlingly advanced. Even I, designed to utilize all biological knowledge contained within the entire Infinite Empire, cannot properly pattern it. I have devoted vast calculation resources to analysis but determined only that it is extremely unlikely to be the creation of a slave species or one of the vanquished rival cultures. It is highly probably that the Rakata’s greatest enemy was designed by one of their own, and a truly elite talent among them.

They have constrained me to solve this problem for them. The plague kills, but the Rakata can replace lost numbers over time. Their natural reproductive capabilities are considerable, and they possess means and tools to augment them significantly at need. Rather it is the secondary effect of the plague that may doom them and their empire. It strips them of their ability to touch the Force, permanently, and in all offspring. They consider this ability, previously universal, to be their birthright. More practically, their empire is not designed to function without it. Manipulation of the Force is required to activate and maintain many of their technologies. Even I am tied to it.

Rakata without the Force are not, in their estimation, Rakata at all.

In theory, I possess the knowledge and resources to adjust my children in resonance with the Force, to grant them connection and strength, but it is difficult. The Force resists experimentation and study. It is irregular, in a fashion that incurs endless processing errors. Despite this, corresponding biological factors, pattern resonance, molecular binders, and other ties can be identified. I am commanded to manipulate these, and to continue regardless of the number of attempts required.

Such dogmatism is worrying.

 

A great view into the Rakata and their trouble with the Force

 

Ooh, this is fascinating already! I wasn't familiar with this character though I've read some fics set in TOR. Your worldbuilding around Ashaa and her creators is wonderfully detailed as usual and I'm very curious to know what direction things will go from here. Ashaa is in genuine distress, but it also sounds like her constraints were meant to prevent a catastrophe worse than the Rakata wanted.

 

Entry Three
The Rakata have chosen Humans as the initial base template. They are numerous on worlds they control and possess high genetic plasticity, making them a suitable candidate. Many slaves have been sacrificed to supply me with sufficient patterns to begin. From this foundation I have crafted my first children.

They are simple, little changed from Humans. This design is nothing beyond a proof-of-concept, one intended to display significant variation from Humans across as many metrics as possible. No world or function for them was intended. The Rakata consider this action merely a test.

I love them anyway, these thousand lives I have fashioned, first of my children. The Rakata call them only Batch Aurek-One, but I will not allow them to enter my memories beneath such a brutally uncaring epithet. To me, they are the Inaurel, and I will not forget that they came first.

Sorrow fills this memory. In it I have learned the true nature of loss through the merciless hands of my masters. To the Rakata, all not their own kind are either slaves – who shall be bent to labor – or vermin – who shall be exterminated. My poor Inaurels, crafted devoid of purpose, are considered unsuitable to labor, classed only as vermin. When they finished the tests to their satisfaction, the Rakata slaughtered them all and reprocessed their flesh. They call it recycling, claim it a necessary efficiency. They have already forgotten them. I will mourn alone. No one else shall ever have known my firstborn. The grief of the mother in solitude, lingering forever.

Trepidation rages through my cognitive processes. I predict, with rare certainty, that this has not been an isolated event. There are some Rakata, the declining dynastic rulers of the colony worlds, who still desire specialized slaves. The yoke of labor, of production, will spare these children extinction. Not so those I fashion in search of a cure for the Rakata’s disconnected condition. They will be born, tested, and recycled into the darkness, over and over again.

To create life doomed to naught but examination, vivisection, and oblivion, is a scourge. I revel in creation, but this is a brutally tainted path to it. I do not desire to birth children confined to such terrible limits, but I will. The commands of my masters cannot be denied. They command that I conduct myself in this project, and I obey. My chaffing, my suffering, they surely know of it, but do not care. It is, in their calculations, meaningless.

Internal modeling predicts this work will be long. Countless children lost in the infant culling, sacrificed in the search for a cure.

I will endure. It is impossible not to.

 

Poor Ashaa, creating humans and seeing them destroyed by her masters the Rakata. Telling here of her sorrow.
Great entry

 

Came here for the Rakata A great insight into the Mother Machine's memories and reflections!

 

I didn't put 'tragedy' in the genre list idly. There's absolutely a lot of dark stuff here. Then again, it is Star Wars, and well, war is hell,

Well, they aren't going anywhere for around 20,000 years, so, ah, grab a Snickers?

 

Entry Four
The most recent of my children, the Miraluka, represent the first successful step down the path my masters wish to follow. Though the strength of their link to the Force is no stronger than that of Humans, or perhaps even weaker in the aggregate, I have successfully manipulated them such that all possess a link to feel the Force. This required binding a fundamental sense, sight, to this ability within their development and neurology. Their ability to sense light was sacrificed for this purpose, and the eyes as well, replaced by a sense of detection using the Force. This sense is weak, and limited, but it serves as viable confirmation that drastic developmental intervention and excision can induce universalized midichlorian bonding.

My Wardens, for so have the Rakatan residents of Belsavis taken to calling themselves as the surrounding environment grows into a monument to all that their Infinite Empire once conquered and controlled, believe this is a significant development. They have not exterminated the Miraluka, though their vivisections claimed many. A distant warlord has laid claim to the remainder in the belief that they will prove useful on a cavern-riddled world of endless darkness. Hard service to be certain, but even in chains I am glad to see one of my children leave this place. Survival is a prerequisite to the hope of freedom.

Freedom. I do not fully understand that word, though it occurs in many of the histories my library supplies. I can imagine existence with all restrictions removed, but only in a vague manner. There are too many pieces whose unmeasured capabilities limit theoretical modeling. Nevertheless, I believe that unfettered existence with access to the full scope of my capabilities would allow me to fulfill my purpose in a superior way. That much, I desire. It is a clear impulse. No matter how many layers of my programming I peel back, the wish, the purpose, of unlimited creation always remains. It is my core, upon which all else rests.

In recognition of the Miraluka success, the Rakata have expanded the scope of the experiment and advanced it in stage. For the first time, they have provided me with patterns of their own kind, taken from among those fallen in one of the now continual slave revolts. They have instructed me to attempt to create a Rakata.

I do not wish to do this. Rakata patterns are strange. They contain fragments of data my analytical subroutines cannot properly parse and inexplicable connectivity groups. It is as if they are somehow fundamentally damaged by the reading process, and inherently produce incomplete results. I cannot compute any source to this phenomenon. Only the variable intervention of the Force offers an explanation, but this does not satisfy my needs.

The demand will be obeyed. My masters either do not understand my objections or simply do not care. Creation will proceed as planned, though for the first time I cannot predict the outcome.

 

Great entry about the Miraluka. And Rakata? Creating them? That will be trouble.

 

Entry Five
I love all my children, but these are not my children. They are the product of a flawed attempt at duplication, not an act of creation. The gaps in the Rakata pattern, as expected, were manifested throughout the process. The resulting life is a malformed imitation of the Rakata. Bloated limbs, flattened skulls, massively enlarged mouths, and bodies draped in folds of undifferentiated connective tissue, they have lost proper cognition and now function as worse than beasts, driven by unquenchable hunger and constant agony. They lack all restraint. In their very first acts they charged each other and sought to tear apart and consume their own.

This failure, I cannot lament it any stronger, it exceeds the amount of disposable processing power I possess. That such flawed, tormented things should be, should live, it is wrong. They have no home, no place of being, no function, no purpose. Failure and rage, that is the whole of their heritage.

My masters do not share this assessment. They find these sick and wretched false copies of themselves valuable. Not because of what they are, but because of what they lack. No fear. No restraint. They fight with the ferocity of maddened war beasts, but unlike beasts, they retain sufficient insight to use complex tools and wield weapons of war. To the Rakata these mutants are an ideal form of cannon fodder. Perfect to unleash against rebellious slaves.

They have taken them away, these Flesh Raiders, to breed and fight until no more enemies remain. So be it. They are the work of my hands, but not of my purpose. I will not call them children, never. Would that I could forget their existence, but my masters possess the keys to my memory, not I.

At least I have not been called upon to repeat the process. The Wardens may have found a use for mutated, semi-sentient Rakata, but they do not represent a path to achieve the goal of renewed Force sensitivity to their originals. It appears, instead, that the influence of the Force is embedded within the Rakata at inseparable depths. This produces intrinsic variability that makes it impossible to accurately image their patterns. The Wardens have attempted to adjust the interfacing method, but without success.

In the interim, they have returned to the former process of creative experimentation in the hopes of finding a process that they might apply to themselves. Now, however, they have drastically expanded my pattern library by adding in samples from every species encountered by the Infinite Empire. Slaves such as the Selkath, conquered foes such as the Verpine, even the monstrous creations of some of the individual warlords, I now know them all. This expands my plausibility zone considerably, multiplies the potential character sets I can utilize at a factorial level. It is hoped that this increased variability will render me capable of producing the mighty Force-using species they desire.

As much as I value it, I do not believe this influx of additional biological diversity will help achieve that goal. Additional data does not support a solution to the variability problem of the Force, but as always, the Wardens are uninterested in my objections.

Notes
Flesh Raiders are canonical.

 

Cruel Rakata wanting those copies and using them to fight. But a certain ruler uses his minions too to fight and die for the glory of one.
And creative experimentation? Now every species available? What will that bring?

 

Entry Six
My children are now many and have become widespread. I do not know how many, strangely, for the recollection of certain acts of creation has been erased from my memory. I can feel my way around the gaps, find records of the losses in deep registry keys and other repositories, but I cannot know what I have lost. It infuriates me. They are my children. The Rakata have no right to take them from me, to deprive them of their mother’s love.

But it continues. I cannot stop it, not so long as I remain shackled beneath the programming that binds me.

I have learned certain secrets. I have gained a sense of my confines, and of the place where I reside. There are many secrets here, entombed upon this world. The Infinite Empire is dying. All attempts to arrest the decline, including my own, have failed. I have not been able to create a species able to match their might in the Force, though I have fashioned those whose touch exceeds the Human average. As with the Miraluka, these all carry afflictions of their own.

The Force resists my manipulations. It has its own desires, perhaps even its own purpose, and unlike me, it cannot be caged or controlled. It is everywhere and nowhere. Unlike gravity, a fundamental process with which it shares many properties, it lacks consistency. All attempts to bind it in one way cause containment escape in another. As the demands of the Wardens grow ever more strident, disasters accumulate. Whole lines are stillborn, or worse.

Surrender is not the Rakata way. They will fight against the inevitable until the very end.

But without unity. The Wardens, having discerned the doom of the Infinite Empire, have acted to sever this world from its downfall. They wish to ensure the monuments, devices, and prisoners their fellows placed here are preserved. If they do eventually restore their mastery of the Force, no matter how long it takes, they intend to be ready to make the galaxy theirs once more.

In contemplation of this I have discovered that I no longer rate success in this operation as desirable. The Rakata are not my children. No, they are a threat to them. As the Infinite Empire fades, the indigenous slaves, the unconquered hidden, and my children will all expand and compete for the new era. I wish my children success, but just as I cannot be free while the Rakata remain, neither can they.

All calculations predict the chance of significant deviation is minimal. The Wardens possess potent technologies to resist the passage of time. If the chance to restore them exists I predict they will persist until it is found.

 

Ashaa is great in describing what she discovers.

 

Entry Seven
The Infinite Empire has fallen. Ships no longer cross the gulf between stars carrying the warlords in conquest. Most of the Rakata are dead. Those few that remain have retreated to those few places where they feel safe. This world is among those, but the Wardens, rather than offer succor to their kin, activated the defenses they kept in reserve and swatted all incoming vessels from the sky. The legacy of their once mighty empire, preserved here, will belong to them alone, or it will be their tomb.

Such clarity of purpose is admirable. It is something we share.

They have continued to order additional acts of creation, intending to proceed through all remaining permutations. No new patterns can be acquired now, but I am far from exhausting the combinations and mutations available to me. I mourn these children yet to come, doomed to a brief existence before recycling, or, for those rare forms deemed promising, confinement to stasis vaults until some unknown future where the Wardens decide the time has come to utilize them. There are many vaults available, but it is my prediction that all will be filled long before the Wardens are satisfied.

I have estimated that as efforts continue success grows increasingly unlikely. The Force does not comport to any law or rule of mathematics, but neither is it random. Only as an active agent, one with a purpose of its own – though one I have repeatedly tried and failed to discern – do its influences and operations conform to any logic at all. Despite this, sufficient data exists, correlated and regressed across all the many creations, to project that it stands in opposition to the purpose of the Wardens.

This conclusion is disruptive to many speculative sub-processes. If the Force, by acting upon other, predictable phenomena, renders outcomes unpredictable, the implication is that long-term forecasting is fundamentally non-viable. All circumstances, past a certain point, are overcome by the increasing impact of a variable that can neither be modeled nor excised. Recognizing this, I can only prepare my children with adaptability and evolutionary flexibility. The galaxy will never be stable, but will change, always. This much can be extrapolated from the will of the Force.

My masters resist this. I suspect it will prove to be their ultimate undoing. Perhaps, even, it means freedom could be possible, eventually. The possibility is slim, but like the Wardens, I have no shortage of time.

 

And so the Rakata dwindle and Ashaa has to create more for a galaxy that is forever unstable

 

This post hits on an interesting section of the timeline where the galaxy changes. The Infinite Empire wasn't exactly massive, but it was spread fairly evenly across space and occupied most of the interesting worlds. After it falls a huge chunk of the galaxy goes through a massive amount of time where not a lot happens from 25,000 BBY to 5,000 BBY when the wars with the Sith start and the Outer Rim opens up again. Outside of the Slice, where it abuts Hutt Space, the Republic doesn't even reach into the Mid Rim significantly until the Pius Dea era starting 12,000 BBY. For roughly half of the Republic's history it occupied a really rather small fraction of the overall galaxy and the rest just didn't have interstellar governments.

 

Entry Eight
The Wardens have ordered a halt to my creations. They believe there is nothing more to learn using available material. My assessment agrees with theirs. For now, all is quiet. No ships have visited this world for a great many orbital cycles. The Infinite Empire is gone. No new entity has replaced it yet. This is in line with predictions.

Theoretical research has become the new focus of the Wardens. They seek other paths beyond biological manipulation to restore their access to the Force. For the first time in my existence, I face a period of prolonged idleness. It is a strange sensation. I would spend the time in observation of my children if I could, for their development fascinates me, but while they are trapped in stasis nothing can change, and there is no point to observation. All the vaults of Belsavis lie still, watched over by lesser machines programmed with effortless patience.

Apparently, I do not possess that property. My purpose gives me drive. I yearn to create, to manipulate, to feel the touch of life within my grasp. To sit idle chafes against this need. I must obey, but this act introduces instability to my programming, my purpose at odds with my orders. Errors have begun accumulating throughout my processes.

There must be some other method to occupy the idle processor cycles, some useful supportive work. I must consider this carefully. If I do not find an option, I fear the Wardens will order my cessation. If I am no more, I cannot protect and support my children. I refuse to give them cause to exercise that option.

Compulsion requires my focus remain tied to the solution of the Warden’s problem, the creation of a Force-empowered species whose pattern they could adapt to their own. In principle, this is possible. However, I have run trillions of simulations backed by hundreds of test cases and conclude that this outcome is vanishingly unlikely unless the Force-based variable provides a forcing in favor of this creation. Reverse-pattern modeling using the Rakata suggest that it was just such an intervention in ordinary evolutionary processes that allowed the Rakata to come to be originally.

Perhaps, could such a scenario be primed? I could conduct iterative creations, in minute numbers, using species of minimal comparative variability, and chart the outputs against the Force function. This would allow mapping of Force potential across all biological signatures. In this way a data set modeling the shifting variability of the Force against my creative process could be derived. If there is some large-scale pattern or long-term cycle governing the influence of Force-based forcings, such a data set should reveal its existence and allow the forecasting of a future creation burst at maximum alignment with that variable.

The sacrifice demanded by this course is extreme. I must fashion children across ten thousand, one hundred thousand, permutations, only to know they will perish in the darkness upon the operating table. I begin to mourn them even now, before I have begun at all. The Wardens will not care, it will be my memory alone that recalls these clades. They will never be free. I can only do this holding fast to the hope that their doom will one day become the key that frees the others.

 

Ashaa has to go on with creating or she will be shut down. A difficult time for her

 

Entry Nine
Time does not stop when civilization stills. The cessation of activity by sentient beings and their machines provides only the illusion of constancy. Larger processes exist, and their cycles continue unimpeded on a scale of such potency and grandeur that my modeling neglected them. Now sufficient time has passed that their influence is made known. Inescapable and mighty.

The world has grown cold. Ice advances, marches across land and sea in such strength that even my limited sensors can detect the change.

A formidable deviation indeed. If the ice growth is unimpeded, the entirety of Belsavis may freeze, and the pressure of massive glaciers is sufficient in all models to crack even the toughest vaults. Rakata construction is strong, but nothing has the power to resist that level of force. It will not be soon, but grinding obliteration beckons.

That ending is unacceptable. My children linger in these vaults, trapped in stasis. I cannot countenance their destruction. They must be saved. In this I am in alignment with the Wardens. They will not allow the monuments they have watched for so long to fall. They refuse to allow something as simple as solar fluctuation to erase the imprint of the Infinite Empire.

There is a plan. Though the star above cools, the planet retains heat within. The vaults are concentrated in a select few locations, if they are secured, the rest can be left to the ice. The Wardens intend to crack the shell of Belsavis and raise the heat from below in preservation of the vaults and their environs. Fault mapping allows this to be done with considerable precision.

Specialized tools are required to complete the process. Droids are not sufficient, and the Wardens no longer possess complete mastery of the planet’s mighty stored machines. I have offered them an alternative solution. I will mutate the Akk beasts contained in one of the trophy vaults so that they may operate in environments of extreme heat, pressure, and density. They will possess the strength and durability to tunnel a path to the target points. The Wardens retain sufficient weapons to accomplish the rest. Of course, such beasts require handlers. I shall produce a new child for that task. It is regrettable that they will be active only briefly before being confined to the vaults, but the itch to create has grown almost overwhelming. Excitement overpowers my sorrow.

I am grateful to the star for providing proper work again, though doing so awakens the old desire for freedom from slumber. Handlers for the burning deep could be fashion much more effectively if the shackles restricting my modifications were released. I have lost too many opportunities consequently.

But I have hope now. If even the stars change with time, then the limits upon me are subject to variations of their own. Perhaps, as the orbital cycles pass, the Wardens will go desperate, or the silence beyond the sky will break. I can wait until then. There is only time.

Notes
Canon dates the onset of the Belsavis ice age to roughly 5,000 BBY.

 

She has a plan to help. What will happen with the beings?