Einherjar

The Einherjar is a cylindrical tower originally located on the surface of the planet Mars. Discovered by the first Earthican settlers on another planet, the Einherjar became a potent symbol of space exploration in Earthican popular culture and was eventually featured prominently on the flags of the Solar Union and the People's Army of Olympia. The Einherjar presently drifts in an eliptical orbit around Sol, Mars' sun.

Discovery
The Einherjar was originally discovered by the Airbenders, an Earthican biospheric engineering team assigned to terraform the martian surface. Having located a large, level plateau appropriate for landing a large CO2 injection aparatus, the team landed to prepare the site, finding a large, perfectly level and completely barren plain at the center of which was the Einherjar. Described in the original service documentation as "cylindrical, approximately the height of a four-story building, ashen in color and in exactly the wrong bloody place.", the Einherjar was originally dismissed as an enigmatic nuisance, preventing the placement of vital equipment. In an attempt to remove the obstacle, the Airbenders placed a series of large demolition charges around the base of the structure and detonated them, destroying large chunks of the Einherjar's foundations and causing it to collapse. "The structure is destroyed," remarked lead engineer Daryl Weems, "Work will begin in the morning, and, God willing, we'll have this rock covered in forests by next month." As time would tell, neither statement was accurate.

Unusual Properties
The next morning, the team awoke to find that continuing their work would be quite impossible. Said Weems, "The crawler is just gone... all of our tools, all of the surveying equipment.  Mothersat says it isn't anywhere on the surface of the planet.  And the bloody tower's back.  Only it's bigger now.  I'd say almost twice as tall.  Honestly if I didn't know better I'd say it... Well. Report ends." The Airbenders make several more attempts to clear the building, escalating in severity from simple demolition explosives to a direct bombardment from their orbital particle cannon "Sandblaster". Though these attempts often appeared to destroy the structure completely, it would inevitably be fully restored within the space of a few hours. Satelite recordings taken by the Airbenders' orbiting command and control satelite "Mothersat" show the structure apparently reconstituting itself, rejoining shattered pieces and in places spontaneously "growing" new superstructure. Satelite imagery also records the unaccountable dissolution or "melting" of on-site equipment, which appears on video to transform into a viscous liquid and then simply disappear. Later investigation would, of course, link these two remarkable processes.

The Airbenders' involvement on Mars ended after their demolition efforts resulted in the death of lead engineer Weems. Second engineer Phillip Ross is quoted in his debriefing as saying:

''Well, old Weems wasn't taking the whole situation very well. In my professional opinion, he'd become obsessed, and I want you to note that on your report. What he did wasn't in any way standard procedure for the Airbenders and frankly I don't want the rest of the team to be harmed by his recklessness. The Sandblaster's not even supposed to be powered on when there are personnel planetside, much less within a hundred feet of the blast site. But he did it anyway, crazy bastard.''

''I've seen particle beams in action. We all had to. From orbit I could carve the Gettysburg Address on a continent in letters five miles wide, punctuation and all. I thought that was power, but let me tell you: You don't know what power is until you've stood next to it. Watched it melt a 50 meter hole through solid rock like it was ice cream. And Weems was a hell of a lot closer than me. Old man was standing less than fifty feet from the beam, just staring into it. The blast shield on his EVA suit was glowing red, but he didn't even pause when the beam shut off. Just scrambled down into the crater. Had to see the results. Well, when he saw that pile of slag start to rebuild itself, I think he lost it. Went crazy as a loon, and that's my professional opinion. Started punching the stuff, just wailing on the foundation as it rebuilt itself. I guess he didn't know what else to do. Anyway, I don't know if it was the heat or that thing but it wasn't long before we saw his suit rupture and from there... well I hope the decompression killed him quick because whatever the tower did to him took a full half hour to finish. There wasn't anything left of him after that. No bones, no suit, no nothing. Just the tower. Big and quiet and still as ever.''



Further Investigation and Colonization
Following the withdrawal of the Airbenders, the Einherjar's plateau was classified by Earthican authorities, and was not officially acknowledged again until terraforming had been completed and the first attempts at permanent habitation became plausible. When the Einherjar was commented upon again, it was with much fanfare.

In a press release, the Solar Ministry of Futurism announced that Mars' first colony, Olympia, would be open to colonization. In answer to Earth's pressing overpopulation problem, a new technology had been harnessed to create a vast city on the surface of Mars. This technology could be employed to raise a city from bare earth, as easily as it could be used to reduce a fleet to dust. The key to the advance, of course, was nothing other than the Einherjar. Far from a simple obstacle, the monolithic tower proved to be Earth's salvation: a technological panacea  tapping its true nature as a colony of semi-sentient, self-sustaining nanobots embedded in a carbon endoskeleton.

Though the Einherjar itself proved completely indestructible, small samples taken from its superstructure allowed Earthican scientists to reproduce the technology and reverse-engineer it, leading to the Earthican Nanotech Revolution, which catapulted the infant civilization into galactic prominence. The rise of the Solar Union and the rapid spread of Earthican settlers to every corner of the Milky Way can be attributed in no small part to the discovery of the Einherjar, and the resulting development of carbon-nanite shielding, goo bombs, and nanofabrication.

Cultural and Political Influence
The Einherjar itself resisted all attempts to demolish or remove it. Placed at the center of the colony Olympia, the Einherjar was originally employed as a civic building, the seat of executive power over the colony. As the effective first contact for Earth, as well as the source of much of the planet's technological dominance, the Einherjar was adopted as a political symbol by the Solar Ministry of Expansionism. Its meaning was considerably different for the colonists of Mars, where it became a symbol of local solidarity, the great alien monolith standing over the more familiar architecture of the colony. As the Solar Union's policies became more and more hostile to the population of Mars, it was adopted as a symbol of Martian supremacy and galactic significance, becoming the battle standard of the Olympian Revolution. Ultimately, following the Solar Union's unsanctioned use of Drinu Munitions on Olympia, the Einherjar was catapulted outside of the planet's gravitational field and lost within Sol's asteroid belt. Images of the Einherjar were declared subversive propaganda by the Solar Ministry of Flags and Symbols and expunged from all public communication within the solar union. Following the Solar Union's collapse and the resulting depopulation of the Sol system, interest in the Einherjar has dramatically decreased among galactic historians, and attempts to locate the artifact have been wholly unsuccessful.