Cyberplanet

A cyberplanet is a permanent, spacebourne man-made structure composed of more than 70% manufactured electronic parts. Cyberplanets are generally differentiated from space stations by their size, which approaches or exceeds that of most habitable terrestrial planets, and their spherical shape, emulating ordinary planets by design.

Nox Draconis/New Alexandria
The first cyberplanet, Nox Draconis, was a large-scale civic project undertaken by the Zarakkanian Empire, which hoped to facilitate more efficient data transfer between its client-planets. Nox Draconis, or New Alexandria, as it came to be known, was an ambitious and expensive project for the budding Empire. Its construction was ordered in 430 FE by Emperor Terrance II, who envisioned "a single tome to hold the whole knowledge of an empire", and continued for the full duration of no less than fifteen emperors' rule. By the time of its completion in 1262 FE, the immense economic drain of the project had become normalized, and within 50 galactic standard years of its completion came five events of remarkable historical synchronicity:


 * 1) An enormous swell of popular support for the Zarakkanian government arose throughout the empire, corresponding roughly to the sudden availability of a vast library of scientific data, art, music, and exotic pornography.


 * 2) Available government revenue suddenly swelled as control and maintenance of the structure was transferred to the Bejeweled Hermitage.


 * 3) An entire class of minimally educated, unskilled fabrication and construction workers suddenly found itself unemployed.


 * 4) The Zarakkanian Empire came into possession of its first Bode Node.


 * and 5) The First Galactic War was declared.

This observer will comment no further on that remarkable confluence of circumstances.

Paris and Agamemnon
New Alexandria was, of course, destroyed in 100 SE. Though a number of outlandish theories have been presented concerning the possibility of government coverup or tears in the fabric of reality, it seems much more likely to this observer that its destruction was the simple result of poor design and shoddy implementation. The fabrication techniques and technologies incorporated into the structure changed from emperor to emperor, as did the entire body of engineers and developers working on the project.

The lessons of New Alexandria were thoroughly learned by the time that the second and third recorded cyberplanets (Paris and Agamemnon) were constructed. The two planets served to replace New Alexadria, being largely unmanned and devoted almost entirely to communications and data storage infrastructure. They were, however, considerably smaller, more structurally sound, and designed for greater redundancy and resiliency to subsystem failure. More importantly, their manufacture was completed within fifty years of their commission, proving once and for all that cyberplanets could be produced quickly and efficiently.

Of course, in spite of these improvements, Paris and Agamemnon eventually became historically relevent for entirely different, far more political reasons. The intricacies of their design were shown to conceal far more than communications infrastructure and data storage. Nevertheless, for reasons unknown, Zarakk has produced no more cyberplanets since.

Other Attempts
The completion of New Alexandria inspired a host of public and private projects hoping to reproduce its success. The vast majority of these projects failed, due to miscalculation of the involved costs, to so-called "feature creep" in the projects' designs, or (most frequently) both. Of those attempts, only two proceeded far enough to merit mention. First, in the late First Era, the Alysian Empire set aside a remarkable one-half of its discretionary budget to funding a rival project to Zarak's Nox Draconis. The design phase was, however, marked by lack of centralized authority and an overeager development team, which envisioned the project as "a sort of hybrid living space, manufacturing facility, cultural center and dreadnaught". Needless to say, the project was scrapped as impossibly expensive before it could enter production.

Second, In 680 SE, the Disciples of Mad Jenkins began construction on what was intended to be a residential cyberplanet. Funded in part by a grant from the mysterious Arcological Society, and in part by his own, equally mysterious wealth, Mad Jenkins approached a number of Mirandan developers hoping to construct an artificial rogue planet which could support an ecosystem and house potentially trillions of inhabitants. Despite extravagant offers for the structure's construction, all of the firms he approached turned him down. Said one foreman:

''Well, I mean, the money's good. I mean, hell, the money's unbelievable, and I'm all for going ahead with the project pretty much whatever it turns out to be. So I asks him what exactly he wants us to build and he says "I envision an ark to free my people from the shackles of planet and government."  Well, I'm not a very political sort of fella, so I says to him, "That sounds excellent sir, but what do you want us to build?  How can we at Granger and Hamilton help you?" And he looks at me, serious as you please, and he says in this booming voice, "It must house a million million men, and drift through the cosmos without bending to man or gravity."  We go back and forth like that for probably two hours, and all I know by the end is that this guy probably hasn't ever heard of a design schematic.''

Undaunted by repeated refusal, the Disciples went on to attempt construction of their cyberplanet using volunteer labor. Beginning on the surface of an asteroid, roughly 20 miles in diameter, the Disciples settled using prefabricated zero-g living structures and began building upward.

The resulting structure, which they named Eden, grew to roughly the size of a small moon before its cobbled-together structure began to lose integrity, its own gravity threatening to implode the entire structure. The Disciples' response was to change building tactics, using Eden Central as a hub for an interconnected latice of derelict spacecraft and independently operating space stations. Construction on Eden did not cease until 920 SE, when the spaceborn city was conquered by interstellar pirates. Though Eden eventually grew to a size roughly comparable to a small gas giant, it is not considered a true cyberplanet, since it lacks a defined shape, and the majority of its structure consists of empty space threaded with transportation umbilicals. The Royal Corps of Engineers officially regards the lattice structure as "cheating" and to date the only cyberplanets recognized by the Zarakkanian Empire are those built by the Zarakkanian Empire.