A Light Not Extinguished

STONE Units: Dreamers in the Dark

Origins

The Warp is a dangerous place. It is a simple, undeniable fact, drilled into every human since their childbirth in the schools of the Federation. To sail in its waters, without guidance or protection, is practically begging for a fate worse than death.

In the Age of Reconstruction, man had rediscovered the shipbuilding technologies of old in the Lost Age. Warp Drives combined with the Gellar Fields significantly sped up interstelllar travel, simple plasma engines being outperformed in that regard. However, in exchange for greater speed, the drawbacks were far greater as well. At the time the Navigators did not exist yet, and to navigate through the Warp one needed millions of cogitators to plot even a short journey. Additionally, entire fleets were sometimes lost to the malevolent predators in the Warp- Void Leviathans, swarms of Furies, and other, more terrible Empyrean Entities.

And so humanity's scientists searched for a solution. Simply increasing the strength of Gellar Field was not an adequate answer- even if one managed to protect a ship against incursions, certain Warp Entities could confuse a ship's sensors, causing it to become lost in the tides of the Immaterium where they could slowly batter the fields down and devour the unlucky souls within.

So they looked in another direction. Instead of shielding, why not try to avoid their attention instead? If one could generate a cloaking field in the Warp to hide from its denizens, then the Gellar Fields' burden would be lessened, alongside shortening travel times. But how would one make such a device? If you want to hide, then the best way to do that was to blend in with your surroundings. In other words, by shrouding a ship in ambient Warp energy, it would theoretically be indistinguishible from the fabric of the Warp itself.

Psykers were the obvious solution. But psykers at that time were one in a trillion, and even fewer had the type of powerset to carry out this task. So that line of thought was ultimately abandoned. Finally in M12, a united consortium of scientists from different human nations decided to open the Pandora's Box of bioengineering- they would try to engineer a completely different species to fulfill their goal. Basing their work on ancient fragmentary schematics of the Men of Gold and altering them, while adding genes from the human genome, they succeeded. And the result was the Sentient Transhuman Oneiric Neurocloak Emitter Unit, or the STONE Units in short.

Appearance and Traits

STONE Units typically have a long, thin humanoid figure; their skin is a pale grey, with two rows of bony spurs running down their backsthat serve as receptors for data cables. Their face looks like that of humans, but instead of flesh a STONE Unit's face is comprised of interlocking plates of metal alloy that can shift to make different expressions, with a single glowing orange eye set in the spot between where human eyes should be. Frail of body but strong in mind, most of their lives are spent on human starships, where their bodies are suspended in special preservation pods that let them carry out their duties. The average lifespan of a STONE Unit is around three hundred years. STONE Units are asexual in nature; they are born in special facilities on certain Federation Core Worlds, and emerge as fully grown adults at birth, although the mind is still immature.

The truly unique organ of a STONE Unit is its brain- a bizarre meld of circuitry, neurons and psychically-resonant compounds, it is what gives a STONE Unit its soul, and an imagination that surpasses all but the most gifted of humans. For that is the greatest asset of a STONE Unit- it is capable of simulating millions of conflicting emotions and nonsensical thoughts in a nanosecond alone, which is the basic essence of warpstuff. Combined with a minor telepathic ability, STONE Units can project their thoughts through a series of psychic projectors to generate a cloaking field known as the Aegis, effectively camoflauging a ship from any psychic predators.

The powerful imagination of STONE Units results in them having rather dreamy personalities, and when they are not performing their task of cloaking starships, they usually spend their time submerged in their own mind, crafting entire dreamworlds within their consciousness. It is very rare for a STONE Unit to venture outside their quarters on a starship, but when they do they travel in heavily armored exoskeletons, and occasionally even more powerful warsuits armed with exotic weaponry when a battlefield requires their unique abilities. The Aegis can render objects and beings undetectable by psychic senses, and against certain alien species it is immensely useful, including the Aeldari.

Most ships have a single STONE Unit; however, in the case of truly gigantic ships like the Vindicator-Class, or even artificial planetoids like Federation Warspheres, those are staffed with multiple STONE Units, and in the case of Warspheres thousands are required.

Trivia

The souls of STONE Units seemingly do not interest Empyreal Entities; human psykers describe their souls as 'in a state of half-existence'.

A STONE Unit having more than a minor telepathic ability in regards to psychic talent is extremely rare. STONE Units are typically categorized as Epsilon-Class psykers, and there are sixteen in the entire Federation that do not fit into that category.

Those sixteen are all immensely powerful, capable of generating raw Warp energy from within themselves, alongside other exotic talents not normally seen in the psychically gifted.

The desire to help ships transverse the Warp is genetically encoded within STONE Units themselves, a feature present during their creation.

STONE Units can design hauntingly mesmerizing artwork and architecture, but they must be screened first for any memetic hazards, due to their thoughts being too similar to the essence of the Warp.

They also have a tendency to speak in third person.

In order not to be overwelmed by their own mind, a STONE Unit can compartmentalize parts of their consciousness, including imagination. Somtimes a STONE Unit will develop multiple personalites, although they fade away after a certain period of time.

All STONE units have Federation citizenship, and there is a representative for their race on the Servat Council, the Federation's highest governing body.