“I mean, it’d be a good way to hide your activities, wouldn’t it?” Zelda asked. “If everyone thinks your organization is either useless lore or doesn’t exist, why would anyone come looking for you?”
Well, she has a point there. But who’s so powerful even the turen look up to them? There were few races, if any, that the turen didn’t consider to be lesser civilizations.
“The Pansophists are a collection of higher beings. Life forms that have, through the knowledge they have collected, transcended beyond mortal bodies. They are akin to what you humans would call gods. Omnipotent. Ever-enduring. They are what all turen aspire to become. Some postulate they were turen once, and evidence points to this being the most likely conclusion.”
Ah, there’s the usual superiority complex.
“If these... gods are so secretive, so almighty, how do you know they exist?” Thorne asked. Still not sure I’m buying this whole thing.
“Evidence of the Pansophists’ existence is rarely direct or apparent. Instead, it persists and is made certain through various interconnected events which may, to those not educated enough to understand, appear unrelated,” Elistar lectured. He paused as they reached their destination. A light on the front of the building flashed, blinding bright, and when it clicked off, they were inside the archive.
The room was dark, and somehow seemed larger than it should be considering the exterior dimensions of the building. It was hard to make out anything with certainty in the low light. In front of her, Thorne found several rows of bookshelves stretching off into the darkness. Faintly glowing blue pinpoints of light rested on the shelves where books otherwise would have. There must have been millions of them, row after row, shelf after shelf stretching into eternity.
Compensating for something? Thorne chuckled to herself. No one needs an infinitely large library to store data. My handheld console has enough memory to hold all of this.
“Observe,” Elistar said and waved toward an empty spot on the floor. As he did, a hidden hatch slid open and a brilliant light projected into the air above. Pixels swam and spun in the air, a formless swirl of unfocused light.
“Long have we sought knowledge of the Pansophists. In our unending studies of everything there is to be known, we could not help but to find hints and traces of them. The more we looked, the more we found.” Elistar snapped a finger and the formless pixels resolved into an image. It was a panorama in space; a bunch of ruined stations – why were there so many in one place? – and debris floating slowly through the dark, illuminated only by the faint light of some distant sun. But as Thorne looked closer, she realized they weren’t the wrecks of space stations, just the wrecks of really, really big ships. Dreadnoughts.
“This is the ‘Fields of Ruin,’ as they have been named,” Elistar said. “Or, more correctly, it is the remains of what is now known as the Titanomachia – the largest battle in the history of the known universe.”
Largest battle in the history of Nova Online, right, Thorne thought, translating the NPC’s description into human terms. Something like seventy-five dreadnoughts were destroyed that day, along with who knows how many smaller ships.
“Everyone knows that Titanomachia was a territorial dispute between coalitions of the largest human factions. The battle began long after the war had gone cold and it appeared both sides were ready to negotiate. A maintenance oversight by the faction that controlled sector V-R5RV allowed it to become contested. V-R5RV was a critical sector in the conflict, and losing it would mean losing the war. All at once, the full force that both sides could muster flocked to the sector. In a matter of hours, thousands of ships were destroyed, including seventy-five of the – at the time – two hundred dreadnought-class ships in the universe. In a war that appeared to be ending, suddenly thousands of ships were destroyed and billions of rounds of ammunition were fired.”
“That’s what happens when the two biggest coalitions of guilds in-game go to war,” Thorne said with a shrug. “What’s your point?”
“That the maintenance oversight that caused Titanomachia was not a coincidence.” Elistar snapped his fingers again and the view changed to a scrolling list of documents. Receipts for the purchase of various in-game businesses?
“Shortly before Titanomachia, a suspicious number of real estate transactions occurred in which very rich, very anonymous individuals purchased dozens of ship and weapon manufacturers, as well as ammunition suppliers. The very same companies that were preparing for a steep reduction in profits as the war ended but, as a result of Titanomachia, saw profits rise exorbitantly.”
“Okay, so some big-time investors got lucky? It happens,” Thorne said, unconvinced.
Since when do the turen believe in conspiracy theories?
“Luck had nothing to do with it. We are always scanning and studying various sectors. Shortly before Titanomachia, our scanners picked up an unknown team of private soldiers infiltrating sector V-R5RV. During this infiltration, they caused the maintenance issue which allowed Titanomachia to occur. Our probing revealed this team was hired by a corporation that owed allegiance to neither side of the war. Instead, sources indicate they were owned by one of the very same anonymous individuals who had just before bought up numerous ship and weapon manufacturers.”
“So, you’re saying the Pansophists orchestrated the whole thing? You’re saying they created the situation in order to profit off of it?”
“I am not saying it; the facts are,” Elistar said and snapped his fingers. The projection changed again, this time to show a group of non-uniformed soldiers moving through the halls of a space station. The one at the heart of sector V-R5RV, Thorne didn’t doubt. She turned to Zelda and shook her head. “Conspiracy theories aren’t evidence. And why would turen ‘gods’ interfere in something like this? Doesn’t sound very god-like.”
“It is one of our greatest aims to uncover why the Pansophists do what they do. But
