McEvedy's Folly

Revision as of 14:45, 25 September 2023 by 189.230.26.58 (talk)
McEvedy's Folly
← 3135
3151
McEvedy's Folly 3151.svg
McEvedy's Folly nearby systems
(Map Legend)
System Information
X:Y Coordinates−407.71 : −493.917[e]
Spectral classK4V[1]
Recharge time195 hours[1]
Recharge station(s)none[1]
Planet(s)4[1]

Template:InfoBoxPlanetStandard

Political Affiliation

Planetary History

During the Star League's rapid expansion, many planets previously overlooked for colonization were discovered and surveyed by the Star League Expeditionary Brigade. Few of these worlds were immediately opened to settlement, as the majority required terraforming or were deemed to be of scientific interest in their natural state. The world now known as McEvedy's Folly fell into both categories and became the focus of a select team of planetary engineers and xeno-biologists from the Department of Mega-Engineering (DoME) in the last decade of the Star League. When discovered in 2710, this world was in the midst of an ice age that showed signs of a runaway cooling effect, perhaps resulting in a situation similar to Terra's Snowball Earth age. Year-round ice was reaching from the poles down to roughly twenty degrees of latitude from the equator, and many native species were on the verge of extinction; a complete ecological collapse seemed inevitable.[1]

DoME designated the world project SAGITARIUS UMBRELLA (SU), the sixth of twelve experimental terraforming projects in Records detailing the UMBRELLA projects from DoME headquarters in Greenwich, Terra. McEvedy was known for his less-than-orthodox experimentation, and his use of gut instincts to solve problems. Working initially from the terraforming vessel Galapagos, McEvedy directed teams of biologists to recover as many species from the planet's surface as they could. The scientists determined that there were no surviving animal species left on SU any larger than a Terran house cat. More importantly, the planet's bioforms had evolved four distinct genders, rather than the two genders common throughout most of the Inner Sphere. A complex genome, with a rapid genetic drift in the native species, allowed them to adapt to different ecological niches and the changing environment. McEvedy reported to Terra that it was possible to bring back many of SU s extinct species by simply re-engineering the environment and allowing the plants and animals to re-adapt. The directors of DoME agreed, and terraforming began in Large orbital mirrors were constructed in orbit to begin warming the planet's remaining ice-free areas, but surface research slowed when this generated massive hurricanes over tropical waters where the mirrors focused. During this time, McEvedy continued experimentation with the local life forms, developing a new DNA-editing process and selective breeding techniques. With these techniques, he was able to recreate a genetically stable avian form nearly indistinguishable from the long-dead Terran dodo bird.[1]

DoME HQ received his status reports from Galapagos with great interest, as McEvedy's breeding program appeared able to recreate species that had been accidentally wiped out on hundreds of worlds. Extra security forces, on top of the normal troops typically deployed with DoME assets, were sent to SU to help safeguard McEvedy s discoveries and the Star League s extra investment there. Dr. McEvedy moved his experimentation to the planet's surface as DoME began the second stage of its terraforming process in scientists at the planetary installation termed the site Camp McEvedy. No historical records remain of DoME s second-stage processes or the technology involved at the SU site except on and around Gossamer, the planet's single moon. Current research suggests that the engineers focused the orbital mirrors on several pre-prepared craters on Gossamer s surface, melting vast swaths of crust and spinning out 4 Atlas ferro-alloys and carbon into strands that were centimeters thick, but hundreds of kilometers long. During this time, McEvedy continued his experiments into reversing extinction by releasing his dodos onto the surface and recreating three other avians patterned on extinct Terran birds: the passenger pigeon, the bush moa, and the massive, two-meter tall, giant moa. McEvedy's superiors began to question his fitness as roject SAGITARIUS UMBRELLA s leader in 2752, when news came back to Terra about his increasingly obsessive focus on resurrecting dead Terran species, amid rumors of mental instability. [1][22]

Instead of replacing him, DoME ordered Galapagos and McEvedy's team back to Terra after an unknown force jumped into the system and engaged the anti-asteroid defenses around Gossamer, destroying the DoME security forces assigned to protect them. Before leaving the system, the unknown forces looted the DoME supply bunkers on Gossamer s surface, leaving fewer resources available for the engineers to work with. Declaring his work incomplete, McEvedy refused to leave his world, and stayed behind with two dozen other volunteer scientists, who expected DoME to resume terraforming operations as soon as more security could be assigned. DoME s return never came, and what became known as McEvedy s Folly passed into legend amongst the department s few survivors during the early years of the Succession Wars. The fate of McEvedy s Folly would not be known until its rediscovery by a Canopian planetary survey team in The remains of the extensive terraforming infrastructure in orbit around the habitable planet and the haze of shattered metallic strands around its moon suggested that the world might still have technologies worth their weight in platinum. Dr. McEvedy's final days came to light after the Canopian team returned with an Interstellar Expeditions archeology team for assistance. The Canopian/IE team discovered that Dr. McEvedy's research group continued its program of restoring both native and terrestrial species, but by 2756, McEvedy s sanity began to slip as he realized that the Hegemony had abandoned him. Records left by some of his lab assistants told stories of the doctor s efforts to force an evolution of the native avian-analogs into more mammalian forms an effort that apparently succeeded. McEvedy began taking DNA samples from willing (and sometimes unwilling), lab assistants, and using them as building blocks in recreating extinct mammals. Soon afterward, these experiments began to bear fruit, but then a rebellion of sorts occurred amongst his assistants when they discovered the human-like failures he had been burying secretly in a nearby iceflow. The former volunteers fled Camp McEvedy with as many supplies as they could carry, and became the ancestors of the native human tribes who live on the planet to this day. Interstellar Expeditions also learned that McEvedy s experimentation didn t stop after the rebellion. Before his eventual suicide in 2783, his nearly incomprehensible research logs tell the tale of a man losing his grip on reality through a combination of schizophrenia and isolation. Many of his later creations, amazingly, are still alive including the mammalian crested mammoths, hook wolves, and the chameleon sloth. Without human intervention to repair slight errors creeping into the created species genomes, however, many of these creatures began to reassert their native, alien features. Indeed, the mammalian creations have since reasserted avian traits, including egg-laying and feathers over fur.[22]

Outside of the ruins of Camp McEvedy, what IE found was a world that resembled a funhouse mirror version of Terra's leistocene era. Creatures once engineered to resemble Terran mammoths now resemble elephants with brightly multicolored plumage. Feeding on these large herbivores are hook wolves that now vaguely resemble Terran dire wolves with scaled bird-like legs and feet. But the apex predator, which terrified even the most hardened IE team members, is the thunderbird. It is unknown what McEvedy was trying to recreate, but today's Folly thunderbird is a flightless, moa-like creature standing nearly ten meters tall, with primitive wings that possess an opposable, thumb-like claw at the main joint. The Magistracy of Canopus claimed sovereignty over McEvedy's Folly in the vast amount of knowledge contained in the engineered species on the planet, combined with the left over pieces of terraforming technology meant that the costs associated with finding and defending the system were well worth it.[23]

Meanwhile, IE was allowed to investigate everything they recovered. Immediately, rumors began to spread about the mega-terraforming project found in the eriphery s deep coreward reaches, drawing bandits and treasure hunters alike. In late 3067, the first of many bandit raiders the Keystone Gang hit the research and salvage teams still on McEvedy's Folly. This group s attack easy destroyed the few Canopian mercenary forces present, and the IE team armed with little more than personal firearms to defend themselves was taken hostage. The Keystone Gang threatened to destroy the ruins of Camp McEvedy and kill the hostages unless IE paid a ransom. The response though long in coming thanks to the Folly s remote location was severe. One company of the Markson s Marauders mercenary command, along with two companies of mercenary infantry forces, arrived in system via nonstandard jump point and executed a combat landing at Camp McEvedy. Their assault wiped out the bandit forces with only a fifty percent loss of the civilian hostages. Archeological digs and anthropological studies on McEvedy's Folly continued in relative peace until the end of 3067, with the Magistracy subcontracting mercenary forces to IE until their work could be completed, but the onset of the Word of Blake Jihad effectively ended this arrangement.[23]

With mercenary forces needed back in Canopian space to fight Blakist invaders, the research on McEvedy s Folly was suspended as the local personnel were left without protection. But McEvedy's Folly wasn't forgotten; between the years of 3068 and 3088, the system saw three separate clashes between rival pirate groups, and even between elements of the Marian Hegemony's military, against a Word of Blake-employed mercenary group. In 3070, the Marians Ordo Vigilis received intelligence from a captured Blakist DropShip that the Word was sending a military force to McEvedy s Folly in search of bio-engineering systems, with a goal of manufacturing a better plague. The MHAF immediately dispatched elements of the Third Legion, with additional aerospace assets, to interdict the Word's space-based assets. The Marians arrived in system at the opposite jump point from the Blakists, but detected Word of Blake DropShips lifting off from the planet. The Marian commander, Carolus McDermott, ordered his JumpShip crew to quick-charge their drive and jump to the Word s jump point three hours before the hostile DropShips would rendezvous with it.[23]

The intra-system jump was successful (with some damage occurring to the Marian JumpShip's core) and the Marians managed to board the enemy Merchant-class JumpShip. Their transport compromised, the Blakist ground forces doubled back for the planet's surface, where they were eventually pursued by the MHAF. The ground battle was much less decisive, with the Word of Blake using their DropShips in suicide runs against the Marian LZ in an effort to buy time for their Mechs and battle armor to fade into the landscape. It would be five weeks before the last Blakist combatant was killed while he attempted to use the native population as human shields. When the Marians left McEvedy s Folly, the native human population was nearly half of what it was when they first landed, and some of the most valuable Star League-era equipment left functioning on the planet was reduced to smoking wreckage.[23]

Another loss was the extinction of the McEvedy's dodo; the populations of the bird had always been tenuous, as their flightless and clumsy bodies made them easy prey. Proposals made on Terra in 3138 to re-re-engineer the dodo with recovered technology from McEvedy's Folly have been met by scorn by the public as many see the twice-extinction of the dodo as a sign that it just isn't fit for the modern universe on any planet. After the Jihad and the rise of the Republic of the Sphere, McEvedy's Folly was declared a special protectorate jointly monitored by the Republic, the Marian Hegemony, and the Magistracy of Canopus. The world is nominally independent as the remaining native populations tend to stay far away from any sign of advanced technology and refuse to speak with outsiders. Beginning in 3089, Interstellar Expeditions restarted its research there, protected by combined security forces from the three governments overseeing the system. Surprisingly, much of the funding for these forces come from profits made from children s toys based on a popular tri-vid animated series Mr. Morsel, the Multi-Colored Mammoth featuring many of the Folly's more terrifying animals, made less-so by the magic of holovid editing for a younger audience. Approaching ninety years after its rediscovery, the Folly is still providing mankind with important insights into the genetic engineering and terraforming technologies of the late-star League era.[23]

Geography

McEvedy's Folly has much of its water locked up in or under the world's giant ice caps, still stretching down to near thirty degrees of latitude from the equator. The very low sea levels mean that much of the world's ice-free landmass is connected, making the plants and animals homogeneous across the planet's surface. Native plants and animals all have four genders, two male and two female. This, along with other odd genetics, make the plants and animals widely adaptable to most normal conditions, not including the total ice coverage that was the fate of McEvedy s Folly. This adaptability has made the radical genetic changes made by Dr. McEvedy to the native species temporary, at best. Virtually all of the species modified by him and his team during the final days of the Star League are doomed to either regress or entirely fail (though exactly when is unclear; many have reverted to a hybrid state after three centuries, but it could be another three or more before all traces of their genetic tampering vanishes entirely).[24]

McEvedy introduced many Terran-like animals, based on the native life, but all have regressed to having (or always have had) the four-gender reproductive systems that were native to this world, and many of their avian-like features have begun to assert themselves anew, such as feathers instead of hair, bird-like claws instead of paws, and egglaying births, instead of live births. Many people visiting McEvedy s Folly for the first time experience confusion as they see the nesting habits of the crested mammoth, or the mating dances of the saber-beaked Tucan-tiger. Because of the highly unstable nature of McEvedy's genetic alterations, all modified fauna from McEvedy's fauna are highly susceptible.[24]

Notes

  • McEvedy's Folly is an independent Periphery world beyond the borders of the Marian Hegemony and the Magistracy of Canopus and appeared on maps at some point between the end of the FedCom Civil War and the Dark Age.[15]
  • It was confirmed by BattleTech Developer Øystein Tvedten via the Catalyst Game Labs Ask the Lead Developers Forum that McEvedy's Folly should in fact have been on every map from 3067 onwards until at least 3130.[25]
  • Rumors indicate potential remnants of a large military force after a long forgotten battle, which may have lent the name to the system
“ The amazing blinking McEvedy's Folly has by mistake been left off some post-3067 maps. It should be on all maps of that region from 3067 onwards to 3130 at least.

With regards,
Øystein

”
  — Øystein Tvedten, 21 November 2012

Gallery

  • McEvedys Folly-Flag TtSMF.png

    Planetary flag of McEvedy's Folly

Map Gallery

Nearby Systems

Closest 20 systems (1 within 60 light-years)
Distance in light years, closest systems first:
Frobisher 44.4 Helios 91.7 Kleinwelt 101.9 Coopertown 113.3
Algenib 118.8 Schmitt 121.4 Islington 127.6 Mondra 128.5
Cayuga 129.4 Cresson 138.6 Durabon 138.7 Ballad 141.3
Ballalaba 141.3 Thraxa 144.4 Marius's Tears 149.1 Midden 151.8
Horatius 153.7 Vixen 155.3 Bye's Ship 157.1 Luxani 158.6

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Touring the Stars: McEvedy's Folly, p. 4
  2. ↑ Historical: Reunification War, p. 159: "Inner Sphere - [2596] Map"
  3. ↑ Era Report: 2750, p. 37: "Inner Sphere - [2750] Map"
  4. ↑ Field Manual: SLDF, p. xi: "Inner Sphere - [2764] Map"
  5. ↑ Historical: Liberation of Terra Volume 1, p. 11: "Inner Sphere - [2765] Map"
  6. ↑ Historical: Liberation of Terra Volume 2, pp. 122–123: "Inner Sphere - [2822] Map"
  7. ↑ The Periphery, First Edition, pp. 156–157: "Maps of the Periphery"
  8. ↑ Historical: War of 3039, p. 133: "Inner Sphere - [3040] Map"
  9. ↑ Era Report: 3052, p. 11: "Inner Sphere - [3050] Map"
  10. ↑ Era Report: 3052, p. 23: "Inner Sphere - [3052] Map"
  11. ↑ Objective Raids, p. 46: "Magistracy of Canopus"
  12. ↑ Era Report: 3062, p. 12: "Inner Sphere Map [3057]"
  13. ↑ Inner Sphere, p. 98: "Near Periphery Kingdoms Map""
  14. ↑ Era Report: 3062, p. 29: "Inner Sphere Map [3063]"
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Jihad: Final Reckoning, p. 43: "Inner Sphere - [3067] Map"
  16. ↑ Jihad Secrets: The Blake Documents, p. 65: "Inner Sphere - [3075] Map"
  17. ↑ Jihad: Final Reckoning, p. 63: "Inner Sphere - [3081] Map"
  18. ↑ Field Manual: 3085, p. vii: "Inner Sphere - [3085] Map"
  19. ↑ Era Report: 3145, p. 11: "Inner Sphere - [3135] Map"
  20. ↑ Era Report: 3145, p. 39: "Inner Sphere - [3145] Map"
  21. ↑ Field Manual: 3145, p. VI: "Inner Sphere - [3145] Map"
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Touring the Stars: McEvedy's Folly, p. 5
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 23.3 23.4 Touring the Stars: McEvedy's Folly, p. 6
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Touring the Stars: McEvedy's Folly, p. 9
  25. ↑ BattleTech Developer confirms the status of McEvedy's Folly.

Bibliography

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