Galactic Havoc: Mindkind Unity

Galactic Havoc: Mindkind Unity

I have written up the "protagonist" faction, so now let's have an "antagonist." This is going to be one of the primary opponents of the Solar Federation, but still only one of many. Since now I have two factions, I can think of an example conflict and ponder on what technologies could have developed on both sides to help them against the enemies, and maybe even set some numerical benchmarks for balance purposes.

    Mindkind Unity

    Capital World: Arza-III (Corten).

    Major Species: Humans.

    Languages: Cygnan.

    TL: 10.

    What is the difference between a human, an uplift, and an AI? To a member of the Mindkind Unity, there is none. A human was born with a human mind, an uplift was given a human mind by humans, and an AI was programmed by humans to behave like humans. The mind is what matters the most, the physical shape is of no importance.

    AI and mind uploading were two very restricted technologies in the Solar Federation for millenia. However, during the Era of Silence, there was a resurgence of these technologies in many colonies that got cut off from Sol. One of such colonies was Corten, a garden world orbiting a main sequence star that was named Arza by the Federation astronomers. Arza was part of the Cygnus sector that contained several star systems in close proximity with one another. This allowed Cygnans to maintain integrity during the Era of Silence, using STL ships. The voyages were, however, still long, so most of the passengers on spacefaring vessels were mind uploads in robotic bodies. Thus, when the hyperspace flux of the Era of Silence abated, the Cygnans already had an interstellar polity.

    Each world of the Mindkind Unity is governed by a so-called planetary consensus, a supercomputer that contains a conglomeration of hundreds of minds that work in unison to manage the population.

    The Cygnans simultaneously pity the humans of the Solar Federation and other polities that do not approve of AIs and mind uploading technologies and hold them in contempt. Why are they so stubborn about not wanting digital immortality?

    Despite being called the Mindkind Unity, certain Cygnan factions have very different worldviews that sometimes even cause military conflicts within the Unity. Some believe that non-Unity humans must be exterminated, some believe that they should be given a chance to join them (after copying a mind of a freshly killed Federation soldier, of course). Some believe that the Mindkind Unity should strive to become a single compound entity, while others think that such aggregation of minds would create a mind that definitely will not count as human. All of them, however, are either hostile to aliens or at the very least highly suspicious of them.

    Technologically, the Mindkind Unity is as advanced as the Solar Federation, even more so in some aspects. The practice of mind uploading lets them "reuse" fallen soldiers by uploading them into new robotic bodies. However, this can be prevented by destroying their infrastructure, that's why the databanks where minds are stored are the primary target for the Solar Federation.

    It was believed that AIs and mind uploads are incapable of wielding any supernatural powers, be they magic or psionics, but the recent breakthrough in psychotronics has allowed the Cygnans to manufacture psionic matrices that let a sentient mind in a cybernetic body use psionic abilities. Magic, however, is still treated with fear and suspicion, especially after long conflict with an alien civilization that employed technomancy to disrupt the cybernetic soldiers from afar.