The Bigger Picture 3

"Just as stars are the sources of life for us with how much split they produce, your star allowed you to live by producing the barest minimum of it."

He drew a few wispy lines from the star outward, each ending at one of the creatures.

"Once a living being reaches maturity, they will produce enough split naturally to keep themselves alive without an outside source, though it is uncomfortable and can weaken you over time. Those with a greater proficiency in manipulating split, nobles, can usually generate a small surplus. Gods generate enough for a few people.

It is this function of stars, their ability to generate vast quantities of split, that makes them a vital part of life. Children born and raised in the presence of a higher quality star, on that makes more split, will demonstrate a higher level of proficiency with split."

Certain things started to click into place for Donovan. "Is that a big reason why the green stars are fought over? They can make you more powerful in the future?"

"That is one reason, but there are others. Food grows faster and in greater abundance, and deposits of valuable minerals tend to be of higher quality. They also replenish faster."

The Scholar gave his best shot at drawing what looked like a stalk of some grain and a sword, likely representative of metal.

"But there are risks. The star turning hostile is one you experienced first hand, but animals run the risk of transforming into equivalently more powerful greater beasts. Asteroids and other debris will also form at a higher rate, so impacts on the surface happen more frequently here."

Don and Diana could make an inference to what he was drawing as it was coupled with context, but the Scholar was definitely not called the Artist for a reason.

"Generally, the rewards outweigh the risks." He turned around, an opening for more questions.

Diana's hand shot up again. "How much greater are the benefits of the green stars in comparison to, say, a yellow one?"

"It depends heavily on how powerful the individual star is. The color classification might be a bit misleading to someone who knows nothing about the way stars work, but they fall onto a spectrum.

I'm sure you remember how at times your star exhibited patches of different colors all changing into one another? Most stars are a single color. The shade of that color is a more direct comparison to their actual strength, a lime colored Verdant stage star is going to be less valuable than one that is a deep green."

Don's hand shot up next. "Why was it patchy then? Does it have something to do with that weird spiky shape it made?"

"The reason it was patchy was because of our attacks on it. I won't go into specifics as you don't know enough about it to understand fully, but our method of attack dilutes a star's split concentration. The impacts are spread over the stars massive surface, so it takes time for it to even out."

So it was like a bowl of honey. If you scoop some out it will take time for it to fill the crater, but it will eventually level itself.

"We aren't exactly sure why hostile stars take that shape, we can't exactly ask them you see, but we do know that a star that has taken that shape WILL attack. It doesn't have anything to do with its color.

Do you have any more questions on the subject?"

"I have a few, but I don't think they are too relevant to the topic. Diana?" Don had some things he wanted to know, but he wasn't sure if the Scholar would be able to understand the terminology without consulting the dictionary. More specifically, the replenishment of mineral deposits and what he meant by their quality.

If high purity tungsten, copper, and iron veins could replenish themselves in a reasonable timeframe and he could get a hold of them, production would be cheaper then either he or ARC had anticipated. If materials like coal, oil, and fissile nuclear material were included, concerns about power generation could reasonably be thrown out the window.

"I have some, but they are probably more complex. Are you familiar with the concept of terraforming Scholar?"

He consulted his dictionary. "To transform a lifeless planet into something that can be lived on..? If you are asking whether or not we have tried such a thing, then I can't definitively give you an answer. There is a lot of history, most of which has, regrettably, not been recorded. If I had to guess though, probably not."

"Why is that?"

"Establishing a colony on a planet in a short time period is already expensive enough to cripple kingdoms, so I can't imagine anyone would want to finance the creation of a livable planet when perfectly good candidates for colonization already exist."

Diana furrowed her brow. Establishing a colony on an already habitable planet was expensive? Sure getting the infrastructure and industry online might be a pain, but that applied to infrastructure and industry universally. Surely it couldn't be taxing to the point of economic collapse right?

"If that's the case, then how did you guys expand to where you are now?" Don didn't know much about territorial expansion, it wasn't relevant to his duties, but surely they would have to have had some way to expand to their size.

He had seen a truly massive star map covering an entire wall courtesy of the Cartographer and taken a photo of it. ARC estimated there to be close to a million stars plotted on it, at least a third of which had habited planets in orbit.

All of those plotted stars were only the ones with relevant travel lanes between them, supposedly there were a great many stars in the spaces between.

He wasn't willing to believe they reached 300,000 inhabited planets without colonizing a single one.

"Most of them were introduced, placed, in their locations. They were already inhabited, results of the experiments of the Great Csillacra the same as you."

"The Great Csillacra can do that?"

"Of course it can! Should your people and planet have survived, you would have had the ability to choose where you wished to be placed as well!"