The Tabula Rasa, formerly known as Oculus, is an interstellar generation ship constructed by Sun Industries with the goal of leaving the solar system behind in order to explore the rest of the galaxy.[1]
Description[]
The Tabula Rasa was constructed inside a hollowed-out asteroid and has its own self-contained ecosystem.[2] The vessel was originally designed as a spherical city that defies gravity as the surface bends upside down on itself. The design is meant to resemble the shape of a human eye,[3] with an artificial sun as the pupil. The gravity of the city was designed so that the central light source would always be located upward from wherever an observer stands.
While the original model featured intricate parks and public buildings winding together,[3] the final design removed the buildings and made the spherical environment into a garden containing hundreds of varieties of trees and fruiting bushes from Mars and Earth.[1] This garden serves as the heart of the ship, while the remainder of its interior is dedicated to engines, reactors, living quarters, a school, and water plants.[4]
Quicksilver has an onboard study in the garden. It has a floor made from green stone, with a window looking out at the garden. Two walls are taken up by screens relaying data, while the one behind the desk serves as a display for relics.[1]
The ship possesses a large long-range telescopic array constructed in several parts so that it can extend out from a crater to change its view. The array is described as looking like a tornado made of metal and glass, and tapers to a spherical viewing chamber. Eight short-range telescopes are scattered spread along the surface of the asteroid so that a tilt of its axis can allow the array to bring them to bear without having to realign itself. The array is designed so that even a novice can use it, and is run by an AI that can fill in unseen elements of celestial bodies when visual information is lacking due to their positions relative to the ship's. The array can also record the information it observes for a period of at least twenty days.[4]
History[]
Pre-Fall[]
The Tabula Rasa was designed by the Master Maker Glirastes as a commission for Regulus ag Sun sometime before 743 PCE. Quicksilver requested that Glirastes build him a city "for a child who had never seen anything else". Glirastes took the idea to heart and based his design on Lysander au Lune's eye.[3]
Glirastes considered the design, which he named Oculus, to be his greatest work, and sent Quicksilver a finished model of the city sometime before the Battle of Phobos.[5] As far as Glirastes knew, they never broke ground before his patron publicly aligned himself with The Rising.
The Solar War[]
In approximately 745 PCE, Quicksilver secretly began construction of Oculus, now renamed the Tabula Rasa, when he began funding off-grid mining for rare metals in the Asteroid Belt in order to obtain the materials needed for the ship's construction.[6] After Sun Industries purchased the helium-3 mines on the Martian continent of Cimmeria, he siphoned helium from the mines in order to power both his construction equipment and the ship itself. Construction began by hollowing out the inside of Asteroid 12193, which Quicksilver used to keep the ship concealed from detection by both the Solar Republic and Society Remnant.
At some point before March 754 PCE, Pax Augustus was given access to confidential files containing information on Oculus that his mother had gathered during her investigations into Sun Industries' off-book dealings. He shared the information with Lyria of Lagalos, and sent her into the Asteroid Belt to search for it.[7]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Light Bringer, Chapter 38
- ↑ Light Bringer, Chapter 13
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Dark Age, Chapter 64
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Light Bringer, Chapter 39
- ↑ Glirastes refers to Oculus as his last commission before The Fall, but it could not have been ordered after Quicksilver publicly allied himself with the Sons of Ares. Ergo, the model would've been sent sometime before the Phobos uprising.
- ↑ Light Bringer, Chapter 35
- ↑ Dark Age, Chapter 88