Algorab

"Rise, raven, rise."
Much like the Starmoth Initiative, the Algorab Organisation is a child of the Low Age but the conclusions it drew from this time are wildly different. The Starmoth Initiative was born from a secular tradition of progress-focused organisations while Algorab comes from post-apocalyptic cults dwelling in the wastelands of what had once been the western world. Where the Initiative sees humankind's post-apocalyptic survival as the herald of a golden age to come, Algorab considers that humans now live on borrowed time. Our species should not have survived through the industrial era. The fact that it did, against all odds, is an anomaly. All intelligent species have to die, posits Algorab. Humankind should have died in the furnaces of global warming and the killing fields of nuclear annihilation. In fact, for all intents and purposes, it did die. The interstellar age isn't a new golden era of progress, exploration and prosperity. It's the new, accidental evolutionary step of a zombie species that should have never reached this stage. A fragile, foolish band of humans lost in a galaxy it should have never reached. A species that should be protected at all costs because it is now deeply, fundamentally out of its depth.
Where the Initiative sees a geometry drive, Algorab sees a terrifying object capable of turning spacetime itself into a weapon. Where the Initiative sees ruins to explore and understand, Algorab sees the tombs of failed civilizations. Where the Initiative wants to reach out, Algorab seeks to protect. Where the Initiative is cautiously optimistic, Algorab is confidently pessimistic.
Though their philosophy is completely at odds, Algorab and the Starmoth Initiative share a very similar structure and organisation. Both are cooperative organisations financed by communal contributions and donations. Both are fiercely independent and operate in deep space at the edges of settled space. The similarities, however, stop there.
The Starmoth Initiative can be considered as humankind's searchlight, seeking shiny objects in the depths of space. Algorab would be a holstered weapon, ready to be grabbed just in case the searchlight encounters something dangerous lurking between stars. It dedicates itself to arming humanity against the potential dangers that could lurk in the shadows of the Milky Way. Algorab's most well-known domain of operation is the military protection of deep space ventures against nonhuman threats, as is the case in the Serene Sea where Algorab is battling the Sequence. However, it would be a mistake to reduce Algorab to this purely military and anti-xeno angle. In fact Algorab's military endeavours are only the surface of their work. Deep down Algorab does not consider unwilling enemies like the Sequence as a true threat. What they are truly afraid of are threats operating at a cosmic level. Gamma bursts that can erase a planet's biosphere in seconds. Holes in the curtain of space and time. Causality loops. Weird matter corruption. Objects and concepts that can not be countered by weapons but by a deep, dangerous and even somewhat eldritch understanding of physics.
This is Algorab's true quest, its deepest purpose: to safeguard humankind against the cosmos itself.
All content in the Starmoth Blog is © Isilanka
Written content on Starmoth is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 4.0 license