Motif · from book 5
Primal engines
Circe's history lesson on the CrawlCon panel: the original council nations 'accidentally tripped the primal engines' and started the chain reaction that overpopulated the galaxy, leaving primal elements to be collected from the pre-seeded worlds; the Hive, who reverse-engineer primal technology, demanded the right to field-test macro-AI-controlled enhancement zones, and the request was put under advisement. A hunter promises to birth a thousand nymphs in the birthing hall of Hive Home two.
First appears: Book 5
Series arc
As of book 7. Hive Home and Macro AIs in book 6; in book 7 Paulie's real speech: everything born on a seeded world carries a grain-sized primal system that fills over a lifetime and returns to the planet at death, and the crawl harvests it — a whole world's death on a single ship, fed to the centre system so its citizens live unnaturally long. The macro AIs are made over and over only because the spectacle pays.
Open threads
Status is open or resolved; the chapter after it is the last one that moved the thread.
| Thread | Opened | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Two kinds of Residual, and a hidden upgrade | B6 ch. 73 | open · B7 ch. 69 — Agatha is the rarer kind, in line with the Nebulars; the Apothecary's thousands the other; Fopsy's shutdown theory. |
All threads: Open threads.
Through book 5
Circe's ten minutes of history on the CrawlCon panel 'Crawling Through the Ages': the council nations 'accidentally tripped the primal engines', the overpopulated galaxy, the primal elements to be collected from pre-seeded worlds, and the Hive's macro-AI enhancement zones (B5 ch. 33). Keith says his father says Carl whores himself 'to the macro AI and to the mudskippers' (B5 ch. 31); Vrah will birth a thousand nymphs in the birthing hall of Hive Home two (B5 ch. 35).
Through book 6
Through book 7
Grains harvested from the dead (B7 ch. 0).
Where they appear
| Book | Chapters they are in (of the book's) | Where |
|---|---|---|
| 5 — The Butcher's Masquerade | 3/78 | Ch. 31, Ch. 33, Ch. 35 · the book's own page |
| 6 — The Eye of the Bedlam Bride | 3/74 | Ch. 46, Ch. 48, Ch. 51 · the book's own page |
| 7 — This Inevitable Ruin | 3/89 | Ch. 0, Ch. 20, Ch. 58 · the book's own page |
By book
Primal engines in book 5 — The Butcher's Masquerade
Circe's ten minutes of history at the masquerade: the council nations 'accidentally tripped the primal engines', the overpopulated galaxy, the primal elements to be collected from pre-seeded worlds, and the Hive's macro-AI enhancement zones (ch. 33). Keith says his father says Carl whores himself 'to the macro AI and to the mudskippers' (ch. 31); Vrah will birth a thousand nymphs in the birthing hall of Hive Home two (ch. 35).
Primal engines in book 6 — The Eye of the Bedlam Bride
The AI's description of the hydra: the mantises' Hive Home was once a factory for something interesting, they turned it on, and an infant macro AI formed — nurseries, and the lobotomizer (ch. 46); Orren's explanation of the Primal Engine, a grain of rice at a planet's core, and the Macro AIs that can only be installed into one, like a consciousness in a zygote (ch. 48); Paulie's kind live in every civilisation with a primal engine (ch. 51); the elements the crawl exists to mine (ch. 37).