Ta'Koro

Ta'koro is a large, partially assembled megastructure surrounding a black hole of the same name. It numbers among the largest megastructures in Cosmoria. Like a cathedral, this enormous structure has been passed down across thousands of years, each inheritor leaving their mark. First assembled by Yanaris, the structure came under the control of Pecay-Po. Later, it was heavily damaged by the Providence Union's assault, only to be later repaired and expanded. Sagittarium took the structure most recently, once again damaging and rebuilding it. Currently, they have left it to the colony of Vanaheimr.

Ta'Koro is one of the youngest megastructures in the universe—even so, construction began before most species could even articulate what a megastructure was. Because of this, it is considered among the best places to go to learn about ancient history. Ta'Koro is controlled by Vanaheimr, a former colony of Sagittarium formed over the ruins of ancient Pecay-Po.

Structure

From afar, the structure of Ta'Koro appears relatively simple. A half-completed shell surrounding a small intermediate mass black hole. Zooming in reveals infinite complexity befitting a structure of this size. Some parts of the shell have wildly varying amounts of layers from only four to upwards of 750.

The bottom of the structure, closest to the black hole, hosts a huge arrangement of toruses looping around the black hole with a ~2 meter radius. These rings have large amounts of magnetically confined matter looping around them at insane speeds, making the average momentum of the entire sphere of Ta'Koro high enough to avoid collapse into the black hole. This sophisticated design resembles other megastructures the universe over.

Taking all layers into account, 29 percent of the sphere as it existed on the eve of the Providence Union's invasion was under construction, with the remaining 71% of the structure divided into 43% habitable area, 21% manufacturing, 6% computational servers, and 1% comprised of virtually every service available. Roughly 60 percent of the planned area of Ta'Koro was completed by the time of the invasion, and approximately a third of that has deteriorated and collapsed into the black hole in the millennia since.

Living Conditions

Despite the stereotype of large structures like ecumenopoli (Ta'Koro can be considered as an absurdly huge example of such an object) being filthy everywhere except where rich people live, on Ta'Koro this is not the case. Ta'Koro is remarkably clean all throughout its habitable space, due to robotic cleaners continuously working to clear any damage and debris from the endless halls of the sphere.

Because the Pecay-Po Federation had virtually eliminated any wealth inequality, most everyone lives in small, understated homes throughout the many levels. These homes are filled with anything the inhabitant may need for living, and poverty is almost unheard of. Of course, for the Elkeres species, these homes are filled with oxygen-nitrogen air, and the homes the Deviri live in are flooded with water, corresponding to their native habitats. The two species routinely venture into each others' regions of the structure in environment suits.

As the centerpiece of the Grand Design of the Founders, Ta'Koro is also the site of much tourism in the form of somewhat misguided pilgrimage. However, Ta'Koro is not a religious site, and nothing says that anyone is mandated to visit it.

Because of Ta'Koro's massive size, it is impossible to universally describe the cultures found here. Unlike a modern ecumenopolis, whose population is confined to a few million square kilometers, Ta'Koro offers trillions of square kilometers of living area. This makes its population markedly more diverse than most places. There are hundreds of thousands of varying cultures found all across the sphere, and disparate regions of Ta'Koro are as different culturally speaking as different planets across a galaxy from one another.

As for its "uninhabitable space," nomads have been moving throughout the structure for millennia. Called the Ta'Koro Remnant, their stories and cultural practices offer a rare glimpse into the culture of Pecay-Po. The nomads mostly wear cheaply made pressure suits and do their best to avoid radiation, a fairly straight-forward task given Ta'Koro's immense shielding. They subsist on various vacuum-resistant fauna hailing from airless worlds, spending months taking them back to their pressurized settlements. Modern pressure suits adopt some of the techniques the Ta'Koro remnant refined over the millennia.

Roving bands of rogues occasionally set up air or water-filled regions of the manufacturing zones as bases for their illegal activities, which are destroyed whenever found by law enforcement. Because of its huge area, there are believed to be many of these hideouts still unknown as the manufacturing zones are rarely visited. They often end up in conflict with the Ta'Koro Remnant, but just as often align themselves with them against law enforcement which views both groups as a problem.

History

Ta'Koro was found very early in the history of the Elkeres and Deviri species built sometime eons ago by Yanaris, and was initially treated as a scientific research site. As people began moving to the site, an unplanned development took place. This chaotic underbelly of Ta'Koro remains in some places to this day. During the formation of Pecay-Po, its design became more orderly as conceived by the Founders, a secretive group of individuals from the Elkeres and Deviri species who, while initially intended to formulate a treaty to bring the two species together, instead wrote up a grand design for the entire future of the nation. This design was kept very secret and was believed to extend at least 5,000 years into the future. However, it is known that Ta'Koro was to be the centerpiece of the design.

As Pecay-Po Federation replaced the descendants of Yanaris, they became isolationist. Everything they needed could be had in Ta'Koro. A more orderly construction project began in 5,600 CE, and the first habitation zones were completed roughly 700 years later. Many people flocked to the newly assembled structure. Ta'Koro reached its maximum volume in 6100 CE.

When the Providence Union invaded in 6,635 CE, Pecay-Po's population and infrastructure in the nearby Varlac and Lyak systems were swiftly wiped out, and Ta'Koro was abruptly on the front lines. The Union's bombardment caused major structural failure across the sphere as large sections plummeted into the black hole, taking with them trillions of people. The sheer amount of mass lost to the black hole released energy as it fell, enough to briefly outshine the dimmest red dwarfs. This nearly caused a cascading failure as inner trusses melted. This forced Pecay-Po to surrender lest more material fall. The atomic weapons stopped falling, replaced with marines who cleared out large tracts of the structure. Ta'Koro's remaining population worked the factories whose output enriched the Providence Union, its upper class growing corpulent from the trade this brought in.

Centuries later, when Sagittarium's indomitable fleet grew bored with Aylathiya; they flew across Paleas to the ruins of Ta'Koro. They too used it as a scientific research site, lacking the resources outright to properly rebuild it. The black hole was used to test slingshot maneuvers in complex time travel experiments, none of which succeeded, among other things. The colony of Vanaheimr was more a state-controlled corporation bent on bringing Ta'Koro up to 85th millennium standards. Over centuries it would accumulate the materials needed to repair large sections of the megastructure.

Ta'Koro took yet more damage during the War of Saiheran Succession as Kalea's armies swept across Thalvett and triggered Sagittarium's counterattack. As of the modern day, the battered sphere remains in place, a testament to the tenacity of its inhabitants and the really good engineers they had in Pecay-Po.