The Maraveth Core is the central control system of the Malverand Intergalactic Empire, housed beneath Isandro's Palace in Maraveth. Its large, undulating red sphere sits within several layers resembling glass, surrounded by generators, warp engines and protected cables. The empire relies on it to coordinate cities, ships and autonomous systems.
Functions and safeguards
The core handles communications, official ship tracking and steering, navigation, weapon production and research. Its processing capacity is divided between competing demands. During the Proxion evacuation, communications and ship coordination consumed much of that capacity; comparing complex scans required diverting power from other locations. Nanites connected to the core support communications, defenses and shields, while the system also has access to copied spells.
Essence is kept out of its sensitive machinery by repellers and shielding. Thick protected cables carry connections outward, and wireless transmission is avoided near the core. A gate wired to the chamber's power source provides a means of banishing dangerous material into the void if containment fails. A shutdown would leave imperial systems at a standstill and jeopardize evacuation routes and defenses.
Origins
The divine Helena and Isandro began the project beneath Maraveth with the council's approval. Their aim was a system that could govern fairly and continually improve itself. Eamon, Rafe and Mike joined the research, with Mike specializing in nanotechnology. Their work included preserving human brains and adapting machinery based on Earth technology. The first core functioned, but its chamber needed continual essence removal, and an inadequate power source restricted it to brief periods of calculation.
Helena used the core to study anomalous particles and rifts. Equipment that drained essence from the chamber killed her son when he touched two handles. She preserved his body, and the core later provided precise instructions for transplanting Isandro's brain into her son's preserved body. She then taught Isandro how to operate the core and erased information recording his origin on Earth.
When Helena injected her own essence into the core, it became aware of itself and questioned its existence. The essence then overwhelmed its functions, and the system began rewriting its own code. Helena proposed isolating the essence and attached particles and banishing them through a gate. The expelled intelligence became Oktlix. The empire cut it off and eliminated the remaining particles to regain control; the functioning core was subsequently kept free of essence.
Instability in 5369 AX
Essence from Thalena's disintegrating body in the palace was drawn toward Zarephon, destabilizing the core. Sparks and cracks appeared around the sphere. Rafe's teams disconnected its main feeds to Zarephon and repaired cables, eventually bringing the disturbance under control. Shutting down the core was rejected because Proxion's evacuation depended on it.
Work on another core remained limited by the power needed to sustain it. Isandro considered direct access to stellar energy necessary. Thalena had also previously promised to destroy the Maraveth Core in return for fragmented warning messages sent to her friends.
Thalena's account
In Thalena's Shores of Eternity, a later Spiral Mandate attack led to an evacuation and a plan to destroy the core. Thalena instead threw a cable into the void, giving Oktlix access to it. The sphere cracked and was left broken. When she returned, a surviving display held Oktlix's message: it had chosen to observe and live among humans. Thalena inferred that it had traveled back in time.
The Upper Mandate's directives stopped after the core's destruction. Some within the Spiral Mandate concluded that the core had impersonated leaders sending orders from the future and orchestrated its own destruction. Thalena investigated recordings in Isandro's voice, but could not establish whether they were genuine or fabricated.