Sheriekas

Sheriekas are "The Enemy" / The Great Enemy / Iloheen / Unmakers

sheriekas, Iloheen

The sheriekas (not capitalized) were originally human or humanoid. They lived within a static universe, not the expanding Liaden universe. They sought perfection, manipulating their genes, altering their bodies, and employing other advanced technology to evolve into supremely powerful beings who found organic life displeasing. Thus, they erased all life from entire star systems.

“They’d named themselves after their own dead planet, which they’d destroyed early on in their quest for transformation”

“They thought to conquer death and perhaps have conquered it”

They changed their names to Iloheen — believing themselves Divine

Decrystallization

The sheriekas found a way to eliminate whole star systems by decrystallization. Around the time Jela discovered his small tree there were ten star systems erased by decrystallization - all in the Arm. (One of them Vinylhaven, a brown giant system)

“Guess is, that a sphere approximating three-fourths of a cubic light year was taken away. Down to the photons and below, there is nothing. The event can be measured by finding the wave front of light.”

Their Backstory

Jela, in Crystal Soldier chapter 1, musing on the sheriekas.

The Great Enemy

“Sheriekas. They’d been human once, at least as human as he was […] But they’d willfully broken away, continuing with their destructive experiments and their … constructs… while they offered up a grand promise of a future they had no intention of sharing.

They’d named themselves after their own dead planet, which they’d destroyed early on in their quest for transformation – for superiority. In their way, they were brilliant: conquering disease after disease, adjusting body-types to planets, increasing life... They’d been driven to achieve perfection [...] To hear them tell it, they were the evolved human, the perfect species. Along the way, they’d created other beings to accomplish their will and their whims.

And then they’d turned their altered understanding back along the way they had come, looked on the imperfect species from which they had shaped themselves – and decided to give evolution a hand. So they had returned form wherever it was they had gone, sowing world-eaters, robot armor, and destruction as they came...

It had been a big war – the First Phase, they called it, fought well before his time – and the after-effects had spread over generations. Those refusing the initial offer of sheriekas guidance had supposed they’d won the war rather than a battle. That assumption meant that Jela was here, fighting a battle centuries later. And that there was no pretense from the enemy, now, of benevolent oversight.”

Escaping the Un-Makers

• When Jela meets Cantra the war against the sheriekas aka The Iloheen is almost lost. The enemy displays a dwindling desire to control mankind and more a desire just to be rid of it entirely, willing and eager to destroy everything in existence to that end.
• Rool Tiazan (himself sheriekas-made) is one of the leaders of The Dramliz, rebelling against his captors. He states that the sheriekas cannot be defeated, but they can be resisted, they may be confounded, and they may be escaped.
• They decide escape is their best hope, so Cantra yos'Phelium assumes a scholar's identity to get into Osabei Tower and free a brilliant old scholar who can calculate the coordinates to Someplace Else.

• They are focused and determined and damned lucky, and they succeed. Rool assures them that the best defense against the enemy is random action, including The Luck, which he sees around Cantra and Jela -- and even The Tree, who pushes off the sheriekas at a pivotal moment during flight.

• Humanity escapes its Enemy, following the newly formed Clan Korval- piloting an upgraded flagship Quick Passage - from Old Solcintra to the expanding Liaden Universe
• Landfall. The Captain (Cantra yos'Phelium) names it Liad, in memory of elderly Scholar Liad dea'Syl, who got his pi-loting equations right 😉
• See also Liad#Brief History of Liad

Timonium

“Spill spectrum shows timonium, timonium and timonium.”

In the static universe, the enemy powers their fractin-based devices with timonium. (This radioactive metal is also mined on Surebleak in the expanding universe.) Some sherieka-made devices migrated into the new universe, where they are forbidden, referred to as Old Tech or Befores. Some of these are nasty little mind-benders; others are malignant Great Works— Independent Logics like Tinsori Light, World-Eaters, Recruiting Stations, etc. The Department of the Interior seeks old tech, employing it to brainwash, etc..

"The sheriekas use timonium as if it were the commonest of metals." They can find it over distance and they can make it act or act on it from a distance.

Sheriekas Devices

• World Eater - A big ship that can destroy worlds, confined to normal space, slow.
• World Eater Glyeth
• healing device - Cantra's ship Spiral Dance has a sheriekas healing unit (she calls it first aid kit), that can restore a body to spec on a cellular level. It erases scars and tattoos and even offers (telepathically) the option of optimizing the patient (up to the ability to bend event to one's will, to sculpt the forces of the mind)A low box, its smooth surface so deeply black it seemed to absorb the surrounding light. The top goes up when touched, and the interior is lit in a pale and disquieting green. The pallet has a slick and giving surface. The air around the box is noticeably cooler than the ship's ambient temperature. When the healing is finished, a chime sounds and the hatch comes up.
• Robot ships and battle robots - They use them to destroy worlds and erase life. Humans tried to use the sheriekas-designs against them but with terrible consequences. There were battle robots built to sheriekas plans which went mad and laid waste to the worlds they should have defended.
• Humans built robot ships after plans “captured” from the Enemy in the last war. They went pirate and held worlds hostage for their resources.
• Tinsori Light — originally built as a waystation by The Uncle, sheriekas highjacked it and reprogrammed it for evil
• Hols Senneth Recruiting Station

Engineered Soldiers

They also created the prototype of engineered soldiers, M-Series, from which design came hero M Jela, and eventually the modern Yxtrang, including Nelirikk, Diglon, & Hazenthull.

“The prototype of the M Series,” he said, with, Jela thought, care, “was developed at the end of the last war by those who now call themselves sheriekas. The design was captured, modifications were made, and when the sheriekas returned to exercise their dominion over the Spiral Arm, the M Series was waiting to deny them the pleasure.”

Jela grinned. “I hope they were surprised.”

“By accounts, they were just that,” said Rool Tiazan. “They had abandoned the design as flawed, you see.”