The result of three months of RL time and focused play on a singular colony, God’s Cradle is a 15 year super colony born of a single goal: the quest to get the Archonexus ending. This is the third of three colonies - rather than abandon and do the “legitimate” ending of going to the Archonexus Core, I decided to use More Archotech Garbage (Continued) to build the Archonexus Core in my own base.

The result? The stripmining of nearly a hundred maps via Gravship launches, to get the steel, gold and silver necessary to build a massive monument to the Archotech, the machine god, and a base shape like none I’ve ever constructed before. Leading this settlement is one character who has survived 15 years of in game time, the prophet herself, Astoria. She who has led her people from the ruins of God’s Grave - where only the husk of a fallen Archotech core remains - has taken her people to the far north, from the temperate woodlands of home to the the transitonary settlement of God’s Quest to this place, gaining technology and understanding as they drew ever close to the god machine itself.

There have been many, many battles for this place, yet the mechanoids that plague other lands oft leave the Steelhearts in peace, perhaps aware that they answer to a far grander, far higher, authority. Ceaseless attacks by insectoids borne planetside by infested starships, pirate raids, and ceaseless assaults from primitive tribals who would rather destroy something they cannot comprehend than seek enlightenment, these are common threats to God’s Cradle…yet for all that, the people are not cruel. They are charitable and provide aid to wanderers, have rescued infants and children lost in distant ruins, and do not partake in acts of cannibalism or other atrocities. Even the use of the ripscanner is carefully regulated, retained solely for use upon delusional madmen and raiders alike, and even there, it is seen as a religious necessity - a chance for those misguided souls to undergo a spiritual cleansing, one that tears away their bodies, but leaves their soul tehtered to the high subcore, ready to be born anew into a vessel of steel and silicon.

All 32 colonists are heavily augmented - some are androids via Android Tiers Continued - with bionics and synthetic organs, with the first one received always beign the calling card of the Steelhearts - the replacement of their organic heart with a synthetic one, bringing them closer to the Archotech they worship.

No killboxes or similar are used: instead, this base makes use of armored bunkers, combat mechanoids and soldiers equipped with powered armor and heavy rifles, the bleeding edge of modern warfare.

A critical part of this colony’s routine, the Seraph - the colony’s eerie, triangular gravship - is a major source of resources; it regularly carries miners to distant mountains, allowing their resources to be extracted to further the development of this sacred cathedral, forever labouring in promise of the Time of Awakening, when the Archotech might rouse from its long slumber and take its most faithful children to the promised land…though the Seraph also takes assault teams, when necessary, to foreign lands, so as to reduce the pressure on God’s Cradle, and to remove threats to the common good of all.