Urnudans

Urnudans are the people of Urnud, often mentioned in connection with the two‑world bloc known as the Pedestal alongside Tro. Reports available on Arbre describe Urnudans as key participants in building and operating the starship Daban Urnud.

Context and history (as reported)

• Analysts correlating timestamps on captured Urnudan records with Arbran events estimate that Urnudans set out on their first inter‑cosmic voyage roughly nine centuries ago. Later, Troan participation grew, and the two worlds traveled and conducted “Advents” for long periods between new contacts. Some observers suggest this long wandering helps explain their brisk, sometimes tetchy bearing.
• Accounts from a Laterran visitor indicate that during the extended voyage the leadership culture aboard shifted in tone—from strictly rational theors to something more priestly in outlook—especially among those closest to strategic decision‑making.
• During successive Advents, shipboard communities both shed and gain population: some settlers remain behind on visited worlds, while recruits from the new world join the expedition. Testimony mentions earlier Advents involving Tro, Laterre, and Fthos.

Community aboard the Daban Urnud

• Many Urnudans are part of the shipboard population commonly called the Forty Thousand. The living hub of the vessel consists of sixteen rotating spheres (“orbs”). Each orb is half‑filled with water and supports house‑boats with gardens on their roofs; communities are officially organized so that each of the four participating worlds holds four orbs, though mixing occurs in practice.
• Education and technical training are emphasized to maintain ship systems and mission continuity; competition among the worlds for skilled roles is described as keen.
• Pressurized corridors link the orbs, allowing inhabitants to travel between living spheres and supporting both world‑based organization and practical mixing.
• Captured sunlight from the icosahedron’s exterior is piped inward via trunk lines of optical fibers to illuminate the rooftop farms within the orbs.
• Everyday life on the house‑boats is adapted to motion: cabinets latch, furniture is fixed down, and communities adjust to occasional jostling when the ship maneuvers or the water sloshes.
• Within the Orbstack, Orbs One through Four are Urnudan; by convention Orb One houses high‑ranking members of their community. The Nexus where Orbs One, Five, Nine, and Thirteen meet adjoins a torus of command spaces used for leadership meetings. Current accounts note that tensions between the Pedestal and the Fulcrum have led to physical partitions and secured hatches within parts of this command ring.

Leadership and internal structure

• Ranks and roles: In Urnudan naval tradition the senior strategic officer is the Gan (roughly “admiral”), while tactical command of a vessel is delegated to a Prag (akin to a captain). Aboard the Daban Urnud, this evolved into a stable arrangement with a Gan responsible for strategy and a Prag directing day‑to‑day operations and security.
• Power drift over long journeys: Accounts describe a cyclical shift in influence—during an Advent the Gan tends to gain authority, but as years pass between Advents tactical command (the Prag) accrues power. Within shipboard parlance these opposing tendencies are called the Pedestal and the Fulcrum.
• Present counterparts: The current Gan is referred to as Gan Odru (name reported in parley), with the tactical counterpart identified as Prag Eshwar. Eshwar is associated with the Pedestal tendency; the Fulcrum is reported as having strong Fthosian support.

Beliefs, signals, and the long quest (reported)

• Origin of the detour: Urnudan histories relate that a “third Gan,” having received vivid images of devastation interpreted as an ancestral summons, altered course so the ship would arrive at a different time relative to its point of origin. Later Arbran readers identify those images with the Third Sack, though whether they were sent intentionally or arose within the Hylaean Flow remains an open question.
• Intercosmic information: In a ceremonial dialog, a senior avout summarized the Hylaean Flow simply as information passing between cosmi and urged careful doubt about specific attributions while accepting that such a Flow exists.

Language and measures

• Documents attributed to Urnudans use “Urnud years” as a standard unit of time. Where their reports reference people or places from other worlds, a phonetic alphabet for transliterating proper names is employed, easing cryptanalytic comparison to Arbran events.
• Urnudan numerals are used prominently to mark accessways to the orbs; for example, the Urnudan glyph for unity is painted next to the approach for Orb One.

Facilities and operations observed

• Vertex complexes include observatories; the main telescope dome can be sealed, pressurized, and vented and effectively functions as a large airlock. Telescopes are typically operated remotely via the Reticulum.
• Urnudan personnel include armed soldiers and firefighting crews who traverse the vertices, Tendons, and the Core to respond to incidents.
• Medical response and cross‑cosmi acclimation: Shipboard medics are described responding quickly when visitors cannot tolerate the local air mix, administering supplemental oxygen and, as a protective measure against possible brain injury, induced hypothermia. A cosmographer from Fthos at an observatory airlock recognized the symptoms and raised an alarm.
• Air‑mix differences and movement: Accounts note that some long‑term residents rarely leave their home orbs because of air‑mixture differences, while others acclimate over time and can move freely through common areas.

Surveillance and tactics (reported)

• Advisors describe Urnudans as past masters of space warfare who couple powerful telescopes with syndevs to sift very large image sets, building a census of objects injected into orbit and flagging any that maneuver with thrusters.
• Decoy discrimination is said to exploit orbital behavior: large balloons feel atmospheric drag differently from dense payloads, allowing analysts to separate fakes from true targets over time.

Recent parley and shipboard developments

• Warden incident and response: During a formal parley near the heart of Orb One, Urnudan leaders recounted that the Warden of Heaven, against advice, removed his suit in a pressurized environment and died of a sudden vascular failure; his body had already been sampled for research before an autopsy, and it was returned in a manner that later backfired politically. In contrition, members aligned with the Fulcrum sought to deliver shipboard blood samples “in exchange for blood” to Ecba. A Laterran linguist, Jules Verne Durand, had earlier interpreted a signal from Fraa Orolo as pointing to Ecba; the messenger who attempted the delivery—Lise—was shot during the launch and did not survive.
• Losses and the “hostage” dispute: In ensuing clashes centered on the World Burner complex, Urnudan accounts put fatalities at thirty‑one. A further eighty‑seven were sealed into a chamber by visiting avout; Urnudan tactical command described this as hostage‑taking, while the avout present characterized it as an effort to keep noncombatants safely out of harm’s way.
• Weapon posture: A large device associated with the World Burner was described by Urnudan leaders as a weapon of last resort intended to hang over a planet as a threat rather than to be used. Its destruction coincided with an abrupt tightening of security throughout the Daban Urnud; contemporaries noted that the event seemed to shake the Prag, who then opened a channel to the Gan to discuss de‑escalation.
• Sabotage details (as told by Arbran sources): The device’s destruction was attributed to shaped charges placed on multiple critical points—the primary detonator, the inertial guidance system, and the propellant tanks—followed by a secondary detonation as the tanks ruptured.
• Breach of the sealed vertex: After two days with trapped personnel running out of breathable air, responders blasted an opening into the isolated vertex room, venting its atmosphere to space to reach the hostages. Two of the visiting avout inside died in the vacuum.

Current posture

• In present contact near Arbre, Urnudans act in concert with Tro under the Pedestal banner. Descriptions emphasize a capable, wary leadership and a disciplined shipboard society prepared for decisive action when they perceive threats.
• During a night‑side pass, observers in low orbit reported kinetic rod strikes on major equatorial launch facilities, an action attributed in‑world to the Pedestal’s orbital presence.
• While suited crews were working on the World Burner, one account reported a sequence of bright flares followed by a palpable jolt, interpreted as destruction of propellant tanks on the device. Immediately afterward, the forward bearing chamber filled with responders moving along the Tendon serving that vertex; injured personnel were seen evacuating, and access control tightened across the Daban Urnud, with soldiers securing approaches to Orb One.
• Negotiations: In the aftermath, leadership initiated four‑way talks among the Pedestal, the Fulcrum, and the Magisteria. An Arbran delegation was transported to the Daban Urnud with physicians, oxygen, and provisions to support dialogue and humanitarian needs.