“We assume that’s where we came from.”
Almerandi teaching about the galaxy in the sky
The Cluster
The Array is a large open cluster of over 100,000 star systems, a small satellite galaxy around a vastly larger barred spiral, 30,000 parsecs away. In much of the Array, the larger Galaxy (the Splay) dominates the ‘western’ sky.
Stars in the Array are not rotating in a disc, but are grouped amorphously. There are dense and sparse regions throughout, but the tendency is that stars thin out as you approach the rims.
The types of stars are distributed roughly as they are in a typical galaxy, with about 15% of the stars being main sequence yellow stars like the Sun, and most of the rest being red dwarfs. There are also red and blue giants, white dwarfs, neutron stars and even black holes.
The Array also has nebulae, of many kinds. Some gas clouds are still the sites of star formation. There has also been one supernova in recorded history that disrupted the systems in its vicinity. None are anticipated to happen in the next thousand years.
Worlds
Once the Arrival began, many worlds that were uninhabitable became the targets for Outsider processors. By the time humaniti arrived, thousands of planets in the Array had atmosphere codes in the range of 5 – 8, and in the last 10,000 years, they have terraformed even more planets. Every sector in the Array has at least one world that has standard atmosphere, and some sectors, especially towards the Core, have several.
Indigenous Life
Before the arrival of humaniti, the majority of the systems in the Array had no life. On the worlds where it did exist, the Array had its own native life, mostly in two separate genetic lines. This had spread across the cluster, by panspermia, over the course of a billion years, to planets from more than 10% of the systems.
Spore
One genetic line resembles what we would recognize as fungus. Universally they are called the ‘Spore’, reproducing with a similar mechanism to Outsider fungi, and never developing ambulatory movement. On many worlds, this was the only line that had taken root at the time, and it existed on over then thousand worlds back then. These spore have evolved to fit in a multitude of evolutionary niches. Their biological byproduct has a reflecting long-term cycle, where sometimes is produces CO2, and at other times, oxygen, and also some solvents and other trace gasses. Large forms of the spores exist, like mushrooms, but none has developed a circulatory system, or intentional mobility.
Spore of some kind are now on roughly half the worlds of the Array, usually in trace
Flower
The other genetic line, the ‘Flower’, has the potential for mobile forms evolving, leading to indigenous (what we would call alien) animals existing on hundreds of worlds. The animals, or ‘Blooms’, are usually the mobile phase of a stationary Flower, in the life cycle of a plant-like organism, that stays in one place, using variously: photosynthesis, geothermal heat, tidal forces, and even wind and hydrology, in order to grow and develop, before one or more pods develop over time. Eventually, from each pod an animal Bloom form is birthed, only alive for a short time (usually a few years at most). This allows the animal to find and prepare a place for its reproductive phase. This animal phase uses stored energy from the pod phase at first, before relying on consumption of other life forms (even other animals) to supplement the photosynthesis and other energy sources they can rely on during rest/recharge.
Humaniti has actually spread indigenous life to other planets in the Array, often by accident, so that more planets have indigenous species now than before the Arrival. At the same time, Outsider life and terraforming have caused indigenous life on some worlds to go extinct, as the changing conditions became inhospitable.
Two other indigenous lines in the Array are known to exist, but each is unique to its own world, not having spread to other planets.
Outsider Life
With the Arrival came thousands of Outsider species of life that had the same origin as humaniti, including plants, animals, fungi, and various single-celled organisms and even viruses. These life forms were cultivated by automated seed ships over many thousands of years, first the microscopic life, then larger organisms, to multi-cellular organisms, ever to larger forms of life. Even cetaceans were able to survive on at least three worlds. Humans were the last additions to the Array, and their introduction marked the end of the Arrival.
Once humans began to spread from one world in the Array to others, they brought with them Outsider life, and this has proceeded for over ten thousand years. Terraforming has continued as well, once Array cultures had the technology, and currently, tens of thousands of worlds have become host to some type of Outsider organisms.