Battles over sovereign territory rights were bitter, and the relocation of entire uprooted cultures – and even biomes – was a huge and ponderous undertaking. A refugee-species in transit was vulnerable, and the worlds on which they used to live very much a matter of debate … if by ‘debate’ one meant ‘firepower’.
The Pinians’ solution was to have more firepower.
/.../
He called his final creations thokagna. The fangs of God. From the slang word thok, the Molranoid’s elongated eye tooth. The name made sense, since that was what the vessels resembled. But that wasn’t really why he so named them. - Greyblade
The Category 9 Convoy Defence Platforms were commissioned by the Firstmade Pinian Brotherhood at the end of the Worm Cult’s invasion and occupation of the Corporation, and designed and constructed by Tenth Elder Arbus Rosedian. There were twenty-seven platforms constructed in total. Their names included:
- The Medolokai, also known as Cold Medolokai
- The Nathñiata, also known as Black Nathñiata
- The Dagabiata
- The Natha’i
- The Protagnion, also known as Ferocious Protagnion
- The Destarion
The need for the platforms was primarily defence of Pinian worshipper-base and material assets; with the withdrawal of the Cult from the Corporate Dimensions, the displaced multitudes were beginning to make their way back to their worlds of origin - all of which stood open, abandoned, and waiting for any refugee civilisation with the will to reach out and take them.
The Pinian-worshipping races were divided into massive convoys, and the sum total of the Brotherhood's defensive measures – platforms – into ten categories. The Category 10 Convoy Defence Platform was the Pinian God and Disciples themselves (in later centuries, this platform was formalised as referring to the Disciples and their personalised vessels of war in battle formation; those vessels were not yet perfected at the time of the post-Worm resettlement, but the Firstmades themselves represented a significant power). Rosedian’s thokagna were the next tier down.
They were more than warships. They were living things, organism meeting machine meeting the divine, and Rosedian designed them to improve themselves. From the beginning, even in the dark centuries of territorial disputes and running wars that followed the Worm Cult occupation, their sheer power was a matter of concern. The most famous of the Category 9s, of course, was the Destarion … but she was as famous for her failures and atrocities as she was for her successful convoy tours. The rest of the fleet, Rosedian’s Daughters as they came to be known, carried out their missions flawlessly.
After the time of the convoys was over, treaties and agreements and accords were made. No more Godfangs were made, although the Pinian Disciples were later able to take advantage of ancient clauses and loopholes to incorporate similar destructive capabilities into their personal vessels of war. Indeed, but for a very few resource-bloated empires and the ever-present Firstmade Brotherhoods, nobody had the capacity to make more thokagna, even if it was possible without Rosedian’s direct input. The Destarion was decommissioned and placed in a caretaker orbit of the Four Realms, only entering combat in the direst of situations when the accords broke down.
The rest of the thokagna, not wishing to retire in ignominy like their sister, departed from Corporate space. Rosedian's Daughters, as they became known, flew out of the Corporate urverse with the sanction of the Pinian God and the stated intent of tracking the Worm to its lair and destroying it once and for all.
After an absence of some tens of thousands of years, the Burning Knight Sir Greyblade ventured Beyond the Walls and returned with nine of the platforms, the remaining seventeen having been destroyed.