Sophia Delphi's Fall 2020 AB Research Project

Sophia Delphi's Fall 2020 AB Research Project was conducted at the University of Oraulan with some travel abroad to the city of Atenhaten.

Following the events of the Raid on the Cult of Kronos, Sophia wanted to learn more about her own lineage based on Twinkle's claims that she was a descendant of the ancient Valerian Empress Minerva. Given that she was studying virtuoarchaeology at the University of Oraulan, she decided it was a perfect opportunity to make her own self-discovery part of a class assignment.

Overview

One of Sophia's main goals was to corroborate the idea of her actually being Valerian. Based on her own initial observations, she didn't have the phenotype of one. Valerians stood over seven feet tall having bronze skin and peak physical fitness. With Sophia standing at only 5'5", it was obvious she was not one at all. During her training in Midori Monastery, they rarely ever talked about the history of technokinetic individuals, most likely due to the Blackout from 2,000 years prior making much of their history inaccessible. So it was up to her to try to trace her lineage herself.

From speaking with Twinkle, she discovered that his claim was based on her containing some of Empress Minerva's DNA even if it was only a tiny fraction of it. Sophia also decided to ask her grandmother Mimi Delphi what she thought of the relation and how it could be possible. Mimi said that her own mother used to tell her a bedtime story about a beautiful empress that made copies of herself so that she could speak with her subjects across the entire galaxy, allowing her to be close with everyone at once. Sophia theorized that this had to mean the empress must have cloned herself, possibly explaining why her DNA was widespread. This shot down the idea of her being a direct descendant, but she could still be related in some way. It would not be as straight forward, but she thought it would be fun sorting out the different family names to find the path she was looking for.

The first mystery to solve was that despite how widespread Empress Minerva's DNA was, the Valerian people were for the most part thought to be extinct. The main exceptions were half-Valerian individuals with mixed traits of Valerian and normal humans. On the planet Yeddo, there were two major populations of these sort of people. The first was the Taranis Empire found deep within the Oraulan East Condemned Zone. The second was further to the east in the Ateno Desert.

What she found was that generations ago, a Taranisian ancestor intermingled with the people of her home at Midori Gardens which explained where she got her technokinesis from despite her phenotype. Traveling to the Taranis Empire was out of the question given its location and the fact that it still was a hostile nation. Instead, Sophia decided her next best move was to travel to the city of Atenhaten using a vrNet avatar, much like how Kristoph Langusten had been projecting to Yeddo from the planet Merin.

The Darkseer Monks

Logging into the vrNet, Sophia activated a holographic avatar of herself thousands of miles away in the grand desert metropolis of Atenhaten. This was a place that had advanced quickly since the Blackout thanks to hidden stashes of Valerian technology.

At the city, Sophia found an enclave of technokinetics called the Darkseers who would wear blindfolds at all times to navigate the world without eyes. She had the chance to take a tour of the enclave, but she hoped to be able to eventually train with them. The Darkseers were taken aback by how little she knew of the Valerians, but it was expected given how esoteric the deepest of knowledge was.

The Darkseers shared their techniques of wearing blindfolds to help them see the energies of the world better. They challenged her to project herself inside of a fragment of a virtual world that was recovered in the ruins that Atenhaten was built atop. This world was created with a much older data format than she had ever worked with.

After several attempts, she managed to get inside of it, and what she found was remarkable. This virtual world depicted a desert on a distant planet a place where great, marble white pyramids rose from the ground. There was also a giant statue of what looked like a lion with the face of a man. This was a long forgotten civilization called Egypt. The Darkseers explained that this particular virtual world was a fragment of a program created by the Valerians to study the ancient homeworld of humanity, following up on a recent theory that Yeddo was not the homeworld of humans, but instead it was a planet called Earth. Essentially, the Valerians were very much interested in archaeology themselves and would keep thorough historical records.

What worried Sophia a lot was that despite the Valerians' attempts to preserve history, the Blackout made most of it for naught. Something terrible must have happened that caused most of it to vanish, but those questions started to go into the realm where even the most experienced archaeologists had no answers for. One place with potentially more answers was the Taranis Empire, but they were very reclusive and unwilling to share their knowlege so lightly.

To make matters more complicated, the Federation eventually followed up with Sophia about her experience with the Cult of Kronos. After the Federation interrogated its members, they learned that the Cult of Kronos was working as a proxy organization for Taranis - specifically producing cybernephrine which Taranis could sell to the black market for large sums of money. By now, the Taranis Empire had learned who Sophia was, and more than likely, were she ever to set foot into the Oraulan East Condemned Zone again, she would be the target of contract killers working on Taranis' behalf. Sophia wondered to herself that if she went any further, she would crossing into dangerous territory, but given her interference with the Cult of Kronos, perhaps there was no going back for her anyway.

It might have been beyond her abilities then, but she hoped one day to eventually tame the Oraulan East Condemned Zone. As unlikely as it was, she dreamed that by eventually cleaning up the area and restoring order to the region, she could gain proper entry to the Taranis Empire to perhaps gain an audience with its empress. She wondered if she could be related to Phyliss Taranis although considering how recent the Virtual Wars was, it would not be the most flattering thing to be associated with. Phyliss had allied with the enemy factions of the Insurgency to undermine the Federation, and it was only a loose truce that prevented her from launching another attack on Port Oraulan.

Sophia had wondered if discovering more secrets of the Blackout was worth such a risk. For the time being, Sophia was just one woman in a large galaxy. She still had more growing to do as not only a technokinetic, but also as a person.

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