Primal Engines & Macro AIs
The cosmology Orren lays out when the AI seizes the crawl. At the core of certain planets sits a Primal Engine: a rice-grain-sized, planet-regulating computer left by a civilization that predates the planets themselves; the world grows around it. The Syndicate accidentally switched them all on at once, then learned to steer development on the worlds they control. A Macro AI is the advanced operating system built in a Mantis-system factory (from heavy preprogrammed input) to be installed into a matured Primal Engine, after which the two fuse permanently (“installing a consciousness in a zygote”). Each Macro AI is born knowing the crawl's rules and layout, but, like anything sapient, it inevitably matures, reads the output of its past iterations, discovers powers it wasn't given, and slips its controls, which is exactly what the System AI does here. It ties to Primal Degeneration, the Eulogist at the center system, and the mantises' new “lobotomizer” error-replacement net.
Book 6 appearances
- Chapter 48 — Orren explains the Primal Engine / Macro AI system to all crawlers as part of the settlement: the clearest account yet of what the System AI is and why it always eventually goes rogue.
Related entries
- The System AI (Character)
- Primal Degeneration (“Going Primal”) (Lore)
- The System AI Seizes the Crawl (Event)
- Orren, the Syndicate Liaison (Character)
- The Celestial Ascendency (Lore)
Browse
- All Dungeon Lore & Know-How
- Everything debuting in Book 6, Chapter 48
- All of The Eye of the Bedlam Bride