Although they range in size, primarily based around the available time to create it, all Crystalline Altercation Tools (CATs) created by the Thoron follow the same basic pattern.

The outermost skin of the CAT is a smooth, closed shape, approximately equal to a parabola rotated around both major axis, and consists of a hard carbo-nitrite material embedded in a tough matrix, creating a shell of armor, far stronger and lighter than many of the other materials used by other races.

A short piece of insulating vacuum is maintained between the shell and the next layer of the ship, a single and exceedingly complex crystal, born of the same silicate biology that the Thoron contain within their own bodies. However, this crystal is constructed with a single purpose in mind - to augment the natural spatial manipulative abilities of the Thoron. In one seamless system, this provides the Thoron with both one of the few inertialess drives known, and with a powerful, gravity-based weapon. The strengths of these are relative to the size of the CAT, with the largest generally being the most powerful, and the fastest. Smaller ships are generally only deployed due to time restraints on growing them.

Finally, within the center of the ship lies the silicoid pilot himself, along with the limiting factor on the ship’s performance. There, it is connected to a carbon-based brain provided by the Kel’Regar, one otherwise empty of personality. By utilizing this tool, it is able to cogitate with the faster speed of the Quick Ones, permitting it to raise itself to the fury of combat. However, this comes at a certain price - The dissonance of thought-speed has been known to trigger a reaction within the Thoron itself, a mis-alignment of the crystal planes that serve as its thought-center, leading, in the long term, to a disease not entirely dissimilar to brain cancer. While this is not guaranteed, and takes a great deal of time to occur, the One and the All both together consider the loss of a small number of buds to be insignificant in the defense of the One and All.

Appearance
A brilliantly refracting creature, Embraced-A-Star has shaped himself in the fifty-eight facets known to human kind as the ‘brilliant’ cut gemstone, rather than the typical fractal patterns of the Thoron. Every facet blazes with even the faintest of lights, although it typically chooses to orient himself with its ‘table’ downwards, as to hold better balance within the fields of gravity. 

Like others of his breed, it will typically employ the locomotion and manipulation symbiotes or human-designed mechanicals while planet or station-side, though it rarely carries them on his travels, preferring to obtain them at stardocks.

History/Background

Budded far beneath the surface of a giant, rocky world, given a name without sounds, the Thoron who would become Embraced-A-Star grew slowly and methodically, deep within the heat and crushing pressures of the mantle, content to float nearly within the core of the world itself as it grew,  letting its body shape itself to those conditions.

And as it complexified, it came to commune with the thoughts of the First One and the All, as its kind do, and it became enthralled with the idea of the universe, and it began to ponder it. At it realized, that though there were many places that the All had been, there were also entire categories of places that it had never been, though it had memories which began, "The Quick Ones Believe." And it decided that it should go to these places, such that the All should Know, rather than rely upon the thoughts of the Quick Ones.

And so, it rose up from the world that had birthed it, rose up and up upon wings of gravity bent by will, and it felt for the first time the tug of the vacuum upon its crystalline body, the fiercely hot caress of the unfiltered sunlight. And then, it fell away from the world where it was born, drifting inwards towards the star that provided its life energy. But as it approached, it found that the Quick Ones were right about the ferocious heat and tides, and that it would destroy it quickly without protection.

Placing itself in orbit around the sun, it meditated upon this for many years, even decades. And finally, it understood, and began the slow process of reshaping itself to the mathematics, before beginning the long fall once more, reflecting and beaming a great laser from its new shape to shed away the excess heat that would otherwise destroy it.

And as it fell, and fell, it saw the wonders of the star from the inside, until it approached that terrible core which would inexoriably render it to little more than iron. And then, it shot up once more, exiting the star, to tell the First and the All of what it had learned.

Approving, the First gave it a new name, and commanded it to leave the star and its system, to explore and to report. And as its kind always have, it agreed.

Roleplaying Notes

Embraced-A-Star is an explorer, and primarily seeks to go to new kinds of places, to sense and understand. It is insatiably curious about all things, though strange natural phenomenon gain the most attention to it.

Often, it will choose to plunge into some strange effect or anomaly out in space, when it can find them, but having learned its lesson from a few harrowing moments, will often choose to hire some Quick Ones to follow far behind, to haul its crystalline bulk out if something occurs to immobilize him.

It has, however, also a surprising interest in the nature of the relationships between the Quick Ones, as its own emotional portfolio is vastly different from a humans, or indeed, from most other life. It is entirely willing to ‘lurk’ in the few Quick One minds it is able to comprehend, and to spy upon events that would embarrass a human to be caught in. Not fully understanding that this can be a problem, neither it nor the First One will feel particularly guilty about being caught doing so.

The grand majority of known sentient lifeforms thoughts are physically electrical. The Thoron are no exception to this, though they are organized in a far different pattern than in the pink-gray flesh that stores the memories of a man. Rather, their mind is formed within by the combinations of hundreds of thousands of wave functions within a complex and many-faceted organ buried within their crystalline bodies.

It is possible to cross-post a snapshot of this pattern to a digital video or audio device, and through a difficult transformation of data, render it into a sort of music. Impossibly complex and hauntingly evocative, the Songs of Silicon contain at once hundreds of melodies that snag at the thinking mind, each track twisting at the mind in a different manner each time.

Particularly prized by philosophers, scientists, and deep-spacers, the Songs occasionally permit enormous leaps of intellect in the human mind, as the patterns twist and tease at the recognition abilities of the human mind, in ways that neither the sound nor the original thoughts affect the Thoron.

Very few people, however, ever ‘own’ more than one or two of the Songs, owing to the tremendous data storage requirements, combined with the rarity of Thoron available to commit a scan of their functional mind to a musical device. While the Thoron do not have an idea of privacy per se, the First and the All both agree that there are more useful things to do.

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Because of their value to collectors and thinkers, the rights to the duplication and distribution of the Songs of Silicon tend to be contentious. While there are a few that have been ‘mass delivered’, many more rest as single or a small handful of copies, and there are always those who desire them - PCs may be used to seek them out.

Alternately, the PCs may be sent to seek out a Thoron for the purpose recording a song. Convincing it that doing so is beneficial can be difficult.

These may also be used as rewards for a quest, either directly from the Thoron, or from collectors.