The Hill
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
Contents |
Overview
There is a gestalt intelligence, the product of an insect race spread throughout, and seemingly native to, Rhode Island's subterranea. The ant-like individuals are organized into interlocking, specialized colonies that thus form supercolonies of sorts, and every supercolony is linked to the greater whole of the hypercolony. Out of those millions of almost mechanical minds, for the most part very rudimentary, rises the hivemind, which calls itself the Hill.
The Hill creates and maintains mystifying technology mainly based in the direct application of principles governing forms of telluric enegy, and seems to have mastered some applied biological sciences. The source of the advanced knowledge these achievements imply is an absolute mystery, and The Hill's grasp on it seems largely intuitive, but innovations has been displayed. History records no direct interaction between the Hill and the macroscopic world until the days of the Rikti War, and even it seeks to conceal its true nature even from the humans it has elected to contact. Some mistakenly believes the advanced artefacts created by the insectoids to be the source of the intellect.
While the Paragon City underground plays host to one of the two densest colonial clusters in the entire hypercolony, the Hill doesn't control the metrolpolis' microcosmos by any means. While its colonies do combat other ants, this is mostly on a defensive basis, and little enough of its total ressources are brought to bear on them that the level field remains mostly level. In effect, the Hill's hypercolony occupies a different niche altogether from natural insects, and its obectives aren't threatened by them.
Biology
The vast majority of the Hill's biomass is composed of individual organisms virtually indistinguishable from ordinary ants. They also seem to belong to many altogether different species ants to an outside observer, even down to the genetic level, but the new evidence of genetic engineering by the Hill keeps the possibility that even these differences are artificial open. Every specialized worker and colony, from the truly microscopic precision workers to the overseers too large to survive without the support and protection of a technological shell, could find its origin in the same original colony. Even the same individual ant's genetic code.
Technology
History
Extradimensional Origin Theory
Because the gestalt intelligence has only manifested itself in the aftermath of the Rikti's original invasion and that the hypercolony has been, like the Rikti, modified extensively by advanced science and technology of unknown origin while displaying a sort extrasensorial communication, some of the few humans aware of both the Hill's existence and its true nature have come to theorize that the Hill and the extradimensional invaders share link in their origin.
This as mostly meant suspicion of the Hill, which could then be another insidious strategy by the Rikti to undermine Paragon City. However, some of the proponents of this Extradimensional Origin Theory have advanced that the hypercolony might have been introduced unwittingly by the aliens, pointing out that the variation of portal technology used by the Rikti in excavating their tunnels is not well understood by this world's scientific community, and that somehow it could have lead to some matter exchange from another dimension's underground to this one, as well as the other way around. The Hill might be alien to both this world and the Rikti's.
This would explain why the Hill had seemingly reacted to the Rikti as an immediate, global threat. What it does fail to explain is far from widely known to the surface world.
The Rikti War
The Hill had existed outside of the awareness of the human world for centuries, and if not for the Rikti it might have remained so for centuries more. The insect gestalt intellect had chosen the path of secrecy since it last interracted with humankind, and despite Paragon City thriving and growing over vital sections of the supercolony it had succeeded in that. It watched and adapted its underground works to its human counterpart's, and when it failed to do so, its component individual were dismissed as common ants without a thought.
That ever precarious balance was broken by the arrival of the extradimensional invaders. The Rikti's covert, underground operations in advance of their attack represented a direct, unexpected threat to the Hill, as they occupied tunnels and chambers and excavated new ones deep under the human city. The hypercolony could only retreat away from the expeditionary force in panic. The outbreak of the war kept the Rikti from investigating further the few strange artefacts unearthed, but not destroyed, by their delving, but it proved of little relief to the Hill. A new force was moving through the underground to oppose the Rikti as something the hypercolony could not comprehend had occurred. The Rikti had broken the wards keeping the entrance to Oranbega hidden and the ancient city's hellish legions were pouring out to oppose them.
The Hill itself has an aeon long history, but no true knowledge of it. Since Oranbega had lain dormant underground, the colonies under Paragon City had never encroached upon it, unknowingly affected by its runes. And so, the colonies were now caught in the crossfire. Some were destroyed, some were evacuated as they were connected to tunnels that were formerly safe, but now filled with many eyes and keen intellects intent on violence.
