Wiki History
Wiki History
Version One
(I never saw this one. When I ran across the Swarm Cycle in 2014 or so and got turned onto their wiki, they were mostly done creating "Version Two" from scratch because their first one had gone away and no one had any backups at all. -ZM)
Version Two
(The second Swarm Cycle wiki was hosted at "Swarm.freewiki.in", a free wiki hosting site registered in India. It went down in mid-2023, and investigation showed that the domain "freewiki.in" was no longer registered. Well, we could have registered that ourselves, but what would be the point? What we really wanted was the server data, the articles and pictures and links that comprised our wiki and that wasn't available. I tried several times over the years to get in contact with the domain's management so that we could get a database backup, but no one ever responded. -ZM)
(Nota Bene: The below welcome and summary "Home" page was posted in 2009 when the "Swarm Cycle" was first getting started. Since then, approximately 300 stories have been posted on ASSTR.org and StoriesOnline.net, and the Swarm universe has become a bit more complicated than shown below. -ZM 01/03/2020)
The Swarm Cycle will hopefully be a collection of stories based on an idea introduced by the The Thinking Horndog where he described an invasion of our Galaxy by the Sa'arm . The intent is for this to be a multi-author universe similar to the popular Naked In School stories. The basic concept is this:
- The Sa'arm, a species with insectoid behavior that little is known about, is sweeping across the Galaxy, occupying planets without regard to whether a civilization exists on them or not. They appear to communicate by some form of extrasensory perception; any being incapable of such communication is treated as non-sentient.
- Their projected path takes them through the heart of the Confederacy, a multi-species galactic civilization. The Confederacy's component races are all non-violent; one of the prime requirements for membership is a racial abhorrence for aggressive behavior. The Confederacy's Artificial Intelligences have been handling the interface between the realities of the natural universe and the sensibilities of the member races for nearly a million years.
- Earth, while not on the direct path of the Sa'arm expansion, is destined to become a target approximately nine years after the date of our first contact with the Confederacy. However, this is not why first contact is initiated; the reason has everything to do with our ability to resist the [Sa'arm]] -- something Confederacy member races more or less uniformly lack. (Due to the initial efforts of the humans the first Sa'arm ship doesn't arrive until year 12.)
- The Darjee are assigned duties as the liaison race and resources to be provided are limited to those of the Darjee and the AI's, as the rest of the Confederacy cannot stomach participation in anything so vulgar as combat -- even in the face of certain extinction. This limits the available resources in support of Earth's -- and, ultimately, the Confederacy's -- defense.
- Evacuation of an entire planet is beyond Darjee capability -- approximately thirty percent (corrected to 3%) of the human race can be evacuated to colony worlds in a 'Diaspora'. Priority must go to prime candidates -- who MUST contribute in some manner to the defense. CAP testing is developed as a criterion for selection -- and in order to foster high birth rates and keep the whole thing from becoming a eugenics project, selectees are allowed to evacuate a number of males and females (CAP Score irrelevant) commensurate with their value to the defensive effort.
Version Three
That's this one, hosted on the "SwarmWiki" subdomain of Zen Master's own "TampaAD.net" domain. It was initially populated with data from an .XMS text backup made 2/27/23, and that only had the text from 'all pages'. It had none of the categories, the templates, the graphics, etc. We got this one up in late April 2024, and since the URL became stable several people have been helping get it back into useable condition. Of course, now that I control the server if I don't have a good backup it's my own damn fault. -ZM
(Someday this will be a navigation template. It will provide a bar across the bottom of each article with useful navigation links. Until then, this is just a placeholder to get rid of all the red "broken link" indicators. -ZM User (talk) 10:00, 3 May 2024 (PDT))
