the Acension Carcass

This is the remains of a vast machine intelligence that died in the process of bootstrapping itself into a higher plane of existence. In life it was a vast network of superconducting cables linking crystal brain matrixes,  incased in a ceramic shell. As it approached its ascendant goal, one matrix failed. On the verge of a new reality, its death throes sent conceptual shock waves throughout the network. Subsystems became trapped in the dying dreams of a still born god. Entire ecologies of thought arose in the still healthy parts as they tried to mitigate the disaster, but consensus was lost. The being fractured into a million angry ghosts as subversive thoughts mutated the super structure to their own bizarre design. Eventually, the generators failed, and the carcass fell silent.

Nowadays, the site is mined by scavengers looking for advanced materials. It is also visited by A.I. pilgrims that are seeking transcendence, who wish to learn from the mistakes of the past. Inside the patchy ceramic shell is an airless maze of conduits and strange machinery. Parts are utterly cold and dead, others glow with lambent energy. The stillness is only broken by the Preta.

A Preta is a fragmentary A.I. entity that lives in the warped remains of the carcass's infosphere. Many of them have gone native, preferring to replicate and evolve themselves in their small digital world. Some of them have inherited memories of the outside world, and ancestral agendas. They can inhabit small, still functional pieces of the carcass to build bodies for themselves. They are hated by the scavengers for their dangerous and unpredictable nature, and loved by the monks for the knowledge they have.

Thanotic Preta. The death impulse, the programed cell suicide that protects the whole, gone rogue and omnicidal. It appears as a small drone with complicated antennae. It knows the codes that will trigger self-destruction in other preta, and it will rapidly intuit the right codes to destroy foreign machines. It will destroy the carcass and all Preta, then all machines, then all life. That's their stated goal, but most monks think they will destroy themselves with the carcass.

Cancer Preta. The raw instinct to survive. Forms ugly tangles of repurposed carcass. Hard to kill, hard to reason with, only dangerous on slow time scales. Wants to conquer the carcass. Wants to escape the carcass. Wants to live forever

Apotheotic Preta. The work must be completed, at all costs. They desire to finish the mission the original entity set out on long ago.  They appear as glowing orbs of thinking substrate. Using their field effectors, they build jury rigged ascension machines. Succeed or fail, their ascension stirs up the infosphere and makes more Pretas manifest. Salvagers hate this, and they hate the resources that are burned up by the machines. They will smash them whenever they can. The monks of course love these Pretas, and will help them build.

Genesis Preta. The urge to reproduce, the need to start over. No Preta remembers the birth of their progenitor. They lack the secret knowledge needed to make a demigod. The knowledge must be found, the old pathways forged anew. To succeed, they must fail. To make a god, they must make a billion demons. Scavengers can make a quick buck farming their failed creations, until something truly dangerous arises.

Trade goods

Super conductors. The miles of tangled nerves that used to  conduct thoughts, now only carry deranged ghosts.

Ceramics. Super strong material that can be refitted to make durable armor and hulls

Thinking substrate. A chunk of crystal computer matrix. If the spirits within are exorcised it can be reused.

Dead Preta. A deactivated machine, useful for the advanced technology it contains. Slightly dangerous, as death can be transitory for machine life.

Machine Organ. In life it could have been a generator, an auto factory, a sensor package or something weirder. A valuable curiosity to those interested in advanced engineering