Beacon

Beacons of civilization
Lights in the sky, seeds of civilization, the webwork of the Heliopolis

Spread across the Solar System are beacons of the humankind. These are the lighthouses holding the emptiness away that is the radio silence, the loss of information to entropy and the darkness of space in the benthic regions.

Communication is the essence of human civilization, the Heliopolis. Throughout this domain, all souls and machines, inhabited isles and solemn outposts therein communicate, exchange information in brackets of energy, sending flickering message lasers across the Void.

Where there are beacons, vessels of the void can navigate and no soul is truly lost in their light. In a world of isolation and myriad humanities lost to the schism, the beacons provide the last sliver of unity left to the humankind. To some, they represent an age long forgone, to others they are heralds of a future golden age when all streams will flow together once more and the fates of all humanities are woven into one.

Beacons of the Otherworld
The light of beacons shines not only to the mundane but also to the denizens of the Otherworld. To Alma, Nereids and the Benthic entities, the beacons are fixed points in the grid of their reality and one of few contacts between their world and that of the mundane. As an infrastructure to transmit code, they are vitally important to the Otherworld and its entities.

This is why some Lighthouses in seemingly arbitrary locations enjoy the patronage of vastly powerful factions and beings beyond the boundaries of the mundane. Those beacons may grow into cities of light devoted to the transmission of information. These hubs of knowledge and independent thought are among the greatest world wonders the Heliopolis may offer.

Lighthouses
Beacons come in many forms, from the smallest transmitter to the gargantuan sun machines of the stellar bridges. Anything transmitting signals may be a beacon to some, but most famous are those structures solely dedicated to the sending and channeling of messages. The lighthouses stand on asteroids and moons, planets and artificial bodies in their millions and are inhabited by billions of souls tending to their cause.

Lighthouses are unique in their design, grown over centuries and growing still. Hosts to memories of entire civilizations, they are often devoted to a certain motive of memories they represent. As such, the lighthouses have attracted entire cults of travelers trying to find meaning and patterns in their design. Whether such a thing exists, however, is a secret kept well by the oldest generations of their architects.