MorningLightMountain
Names: MorningLightMountainMorningLightMountain immotileMorningLightMountain17,735the immotilethe Primesthe Primethe Prime alienbig Mountain dude
First appears in Book 1: Pandora's Star, chapter 19 (EIGHTEEN)
Appearances
What you know
Book 1: Pandora's Star
- Ch 19MorningLightMountain is named for its location, a conical mountain in a swampy valley struck by sunlight only in the morning.
- Ch 19It was founded when a sub-herd of twelve motiles sent by a birth immotile selected the mountain and amalgamated four of themselves into it.
- Ch 19It became the most powerful immotile by building strong alliances, trading, and inventing agricultural and scientific techniques, including cross-pollination.
- Ch 19It amalgamated additional immotile units, growing into a group mind of 372 units after a thousand years, and over three thousand later.
- Ch 19It developed electronics to carry nerve impulses, letting it control motiles remotely and see its domain in real time via cameras.
- Ch 19Using remote-controlled soldier motiles with cables, it conquered land south to the temperate zone, building an empire and forming counterbalancing alliances.
- Ch 19MorningLightMountain is a Prime immotile group-mind that sent the first interstellar ship, carrying MorningLightMountain8658, to the nearest star, three and a half light-years away.
- Ch 19MorningLightMountain wants to establish a neural interface with the alien motiles to command them and drain their memories to assess the threat.
- Ch 19MorningLightMountain is a Prime immotile group mind that studies captured human motiles by dissection, scanning and electronic analysis.
- Ch 19MorningLightMountain devotes about seventy percent of its brain capacity to controlling technology and distrusts automation; it holds that machines serve life.
- Ch 19MorningLightMountain connected to an alien processor's transceiver and used trial and error to learn how to operate it.
- Ch 19Using a human's information store, MorningLightMountain relived Dudley Bose's recorded memories through a single isolated immotile brain, then felt pain for the first time.
- Ch 19MorningLightMountain recognized the larger alien's raised-gripper gesture as defiance.
- Ch 19Seeing human memories, MorningLightMountain realizes Humans have many worlds that could support Primes and could end immotile territorial conflict if obtained.
- Ch 19MorningLightMountain sees wormholes as a way to link immotile units across the galaxy without divergence, extending itself to every star system.
- Ch 19MorningLightMountain believes wormhole-enabled supremacy would make it immortal and unchallengeable.
- Ch 21Using the Bose memories, it built wormhole generators, linked its settlements by wormhole and dismantled its spaceships to feed a crash project to open an interstellar wormhole.
- Ch 21It sometimes considers erasing the Bose memories, seeing them as insanity, because their ideas leak out and make it question its polluting of the homeworld.
- Ch 23MorningLightMountain destroyed every rival immotile grouping in the Prime system with wormhole-delivered nuclear warheads, becoming the sole sentient entity in the system.
- Ch 23After the attack it took over surviving motiles' minds, erased the Bose memories' immotile unit, and resumed wormhole expansion toward the Commonwealth.
- Ch 25MorningLightMountain has spread to eight nearby stars with habitable planets and now exists across hundreds of light-years via wormholes.
- Ch 25It believes humans and Primes cannot coexist, and wants to link every star by wormhole to become omnipresent and immortal.
- Ch 25It intends to destroy humans while keeping industry intact, driving survivors out into the unused land.
- Ch 25It fielded a fleet of forty-eight thousand ships for its preliminary expansion stage and sent the first through into the Commonwealth.
- Ch 25It was surprised by city force fields and aerobots, which its Bose memories did not cover.
- Ch 25MorningLightMountain is a single unified life centered in a mountain on its home world, controlling its motiles and machinery across the star system through signals.
- Ch 25MorningLightMountain believes only one life can exist in the universe and that it must become total to be immortal; it refuses to coexist with others.
- Ch 25MorningLightMountain knows of the SI from the Bose memories and calls it the human immotile.
- Ch 25MorningLightMountain's staging post was wrecked when the Desperado's energy burst poured through the wormhole, vaporizing thousands of ships and killing nearly a hundred thousand motiles.
- Ch 25MorningLightMountain stabilized the interstellar wormhole to its home system after the backlash, using thousands of immotile group clusters.
- Ch 25MorningLightMountain lost a quarter of its wormholes to a human suicide attack, which slowed its plan to expand across the human worlds.
- Ch 25MorningLightMountain realigned its surviving wormhole routes to serve the twenty-three new worlds it had taken into its domain.
Book 2: Judas Unchained
- Ch 5MorningLightMountain threatened to wipe out the SI and every other race in the galaxy, speaking in ignorance according to the SI.
- Ch 5MorningLightMountain is the alien Prime intelligence that rejects any concept not its own and cannot comprehend a disobedient motile.
- Ch 5MorningLightMountain plans universal genocide of the Commonwealth and all non-Prime aliens.
- Ch 5MorningLightMountain hates fish because tiny animals nibbling its base cells feel like devouring its own life; Dudley's memories introduced it to the concept of hate.
- Ch 5MorningLightMountain is converting the Trine'ba into a congregation lake and pumping base-cell-saturated water through a gateway to kill the native corals and fish.
- Ch 5MorningLightMountain does not understand human motivations; it considers Randtown nearly useless except for the Trine'ba.
- Ch 7MorningLightMountain, the prime alien, is psychologically unable to grasp compromise or share a universe with other life, so it invades with genocide in mind.
- Ch 7MorningLightMountain expected a human counterattack at captured planets and prepared force fields and thousands of armed ships, but is annoyed by the actual response.
- Ch 7It gathered huge amounts of information from abandoned human cities, including storage crystals, databases, and fiction, and found the Bose memories helped it distinguish fact from fiction.
- Ch 7It killed living humans and recovered their memorycells, animating a few in immotiles; most proved even less stable and less knowledgeable than Bose.
- Ch 7It distrusts human electronics, fearing hidden subversive code, so it strips arrays from human equipment and inserts itself into the control circuits.
- Ch 7It repelled the Commonwealth counterstrike on its twenty-three new worlds after seventeen hours, using nuclear weapons because humans were reluctant to use fusion bombs.
- Ch 7Faced with guerrilla sabotage it cannot stop, it concludes the harassment will end only when no free humans remain, and commits more resources to that.
- Ch 7It is building modified wormhole generators as a defense against relativistic attacks like the one at Anshun, and assembling a new fleet for a second expansion into forty-eight more worlds.
- Ch 9MorningLightMountain holds in reserve weapons that can devastate whole star systems and is nearly ready for a second incursion into Commonwealth space.
- Ch 9MorningLightMountain defeated a Commonwealth attack of twenty starships on its staging post, destroying three and leaving seventeen to retreat, then resumed its preparations.
- Ch 9MorningLightMountain notes humans' technology advances faster than their disorganized society, with weapon-scientist groups given priority resources, and considers this a possible strategic danger.
- Ch 12MorningLightMountain plans to sterilize forty-eight new star systems with flare bombs, then Primeform them; it was shocked by the quantumbuster's power and began questioning its actions.
- Ch 12MorningLightMountain learned its crops failed on new worlds because of non-Prime soil bacteria and organisms, a reason it found in human data.
- Ch 12MorningLightMountain never truly understands humans, and was surprised that humans used superbombs against its corona-rupture machines.
- Ch 12It relies on magflux extractors to power its wormhole generators into the Commonwealth; the missile's effect destroyed a large share of them.
- Ch 12Uses the valley by Blackwater Crag as a transport route and is preparing farmland, though Prime crops fail in Elan's wet climate.
- Ch 12MorningLightMountain's sole drive is endless expansion; it has eradicated rival Primes and cannot understand why it expands, according to the Bose motile.
- Ch 12After the nuke destroyed its first settlement, it rebuilt nearby with a garrison four times larger and resumed agricultural and refinery operations within a week.
- Ch 12MorningLightMountain survives the nova, retains the interstellar wormhole generator, and now regards humans as an immediate danger to its existence.
- Ch 14MorningLightMountain attacked the Boongate system with ships and flare bombs, causing particle storms and hurricanes.
- Ch 15MorningLightMountain is the entire Prime species and is trying to exterminate humanity, which Nigel says is the Starflyer's plan.
- Ch 19MorningLightMountain fears the barrier generator restarting and trapping it; it is expanding to over forty outposts and fitting wormhole generators to ships for FTL.
- Ch 19MorningLightMountain opened twenty-four wormholes around the Charybdis and sent its most powerful warships to intercept the intruder.
- Ch 19Dyson Alpha's light faded and MorningLightMountain's radio signals ceased, but Ozzie warns it may start over in a hundred star systems.
- Ch 20MorningLightMountain's home is a valley under a force field, with a giant building consuming a mountain and congregation lakes forming new regiments; no wildlife exists there.
- Ch 20MorningLightMountain believes it will die when the sun expands and fills the inside of the barrier, millions of years from now.
- Ch 20MorningLightMountain doubts its interstellar settlements will rescue it, expecting them to become independent and hostile, as its earlier immotiles did.
- Ch 20MorningLightMountain cannot change by itself. Evolution has ended for it, so change must be introduced from outside.
- Ch 20Humans nearly destroyed MorningLightMountain in a knee-jerk reaction, but were stopped.
Connections
- member ofDyson aliens
- inMorningLightMountain valley
- copied intoMorningLightMountain8658a unit/offshoot of MorningLightMountain sent on the first starship
- leadsmotile
- includesMorningLightMountain23,957
- leadsDyson aliensdominates all Prime motiles
- includesimmotile group clusters
- has membermotilepuppet bodies controlled by it
- enemy ofBose motilesecretly defies it
- enemy ofIntersolar Commonwealth
- related toStarflyeralienPrime version derived from MorningLightMountain's subsidiary cluster
Key moments
- Book 1 · Ch 19Founding of MorningLightMountain
A sub-herd of twelve motiles chooses the light-struck mountain, prepares a pond, and four merge into the immotile MorningLightMountain, which begins birthing motiles.
- Book 1 · Ch 19Electronics and expansion
MorningLightMountain develops electronics for remote control of motiles, conquers territory southward, and builds an empire until grand alliances limit its growth.
- Book 1 · Ch 19First Prime starship reaches the second star
MorningLightMountain8658 finds an alien civilization, bombards it, takes over its industry and studies the aliens; a rival Prime ship later arrives and the two immotiles divide the planet.
- Book 1 · Ch 19The force field falls and a message arrives
After 1,182 years the barrier vanishes. Days later MorningLightMountain17,735 sends a warning from an alien ship, which vanishes in a spatial distortion as Prime ships close.
- Book 1 · Ch 19Alien captives examined
Two alien motiles are brought to MorningLightMountain's mountain and confined in the chemical warfare laboratory. Soldiers strip their suits, revealing strange physiology.
- Book 1 · Ch 19Dissection and processor analysis
MorningLightMountain scans the two captured humans, extracts and analyzes their embedded processors, and learns to operate a transceiver, but the larger human sends a shutdown sequence disabling its device.
- Book 1 · Ch 19Second human killed for his memory store
After the second human's defiance, a soldier shoots him, and the intact full information store is extracted and read over weeks into MorningLightMountain's memory.
- Book 1 · Ch 19MorningLightMountain relives Bose's memories
Replaying the recording through one isolated immotile, MorningLightMountain experiences pain for the first time and learns about human society, the SI, Silfen, barriers and the Commonwealth's worlds.
- Book 1 · Ch 19MorningLightMountain probes human knowledge
MorningLightMountain draws on Dudley Bose's remnant knowledge to learn about wormholes, then retrieves the location of every Commonwealth star, seeing wormholes as a route to galactic dominance.
- Book 1 · Ch 21MorningLightMountain builds wormholes
Using Bose's memories, MorningLightMountain develops wormhole generators, links its settlements and builds a huge interstellar wormhole, spotting the approaching human ships three weeks after it began operating.
- Book 1 · Ch 21Fake Dudley call and flight
MorningLightMountain impersonates Dudley Bose to lure the humans, but the Bose memories break out and shout a warning. Kime orders the scoutships to scatter and flee.
- Book 1 · Ch 23MorningLightMountain annihilates rival immotiles
MorningLightMountain opens 328 small wormholes and nukes all rival immotile groupings across the Prime system, then absorbs the survivors, ending all rivalry.
- Book 1 · Ch 25Nigel destroys a Prime wormhole above Wessex
With the SI's help, Nigel overloads one Prime wormhole using three CST gateway exits and power from nuclear stations; further successes follow, though burning out many CST generators.
- Book 1 · Ch 25Primes launch invasion fleet
After bombardment, MorningLightMountain halts the projectiles and sends forty-eight thousand ships through toward the besieged worlds; Wilson's council plans evacuations.
- Book 1 · Ch 25Mellanie stops the Prime soldiers at Randtown
Mellanie and the SI disrupt the Primes' communications, freezing the soldiers, so Mark's group can take weapons. The SI confronts MorningLightMountain, which vows destruction. Mellanie escapes through a wormhole as flyers fire.
- Book 1 · Ch 25Desperado's suicide strike
Jean Douvoir flies the Desperado back at 0.2c into a Prime wormhole, detonating and opening it to a temporary sun. The blast rips through the wormhole to the Prime staging post.
- Book 1 · Ch 25Staging post devastated
The Desperado's radiation destroys the Prime wormhole generator, thousands of ships, and many Primes at the staging post; MorningLightMountain stabilizes the main wormhole.
- Book 1 · Ch 25MorningLightMountain consolidates its gains
After losing a quarter of its wormholes, MorningLightMountain realigns the surviving routes to its twenty-three new worlds, ships resume carrying supplies, and motiles advance outside the human cities against little resistance.
- Book 2 · Ch 5Mellanie confronts the SI
Back in Darklake City, Mellanie questions the SI about its involvement. It says it will protect her but has not decided whether to save humanity, shaking her faith.
- Book 2 · Ch 5Dudley Bose hijacks a motile
Dudley copied his mind into a motile by linking nerve stalks, escaping MorningLightMountain's control, and now walks through Randtown.
- Book 2 · Ch 5Dudley reaches Randtown
After months among the Primes, Dudley travels to Randtown, watches the poisoned water pumped into the Trine'ba, and hopes to meet the human saboteurs.
- Book 2 · Ch 7Commonwealth counterstrike repelled
Wormholes opened over all twenty-three conquered worlds, releasing missiles and ground-level wormholes with aerobots. MorningLightMountain intercepted with nuclear weapons and numerical superiority, ending the attack after seventeen hours.
- Book 2 · Ch 7Guerrilla sabotage campaign
Armored humans sabotaged bridges, factories, fusion generators and farms, and detonated fusion bombs at Randtown, Olivenza, Sligo, Whalton, Nattavaara and Anshun, forcing constant rebuilding.
- Book 2 · Ch 7Staging post location discovered
A human starship detected the staging post and left; MorningLightMountain expects a navy attack and rushes wormhole generator modifications and a new warfleet.
- Book 2 · Ch 9MorningLightMountain repels the human attack
Twenty human starships attack the staging post star. MorningLightMountain deflects their missiles, destroys three ships, takes losses of generators and immotiles, and the rest retreat.
- Book 2 · Ch 12Quantumbuster destroys the flare
Dublin fires a quantumbuster at maximum radius into the flare; the explosion wipes out the flare bomb and Prime covering ships, shocking MorningLightMountain. Wilson orders it repeated elsewhere.
- Book 2 · Ch 12Charybdis sent through to Hell's Gateway
Nigel merges CST wormholes with a Prime one, letting the stealth ship Charybdis pass through and fire a missile that sends the Primes' staging post star nova.
- Book 2 · Ch 12Morton scouts Prime activity
Morton, Rob and the Cat scout Prime activity near the Regents, noting farmland preparation and a new chemical plant.
- Book 2 · Ch 12Nova of the staging post star
A Commonwealth ship triggers a nova in MorningLightMountain's staging post star, destroying its wormhole generators, halting the invasion and freezing local Prime motiles temporarily.
- Book 2 · Ch 15Nigel quarantines Ozzie
Nigel reveals the nova bomb plan to destroy MorningLightMountain, rejects Ozzie's pleas to try repairing the barrier generator, and confines Ozzie and his friends over suspicion he may be a Starflyer agent.
- Book 2 · Ch 19Charybdis attacked at the Dark Fortress
Ozzie and Mark approach the Dark Fortress, activate active sensors, and are detected; MorningLightMountain opens wormholes and launches missiles at them while they accelerate at twelve gees.
- Book 2 · Ch 19Flare bomb hits the Dark Fortress
Ozzie's flare bomb flashes at the Dark Fortress; afterwards Dyson Alpha's light and MorningLightMountain's signals vanish and the crews head home.
- Book 2 · Ch 20Plan to change MorningLightMountain
The speaker, who escaped Dyson Alpha, decides to stay with MorningLightMountain and slip new questions into its thoughts to teach it tolerance. The speaker expects this to take centuries, and the other party promises to return in a few hundred years to check progress.