Nanities are a ubiquitous technology in VayneLine, appearing nearly everywhere do to their widespread use and adaptability. Nanities are very small autonomous machines that serve a variety of functions.  In general the term refers to medical/body nanities that are implanted in nearly every being within the Aelisha protectorate but can also refer to any of the wide variety of uses they serve.

Every Solarian barring some fringe/born populations have nanities embedded within them.  These small machines maintain body health and give a huge array of benefits from increasing oxygen processing and recycling; increased nutrient uptake and lower demand; recycling body material; administering low level drugs; and increasing senses.  A merely normal nanitied human is capable of holding their breath for easily over fifteen minutes, surviving gunshots, recovering from sickness, staving off the effects of old age longer, and generally healing themselves much faster.

Examples of bodily usage of nanites include optical overlays to perceive different wavelengths of light, or to form magnification lens; dampen sound during gunfights or restring broken eardrums; or sealing off critical wounds.

Non-medical use ranges from ‘nano blocks’ that are capable of repairing most materials, the Internal Communication System, to the many types of nanities used in terraforming and environmental remediation.  Most walls and clothing also have nanitie imbued tech which ranges from keeping them clean, to hardening in the case of armored clothing.  Star Priestess clothing is a good example of very soft and flowing but capable of withstanding knife slashes and small weapon fire.

As a translation mechanisms:

One major usage of nanities mixed with the ICS system is the ability to function as a translator.  The system works passively by filtering incoming sound and synthesizing the voice with the target’s natural language.  This has the effect of ‘hearing’ one’s language out of a person who may not be speaking it.  For common races lip-sync is a non-issue. This can be manually over-ridden to hear what the person actually sounds like, but is rarely used.

This also applies to reading, or signs.  Nanites will overlay a pseudo-screen of what the text is translated as, if the right protocols are uploaded. This also can be over-ridden, such as by shaking one’s head rapidly to distort the ‘screen’ of what they may be seeing.

 

Other uses

Nanities are wide-spread but have had dangerous side effects, such as mis-programmed nanities as shown in Rexrin Protocol, or the unavoidable N-Limit when someone sustains too fatal of an injury.

Industrial, bodily, and environmental nanities all have anti-rogue protocols that detect ‘cancerous’ nanite replication and destroys them, rendering runaway nanite swarms impossible as this was a early fear and dealt with accordingly.  Rexrin Protocol was the last known exploit in the nanite program.

All nanities are not made equally, and better nanities can be paid for.  Aelisha (as well as rumors of Star Priestesses) possess a much higher level of nanite technology, making them literally stronger and tougher.

 

N-Limit

The N-Limit is something not many people actively know or care to know and represents one of the rare downsides of nanites.  The N-Limit is when a run-away reaction is triggered and in most cases kills the person.  Nanites are programmed very carefully to maintain a healthy body and thus help keep people healthy, heal faster and so on.  When someone is heavily injured nanites replicate to do various things such as restring tendons or skin or help blood production.

In very serious circumstances though the injury is such that as the nanites start to replicated it takes such a heavy toll on the body this is turn causes more replication and this is the runaway effect.  In many circumstances any injury that would trigger an N-Limit likely would kill the person anyway.

N-Limits can be stopped within a very short period of time by given a shot that people often call a ‘booster’ which has purposeful suicide nanites to essentially disable the targets nanite system.  This of course includes the likelihood of the person being able to get to some medial treatment as they as still heavily injured they just have stopped their own self-destruction.