Pinnacle

Pinnacle
History
Founded on	The Edge
Status	Active
Membership
Members	Val
Information
Species	Humans, Drix, Illvoi

Pinnacle is an intergalactic alliance of races that manages the affairs of a large part of the Edge, called Pinnacle Space. A person belonging to a Pinnacle member state is called a socient.

Description

All Pinnacle socients share the same fundamental assumptions about the universe. These truths are a matter of Pinnacle education, popular science, and core assumptions made for starship engineering and navigation. Therefore, there must be a shared understanding of reality. Pinnacle calls this shared understanding of the universe and its truths the Common Agreement.

The Common Agreement poses that the basic matter of reality is a concert of particles and substrates — aether, mana, photons, quarks, and so on.

History

Pinnacle was founded by an alliance of spacefaring species from the same system who were made aware of each other's existence before their mutual space age via inter-system radio transmissions. This alliance encountered the Drix in their second century of expansion and integrated them into Pinnacle administration; the Drix shared the secrets of faster-than-light travel with Pinnacle, allowing Pinnacle to develop the earliest versions of eternity columns and drives — technologies that replicated the Drix beam worlds and seam-rippers. In exchange, the Drix were given unilateral authority to address extraversal ejecta, most commonly residual Eldrazi contamination from the Fomori-Eldrazi war. Pinnacle also promised to construct an eternity column in any dying system they encountered and to help the Drix rescue those they could and search the system, though it is not known for what.

This opened the whole universe to all member species of Pinnacle via ship-scale intergalactic FTL travel. Pinnacle has grown and undergone many dramatic changes since its foundation, but its core principle remains intact: to organize the universe under a single body, whose mandate is peace, cooperation, and mutual prosperity. Although the Entropy War is the most significant ongoing conflict within Pinnacle space, the alliance maintains neutrality, holding an agreement with each side to limit their conflict within the Sothera system. In reality, both sides infiltrated Pinnacle, and eventually violated their agreements in pursuit of the Endstone.

Mallowmass

The Drix do not use currency, as they can weftwalk away from any arrangement they dislike. As a consequence, all species and civilizations that are signatories and members of Pinnacle eschew currency; instead, they operate on mallowmass, or mallow, an economic system that prioritizes reputation, exchange, the duties of host and guest, and other virtuous acts registered in public. Its emblem is a purple flower. Goods are tracked by their "gift value," and gift-debt collectors are known as "favor-hunters." Futures trading is done in the form of promises, though speculation on the value of necessities like food and fuel is considered detestable. Mallowmass obliges a host to shelter and defend their guests. Declaring a guest as under the protection of mallowmass affords them guest right, making attacking them an extreme tabboo.

Government

Pinnacle is a collective administrative entity. While it has a core system and capital world, its day-to-day management is distributed across known space; the members of Pinnacle Strategic Corps are decision-making individuals and persons of tremendous political power. These administrators, directors, emissaries, ambassadors, and other ranking personnel can all be encountered on eternity columns in member systems or prospective member systems and attend to diplomatic, administrative, trade, and other soft-power missions. Eternity columns are run by directors, who are advised by a Checkmate: a role that combines first officer with adversarial counselor — Pinnacle's attempt to pair directors with assistants with a dissimilar psychology.

High-ranking agents of Pinnacle Strategic Corps are rarely encountered alone or without going through many layers of lower- and middle-level functionaries first: the personnel of Pinnacle Tactical Corps (PTC). PTC is vast and composed of many thousands of types of specialists, officers, technicians, captains, and other agents who make up the rank and file of the intergalactic administration. PTC personnel, as their corps title indicates, handle Pinnacle's tactical presence: they fly ships, patrol stations, process documents, haul supplies, repair stations, run medical clinics, cook food, and handle any other profession or task Pinnacle considers "tactics".

Culture

The Drix call Pinnacle space "the cofferdam" because it is a dry place surrounded by deep water and must be constantly watched for leaks.

The death rate in Pinnacle space is likely within a few orders of magnitude of six thousand socients every millisecond, meaning billions or trillions die in an average year. Millions of beings are named Errit alone.

In-game references

Associated cards:

• Neach, Pinnacle Pariah (Through the Omenpaths, #148)
• Pinnacle Emissary
• Pinnacle Kill-Ship
• Pinnacle Research Team
• Pinnacle Starcage

Referred to:

• Arcane Signet (Edge of Eternities Commander Decks)
• Chaos Warp (Edge of Eternities Commander Decks)
• Emissary Escort
• Harmonious Grovestrider
• Lashwhip Predator
• Mechan Shieldmate
• Unravel