Conjoiners

This is a list of fictional factions in Revelation Space. The human factions are found in the Revelation Space universe, the setting for a series of stories and novels by Welsh author Alastair Reynolds.

Spacefaring humanity is divided among these four main factions. While each of these factions has its roots in the Solar System, they have spread with humans to multiple other star systems. Demarchists controlled most major colony worlds, including Yellowstone, until the introduction of the Melding Plague. Conjoiners inhabited hollowed out asteroids on system peripheries, called Nests, before the move to the central Mother Nest in the Yellowstone system during the Conjoiner-Demarchist war. Ultras prefer living aboard the massive lighthugger ships, and are generally uncomfortable on terrestrial worlds. Skyjacks are comet and asteroid miners.

Conjoiners or the Conjoined (pejoratively referred to by outsiders as spiders) are a faction based around mental augmentation and communication, and the advancement of the human mind. Early experiments by the Conjoiner matriarch Galiana and her group on Mars in the early 22nd century with the uses of technology in augmenting consciousness prompted her to begin experimenting with allowing her subject's implants to communicate — triggering the event known as the Transenlightenment, and the beginnings of the Mother Nest and of the Conjoiners. After losing a war with the remainder of humanity, the first Conjoiners later escape the Solar System with the help of Nevil Clavain and colonise other star systems. They then progress to a technological level considerably ahead of the rest of humanity, although still far behind many alien cultures in nearby space. The Conjoiners function as a single society for centuries, before the events of Redemption Ark result in them splintering into numerous factions and disappearing from the affairs of baseline humanity by the time of Absolution Gap, by which point they are engaged in the war with the Inhibitors. With the "Rise of the Greenfly", other human factions are wiped out, leaving an isolated enclave of Conjoiners as the last humans in the galaxy, along with the Ultranaut Irravel. Even they are forced to flee eventually, as the Greenflies' grip on the galaxy increases.

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