Shellac records — an exohuman Earth-era medium first popularised in the 19th century — experienced an unlikely renaissance on VOI 700 D.

When the colony ark Last Frontier crashed on Day Zero, the settlers lost their quantum internet, most high-density drives, and any hope of cloud computing. The Tier-1 AGI GAIA, suddenly marooned in isolated vaults, still needed a way to push firmware patches, security keys, and medical data to each Local GAIA Hub — but every byte had to travel on minimal power and leave a tamper-evident audit trail.

To meet that need, engineers in New Kourou founded the New Kourou Shellac Corporation (NKSC) in 2625. What they made:

• Fungal-polymer shellac blanks pressed from native resin.
• Hand-cranked “lathe-writers” that engrave tone-encoded files onto the disks.
• Clockwork and piezo-pickup sequencers that decode those tones back into GAIA-readable text.
• Usage of the Weber Communication Company's Shortwave Network for the transmission of the files between settlements.

Beginning in 2627 NKSC used the same presses for culture: every Friday Weber Broadcasting Services cut a “Studio Master” live-session disk that couriers of the New Kourou Courier Service and Firetown Courier Service rushed to pubs across the Free State of Settlers. Owning the week’s groove became a status symbol and forged a shared playlist between settlements.

When the Free State collapsed and the Federal Confederation rose in 2631, the NKSC was absorbed, re-badged as the Federal Shellac Manufactory (FSM), and given an exclusive charter to supply the newly founded Federal GAIA Agency. Whether labelled NKSC or FSM, the same workshops still turn out the disks and the rugged readers that keep GAIA’s network alive.

From the improvised ingenuity of the Beta Age to the energy-rationed bureaucracy of the Gamma Age, shellac records — and the devices built by NKSC/FSM — carry the Confederation’s lifeblood: firmware, legislation, culture, and contraband alike, all etched into brittle spirals of resin.

Early-20th-century shellac records were made from insect resin, prized for durability. On VOI 700 D settlers replaced the resin with a native fungal polymer that could be cast in low-temperature kilns, matching treaty eco-limits.

The crash vaporised the orbital relays and toasted most mass-storage hardware. When the Free State of Settlers formed, it ran a laissez-faire economy — no central planning, no nightly ledgers to collect. Communication therefore flowed almost entirely downward from the sole surviving GAIA core in New Kourou:

• Kernel burst (≈23:30) — each Friday the Kernel pushed firmware patches, security keys, and medical encyclopedia updates over the Shortwave Network, operated by the Weber Communication Company.
• Disk engraving (00:00 – 02:00) — local scribes in the Local Hubs of each settlement cut the received data onto shellac, verified the checksum tone, then filed the disk in the hub’s vault.
• Hub flash (dawn) — technicians halted GAIA for ten minutes, swapped in the new build, and logged the CRC on a paper register.
• When Local GAIA Hubs were finally dug beneath town halls (2626 →), the ritual stayed the same: burst down, disk in, vault flash.

One-way lifeline from the Kernel: No uplink analytics, no quota traffic — just a weekly lifeline of firmware and knowledge from the Kernel to keep each isolated node on speaking terms with its parent.

Post-Great War, under Communardism the Federal GAIA Agency formalised a stricter cycle:

Enabler of a Data Driven but (mainly) Analogue society: Shellac is the de facto courier of the Annual Plan, ration tables, and treaty audits.

• Tone files were broadcast over the Weber Shortwave Network
• Encoding and Storage Capacity: Shellac records were encoded with up to 6 GB of data using tone‑based encryption.
• Text data was stored at a rate of 30 tones per second, allowing up to 9,000 characters on a five‑minute record.

• Specialized sequencers and receivers processed shellac records. These machines converted tonal data into readable files, ensuring compatibility with local GAIA servers.

From 2628 to 2630 the weekly WBS “Studio Master” pressings — live music sessions cut by the New Kourou Shellac Corporation (NKSC) onto mirror-finish blanks and issued in numbered sleeves — quickly became status trophies. Pubs would race to spin the fresh groove on Friday night, and a tavern’s prestige was measured by how many dog-eared Masters lined its shelf.

To hear them without siphoning a QFB, NKSC also sold EchoHorn kits: a bronze pickup saddle and folding hardwood horn that bolted onto any clockwork sequencer, boosting output to roughly 70 dB. Perfectly legal during the Beta Age, EchoHorns were banned after nationalization, in the Gamma Age they are only available on Firetown's black market.

Those same late shifts that kept GAIA’s firmware presses running also birthed “ghost pressings.” Technicians lingered after hours, striking surreptitious runs of music disks, Tone-30 Pro upgrade heads, and spare stylus sets, then funnelling the contraband west through a chain of Firetown middle-men.

A quieter offshoot is the Data-Art scene: hobbyists feed raw GAIA packets into lathe-writers and perform the resulting atonal hiss as ambient soundscapes — half protest, half meditation on the thin line between information and culture.

The use of shellac records across the Beta and Gamma Ages demonstrates the adaptability and resilience of ExoHuman society:

• Beta Age: Symbolized survival through ingenuity, bridging the gap between technological aspirations and material realities.
• Gamma Age: Became the backbone of societal planning and governance under stringent resource constraints.

Shellac records stand as a testament to humanity’s ability to reimagine antiquated technologies to meet futuristic challenges.

• “Housing Files Heist” (Gamma Age) – Outlaws storm the Office of the Mayor of Morningstar, overpower two Federal Sheriff deputies, and escape with a shellac disk for the Federal Housing Agency, containing every housing record in the Confederation. Within a fortnight three settlers — all ex-Quantum-Fusion engineers from an old nano-project aboard Last Frontier — are abducted. Convinced the thieves used the disk to locate their targets, the Sheriff deputises the PCs to: (1) reconstruct how the hub’s reading lathe was bypassed, (2) protect remaining engineers, and (3) uncover what dangerous nano-scheme the captors intend to resurrect.

• Beta Age
• Gamma Age
• GAIA
• Local GAIA Hubs
• Federal GAIA Agency (Gamma Age)
• New Kourou Shellac Corporation (NKSC)
• Federal Shellac Manufactory (FSM)
• Shortwave Radio Transmission
• Weber Communication Company
• Weber Broadcasting Services
• Exohuman Technology in the Beta Age
• Exohuman Communication in the Beta Age
• Exohuman Communication in the Gamma Age