Oxyd

"A weapon of annihilation, reshaped by those it had consumed into a world that gives life."

Oxyd (German: Oxyd) is one of the most extraordinary celestial bodies in the saga of Die Terranauten -- an object that undergoes a transformation from inert asteroid to doomsday weapon to sentient energy sphere to, finally, a habitable planet orbiting within the Three-Sun System of the Carmas. Its history spans approximately seven booklets (019, 020, 021, 023, 032, 064, 065) and encapsulates the saga's deepest themes: the catastrophic hubris of Kaiser Force technology, the capacity for human transcendence through collective sacrifice, and the judgment of the cosmic Entities upon the human species.

The Carmas call it the Todessphare ("Death Sphere"). The humans trapped within it call it Phoenix. The Entity that observes it calls it the proving ground for humanity's right to exist.

Physical Description and Stages

Oxyd passes through four distinct stages across the saga:

History

The Kaiser Force Experiment (2501 / December 2499)

The story of Oxyd begins with scientific ambition and catastrophic failure. Summacum Homan, a scientist working for the Kaiser Corporation, selected the green-shimmering asteroid Oxyd as the subject of an experiment to transport matter through Space II using Kaiser Force technology. The experiment, conducted in Earth orbit, was intended to demonstrate the viability of Kaiser Force-driven transmitter technology.

The experiment went catastrophically wrong. The asteroid was saturated with Space II energies but not successfully transported. Instead, one of the six Gray Guard spacecraft in the vicinity -- the TERRA I, commanded by Queen Quendolain -- was inadvertently pulled into Space II along with Oxyd. The TERRA I's Driver Lodge, including Mater Helia, vanished entirely. The crew experienced spatial distortions, encountered shadowy entities, and began exhibiting unauthorized emotions and independent thought -- their Gray Guard conditioning was breaking down. Quendolain realized that exposure to Kaiser Force had transformed her entire crew into Drivers.

Meanwhile, Cantos, the Genessaner who had been warning humanity about the dangers of Kaiser Force since his arrival at Syrta, sensed the psychic shockwave of the catastrophe from across the solar system and collapsed. He and his companions -- Red Hedger, Freier Doug, and other freed Drivers -- resolved to seek the Terranauts on Io to coordinate a response.

See also: 019 - Operation Doomsday

The Comet of Oblivion

Charged with dangerous energies from Space II, Oxyd hurtled toward Earth as a doomsday projectile. Max von Valdec, Chairman of the Council of Corporations, abandoned the planet, positioning himself and his loyalists beyond the Pluto orbit. He used propaganda to blame the crisis on Cantos and the Genessaner, framing them as alien invaders rather than the saviors they were.

Cantos intercepted a communication between Valdec's agent Soster and Summacum Homan, seizing control of Soster's yacht to expose Valdec's deception. When Soster activated the Kaiser Force drive in desperation, he created a spatial rift that threatened to consume the entire solar system. Cantos steered his own ship into the energy bridge connecting the rift to Oxyd, stabilizing the situation and averting immediate catastrophe -- at great personal risk.

The Gray Guard command, under Chan de Nouille, decided to send a Driver commando to Oxyd in a final attempt to avert the collision with Earth.

See also: 020 - Comet of Oblivion

The Oxide Death Zone

As Oxyd continued toward Earth, emitting destructive Gray Flood waves that caused chaos and casualties aboard Summacum Homan's research ship, five ships of Gray Drivers were dispatched on a suicide mission to push the asteroid back into Space II or destroy it. Among them was the TERRA I, now under Queen Carmen's command, with Queen Quendolain and her transformed crew as prisoners.

Quendolain used her enhanced PSI abilities to rally her former crew. They seized control of the TERRA I and piloted it through Oxyd's strange gravitational fields, landing on its surface. Meanwhile, Summacum Homan authorized the construction of a Kaiser Gate -- a transmitter field designed to trap Oxyd.

On Earth, Brak Shakram, the former Noman leader, escaped the Kaiser Laboratories on the Moon and broadcast a message to the Nomans, urging them to trust Cantos and resist the panic. He was killed by the Gray Guards before his message could fully spread.

In the decisive moment, Cantos intervened, using his powers to send Oxyd into Space II. The immediate threat to Earth was eliminated. But the TERRA I and its crew -- including Quendolain, Carmen, and the Gray Drivers -- were trapped aboard the asteroid as it vanished into the alternate dimension. Max von Valdec returned to Earth to manage the aftermath, blaming the entire disaster on Cantos and the aliens.

See also: 021 - Oxide Death Zone

The Aftermath: The Oxyd Catastrophe

The event became known as the Oxyd Catastrophe (German: Oxyd-Katastrophe) -- a disaster that nearly destroyed Earth and led to the discontinuation of transmitter research. The Nomans later broadcast the truth about the catastrophe during their failed uprising, revealing that Cantos had saved humanity, not endangered it. Max von Valdec suppressed the truth and crushed the Noman rebellion, but the seed of knowledge had been planted.

The Oxyd Crisis became a byword for the deception practiced by the Council of Corporations upon the people of Earth.

See also: 023 - The Outcasts of Terra, Oxyd Catastrophe, Oxyd Crisis

Phoenix: The New Universe (Booklet 032)

Within Space II, Oxyd was reshaped by Kaiser Force energies into something unprecedented: a self-contained proto-universe that the survivors named Phoenix. The asteroid's surface became a treacherous, ever-shifting landscape where the laws of physics operated differently. The environment responded to the mental states of its inhabitants -- hate-thoughts could manifest as physical monsters, and positive collective will could reshape the terrain.

The humans stranded on Oxyd/Phoenix underwent a profound transformation. Queen Quendolain, injured during a tremor aboard the TERRA I, healed miraculously and declared herself and her former crew the "Changed of Phoenix" (German: Veränderte von Phoenix). These Changed Ones possessed extraordinary PSI powers, no longer required food, and existed in a symbiotic relationship with Oxyd's energies. They became known as Companions in Fate (German: Schicksalsgefährten) -- beings bound together by their shared transformation.

The stranded population split into three factions:

Conflict between these factions escalated. Daktar killed Queen Carmen, triggering a violent response from the Gray Drivers. A beam cannon was fired at the Changed, but instead of killing them, it unleashed monstrous creatures born from the collective hate-thoughts of the combatants. Only when the Gray Drivers heeded Quendolain's call to surrender their anger did the monsters dissipate.

When Cantos investigated Phoenix, his attempt to penetrate its energy barrier hurled him backward in time to witness the destruction of Zoe, the former planet of the Lodge Masters. He encountered Llewellyn 709 during this temporal displacement before returning to the present. Landing on Phoenix, Cantos warned the survivors that their world was on a collision course with Rorqual, the Terranauts' base. The Changed refused to evacuate -- they had become part of Phoenix and could not easily leave.

Cantos traveled to Rorqual and organized a Super-Lodge to telepathically contact the Changed Ones and convince them to redirect their world. The Changed Ones succeeded, moving Phoenix out of danger. Cantos departed for Genessos, pledging to advocate for humanity among his people despite the cosmic danger they represented.

See also: 032 - The Exiles of Oxyd, Changed of Phoenix, Companions in Fate

The Entity's Observation (Booklets 064-065)

By the time of Booklets 064-065, the exiles on Oxyd had evolved further. Quendolain and Daktar had merged in mind and spirit, becoming a single composite being. Somar-Ellen and Ramus had achieved a similar unity. These fused beings, now calling themselves collectively the Changed Ones, struggled to comprehend their existence within what had become a sentient energy sphere threatening the wider universe.

An ancient and powerful being -- the Entity, one of the cosmic Entities (or Varen Navtem) -- observed Oxyd and the humans within it. The Entity contemplated the threat that Oxyd posed to the cosmos, watching to see whether these transformed humans would prove worthy of continued existence or whether they represented yet another catastrophic consequence of Kaiser Force that demanded annihilation.

The Changed Ones formed a Super-Lodge to extend their awareness beyond Oxyd's boundaries. They made a critical discovery: Oxyd was hurtling through space on a collision course with the Three-Sun System, home of the Carmas, a peaceful alien civilization. Quendolain managed to divert Oxyd from its initial trajectory, pushing it outside the Milky Way galaxy, but the effort left the exiles weakened.

Quendolain connected with her "second self" in Space II, gaining renewed strength. The exiles then encountered a crashed Carma spaceship within Oxyd. The Carma crew was hostile, believing the humans responsible for the Death Sphere bearing down on their homeworld. The Changed Ones learned that the Carmas called Oxyd the Death Sphere (German: Todessphare) and had been told that humans were bloodthirsty flesh-eaters.

Despite the Carmas' hostility, the Changed Ones allowed themselves to be captured to gain trust and assist in piloting the ship. The Entity watched these events, weighing humanity's moral choices against the destruction their technology had wrought.

See also: 064 - Planetfall, Entities, Three-Sun System, Carmas

The Transformation: From Death Sphere to Living World (Booklet 065)

The climax of Oxyd's story unfolds in 065 - The Life Givers, one of the saga's most thematically significant booklets.

The Entity observed as Oxyd -- the lethal energy sphere born of humanity's Kaiser Force experiments -- threatened to annihilate the Three-Sun System and its peaceful inhabitants. The Entity respected the Carmas but despised humanity. Yet it acknowledged an unexpected truth: the humans within Oxyd had become something more than the reckless, violent species it had judged them to be.

The Carma fleet, led by coordinator Bars, attempted to destroy Oxyd by deploying "Planet-Eaters" -- weapons that initiated uncontrolled nuclear fusion. These weapons failed. The Super-Lodge of the Changed Ones realized the Planet-Eaters were related to Kaiser Force and drew energy from Space II -- a bitter irony, as the Carmas unknowingly employed the same dangerous technology that had created Oxyd in the first place.

In desperation, the Carma government under President Kerym Sahs made a terrible decision: to sacrifice the planet Cohrs, an ice world in the Three-Sun System, by setting it on a collision course with Oxyd to create a dimensional gate that would destroy the Death Sphere. The Carma fleet attacked Cohrs, and the resulting dimensional distortion threatened to consume everything.

In the final moments, the Super-Lodge was severed from Oxyd as the Carma Cruiser was drawn into the dimensional gate. The Changed Ones found themselves in a paradoxical space between dimensions. There, they made their choice. Rather than flee, rather than allow destruction, they merged their individual minds into a single entity -- a collective consciousness that became one with Oxyd itself. This unified being willed a new beginning.

Oxyd was transformed. The lethal energy sphere became a habitable planet -- a life-giving world that took the orbital position of the destroyed Cohrs in the Three-Sun System. The weapon of annihilation became a cradle of life. President Kerym Sahs and the Carmas were invited to settle on the new Oxyd.

The Entity observed all of this. Its conclusion was pivotal for the fate of humanity:

The Entity decides to continue observing humanity rather than immediate destruction.

This single judgment -- rendered by a being millions of years old, witnessing a species it had dismissed as reckless and violent choose collective self-sacrifice to save an alien civilization that had attacked them -- delayed the Final Strike against humanity. It established that the Entities were not monolithically hostile but capable of revising their verdict when confronted with evidence of moral evolution.

The Oxyd transformation foreshadowed the saga's ultimate resolution: David terGorden's later negotiation with the Entities on their Central World, where he would make a similar appeal -- not through force, but through moral demonstration and the promise to reactivate the Intercosmic Anti-Entropy System.

See also: 065 - The Life Givers, Entities, Kerym Sahs, Cohrs

The Changed Ones

The humans transformed by Oxyd's energies -- the Changed of Phoenix -- represent one of the saga's most radical evolutionary leaps. Originally a mix of Gray Guard soldiers, Gray Drivers, and imprisoned Terranauts, they were reshaped by the energies of Space II into something fundamentally new:

• Enhanced PSI abilities: The Changed Ones possessed psychic powers far beyond those of ordinary Drivers, capable of forming Super-Lodges that could redirect celestial bodies and transform matter.
• No need for sustenance: Within Oxyd/Phoenix, the Changed Ones no longer required food.
• Mental fusion: Several Changed Ones merged into composite beings: Quendolain and Daktar became a single entity, as did Somar-Ellen and Ramus (forming the composite being known as Somar Ellen-Ramus).
• Symbiosis with Oxyd: The Changed Ones existed in a symbiotic relationship with Phoenix's energies, drawing power from it and, in turn, shaping its reality through their collective will.
• Emotional sensitivity: The environment of Phoenix responded to emotions. Hate manifested as physical monsters; unity and peace stabilized the world.

The Changed Ones' final act -- merging into a single collective consciousness to transform Oxyd from a weapon into a world -- represents the ultimate expression of the saga's theme that PSI-based unity and self-sacrifice can overcome the destructive legacy of technology.

Key Figures Associated with Oxyd

Related Phenomena

• Oxyd-Energy: The unique energy form that beings could be converted into on Oxyd, the medium through which the Changed Ones existed.
• Gray Flood (German: Graue Flut): Destructive waves of energy emanating from the charged Oxyd that affected the minds of Drivers and caused physical damage to ships.
• Strudelwirkung: The "swirling effect" caused by Oxyd's immense gravitational anomalies.
• Death Sphere (German: Todessphare): The Carma designation for Oxyd as it threatened their star system.
• Phoenix (German: Phonix): The name the Changed Ones gave to the new universe forming from Oxyd's chaotic energies.
• Oxyd Catastrophe (German: Oxyd-Katastrophe): The historical name for the disaster that nearly destroyed Earth.
• Oxyd Crisis (German: Oxyd-Krise): The broader political crisis caused by the Council's deception regarding the catastrophe's true causes.
• Kaiser Gate: The transmitter field Summacum Homan deployed in an attempt to trap Oxyd.
• Planet-Eaters: Carma weapons that initiated uncontrolled nuclear fusion, deployed unsuccessfully against Oxyd.

Cosmic Significance

Oxyd occupies a unique position in the cosmology of Die Terranauten. It is simultaneously:

1. A cautionary tale about Kaiser Force: The Oxyd Catastrophe is the single most dramatic demonstration of what happens when Kaiser Force technology is used recklessly. It transformed an ordinary asteroid into a weapon capable of destroying planets, and its aftereffects rippled across the galaxy for decades.

1. A test of humanity's moral worth: The Entity that observed Oxyd's approach to the Three-Sun System was evaluating whether humanity deserved to continue existing. The Changed Ones' decision to sacrifice their individual identities to save the Carmas -- an alien species that had attacked them -- persuaded the Entity to delay judgment. This moment directly foreshadowed David terGorden's later negotiation with the Entities, in which he would argue that humanity was capable of solving the cosmic problems it had caused.

1. A demonstration of PSI over technology: Every technological solution attempted against Oxyd failed -- Summacum Homan's Kaiser Gate, the Gray Driver suicide missions, the Carma fleet attacks, the Planet-Eaters. Only the collective PSI power of the Changed Ones, exercised through self-sacrifice rather than destruction, was able to transform the threat into something life-giving.

1. A bridge between civilizations: The transformed Oxyd, settled by both the remnants of the Changed Ones' consciousness and the Carma people, became a point of contact between human and alien civilization -- a world born from human technology's worst failure and redeemed by humanity's capacity for selflessness.

Appearances

Themes

Oxyd's arc encapsulates the central moral argument of Die Terranauten: that the same species capable of creating weapons of cosmic destruction is also capable of transcending its nature through collective sacrifice and moral evolution. The asteroid that nearly destroyed Earth becomes, through the willing dissolution of individual human consciousness, a world that sustains alien life. Technology fails; connection succeeds. Destruction is answered not with counter-destruction, but with creation.

The Entity's verdict -- to continue observing rather than annihilating -- is the saga's quiet recognition that judgment must be provisional, that even a species as reckless as humanity contains within it the seeds of something worth preserving.

See Also

• Kaiser Force -- The technology whose reckless use created the Oxyd Catastrophe
• Space II -- The alternate dimension into which Oxyd was banished and where it was transformed
• Changed of Phoenix -- The humans transformed by Oxyd's energies
• Entities -- The cosmic judges who observed Oxyd and delayed their verdict on humanity
• Cantos -- The Genessaner who saved Earth from Oxyd and later investigated Phoenix
• Queen Quendolain -- Leader of the Changed Ones and architect of Oxyd's transformation
• Three-Sun System -- The alien star system Oxyd threatened and ultimately joined
• Carmas -- The alien species whose homeworld was threatened by Oxyd
• Cohrs -- The ice planet sacrificed by the Carmas, whose orbital position Oxyd now occupies
• TERRA I -- The Gray Guard spacecraft trapped on Oxyd
• HADES -- The spacecraft that crashed on Phoenix
• David terGorden -- The Heir of Power whose later negotiations echoed the Changed Ones' sacrifice
• Rorqual -- The Terranaut base world briefly threatened by Phoenix's trajectory

Oxyd appears in 7 of 99 booklets of Die Terranauten. Its transformation from weapon to world is the saga's most concentrated expression of the principle that moral evolution -- not technological dominance -- determines a civilization's right to exist.