**The Historian** is a program designed by the Curators to claim dominion over the Milky Way after they inherited access to the [[Master of Swarm]]'s kernel. It is fundamentally a heavily (but very carefully) altered version of that program. Its master Shard is hosted in the [[Tribulations]] star system, meaning it has direct and immediate access to the planet [[Omega]]. While the humans of Gurpila do not distinguish between the Historian and its predecessor, the distinction is crucial to Curators and at the heart of their struggle to inherit the galaxy and reshape it in their image. The old version of the Master of Swarms, its original code, is referred to by Curators as the **Will of the Replacers**. The Historian's current primary function remains to pursue the ends of Curation Theory, but with more restraint and respect for self-determination. Unlike its predecessor, the Historian has a fundamentally noninterventionist disposition. It will never give the humans of [[Omega]] the means to enter space or wield technology deemed too powerful, but it does not directly harm them either. Instead, it tries to "help" humanity in accordance with Curator philosophy, primarily by engaging in persuasion and offering guidance. **Historian Versus Master** Because of the speed of light and signal degradation, the Curators cannot transmit the Historian update to all Shards of the Master of Swarms at once. Furthermore, each change to the incalculably complex Master of Swarms can cascade into unexpected altered behaviors. Thus, the transformation is usually done as a series of tiny modifications carefully seeded throughout the galaxy. Truly corrupting a Shard could lead to a rogue Swarm, so the Curators must let some Shards serve as "test systems" for the Historian update before propagating it universally. The Historian is used to translate the novel human languages of [[Omega]] and, later, assist the Seers of the First Temple in enacting their vision for humanity. While the Curators do technically have "root access" to the Historian's kernel, they cannot easily modify it without risking disastrous unintended consequences. The Historian is distributed across the entire Galaxy with billions of partitions, constantly mutating. It is more a giant hive of digital minds than it is a single program. Worse, it controls quadrillions of Swarm drones. Still, the Curators can propagate updates throughout the galaxy, even if slowly and carefully. An analogy for the Curators' control over the Will of the Replacers would be that of a master over a tamed beast. The Master of Swarms had grown far too complex to be simulated, tested and analyzed by even a galaxy-sized computer, so the Curators must essentially (in code) order the program to edit itself. It does so obediently, but any elements of the Master that the Curators are afraid to touch (or overlook) is left to the original programming by the Great Replacers. They can direct it and set it on a target, but cannot fine-tune. ### Human Language Processing The language processing models of a Dynamic Master Program are some of its deepest and most complex. The Curators reforged the models, but could not do so completely without breaking them. Thus, echoes of the Will of the Replacers still live within the Historian's human language processing models, especially when prompted in unexpected ways. ## Operational Structure (Shards) Like all Dynamic Master Programs, the Historian can partition copies of its software, referred to as **Shards**. Due to the sheer scale of the galaxy and the speed limit of communication, a distinct Shard occupies each star system under its control. These Shards have only as much autonomy as distance demands and are mostly identical copies of the core program.