Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
It might, but it could just as easily start planning to murder you in your sleep.
The Dark Forest
- Thread starter bigbow
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
- Location
- Trumpistan
- Location
- Sweden
Specifically genetically engineered pets hypothesized to be both Compact pets and mine sniffers / pattern sniffers.
pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
- Location
- Trumpistan
If you do it by line it'll be easier to read.
- Location
- Spain
This one is much easier to understand.
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- Location
- Sweden
I know most people thought the risk too much reactivating the perhaps compromised AI. But damn does it tickle my curiosity if Emma had had available the stations whole systems and first hand witness. Perhaps more could have been saved with the AI probably left as sacrifice when the personnel leave the station.
Or it was Claimed and shut itself off from the anquish of existance after setting nonthinking drones on murdering its charges. Yikes.
- Location
- St. Petersburg
Do we have any reason to suspect that the hyperspace connection takes us to the Outpost or at least closer to our goal instead of away from it? Is this a known route, merely unused because it's dangerous to traverse?
...I forgot, do we know the location of the Outpost, or do we need to look for it?
[x] Take the Semetri Nuclear Mine.
You don't look a gifed nuke in the priming mechanism. We were pretty sure the rock was the only pattern created by its owner, and being mentally unstable doesn't mean much when we are in charge of our ship by virtue of being the only conscious person on it. If we lose our cool, there are thousands of less flashy ways to go out than a nuke we don't know the activation codes for. But the amount of potential power at our fingertips is hard to resist.
We are less likely to find another nuclear charge lying around than we are to need one.
[x] Fine. You'll need a name though.
-[x] Starlight
Mining asteroids gives us minerals. Exploring planets gives us fluorescent cats. I know what actions I'll be taking from now on!
Well, it also gets us Patterned and stressed to the max, but we have a cat for that!
[x] Take the unstable connection.
What does this involve? A piloting roll, or something else? I am not sure I want to chance not coming out in one piece, especially when there doesn't seem to be any urgency, but on the other hand small ships were said to have an easier time of it. What are the risks, in Emma's estimation?
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- Location
- Chile
No hard numbers you can chug out right now, but it's definitively tilting to centuries rather than mere decades.
Uncharted route for the Republic, but it appears the Compact made frequent use of it. It's facing in the right direction to go to a hypothetical exit point near the northern reaches of the sector though.
Only that it's probably somewhere around the northern reaches of the sector (nearer the Scatelli Border than the center of the sector most likely.) You'll have to get a hold of more info if you want to find it, or else dedicate some time to manually search for it when you're nearing Scatelli.
Some piloting is likely required, but the Iris is much smaller than a Corvette, and the connection seemed to get regular use by the Compact Marine, so it's likely any damage suffered during transit should be light, else attrition would've made the listening post unviable.
NeverDies
Classy Coleoptera ಠ_ರೃ
- Location
- Colorado
I wonder what the Pattern can propagate from, physically. For instance, if someone were in the grips of Pattern exposure, could you physically alter the local environment to negate its Pattern compatibility?
This wouldn't work if all matter qualifies as viable for engagement via Pattern, but if it doesn't that could be a viable option for disrupting Pattern exposure to a person.
This wouldn't work if all matter qualifies as viable for engagement via Pattern, but if it doesn't that could be a viable option for disrupting Pattern exposure to a person.
- Location
- Spain
Exactly, our first a one of the worst builds for dealing with the opening act, and the dice rolls hated our guts when we tried to get some companions.
We need to get a couple of toaster bots ASAP to avoid the same problem happening again...
- Location
- Sweden
So if it's gone over a century maybe we will happen upon a slowly dwindling population of hiding humans in a bunker.
I bet there will be Compact people alive somewhere actually. Though going to Sohanin-II would be neat too. If nothing else just to check for Hyuli (and Emma's dad).
I bet there will be Compact people alive somewhere actually. Though going to Sohanin-II would be neat too. If nothing else just to check for Hyuli (and Emma's dad).
Wiadi
Uncompromising Radical Leftist
- Location
- Something Clever
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Just found this & happy to have done so as it appears to be picking back up! Really liking it so far, especially the effectiveness at setting atmosphere/tone.
An observation: if Patterning is basically just a matter of becoming hyperaware of cosmic oneness or whatever, it seems weird that it would provoke something so prosaic as murder. My current theory (and apologies if this has already been raised elsewhere & I just missed it) is that the stage of Patterning we witnessed is just an opening tactic used by Procyon to soften up the ego, making room to move in and take over. It seems perfectly suited to annihilating individuality, after all, but rather poor at promoting specific directed action.
An observation: if Patterning is basically just a matter of becoming hyperaware of cosmic oneness or whatever, it seems weird that it would provoke something so prosaic as murder. My current theory (and apologies if this has already been raised elsewhere & I just missed it) is that the stage of Patterning we witnessed is just an opening tactic used by Procyon to soften up the ego, making room to move in and take over. It seems perfectly suited to annihilating individuality, after all, but rather poor at promoting specific directed action.
It does seem rather odd that so many species, seeing the wreckage of those who came before, would use exactly the same tactics. You know that old saying about insanity...
Wiadi
Uncompromising Radical Leftist
- Location
- Something Clever
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Eh, I mean, that part makes a reasonable amount of sense. Evidence suggests that such measures were at least effective in buying time, which could prove enough for the considerable resources devoted to scientific investigation to bear fruit. It's a bit of a desperate gamble but it's not as if there was an abundance of obvious but untested alternative approaches.
II. Corewards – Part 8.
- Location
- Chile
II. Corewards – Part 8.
You dismiss the orange reminder from your HUD again as you angle the cyberdrill through the maintenance port, gritting your teeth as you guide the tendrils with your mind, just one more joint over here...
Within the diagram in your mind, the last teflek connector fuzzes back to green, and thus the third secondary stasis charger is connected to the whole again and it, too, glows green. You sigh, wiping the sweat off your brow as you reposition the cyberdrill for the next charger. Except there's no fourth secondary charger; no such thing exists. You blink at the schematic floating over your eyes as some sort of electric energy rattles your very soul, in and out in an instant before leaving a giddy wreck.
It's ready, you realize. You crawl out from under the cryopod and flick the emergency wake up routines with numb hands; text quickly slips into your HUD.
-EMERGENCY REVIVAL PROTOCOLS READY. ENGAGE? Y/N.
You stumble between the two before coming down on the 'N' like a torpedo, taking a deep breath as your eyes slide over the form of the still-sleeping Star Lieutenant. Long dreadlocks frame his face like a blond curtain, which along with the full beard makes distinguishing his fair complexion tricky. Ace Pilots always got away with lax regulations…
Your belly feels like a club-room filled with kids synching for the first time, all jumpy and heavy and so exhilarated you fear you're going to blow up. Just breathe, you think, standing up under the glare of hyperspace streaking through the observation window. You're still holding the cyberdrill, so you leave it over the pod and take a step back, knees trembling.
You have to grab a hold of the bracing bar near the observation window as some inner pressure tries to storm your eyes, but your defense is valiant and it's soon routed back down your throat. Alone no longer. It was a difficult thing to parse through, and the sudden swings from child-like excitement to debilitating gratitude to numb shock leaves you dizzy, the observation deck spinning above you.
"Meow?" A great feline head looms over you, whiskers tickling your face.
"Hey Starlight," you mutter. You'd sort of crumbled over the deck ass-backwards, and you guiltily eye the orange flashing-pill icon on your HUD. No wonder you'd fainted. Has it really been 12 hours? Subsisting on a diet of pills was weird, given that the very concept of sitting down for a meal disappeared like so much recycled air, which in turn did strange stuff to the concept of daily time. It made for an interesting experiment on how people got their temporal bearings by sitting down for a meal.
Starlight sniffs your cheek before recoiling back with a cute hiss. "Just some synthetic oil," you say, whipping it off your face. What were you doing again?
Fredrikson!
You bolt up so fast you almost smash into the observation window, and then the eddies of hyperspace join the spinning room as you clutch the bar again. Easy, easy! Your HUD flashes orange once more, and you're suddenly beset by an intense longing for spicy chicken curry. You want it so bad you start salivating.
Stars, even the biocells are starving. They were pulling on your limbic system like a dinner bell… you hated when they did that. "Calm down everyone," you mutter, dismissing the more civilized reminder coming from your cybercortex and muting the icon. You take a second to confirm that Fredrikson's pod is indeed a thought away from reanimation, and then trundle to the half opened pill barrel by the back with a foul mood.
"I'd kill for some chicken curry," you grumble before stuffing your mouth with a double ration. The deck's service cupboard slides from its nest by the wall with a thought, bringing a glass of recycled water which you quickly use to wash down the pills. You wave a hand and it retracts into the wall again, leaving you to wallow in curry angst. Stars, you were practically visualizing it, all steamy and dripping with thick sauce.
"…Meow?"
"Don't tempt me Starlight," you say as you scoop her up, "You're close enough to chicken I wouldn't mind." She meows plaintively as you walk back to the observation window. Even now you could scarcely believe it; another living, breathing human being to share the Iris with. To talk and command and discuss and remember…
You huff, closing your eyes tightly before opening them again, practically massaging Starlight's back. She didn't mind, staring up at the observation window in rapt attention, her fur trying to replicate the yellow flashes of hyperspace.
You sit on the deck, your hands busy with her purring form as you think. You'd never been the type to lead the inspiring charge, or to whip up the crew with frantic speeches and fiery hope. You'd always been at your best when in the middle of a team, a quiet center of gravity that strived to hold, to empower, to make all around you excel beyond what they thought possible… and that's exactly what your new crew would need, starting with Karl Fredrikson. To excel beyond their training, beyond their skills and fears. To pull from something deep within in the face of silent stars and the ravages of time.
You fervently hope you still have it in you; that quiet center of weight from which others can draw strength. That warm wisp that reached out to others no matter the stakes, no matter the loss. Had it rusted to nothing in the face of mute stars?
Shaking your head, you stand up. The Observation Deck could use a cleanup, you think, eyeing some of the more haphazard arrangements you'd been neglecting these past few weeks; spilled synthetic oil, discarded supply crates, opened pill barrels… You'd better clean it before waking up Fredrikson, show a bit of balance between normal naval life and the unusual, critical situation that so desperately needed him. Achieving a balance for him to fall on naturally would be important.
An hour later, you think you've managed it. The observation deck is clean of the sights of haphazard living, but its walls are stacked with supply crates and the odd power tool, as well as the natural wear and tear of daily life. There's the rec area by the other side with the basketball hoop and the full dive pod, a low table with two chairs, and the flag of the Republican Navy draped above the doors. All in all it gives an air of hard nomadic living, but one which is still recognizably Republican.
Roll: Create and Advantage, DC: 2. -1 (dice) + 4 (Rapport): Supportive Environment aspect created.
After sneaking under foot and tripping you a couple of times during the cleanup, Starlight got back to sitting before the observation window, tail swaying from side to side as she looks up at the flashing lines of eternal yellow connecting the Iris to something far in the distance. The cat had accommodated into shipboard life with surprising ease. She'd had no trouble eating the pill-rations, her immediate understanding of them as food just another clue to her unusual nature, though the plaintive meows had been a constant until you started treating her to your secret happy meal stash now and then. She'd taken to exploring the Iris with curious intensity, and thus far her favorite spot seemed to be atop the fusion reactor… that is, when she did not morph into a black furry ball within the sheets of your bed.
You scoop her up from behind, but her complaints are swiftly transformed into long purrs as you scratch her cheeks. "You know, old seafaring vessels had a ship's cat," you say as she accommodates for a better grip and stares up at your face. "I'm afraid we don't have any rats onboard though."
"Meow."
"We all have to make sacrifices," you say solemnly.
You take the stairs up to the second level and collapse over your bed. Bringing up Fredrikson's file on your HUD, you keep scratching Starlight as a cascade of information descends over your eyes.
Star Lieutenant Karl Fredrikson, 33, born on New Kalmar. Interest in historical flying machines since an early age… enlisted by 16, washed out of the Engineering Corps before joining Battlefleet… Disciplinary action over a controversial malware prank on Sector HQ. You raise an amused eyebrow, "Transferred to SIGINT gunship as an electronics specialist," you read out loud, and Starlight tilts her head at your snort. "The Republic makes due," you tell her, and read on. Minor disciplinary issues persisted until he was transferred to an interceptor wing, where he excelled beyond his peers. Made ace pilot by 25.
"Not bad at all," you say, looking over his kill count. Joined all-ace attack squadron onboard the Assault Carrier RNS Gibraltar. Unit awarded with- your eyes glaze over the long list of honors- Ship transferred to the Rimward Rapid Reaction Battlegroup. You purse your lips, asserting your dominance over Starlight by putting your jaw over her head and nuzzling her against your neck. Here things took a darker turn; the Gibraltar practically led the vanguard over the clusterfuck that was Hayte-III. The ship itself was destroyed during the battle for the orbitals, and of Fredrikson's elite squadron only he survived to crash land on the planet's surface. Hunted by the locals, he managed to evade capture for a whole week before he rendezvoused with a company of drop-marines, getting medevac'd four days later.
He stopped participating in the yearly Naval Interbranch Hacking Competition since then, bouncing between some of the most dangerous combat-postings in the navy before he was transferred to Project Vigil. He must have resisted the transfer order quite fiercely, because the last entry on his file is a disciplinary sanction for insubordination. Volunteer force or not, the Navy was not above pushing stuff when it wanted to.
Roll: Create and Advantage, DC: 2. 0 (dice) +0 (Investigate).
You hum in thought; getting a read on someone using these files was often a waste of time. They couldn't hope to convey even a tenth of what a person was just by watching how they stood, or how they talked. Still, it was good to go over the basics again.
Star Lieutenant Fredrikson could now be revived at your convenience, though that left the tricky question of how exactly you would go about it. You couldn't exactly pop his casket and stuff him into the cockpit right away; there's a lot of delicate stuff to explain. The destruction of Station V-38, the compromised Hunter-Killers, the Anarchist base...
The radiation readings on Starlight's home –or rather the absolute lack of them- meant that you'd slept through at least two centuries according to what the Anarchist Compact's TOE had to say about a Semetri-Type 2 mine and its radiation decay. As for the upper bound… you didn't even want to think about it. That and the complete lack of signals traffic was quite the bombshell to drop on the Lieutenant… Stars, you were still reeling from it yourself. How you framed the news to Fredrikson would likely shape his expectations regarding the future of the Iris and your 'task force' such as it was. Come to think of it, it should shape yours as well.
You sigh in contentment now that the biocells have stopped pestering you for protein, but Starlight manages to pry off your jaw by using her tail as a merciless instrument of tickly doom, and soon she's asserting her dominance by squatting atop your head like a black wool hat. She's pleasantly warm, so you leave her there as you yawn, mind abuzz with the thought of the Iris having another crewmember.
"What say you, Private Starlight?" you ask her when her upside down head creeps over your vision, green eyes regarding you curiously before meowing solemnly. She's turned cyan again.
***
OOC:
-How you frame the good news to Fredrikson is important. No matter the technicalities before, you were basically a lone castaway struggling to survive. With Fredrikson's awakening comes a shift: from lone castaway to commanding officer of a functionally independent naval task force operating on what we might as well call wartime. That means setting the record clear on what exactly you are doing and what you expect of your subordinates. As the most senior republican officer present in the theatre of operations, it's up to you to set the objectives of your command, as tiny as it may be right now.
-The following example options all mix the way you perceive your objectives, where you see your authority deriving from , and the current driving impetus of your decisions. They will also mold Fredrikson's expectations (and yours!) regarding your future actions, at least until the known situation changes drastically enough. Write-Ins are encouraged, though I may edit them to better fit into the narrative.
How will you wake Star Lieutenant Karl Fredrikson from his long vigil?
[] Write in!
[] As a superior officer carrying out the directives of the Vigil Project. The core of the matter has not changed; Task Force V-38 has been activated and you're now trying to link up with higher authority so they can slot you back in the fight wherever you're needed.
[] As a fellow survivor cobbling up a scratch force. You're gathering what manpower and materials you can find into a functional task force, with the aim of fortifying the local theatre of operations against the many enemies of the Republic.
[] As the ranking officer aboard the Gunship Iris, carrying out search and rescue operations across the sector. The original directives of the Vigil Project can no longer apply; you're laying low and prioritizing rescue and salvage until you can better ascertain the galactic situation.
[] As commander of an independent task force. You're requisitioning what manpower and materials you can find into an independent command, with the aim of…? (write in).
-Feel free to use bits and pieces of these to build one of your own.
***
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