THRONE//FRINGE: Normal Human Mech-Girl Quest
- Thread starter Cetashwayo
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi
Your welcome. Sick was what I was going for.
Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
Trust the knight wins. I am extremely pleased I have written a charming enough character that he can lure you in to shoot you in the face and take you away in his space abduction van, raid you, completely fumble in defending you because he got too excited, and Arachne is still like "I trust this man with my life" and he wins in a landslide.
Concierge never stood a chance.
Concierge never stood a chance.
- Location
- England
We're going to die, aren't we?
Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
Oh no, it's going to be something much funnier.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
As I see it, it's mostly that you've written the opposition as so bizarre and terrifying (including, of course, the enemies we don't know we have yet) that we just assume we're already screwed and doomed anyway, so we might as well go out in a thematically interesting and exciting manner, gambling on an unlikely but very appealing victory scenario.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
All your characters have their own charm. But only two of them have tried to kill Arachne: Ishtar, and Don Hidalgo. If the Concierge or the Wildcard want to be very-close-friends with Arachne, they have to betray her first. After all, who do you keep closer than an enemy-turned-friend?
24. CHECKMATE
Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
24. CHECKMATE
You've had enough of practicality. You've had enough of Imperial efficiency. You've had enough of the pragmatic option. You've tried everything and it's not enough. You've put your faith in your armaments and it is not enough. You've put your faith in others, and it's not enough.
If you can't win the game, then flip the table.
<:: Okay. Okay. This is insane, but okay, Don Hidalgo. I'm opening a connection now.
The activation trigger of the cross-space connection, opening through a digital wormhole, emerges in your body, a shared digital decrypting key that allows him limited but still considerable entrance to the corridors of your very mind. From the outset Ishtar protests.
I:: ARACHNE! What are you doing? He was trying to kill us not one imperial month ago! He almost did one imperial year ago!
<:: I killed you, once. I could have done it again. I chose instead to make you my partner. If need be, I will do it again. I will free Hidalgo and have him by my side, and we will set fire to all who stand in our way, and your way as well.
Ishtar's doesn't respond immediately, maybe because she expected you to vacillate, or cower, or reconsider on her sudden objection. When she finally returns, her tone isn't pleading but deadly grave.
I:: Is this the choice you're prepared to make, no matter what the consequences? To reject reality and surrender to the rogue's foolish dream, no matter what the cost?
You consider that carefully, remembering everything you've done, everything you've done.
<:: I am a Weaver/Builder. I do not reject reality, I remake it. And if Hidalgo needs me to make our dreams come true, then I will make it so.
I:: Then be done with it. I know you have already made up your mind, no matter what the cost.
You fully unlock the door to your mind. Don Hidalgo's sigh of relief is such that it was as if you broke his chains right then and there.
DH:: Thank you for believing in me one more time. We will show them, now, the two of us. We will show them all.
Out there, the King of Hearts is bleating on, unaware of what's transpired. His missiles, shearbeams, bosers, all hammer upon Hidalgo, at ranges now close enough that the polymorphic march of his stop-motion kingdom is coming right on top of you, the graphics engines of the Chance Illusion's architecture overpowering your own. You won't be able to hold for much longer. If this continues, he may just swallow the both of you into his reality, pop your bubbles, break your defenses and recode you to his whims. If the Catalogue's elements are allowed to repair and reorganize within their own miasmic cell wall, they will be happy enough to help.
KH:: It's over. There's no probability distribution that can account for your survival. No beggar's chance will be left up to you. If you surrender now and spare my element the trouble of needing a new paint job from the smears you'll leave on my cardcruisers, I might think about keeping small slices of the two of you as pets. The Illusion is always on the hunt for novel forms of...entertainment.
You don't like the way he phrases that, but then you don't like much about the King. But it's Don Hidalgo who speaks, his desperation replaced by a barely repressed mania that makes you wonder what you have just done.
DH:: Oh, yes, I agree, King of Hearts. Quite over. Except there's one thing you're forgetting.
Something is activating deep inside Hidalgo and even with the limited connection you can feel it. It is...is that...?
The oblivious king humors him as your risk processing mainframe explodes. Ishtar is screaming but the portions of your mind that would normally attend to her are too scared of what is coming to respond.
KH:: What's that, Donny boy? Another half-bit trick? Perhaps you have a third ally coming in to also lose against me?
The surge of power that you feel is like nothing that you've ever felt before in your present life.
DH:: Just the very first thing I always declare when I introduce myself to an enemy. My true name and title. His lordship Don Hidalgo. Order of the Knights Quixote. Artifact of a different age. Memory Ghost of Reconquistas Past, Interstellar Bounty Hunter.
It is a blanket that swallows you whole and lulls you to sleep with a dream more persuasive than any you've ever felt before.
KH:: Do you mean to kill me with an arsenal of pompous pronouncements?
Your subminds dissolve.
DH:: Something like that. There's just one title left, of course. Just the most important. Just the one that I was made to be.
Ishtar dissolves.
The King audibly hmphs across the code-skeins as he prepares another attack, this one to finish off the knight.
DH:: I am, and I have always been, across one hundred thousand years, across every era, across every culture, across every army:
MASTER
OF
THE
BATTLEFIELD
You dissolve.OF
THE
BATTLEFIELD
The Spaniard Executable Activated: Radical Ontological Refactoring.Sacrifice the user's chassis. Change the genre.
...
...
...
It is the year 85 of the Imperial Century. Almost ninety-years have passed since the discovery of Architecture and the first promise of the Tapestry. Reality rewritten, a place where humans can live, evolve, thrive. And die. The Card Confederacy, a heretical smuggler state, and their allies, twisted rogue machines known only as the Catalogue, suddenly attack the Empire, causing catastrophic losses. Within four months, casualties are fifteen billion.
During a routine scouting mission your experimental exofortress, the Celestial Hydra, comes under sudden and overwhelming attack. Hunted into an asteroid belt frequented only by pirates and suspicious rogues, you must do everything in your power to ensure that you and your friends survive. Desperate times call for desperate measures…and unlikely allies.
This is the age of heroes. This is the age of legends. This is:
THRONE//FRINGE: THE LAST JOUST
You wake up, and you are Arachne Weaver, ace drone pilot, normal four-limbed human, and all around sterling soldier gal. You have your Force Commander Ishtar, your fellow pilots Diana and Ix-Chel, your onboard gestalt intelligence Celeste, and plenty of other charming friends and sapients-in-arms to stand shoulder to shoulder against every threat that comes your way. But you know what? You just had the strangest dream. A dream that you were someone else.
Oh well. Probably nothing. After all, this is the you you've always been.
And always will be.
END ARC II
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- Location
- England
...well I gotta admit I didn't expect ol' DH to have the ability to perform an Emperor-damned Reality Crash. That does come as a surprise.
- Location
- United states of america
Did reality just get rewritten?
This is exactly why getting Hidalgo to play his cards, right now, was a good idea
- Location
- England
I mean, I think the geopolitical strategic calculations involved in that no longer apply, so while you're right you're also not.This is exactly why getting Hidalgo to play his cards, right now, was a good idea
Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
Within a one light-year radius, yes.
I am at least 50% sure this isn't exactly permanent. Probably.
Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
This is not permanent, no. It's an executable so it has a major timed effect. What it does precisely we will find out over the next short mini-arc.
Though it would be funny if I just forced everyone to play a mecha quest permanently (until you all killed me), that is not the purpose of this
Though it would be funny if I just forced everyone to play a mecha quest permanently (until you all killed me), that is not the purpose of this
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Darik29
Verified Delicious
Hidalgos greatest trick.
If you cant win the game, flip the board
Professor Vesca
Good News Everyone!
Flip the board, leap over the remains, and punch your opponent in the face.
You thought you were playing checkers. Then you thought I was revealing the chesboard!
BUT ITS ACTUALLY CALVINBALL!
- Location
- PA
Well, I dunno about my comrades, but I for one would be down for that sort of shenanigan! Dagnamit Don Hidalgo! Let us ride this through to the finish!This is not permanent, no. It's an executable so it has a major timed effect. What it does precisely we will find out over the next short mini-arc.
Though it would be funny if I just forced everyone to play a mecha quest permanently (until you all killed me), that is not the purpose of this
- Location
- United States
I cannot wait to see where this goes.
Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
And no, this is not bad end, no this is not an arc about Arachne remembering who she is. Arachne remembers who she is quite well, but Arachne Weaver is another issue entirely, and she's in control right now. As you will find out soon!
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Well, if we're going to do this, might as well go all the way. We know that we're are going to have to fight him later anyway. He still has that mind control going. If he pulls this out and makes us a mech-girl again all the better.
We're going to befriend him, Nanoha style.
This seems like Don Hidalgo is doing something similar to the pre-collapse trait of my elite from the original thread which gave it the power to use Limited Reality Virtualization to trap enemies in an advantageous battle field. Though themed after the early days of the imperium rather than after the weird dream computers my polity used.
Though it does state it is an executable, so maybe it is more powerful and all encompassing but less reusable?
Though it does state it is an executable, so maybe it is more powerful and all encompassing but less reusable?
- Location
- Poland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It's not just flipping the board. It's flipping the board and giving everyone their character's sheets, because you are playing D&D now.
Oh god this makes Don Hidalgo the dungeon master doesn't it?
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