Fabricated Hazards (factorio fanfic)
Half Life cross??
An Ixion crossover seems somewhat interesting, especially FTL, which seems to have a time component.
EDF, Halo, Slime Rancher
- Pronouns
- That/Thing
EDF
Log #4
I have discovered hell. I surprisingly find myself enjoying it.
Now that that's out of the way, opening a larger portal to Nauvis apparently caused it to be a three way juncture rather than a two way one. Not sure why yet but I am decidedly playing with forces beyond my understanding, so… gonna work on understanding them.
It leads to another earth, because why not. That earth was covered in giant insects that have basically rendered humanity extinct, because why not. The insects are actually aliens and have fancy spaceships basically everywhere, because once again, why not.
But the weapons on this world! They are utterly absurd, beyond the pale. They have no regard for physics, honestly if it wasn't for the issues with friendly fire I doubt the humans here would have lost. I mean a man portable sniper capable of shooting through a mountain? Give me. And that's not even getting into the energy or exotic weaponry.
Aside from the fact that the people using it are wearing armored bikinis and jetpacks, I'm genuinely impressed. Or I would be if the tech worked on my half of the portal, apparently physics are just fucky on that side, letting the absurd pseudo-tech work. But my fuck does it work, I can build the things and mount a cannon hotter than the sun on a drone barely larger than a beachball. That cannon can then fire constantly and just as an idea, purge an entire city from giant ants.
The androids are going even more insane, taking the fact they can't die and that I can give them virtually any weapons they need and just wrecking the aliens shit in. I have androids literally firing themselves into battle inside hollow metal tubes that explode.
It's an unmitigated slaughter, anytime an alien even remotely threatening arrives it just gets dogpilled by a few dozen resistance androids in power armor.
I saw 2B actually smiling after a mission, actually smiling! This entire planet is some absurd festival of gratuitous violence.
This is the most fun I ever had, and I haven't even been doing much different aside from trying to make the weapons work on my half. And well… it's working, slowly but in just a few weeks this absurdity will spread.
The trick is to bring the fucky physics with you.
But yeah this whole alien invasion won't last another week, and that week will be spent hunting down stragglers and trying to stop the androids from doing something stupid with the weapons.
-----------------
The Nameless floated in the void of space, looking down with horror at the world they had tried to destroy. "shit shit Nauvis and weapons that potent?!? They're exponential on both sides …. I'm leaving, this never happened and I am leaving. Fuck this universe…. They won't follow me right? And even if they do I can just keep running! This'll be fine, they'll give up eventually…. Fuck I forgot they were persistence predators. Uhhh uhhhhh, would a black hole still work?!?" the Nameless watched a few moments longer, his senses peeling through the defenses hiding the blight of metal from him, "FUCK! It's already using Blackholes for power!.... I lived a good life, and If I run far enough I can live just a bit of a longer one." And with a flash of divine light the being disappears from the void of space, never seeing the thing watching it in turn, But it was right. Nauvis was a persistent predator.
AN- this one won't be cannon, but it was fun to write and I might continue it whenever I get the urge to write a bunch of Snippets again.
------------------
Halo
On an ancient construction older than any race can conceive are numerous ancient wonders that have long sat motionless and inert, the forerunners who would use them dead longer than some stars have been alive. On one of these ancient installations an old working spins to life, a device commonly used by the forerunners for resource and energy harvesting.
An interdimensional gateway, detecting a weak attempt to open a portal reaches out through slipspace and further beyond. Grabbing ahold of that tenuous connection and forcing the portal open. The machine stay's online just long enough to stabilize the connection before falling silent once more, a stable rift now glowing on the installation's surface.
On high charity thousands of lightyears away a covenant Luminarie flashes as the machine's activation is detected, its arcane programing and sensors rapidly finding the now revealed station. The minor prophets assigned to decoding the luminaries start charting the course, and soon a small fleet of covenant ships are sent to hunt down their gods' artifacts. These ships had been primed for war, originally planned on being sent to a human colony; they have enough firepower to level continents and glass worlds. They set off with holy fervor in their eyes to complete their prophets' works.
Meanwhile the legions of the factory spin to life and set off on a grand reclamation of their own, only a scant few forces being sent through to secure the third exit to the portal. But when they discover just what they are on that flow increases to a flood, dozens of tanks and androids, hundreds of drones and machines. Researchers, scouts, and combatants all flowing forth to study, secure, research and discover all that lays before them.
-------------
Giant alien complex older than old? Check. Tech I haven't the faintest clue as to even the most basic 'how' or 'why', also check. So far this little excursion had been productive, the place's greatest threats were the ancient repair drones and those things had only attack once when one of the androids had tried to hack one of the numerous scattered consoles, and they'd stopped once they had immolated the android. Which hadn't even inconvenienced the android who'd immediately been uploaded into a new body to continue poking things.
If I could say one thing about the scanners it was that they were determined. Usually to get places they shouldn't but it counts for something, even if it does mean they bring the phrase 'curiosity killed the cat' back into relevance.
But even just the metal this place was built from was absurd, the stuff just didn't melt or show any signs of damage. I imagined it eventually would but even with shields they burned out and broke before the metal did. Whatever had made this was currently beyond me. And honestly I was okay with it, It just proved I was no where near the heights of what I could create. Someday even artificial planets like this would be something I could feasibly make.
Even if my current lack of understanding meant I didn't even know what this place was built for, the fact it had a landscape would make one think it was meant for habitation, or maybe conservation. But there wasn't anyone living here, nor habitation to show they had, and I hadn't seen any animals. The sheer level of unknowns means I could be missing something. The life could be digital for instance, or it could be that the plants are the life. And Until I figure that out… well can't really learn too much about the builders.
Honestly I just needed to find some way to hack the station without anything trying to kill me. And with my new processing power I was the best candidate for that attempt regardless. Have a large supply of backup processing power for me to use, link up with Balistraia, and I'm confident I'll make some progress at least.
----------
It only occurred to me now that I didn't actually meet with commander white that often, it was infrequent enough that I was somehow always surprised by her outfit. An odd thing to note while I was talking to her but I was at least happy that she was taking better care of herself, likely due to the very persistent construction drone I had assigned to the task. "What do you mean you don't know what it is?" Commander white spoke, with a level of surprise I found relatively offending. "Why would I? I certainly didn't build it" really, it's like she expected me to just inherently understand any piece of tech I saw.
Well we kind of have been doing that.
Yeah but thats human tech, it has the same basic principles throughout. Not alien stuff using code and technological principles entirely foreign to us.
So it'll take us a few weeks instead of hours?
…..by current estimates yes.
Commander white still wasn't used to how I spoke to her, and she was always torn between her drive to command and her drive to listen to the human. Which was part of the reason I didn't talk to her much as watching the struggle on her face was nearly painful. But eventually she settled on neutrality "what can you tell me? My scanners have been combing the thing for days now and they don't have much of anything yet." "aside from what causes the defenses to trigger" I added, not being particularly helpful. "Aside from that yes" that actually got a slight glare from her, which I was inordinately proud of her for managing. Being annoying with the sole goal of getting them annoyed with me was working. But it was best to turn it down.
"Well the makers of the place are long gone, nothings been touched for ten thousand years at a minimum. The drones aren't actually armed, those are meant for construction and maintenance. The metal is well beyond anything I can make, and the programming is similar. Also I suspect that there used to be an AI of some sort running it." a shameful amount of knowledge after three days of effort, I still hadn't managed to figure out what the metals were made from. "Used to be an AI? Do we need to prepare for a cyber attack" an understandable worry, especially for a machine lifeform. Either something had killed an AI, which meant it could kill them, or there was an AI, which could kill them. "It wouldn't hurt, the AI's existence is only probable and it could be dead or it could be alive. Though if it was I imagine it'd have done something to us by now. Still at this point I can't say anything for certain." which was very upsetting. "I should have that figured out in a few weeks though, but that's a few weeks with a potential unknown threat roaming about."
Commander white nodded at that, unknowns were always more of a problem than knowns. You couldn't even start to plan around the threat, "I'll make certain that my androids thoroughly quarantine and scan themselves, nothing will be getting in or through." I nodded at that, I wasn't even allowing any hard or wireless data transfer through the portals, and everything down to the physical structure of my drones and equipment was checked before being allowed out of the faraday cages now enclosing all ends of the portal. "We won't be taking any chances" I said, with as agreeing a tone I could manage with my still unwieldy vocal cords.
I had had enough with rogue AI messing up my work.
-------------------------------
AN- the halo idea is a fair bit of fun, it'll start with the engineer not even knowing about humanity, also just for the record, he's not on a halo.
------------------------------
Slime Rancher
I sit in a rocky clearing, my power armor remarkably shiny in the drab landscape as I perch on a rock, A small blue spiky slime bouncing in front of me is subject to an intense glare as I reminisce on just how I ended up here. A small swarm of drones orbiting me as they take dozens of samples of the environment, the information being ported directly into my mind, the soil and mineral content isn't anything special, some fossils and the like but nothing outstanding. No ore deposits here, which makes building decidedly more difficult.
The day had started fairly simply, the portal had been opened and the first tanks and drones had come through without issue, the androids from the Nauvis side had followed through and rejoined their friends or simply started exploring the new city. There was some discontent given that Commander White had breached the news, the New's being that there had only ever been one human on the moon rather than a colony.
Not quite the truth but…. I didn't care to deal with riots. This revelation already had a fair portion of the androids freaking out and a larger portion treating me as some form of messiah. Not Ideal in the least, but it was better than dealing with riots from war machines. But while the news being released meant the androids on my side could safely be reintroduced to the larger population it was honestly a footnote compared to what happened next.
That being my own trip through the portal had gone my guards in tow in case anything happened, and things had immediately gone wrong. The portal structure destabilizing itself and a new exit being opened just in time for all of us to fall through, given you can't exactly stop on your way through a portal.
This in itself hadn't been an issue, the portal had still been open, just a few hundred feet in the air. Nothing that I couldn't solve simply by engaging my armors flight systems, and the YoRHa squad, A2, and 2B and 9S all had similar if weaker systems. Letting all of us slowly and safely fall to the ground level where it should have been a simply task to either wait for a vehicle or get ferried out by a few of my drones.
Only the world's native creatures threw a wrench into that simple solution, just as I was bringing my logistics drones out of my internal storage a flickery yellow blob of slime glomped onto my armor, and with a burst of static and light I was just gone. Which reminds me, get anti-teleporting tech asap.
I mean I hadn't been hurt as I crashed into the ground, even a fall from orbit wouldn't and this was a four foot drop onto my armors face. But it was an embarrassing thing, especially given that I'd watched the fall in slow motion and still not stopped myself. The Sensor readings on that flickery slime had been… interesting, and had more than distracted me. Not to mention the sensation of existing in two places at the same time, I might be in every machine but that just made that worse, as there were two of me in every machine.
Did not enjoy.
After I had sorted myself back out and figured out how to move my limbs again I sat up in the rocky clearing I was now in. I was roughly four hundred miles away from the portal, a short trip by any standard. Only the issue there was the large 'ocean' between me and the portal. One not filled with water but instead with the slime, the same slime the creatures were made from. Which implied the ocean itself was alive, which was decidedly unnerving.
Getting across the ocean with just my logistics drones was possible, just rotate them out and recharge them on a cycle. Only it would take literal days to cross that distance with just the drones. Ground travel with my armor was actually quicker, and waiting for a transport was an even better option. That would still take a few hours though, so I was stuck here.
Honestly it wasn't that bad, I had my armor, enough drones to fight a small army, and a new environment full of things to examine, like these slimes. There were four varieties I had observed so far, the staticy yellow slime, the rocky blue one, the one that resembled a cat far too much to be natural, and a pink variety that seemed to be literally everywhere.
Aside from their unique biology, they were far more durable than one would imagine. They had excretions that I could already see a myriad of uses for. The pink crystal for instance, it can seemingly be used for basically anything. It's edible, would serve as a suitable fertilizer for most plants, it's burnable, and can function as an oil. I can refine this to suit basically any roll, maybe not well but it could. A jack of all trades material, if I just had this I could still make anything, and these slimes produce these from eating anything biological and have a roughly fifty percent conversion rate.
I can turn one hundred pounds of fruit into fifty pounds of this stuff, and refine that further down into something useful. There are a few issues, like how it can't serve as reactor fuel, but I'm not saying it can be anything but that it can fill any role in some form. It can't power a reactor but it can burn to produce power for instance.
This alone would be enough of a reason to research this world more, but there are more materials produced by these slimes. The rock slime in front of me produces something that can be alloyed with any metal, making it lighter and significantly more durable than it had been. Any metal, meaning I'll need to rebuild my entire army already just because this is too big an improvement to pass up. On my stronger metal alloys it only enhances them a few percentiles but with the plain steel I use for standard construction? More than doubles the durability. Still weaker than my tanks armor much less my suits but that means my buildings will be significantly more durable with barely an increase in cost.
I was going to exploit the hell out of this.
The cat slime was significantly less useful, largely because it seemed to excrete an organic steroid. Which while potentially useful would only work on organics, my own biology would filter this out before it could take much effect. Though I haven't given up on finding some use for it.
And if those were the only slimes on this planet I would be genuinely shocked. The things seemed to be everywhere. Somewhat segregated sure with only the pink variety being ever present but that didn't really matter. The creatures only seemed to prey on the avian lifeforms that ran about.
With my current observations done I called the drones back to me and pulled the samples I had gathered within my skin. The rocky slime I had been feeding watched me stand up with oddly expressive eyes. Something like wonder on its face, which meant I'd need to perform sentience testing. Human brains did have a tendency to assign emotions to things that lacked them but it never hurt to be certain. I let the small thing follow me as I left the rocky clearing behind and started off in the vague direction of the portal. I wasn't likely to get much closer but I could explore and act like I was making progress towards the portal.
I didn't doubt that the minds had already sent a veritable fleet, and that meant my rescue was only a matter of time. That meant I was free to relax, and as I got onto a large rocky cliff-face and saw the landscape before me, rocky red stone stretching on for miles, I knew that there'd be plenty to explore.
Ahead a few thousand feet and to the right a few hundred more I could see what looked like a river of the 'slime sea' that likely stretched out to the main mass, a few miles ahead I could see some verdant jungle, and to my left a few miles out I could see that the red stone shifted to purple. A full glimpse of my surroundings revealed I was on an island, maybe only a few hundred square kilometers.
I was taken out of my initial and instinctive scan of ideal factory locations by what sounded like demented laughter echoing out below me. Some two meter blob of black and incandescent slime was just… Laughing and lashing out with tentacles while pulling various slimes into it's mouth. I watched three pink slimes with identifiable fear on their faces get latched and slowly dragged towards the thing which… just fuck no.
Immediately enough laser fire to put the sun to shame lanced out, and there wasn't even anything left of the creature for me to research. Just a divot in the ground where it had been. Which was notably underwhelming, I had been expecting far more of a struggle from the thing. The slimes I had inadvertently saved by killing the offensive thing looked at me, and their eyes changed into a child's idea of a star, before they hopped up onto the slope I had perched myself on, joining the rock slime. I took a few of the fruits I had in my inventory out and threw them onto the creatures. Where they immediately ate them, seemingly immediately forgetting their traumatic experience.
It seemed my wait might not be as peaceful as I had previously imagined, as I sincerely doubted that that was the only one of those creatures.
AN-
the muse with slime rancher has flowed the best so far but I think halo has the best starting potential for an actual story. Anyways let me know what you think, can't improve without knowing what I'm doing wrong.
comments and reviews are lovely.
Log #4
I have discovered hell. I surprisingly find myself enjoying it.
Now that that's out of the way, opening a larger portal to Nauvis apparently caused it to be a three way juncture rather than a two way one. Not sure why yet but I am decidedly playing with forces beyond my understanding, so… gonna work on understanding them.
It leads to another earth, because why not. That earth was covered in giant insects that have basically rendered humanity extinct, because why not. The insects are actually aliens and have fancy spaceships basically everywhere, because once again, why not.
But the weapons on this world! They are utterly absurd, beyond the pale. They have no regard for physics, honestly if it wasn't for the issues with friendly fire I doubt the humans here would have lost. I mean a man portable sniper capable of shooting through a mountain? Give me. And that's not even getting into the energy or exotic weaponry.
Aside from the fact that the people using it are wearing armored bikinis and jetpacks, I'm genuinely impressed. Or I would be if the tech worked on my half of the portal, apparently physics are just fucky on that side, letting the absurd pseudo-tech work. But my fuck does it work, I can build the things and mount a cannon hotter than the sun on a drone barely larger than a beachball. That cannon can then fire constantly and just as an idea, purge an entire city from giant ants.
The androids are going even more insane, taking the fact they can't die and that I can give them virtually any weapons they need and just wrecking the aliens shit in. I have androids literally firing themselves into battle inside hollow metal tubes that explode.
It's an unmitigated slaughter, anytime an alien even remotely threatening arrives it just gets dogpilled by a few dozen resistance androids in power armor.
I saw 2B actually smiling after a mission, actually smiling! This entire planet is some absurd festival of gratuitous violence.
This is the most fun I ever had, and I haven't even been doing much different aside from trying to make the weapons work on my half. And well… it's working, slowly but in just a few weeks this absurdity will spread.
The trick is to bring the fucky physics with you.
But yeah this whole alien invasion won't last another week, and that week will be spent hunting down stragglers and trying to stop the androids from doing something stupid with the weapons.
-----------------
The Nameless floated in the void of space, looking down with horror at the world they had tried to destroy. "shit shit Nauvis and weapons that potent?!? They're exponential on both sides …. I'm leaving, this never happened and I am leaving. Fuck this universe…. They won't follow me right? And even if they do I can just keep running! This'll be fine, they'll give up eventually…. Fuck I forgot they were persistence predators. Uhhh uhhhhh, would a black hole still work?!?" the Nameless watched a few moments longer, his senses peeling through the defenses hiding the blight of metal from him, "FUCK! It's already using Blackholes for power!.... I lived a good life, and If I run far enough I can live just a bit of a longer one." And with a flash of divine light the being disappears from the void of space, never seeing the thing watching it in turn, But it was right. Nauvis was a persistent predator.
AN- this one won't be cannon, but it was fun to write and I might continue it whenever I get the urge to write a bunch of Snippets again.
------------------
Halo
On an ancient construction older than any race can conceive are numerous ancient wonders that have long sat motionless and inert, the forerunners who would use them dead longer than some stars have been alive. On one of these ancient installations an old working spins to life, a device commonly used by the forerunners for resource and energy harvesting.
An interdimensional gateway, detecting a weak attempt to open a portal reaches out through slipspace and further beyond. Grabbing ahold of that tenuous connection and forcing the portal open. The machine stay's online just long enough to stabilize the connection before falling silent once more, a stable rift now glowing on the installation's surface.
On high charity thousands of lightyears away a covenant Luminarie flashes as the machine's activation is detected, its arcane programing and sensors rapidly finding the now revealed station. The minor prophets assigned to decoding the luminaries start charting the course, and soon a small fleet of covenant ships are sent to hunt down their gods' artifacts. These ships had been primed for war, originally planned on being sent to a human colony; they have enough firepower to level continents and glass worlds. They set off with holy fervor in their eyes to complete their prophets' works.
Meanwhile the legions of the factory spin to life and set off on a grand reclamation of their own, only a scant few forces being sent through to secure the third exit to the portal. But when they discover just what they are on that flow increases to a flood, dozens of tanks and androids, hundreds of drones and machines. Researchers, scouts, and combatants all flowing forth to study, secure, research and discover all that lays before them.
-------------
Giant alien complex older than old? Check. Tech I haven't the faintest clue as to even the most basic 'how' or 'why', also check. So far this little excursion had been productive, the place's greatest threats were the ancient repair drones and those things had only attack once when one of the androids had tried to hack one of the numerous scattered consoles, and they'd stopped once they had immolated the android. Which hadn't even inconvenienced the android who'd immediately been uploaded into a new body to continue poking things.
If I could say one thing about the scanners it was that they were determined. Usually to get places they shouldn't but it counts for something, even if it does mean they bring the phrase 'curiosity killed the cat' back into relevance.
But even just the metal this place was built from was absurd, the stuff just didn't melt or show any signs of damage. I imagined it eventually would but even with shields they burned out and broke before the metal did. Whatever had made this was currently beyond me. And honestly I was okay with it, It just proved I was no where near the heights of what I could create. Someday even artificial planets like this would be something I could feasibly make.
Even if my current lack of understanding meant I didn't even know what this place was built for, the fact it had a landscape would make one think it was meant for habitation, or maybe conservation. But there wasn't anyone living here, nor habitation to show they had, and I hadn't seen any animals. The sheer level of unknowns means I could be missing something. The life could be digital for instance, or it could be that the plants are the life. And Until I figure that out… well can't really learn too much about the builders.
Honestly I just needed to find some way to hack the station without anything trying to kill me. And with my new processing power I was the best candidate for that attempt regardless. Have a large supply of backup processing power for me to use, link up with Balistraia, and I'm confident I'll make some progress at least.
----------
It only occurred to me now that I didn't actually meet with commander white that often, it was infrequent enough that I was somehow always surprised by her outfit. An odd thing to note while I was talking to her but I was at least happy that she was taking better care of herself, likely due to the very persistent construction drone I had assigned to the task. "What do you mean you don't know what it is?" Commander white spoke, with a level of surprise I found relatively offending. "Why would I? I certainly didn't build it" really, it's like she expected me to just inherently understand any piece of tech I saw.
Well we kind of have been doing that.
Yeah but thats human tech, it has the same basic principles throughout. Not alien stuff using code and technological principles entirely foreign to us.
So it'll take us a few weeks instead of hours?
…..by current estimates yes.
Commander white still wasn't used to how I spoke to her, and she was always torn between her drive to command and her drive to listen to the human. Which was part of the reason I didn't talk to her much as watching the struggle on her face was nearly painful. But eventually she settled on neutrality "what can you tell me? My scanners have been combing the thing for days now and they don't have much of anything yet." "aside from what causes the defenses to trigger" I added, not being particularly helpful. "Aside from that yes" that actually got a slight glare from her, which I was inordinately proud of her for managing. Being annoying with the sole goal of getting them annoyed with me was working. But it was best to turn it down.
"Well the makers of the place are long gone, nothings been touched for ten thousand years at a minimum. The drones aren't actually armed, those are meant for construction and maintenance. The metal is well beyond anything I can make, and the programming is similar. Also I suspect that there used to be an AI of some sort running it." a shameful amount of knowledge after three days of effort, I still hadn't managed to figure out what the metals were made from. "Used to be an AI? Do we need to prepare for a cyber attack" an understandable worry, especially for a machine lifeform. Either something had killed an AI, which meant it could kill them, or there was an AI, which could kill them. "It wouldn't hurt, the AI's existence is only probable and it could be dead or it could be alive. Though if it was I imagine it'd have done something to us by now. Still at this point I can't say anything for certain." which was very upsetting. "I should have that figured out in a few weeks though, but that's a few weeks with a potential unknown threat roaming about."
Commander white nodded at that, unknowns were always more of a problem than knowns. You couldn't even start to plan around the threat, "I'll make certain that my androids thoroughly quarantine and scan themselves, nothing will be getting in or through." I nodded at that, I wasn't even allowing any hard or wireless data transfer through the portals, and everything down to the physical structure of my drones and equipment was checked before being allowed out of the faraday cages now enclosing all ends of the portal. "We won't be taking any chances" I said, with as agreeing a tone I could manage with my still unwieldy vocal cords.
I had had enough with rogue AI messing up my work.
-------------------------------
AN- the halo idea is a fair bit of fun, it'll start with the engineer not even knowing about humanity, also just for the record, he's not on a halo.
------------------------------
Slime Rancher
I sit in a rocky clearing, my power armor remarkably shiny in the drab landscape as I perch on a rock, A small blue spiky slime bouncing in front of me is subject to an intense glare as I reminisce on just how I ended up here. A small swarm of drones orbiting me as they take dozens of samples of the environment, the information being ported directly into my mind, the soil and mineral content isn't anything special, some fossils and the like but nothing outstanding. No ore deposits here, which makes building decidedly more difficult.
The day had started fairly simply, the portal had been opened and the first tanks and drones had come through without issue, the androids from the Nauvis side had followed through and rejoined their friends or simply started exploring the new city. There was some discontent given that Commander White had breached the news, the New's being that there had only ever been one human on the moon rather than a colony.
Not quite the truth but…. I didn't care to deal with riots. This revelation already had a fair portion of the androids freaking out and a larger portion treating me as some form of messiah. Not Ideal in the least, but it was better than dealing with riots from war machines. But while the news being released meant the androids on my side could safely be reintroduced to the larger population it was honestly a footnote compared to what happened next.
That being my own trip through the portal had gone my guards in tow in case anything happened, and things had immediately gone wrong. The portal structure destabilizing itself and a new exit being opened just in time for all of us to fall through, given you can't exactly stop on your way through a portal.
This in itself hadn't been an issue, the portal had still been open, just a few hundred feet in the air. Nothing that I couldn't solve simply by engaging my armors flight systems, and the YoRHa squad, A2, and 2B and 9S all had similar if weaker systems. Letting all of us slowly and safely fall to the ground level where it should have been a simply task to either wait for a vehicle or get ferried out by a few of my drones.
Only the world's native creatures threw a wrench into that simple solution, just as I was bringing my logistics drones out of my internal storage a flickery yellow blob of slime glomped onto my armor, and with a burst of static and light I was just gone. Which reminds me, get anti-teleporting tech asap.
I mean I hadn't been hurt as I crashed into the ground, even a fall from orbit wouldn't and this was a four foot drop onto my armors face. But it was an embarrassing thing, especially given that I'd watched the fall in slow motion and still not stopped myself. The Sensor readings on that flickery slime had been… interesting, and had more than distracted me. Not to mention the sensation of existing in two places at the same time, I might be in every machine but that just made that worse, as there were two of me in every machine.
Did not enjoy.
After I had sorted myself back out and figured out how to move my limbs again I sat up in the rocky clearing I was now in. I was roughly four hundred miles away from the portal, a short trip by any standard. Only the issue there was the large 'ocean' between me and the portal. One not filled with water but instead with the slime, the same slime the creatures were made from. Which implied the ocean itself was alive, which was decidedly unnerving.
Getting across the ocean with just my logistics drones was possible, just rotate them out and recharge them on a cycle. Only it would take literal days to cross that distance with just the drones. Ground travel with my armor was actually quicker, and waiting for a transport was an even better option. That would still take a few hours though, so I was stuck here.
Honestly it wasn't that bad, I had my armor, enough drones to fight a small army, and a new environment full of things to examine, like these slimes. There were four varieties I had observed so far, the staticy yellow slime, the rocky blue one, the one that resembled a cat far too much to be natural, and a pink variety that seemed to be literally everywhere.
Aside from their unique biology, they were far more durable than one would imagine. They had excretions that I could already see a myriad of uses for. The pink crystal for instance, it can seemingly be used for basically anything. It's edible, would serve as a suitable fertilizer for most plants, it's burnable, and can function as an oil. I can refine this to suit basically any roll, maybe not well but it could. A jack of all trades material, if I just had this I could still make anything, and these slimes produce these from eating anything biological and have a roughly fifty percent conversion rate.
I can turn one hundred pounds of fruit into fifty pounds of this stuff, and refine that further down into something useful. There are a few issues, like how it can't serve as reactor fuel, but I'm not saying it can be anything but that it can fill any role in some form. It can't power a reactor but it can burn to produce power for instance.
This alone would be enough of a reason to research this world more, but there are more materials produced by these slimes. The rock slime in front of me produces something that can be alloyed with any metal, making it lighter and significantly more durable than it had been. Any metal, meaning I'll need to rebuild my entire army already just because this is too big an improvement to pass up. On my stronger metal alloys it only enhances them a few percentiles but with the plain steel I use for standard construction? More than doubles the durability. Still weaker than my tanks armor much less my suits but that means my buildings will be significantly more durable with barely an increase in cost.
I was going to exploit the hell out of this.
The cat slime was significantly less useful, largely because it seemed to excrete an organic steroid. Which while potentially useful would only work on organics, my own biology would filter this out before it could take much effect. Though I haven't given up on finding some use for it.
And if those were the only slimes on this planet I would be genuinely shocked. The things seemed to be everywhere. Somewhat segregated sure with only the pink variety being ever present but that didn't really matter. The creatures only seemed to prey on the avian lifeforms that ran about.
With my current observations done I called the drones back to me and pulled the samples I had gathered within my skin. The rocky slime I had been feeding watched me stand up with oddly expressive eyes. Something like wonder on its face, which meant I'd need to perform sentience testing. Human brains did have a tendency to assign emotions to things that lacked them but it never hurt to be certain. I let the small thing follow me as I left the rocky clearing behind and started off in the vague direction of the portal. I wasn't likely to get much closer but I could explore and act like I was making progress towards the portal.
I didn't doubt that the minds had already sent a veritable fleet, and that meant my rescue was only a matter of time. That meant I was free to relax, and as I got onto a large rocky cliff-face and saw the landscape before me, rocky red stone stretching on for miles, I knew that there'd be plenty to explore.
Ahead a few thousand feet and to the right a few hundred more I could see what looked like a river of the 'slime sea' that likely stretched out to the main mass, a few miles ahead I could see some verdant jungle, and to my left a few miles out I could see that the red stone shifted to purple. A full glimpse of my surroundings revealed I was on an island, maybe only a few hundred square kilometers.
I was taken out of my initial and instinctive scan of ideal factory locations by what sounded like demented laughter echoing out below me. Some two meter blob of black and incandescent slime was just… Laughing and lashing out with tentacles while pulling various slimes into it's mouth. I watched three pink slimes with identifiable fear on their faces get latched and slowly dragged towards the thing which… just fuck no.
Immediately enough laser fire to put the sun to shame lanced out, and there wasn't even anything left of the creature for me to research. Just a divot in the ground where it had been. Which was notably underwhelming, I had been expecting far more of a struggle from the thing. The slimes I had inadvertently saved by killing the offensive thing looked at me, and their eyes changed into a child's idea of a star, before they hopped up onto the slope I had perched myself on, joining the rock slime. I took a few of the fruits I had in my inventory out and threw them onto the creatures. Where they immediately ate them, seemingly immediately forgetting their traumatic experience.
It seemed my wait might not be as peaceful as I had previously imagined, as I sincerely doubted that that was the only one of those creatures.
AN-
the muse with slime rancher has flowed the best so far but I think halo has the best starting potential for an actual story. Anyways let me know what you think, can't improve without knowing what I'm doing wrong.
comments and reviews are lovely.
- Pronouns
- That/Thing
I'll add it to the list to research but I've never seen the show.
on the list
Fallout already had a short snippet but I do admit I didn't do the setting justice, I'll throw it on the pile.
Don't know the setting. I'll add it to the research list.
Fun Idea, I'll add the prompt to the list.
You did not hold back. at all, also those are some dense settings regardless.
I don't think you needed to add on, that was already a bunch, but I'll give em a look.
------
while I am happy with all these suggestions I have to admit that I am only human. And I have a decent amount of other stuff going on now. so it might not be reached. If you add a prompt or starting scenario with it that'd probably help, just looking at a shows title doesn't really get the muse going.
could be as simple as 'engineer shows up in kuroinu and gets very angry, violence commences.' or something with more detail. like "Dresden gets lost in the nevernever and ends up on Nier earth, gets lost and hunted down by a bunch of magic animals because they want his magic, gets saved by 2B and 9S who were hunting down said animals for being violent. Dresdens passage unknowingly made a link between the never never and Nauvis and now Nauvis is using it to chuck bitters and eldritch fish everywhere. dresden and the engineer team up to solve this multiplanet crisis.
- Location
- UK
So now there perma portals to Halo and Slime Rancher huh? I guess it's time to go full Factorio on the Halo though with the Covenant incoming…
Honestly, Slime Rancher is by far the better choice due to it not being a universe that needs a heavy war economy(To my knowledge) it would force the Engineer to figure out ways to solve stuff without blowing them up not to mention you don't have to spend as long as the others just go through interact and figure out what is of use Slime rancher 1st with a modern amount of chapters then move to Halo. Plus SR's tech improvements would help a lot when dealing with Halo's army's without making you godlike just based on what both said the forerunner's tech base is out of range by far convent and maybe even the UNSC's tech base perhaps could be deciphered. Still, if you come to blows with either you would likely be overwhelmed and forced back through the portal before you could set up much you have maybe 2 planets in the story which are not even at full production compacity due to their circumstances halo has More unless you have FTL tech which Slime rancher has might I add then you'll get stuck where ever you land and if logic wins get overwhelmed and as said forced back through the portal. sorry huge tangent hope it helps this is my personal and very in-depth opinion your story your rules.
RoyalTwinFangs
For The Chancellor!
- Location
- Somwhere not here
I pick halo because I think that it would be more of a story long term.
A recent video i watched has me suggesting Red Faction Armageddon.
also like both the slime rancher and halo one.
only really good bonus from EDF is starting on learning to be able to operate in/with foreign laws of reality without issue.
with the future potential of either mixing multiple laws of reality for absurd improvements or even potentially custom laws of reality designed just for certain tech.
also like both the slime rancher and halo one.
only really good bonus from EDF is starting on learning to be able to operate in/with foreign laws of reality without issue.
with the future potential of either mixing multiple laws of reality for absurd improvements or even potentially custom laws of reality designed just for certain tech.
I would recommend reading it but the anime has don't a good job at adapting it, it got a few things wrong like most anime but it is a good adaption.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I didn't like slime rancher at first, but after seeing your snippet I'm sold on it. The Engineer needs some cute slimes to give him some therapy.
God knows there's no one in the several dimensions he's been in that's qualified to give him therapy.
Dresden:
A scanner android found some old humanity books about odd rituals and the like. Decides to do it for curiosity sake (or for another reason, like, "It'll give insight into the human's state of mind" or something). In reality its an old spellbook, and said scanner just called up a fey, or invited something malicious, or just opened up a portal to the nevernever. Chaos, expansion, and investigation into the nevernever occurs.
Harry Dresden got news about something fucky happening in the nevernever, and was told to deal with it for reasons (Outsider invasion, his debt got called and now he has to solve it, wizards intuition). It all goes sideways from there. Also Nauvis gets a body or domain in the nevernever, and could possibly be their own fey court. The Court of Evolution (or something). Summer and Winter doesn't like this, at all.
Youjo Senki:
On the teleport sequence back to Nauvis, the aim, anchor, hook, whatever, back to Nauvis gets stuck on something. Said something is Being X's divine energy in Tanya or Mary Sioux. Que expansion into the Youjo Senki world. Every nation looks at said expansion of robots and androids, and think that's the mechanized infantry of the opposing nation kept in secret. Being X and his world gets the attention of Nauvis, and maybe there's some maso going around.
(I mainly want this because I'm interested in YS's mage cores)
Kenshi:
Teleport to Nauvis doesn't work, a portal opens up in the Skeleton Graveyard (or somewhere with loads of forgotten tech), where some of the local residents and maybe a skeleton finds the portal first. Queue expansion, queue research into the Fallen empires and how the world of Kenshi became a post-post-apocalyptic world. Maybe gets his hand on spaceship designs, maybe figuring out how the laser of god works, etc. Not a lot here because Kenshi is pretty openworld and has nearly no railroaded plot to speak of.
Maybe I'll have some more prompts thought up, maybe not.
God knows there's no one in the several dimensions he's been in that's qualified to give him therapy.
You asked for a prompt, and I shall give you prompts
Dresden:
A scanner android found some old humanity books about odd rituals and the like. Decides to do it for curiosity sake (or for another reason, like, "It'll give insight into the human's state of mind" or something). In reality its an old spellbook, and said scanner just called up a fey, or invited something malicious, or just opened up a portal to the nevernever. Chaos, expansion, and investigation into the nevernever occurs.
Harry Dresden got news about something fucky happening in the nevernever, and was told to deal with it for reasons (Outsider invasion, his debt got called and now he has to solve it, wizards intuition). It all goes sideways from there. Also Nauvis gets a body or domain in the nevernever, and could possibly be their own fey court. The Court of Evolution (or something). Summer and Winter doesn't like this, at all.
Youjo Senki:
On the teleport sequence back to Nauvis, the aim, anchor, hook, whatever, back to Nauvis gets stuck on something. Said something is Being X's divine energy in Tanya or Mary Sioux. Que expansion into the Youjo Senki world. Every nation looks at said expansion of robots and androids, and think that's the mechanized infantry of the opposing nation kept in secret. Being X and his world gets the attention of Nauvis, and maybe there's some maso going around.
(I mainly want this because I'm interested in YS's mage cores)
Kenshi:
Teleport to Nauvis doesn't work, a portal opens up in the Skeleton Graveyard (or somewhere with loads of forgotten tech), where some of the local residents and maybe a skeleton finds the portal first. Queue expansion, queue research into the Fallen empires and how the world of Kenshi became a post-post-apocalyptic world. Maybe gets his hand on spaceship designs, maybe figuring out how the laser of god works, etc. Not a lot here because Kenshi is pretty openworld and has nearly no railroaded plot to speak of.
Maybe I'll have some more prompts thought up, maybe not.
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While Slime Rancher seems fun and interesting, I really feel that Halo had the better long term story potential.
But if Slime Rancher is easier for you to write, I'm all for doing a shorter run there.
Play around there for a while as your muse takes you, and transition over to Halo as the slime story starts running down? Or ever sooner, as you might have the Androids and Minds taking over the Farming/Ranching tasks for the most part while he continues on into Halo? That way they can work on building up stockpiles of everything and exploring the place in the background while maybe checking back in with farming side stories or interludes to lighten up things as he gets into more 'serious' settings.
But if Slime Rancher is easier for you to write, I'm all for doing a shorter run there.
Play around there for a while as your muse takes you, and transition over to Halo as the slime story starts running down? Or ever sooner, as you might have the Androids and Minds taking over the Farming/Ranching tasks for the most part while he continues on into Halo? That way they can work on building up stockpiles of everything and exploring the place in the background while maybe checking back in with farming side stories or interludes to lighten up things as he gets into more 'serious' settings.
- Location
- Earth
For shame, that no one has suggested the Alien franchise, Starship Troopers, Starcraft for the bugs or Pathfinder for more Nauvis interactions, Star Trek is always a fun one as well if only for a setting where the first response of the locals isnt to always shoot your face off, MGQ Paradox would be a lark as well given how the machines made to sterilize worlds to start the spread of chaos would pull up an interesting parallel with The Engineer and the Androids. C&C and Red Alert series of games would be something to think of as well and Rogue Trooper, Borderlands, Rimworld, TF2, ARK, let alone the worlds of Fallout or L4D and perhaps most importantly, E.Y.E Divine Cybermancy.
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I would love a crossover with Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, it is a old civilisation game that initially start after the science victory in a normal civilization game.
Then it start accelerating through tech levels in a quite extreme speed. And in the endgame you can build Stargates, use time manipulation as armor and the science goal is to accend.
It actually has lore that you discover every time you first build base improvements. And a short video play after each wonder.
There is a fantastic blog if you only want to read about it instead of play it.
paeantosmac.wordpress.com
If you want to try and play you can find the game on gog.
Then it start accelerating through tech levels in a quite extreme speed. And in the endgame you can build Stargates, use time manipulation as armor and the science goal is to accend.
It actually has lore that you discover every time you first build base improvements. And a short video play after each wonder.
There is a fantastic blog if you only want to read about it instead of play it.
First Time Here?
A few people who have stumbled upon this blog after it was written have mentioned that the reverse-publication order isn’t the best way to catch up with all the material. The posts make more…
paeantosmac.wordpress.com
If you want to try and play you can find the game on gog.
Gate, StarCraft, Subnautica
- Pronouns
- That/Thing
Gate
Balistraia was both confused and annoyed. Confused because a large stone building of vaguely greek aesthetic had appeared within the, a glance through her files, still unnamed city, and annoyed because it had disgorged a few thousand hostiles. Not even interesting ones with fancy weapons or abilities, just human baseline soldiers and a few flying lizards.
Needless to say they were slaughtered by a few roaming squads of destroyer drones. What had been spared from being put towards the Nauvis side's renewed and drastically intensified warfront. Meaning the forces she had to spare were barely enough to fortify the new vulnerability, even the bulk of the turrets were being used to rapidly build hardpoints. Meaning she had a paltry fifty to spare to guard the gateway.
She didn't have that many tanks, nor could she send the androids as a few of the enemies were human. It'd result in non-insignificant psychological damage if they were to kill humans. Balistraia did not imagine they wouldn't, the androids had only grown more devoted to her commander when he revealed the truth about the moon. Showing they were alike to humans in taking illogical and nonsensical actions.
But until such time as the news had settled, and the androids had truly come to terms with it, having them partake in the fighting would be counterproductive.
The fact that the humans actively kept indentured servants and slaves would help tarnish the androids unrealistic idea of what a human actually was. They were creatures just like any other, nothing about them was inherently good or evil. Some were good, and some were evil, and as it stood the evil would take advantage of the androids pseudo-worship.
Something Balistraia would not let happen.
Propaganda could be implemented to counter condition the androids, Ideally with a stance that the commander was liberating the slaves and removing the humans keeping slaves from power. The commander wouldn't actually take up a position in governing the population on the other side of the gate, but installing and monitoring a government to do that for him was something he would do. Or actually it was something he would have Balistraia do if she gave him a plan of action.
Otherwise he was likely to just kidnap the slaves and release them on earth. Which while effective wasn't the best plan Balistraia could imagine. No, she needed to take initiative.
Honestly if this whole issue of needing to govern populations continued to arrive crafting a government mind would be needed. Something to handle the justice system, crafting new laws and managing the police forces. But Balistraia couldn't imagine her maker wanting to craft something that would serve in that role. Deciding what justice even was was gray at the best of times, and making something to arbitrate on that was a daunting task to even imagine.
She was thinking far into the future though, even with the information extracted from the captured invaders the situation on the other side of the portal was blurry at best. No true recon had been done, nor was a proper understanding of the military and political powers developed. She knew there was a monarchy and that it allowed slavery, that was about the extent of the confirmed knowledge.
Before any definite action could be taken she needed more information, and well, they were called scout tanks for a reason. A group of twenty tanks steadily advanced down the paradoxical long tunnel, the ground outside the illuminated path fading into nothingness even with her sensors. It was like driving on a bridge suspended over a void.
The journey was not long, and her twenty tanks soon arrived on a grassy hill overlooking a large plain of similar hills. Off in the distance her sensors spotted clear evidence of the invaders encampment, a series of tents and fires a bare few kilometers away from her portal. Outside of effective weapons range on her scout tanks, but not outside of the range of their sensor units.
There were only a bare few thousand troops, 6764 to be precise. Though Balistraia made note that a fair portion were likely support staff for the army. Their main mode of transportation was walking… while a small portion rode horses. She made note of the weaponry on display, mostly mundane metal armor and weapons as well as primitive bows. There were a few examples of the energy manipulation units, using this world equivalent to Maso, but the radiation here was thin compared to earths and the casters were similarly weakened.
Nothing here was even remotely a threat to her armored units, maybe one of the 'casters' could damage a tank, or one of the few remaining 'dragons' (the ones on earth were still bigger, and some androids even rode them on the dark side of the planet). But those would only be a threat if Balistaia allowed them to be.
She could have genuinely dealt with this army with just the scouting force she had brought. But that wasn't a bold enough statement, no, Balistraia would be heading straight to the nearest 'city' to take it. Outright bypassing this poor excuse for an army. Because really? No defenses, the barest amount of patrols, and no units even stationed to guard their end of the portal. Their inferior weaponry was no fault of their own, they didn't have a maker after all, but incompetence had no excuses.
If they were going to make it that easy to sneak past them she would be a fool to pass up the chance.
-------------------------------
StarCraft
I really need to stop testing the fates to mess with me, and I should do more through testing before using technology that messes with the fabric of reality. Turns out ripping a hole in reality causes other holes to get torn open. All over the planet the portal was opened too, so now Nauvis is covered in a few dozen portals. The Majority of which are on my continent but a far few are in the oceans and there are a scattering on the other two landmasses.
Good news first, the portal worked and I can reliably get from Nauvis to earth, and I think it was the fact I opened the portal in a gravity well that caused this whole mess. So I can fix that fairly easily by just opening it in orbit or in a zero-g environment.
Bad news, the other portals didn't exactly go away, and the place they went too is full of giant bugs. Honestly not surprised by this but….. Why? Oh and the portals are likely going to just keep happening for a while, which I'm just going to call bad news.
So more giant bugs, not a problem right? You're always dealing with giant bugs. Wrong, and on so many levels for so many reasons, the most basic of which being the fact I still have trouble with the damn biters.
But no, these ones also need to have tactics, and seemingly be specialized for moving through the ground like damn fish. They are bugs that swim through the ground like fish! It's my hell, and I hate literally all of it.
Already the biters and the…. Lets just call em zerg, are in an arms race of adaption. It's been like four hours and I already see specialized biter and zerg forms. My time table for dealing with the whole underground bug hive before they become proficient at it is basically gone. In a week the biters will have similar capabilities to the zerg and I'm betting most of the war will move underground. So instead of a nice slow purge I'll need to join in the damned arms race, already got some ideas. (most of them are just stealing ideas from the bugs)
The worst part is the zerg don't even know how to fight the biters, I had been taking special care to prune any hives that adapted to me or even ones that just grew too strong too quickly. But the zerg just seem to be killing the biters and dying in turn, I don't think they have come even remotely to a hive. It doesn't matter how many biters you kill, they are functionally limitless, the only thing these new bugs have managed to do is make the bugs exponentially stronger. It's watching someone feed your enemy steroids and hand them gun to go shoot you with.
At least the oceans been having fun, the zerg tried I give them that, but there isn't much you can do to survive the oceans. On any other planet I don't doubt those massive zerg forms would dominate the waters, but here it may as well have been chumming the water. I had been planning on figuring out ocean bases finally, but with the feeding frenzy going on that's a non-option. The entire ocean is writhing and I have had more than a few tanks and drones eaten by things flopping onto the land for a bit.
But more on the conflict I can actually affect, the biters seem to have the zerg contained to within a few miles of each portal. The hives have already begun their 'containment' efforts as directed by a command bug. A new one special made no doubt given its relatively small size and lack of notable deviations from standard biter form. A ring of artillery and tower worms have been set up around each zerg outbreak.
So basically just the standard defenses around every hive, and hives are rapidly growing around the perimeter giving the biters a ready supply of chaff and a fair bit of terrain control. Never actually seen the hives mycelium do anything beyond passively absorbing energy but… learn new things every day. I mean they aren't doing much, but it's kind of neat to watch them push against the zergs own creeping version of the stuff.
Creeping version because that stuff spreads rapidly, and converts basically everything rather than just existing in everything. It'd eat a tree rather than hijack it. Also a good name for it if it ever comes up, creep.
As for what the zerg are doing to the bugs, well they are trying to kill all of them with the tactic of 'drown them in our blood' or at least it looks like that on a small scale. On the bigger picture it looks like the zerg have some form of command bug for themselves. They coordinate to corral and destroy the bugs raiding parties across massive distances, so some form of ranged communication is happening.
They also seem to have a very varied selection of forms, and they deploy them in a way somewhat reminiscent of a proper army. If one that doesn't care if its units die. Air capable zerg, artillery zerg, zerg who build things, armored zerg…. If an army needs to do it the zerg has something that does that.
The biters have all that too, but they don't use them as well even with a command bug. But it's basically like the biters got into a civil war with their smaller but slightly smarter cousins. And I do mean smaller, the largest one I've seen so far that actually fought was a fifteen meter armored variant, I mean it killed like twenty bugs in the fight it was in, so it's a mean thing but.. It be tiny.
The smallest bug's I fight are the underground ones or scouting ones, or airborn ones, or the ones used as ammunition…. You know what there are a bunch of tiny ones but they don't really fight, they serve utility roles, or as expendable chaff…. Which is fighting. The average biter actually made to fight on the surface is something like ten meters tall, and twenty five long. The armored ones are more like thirty tall. And while there is a bunch of variation, the largest 'standard' bug form is about forty two meters tall and seventy meters long.
On average a single biter is far bigger than a zerg, which just makes it very concerning to watch the zerg use that to their advantage. Tunneling under the bitters and killing them via a thousand deaths (I'd say cuts but the kill death ratio makes this accurate). The biters just struggle against a bunch of small and nimble opponents. It's about the only reason drones have a use still.
The zerg are dying in droves, and the biters are dying to those droves. I don't doubt this will cause some smaller variant biters to remake an appearance. In significant numbers, already seeing an increase in the biters that make smaller biters, the pseudo mobile hives. Those aren't too practical given they need to move slowly and tend to blow up if shaken but they caused me no end of trouble and I don't doubt it'll work on the zerg as well.
Honestly I am about an hour from just going full code black and nuking every single portal on my side. The bugs won't let the zerg back through if they get pushed all the way back but… well my own plans are fucked before I could even try to implement them.
None of the portals are near my bases, but some of them are near being near my bases. So I haven't needed to fight the zerg myself, but well…. The biters not on my continent aren't doing so hot. The ones here were prepared to fight me, and the zerg are at least somewhat similar. But the other biters don't have any of the specialized forms mine developed to fight me.
Sure they have the basic ranged and close quarters versions, and a wide variety of sizes at that. But that only means they fight the zerg more chaff to chaff, without any elite units to counter the zergs own. Really on my side its elite biters against elite and chaff, and so they are doing okay but not great, while there it's elite and chaff against plain old chaff.
The bugs on those continents are dying rapidly, hell they can't do anything besides fire ineffectual at the air units. And they keep getting flanked by burrowers, it's cathartic as hell but my god do I not want the zerg to take over two whole continents even if I have an ocean between myself and them.
Which makes it an amazing thing that I have a massive army ready to clear a continent of bugs on standby, not quite the bugs I had made it for, and not the same continent. But Balistraia will make do.
-------------------------------------
Subnatica
Panicking, panic more is best idea. Freak the fuck out.
Why why why why
Are we falling from orbit?!?!
INTO AN OCEAN!?!?!?
Fucking fuck the fuck fucked.
Plan time? We have plan time right!?
Engage the gliders, it'll slow our descent from terminal velocity. We have forty-eight seconds till impact.
First, split. Find the nearest landmass, scan the ocean while we still have a vantage point. Prep underwater combat systems and preform hot-swap on the components.
My mind races as I fall, panic blinding most of me but I work regardless. The sheer panic making my body work even as my mind is paralyzed. My armor's laser systems are swapped for discharge defenses, harpoon and spear launchers mounted where my ballistic weapons had been. A significant supply of air is stored, and my armor starts to glide as I automatically search for a safe spot to land.
What the fuck is this place?!? The ocean is fucking ten kilometers deep at its shallowest anywhere we can reach before impact. Ten is shallow! Fucking hell even if there aren't monsters we might just fucking sink till we starve.
Calm, we have basic underwater propulsion and there's a dormant volcano a few hundred miles north. If we get there it should only be a few hundred meters deep at its deepest. There might even be islands.
We just have to get there.
Yeah not touching the water fuck that. Drones are a go.
And there isn't a safe spot to land, not anywhere near me at least. My scans had detected a place that might have islands but it was two hundred and eighty seven miles north of my location. And my shield parachute would only let me glide a few dozen miles. Nothing like what I needed. But I'd be fucked if I crashed into the water, dozens of my logistics and construction drones poured out through my armor and clasped onto any available piece of my armor. Giving me enough lift to fly, though steering was a difficult prospect at the speeds I was going. I was going north though, and that was all that mattered. It'd only take ten minutes to get there at my current speed, and once I was on land I could finally breathe.
But what had even happened? I just remembered going into the portal and then immediately free falling from low orbit. Even my suits' cameras had gone straight from entering portal to orbit, and I hadn't even woken up until I was a scant kilometer in the air and traveling so fast my armor was a glowing missile at terminal velocity. I was physically incapable of being rendered unconscious unless I specifically engaged those systems. So what the straight fuck.
Uhhhh uhhhh panic again. Unknown energy buildup and it's POINTING at us.
Its from the volcano…. The only piece of land has fucking ANTI AIR
Yeah thats way to much energy buildup, try diverting course. Lets see if we can just land near the caldera instead of in it.
No change, deploying countermeasures.
Decoy missiles and chaff have failed, trying stealth systems.
Target lock is still engaged, energy buildup reaching estimated peak.
I fucking hate it hear, drop below its firing ark.
That's into the water.
Would you rather get hit by what looks like a plasma gun the size of a large building? We will melt.
……………we can dodge it.
It was a good thing my sensors were scanning the volcano, if they hadn't been I wouldn't have noticed the large energy buildup. My first thought diverted my course bringing me nowhere near the thing. But when that failed to change the energy buildup I deployed my seldom used chaff. Originally designed to protect me against machine targeting systems. It did precisely nothing, nor did outright hiding all of my energy emissions.
So I did the last thing I wanted to do, I dodged, down into the water. Dropping faster than gravity could push me, my drones practically chucked me towards the depths. Just as a bright flash of plasma and radiation lanced through the air, outright incinerating a few of my drones and draining my shields to half even at the distance I had gained from my past location. The sheer shockwave propelled me even faster into the water and I skipped across the surface for a few thousand feet before finally slowing enough to sink.
As I stared down into the pitch black depths I was actively sinking into I resolved to chuck this whole planet into the sun. Just to boil away the damned oceans that spited my so.
AN-
out of these three I can safely say the Starcraft one feels like the only good one. Still, already thinking it might be down to halo, mass effect, slime rancher, or starcraft. mainly because for all of those save slime rancher I've been itching to write more. Not to say I'm done though, unless you guys grow bored of this mini thing I'ma keep it up till I run out of ideas for the settings I got.
that does mean no more suggestions for mainline though.
likes, reviews, and thoughts are lovely. Patreon has mass effect one and soon to be a few more. as well as a short warhammer thing and a maybe canon thing.
Balistraia was both confused and annoyed. Confused because a large stone building of vaguely greek aesthetic had appeared within the, a glance through her files, still unnamed city, and annoyed because it had disgorged a few thousand hostiles. Not even interesting ones with fancy weapons or abilities, just human baseline soldiers and a few flying lizards.
Needless to say they were slaughtered by a few roaming squads of destroyer drones. What had been spared from being put towards the Nauvis side's renewed and drastically intensified warfront. Meaning the forces she had to spare were barely enough to fortify the new vulnerability, even the bulk of the turrets were being used to rapidly build hardpoints. Meaning she had a paltry fifty to spare to guard the gateway.
She didn't have that many tanks, nor could she send the androids as a few of the enemies were human. It'd result in non-insignificant psychological damage if they were to kill humans. Balistraia did not imagine they wouldn't, the androids had only grown more devoted to her commander when he revealed the truth about the moon. Showing they were alike to humans in taking illogical and nonsensical actions.
But until such time as the news had settled, and the androids had truly come to terms with it, having them partake in the fighting would be counterproductive.
The fact that the humans actively kept indentured servants and slaves would help tarnish the androids unrealistic idea of what a human actually was. They were creatures just like any other, nothing about them was inherently good or evil. Some were good, and some were evil, and as it stood the evil would take advantage of the androids pseudo-worship.
Something Balistraia would not let happen.
Propaganda could be implemented to counter condition the androids, Ideally with a stance that the commander was liberating the slaves and removing the humans keeping slaves from power. The commander wouldn't actually take up a position in governing the population on the other side of the gate, but installing and monitoring a government to do that for him was something he would do. Or actually it was something he would have Balistraia do if she gave him a plan of action.
Otherwise he was likely to just kidnap the slaves and release them on earth. Which while effective wasn't the best plan Balistraia could imagine. No, she needed to take initiative.
Honestly if this whole issue of needing to govern populations continued to arrive crafting a government mind would be needed. Something to handle the justice system, crafting new laws and managing the police forces. But Balistraia couldn't imagine her maker wanting to craft something that would serve in that role. Deciding what justice even was was gray at the best of times, and making something to arbitrate on that was a daunting task to even imagine.
She was thinking far into the future though, even with the information extracted from the captured invaders the situation on the other side of the portal was blurry at best. No true recon had been done, nor was a proper understanding of the military and political powers developed. She knew there was a monarchy and that it allowed slavery, that was about the extent of the confirmed knowledge.
Before any definite action could be taken she needed more information, and well, they were called scout tanks for a reason. A group of twenty tanks steadily advanced down the paradoxical long tunnel, the ground outside the illuminated path fading into nothingness even with her sensors. It was like driving on a bridge suspended over a void.
The journey was not long, and her twenty tanks soon arrived on a grassy hill overlooking a large plain of similar hills. Off in the distance her sensors spotted clear evidence of the invaders encampment, a series of tents and fires a bare few kilometers away from her portal. Outside of effective weapons range on her scout tanks, but not outside of the range of their sensor units.
There were only a bare few thousand troops, 6764 to be precise. Though Balistraia made note that a fair portion were likely support staff for the army. Their main mode of transportation was walking… while a small portion rode horses. She made note of the weaponry on display, mostly mundane metal armor and weapons as well as primitive bows. There were a few examples of the energy manipulation units, using this world equivalent to Maso, but the radiation here was thin compared to earths and the casters were similarly weakened.
Nothing here was even remotely a threat to her armored units, maybe one of the 'casters' could damage a tank, or one of the few remaining 'dragons' (the ones on earth were still bigger, and some androids even rode them on the dark side of the planet). But those would only be a threat if Balistaia allowed them to be.
She could have genuinely dealt with this army with just the scouting force she had brought. But that wasn't a bold enough statement, no, Balistraia would be heading straight to the nearest 'city' to take it. Outright bypassing this poor excuse for an army. Because really? No defenses, the barest amount of patrols, and no units even stationed to guard their end of the portal. Their inferior weaponry was no fault of their own, they didn't have a maker after all, but incompetence had no excuses.
If they were going to make it that easy to sneak past them she would be a fool to pass up the chance.
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StarCraft
I really need to stop testing the fates to mess with me, and I should do more through testing before using technology that messes with the fabric of reality. Turns out ripping a hole in reality causes other holes to get torn open. All over the planet the portal was opened too, so now Nauvis is covered in a few dozen portals. The Majority of which are on my continent but a far few are in the oceans and there are a scattering on the other two landmasses.
Good news first, the portal worked and I can reliably get from Nauvis to earth, and I think it was the fact I opened the portal in a gravity well that caused this whole mess. So I can fix that fairly easily by just opening it in orbit or in a zero-g environment.
Bad news, the other portals didn't exactly go away, and the place they went too is full of giant bugs. Honestly not surprised by this but….. Why? Oh and the portals are likely going to just keep happening for a while, which I'm just going to call bad news.
So more giant bugs, not a problem right? You're always dealing with giant bugs. Wrong, and on so many levels for so many reasons, the most basic of which being the fact I still have trouble with the damn biters.
But no, these ones also need to have tactics, and seemingly be specialized for moving through the ground like damn fish. They are bugs that swim through the ground like fish! It's my hell, and I hate literally all of it.
Already the biters and the…. Lets just call em zerg, are in an arms race of adaption. It's been like four hours and I already see specialized biter and zerg forms. My time table for dealing with the whole underground bug hive before they become proficient at it is basically gone. In a week the biters will have similar capabilities to the zerg and I'm betting most of the war will move underground. So instead of a nice slow purge I'll need to join in the damned arms race, already got some ideas. (most of them are just stealing ideas from the bugs)
The worst part is the zerg don't even know how to fight the biters, I had been taking special care to prune any hives that adapted to me or even ones that just grew too strong too quickly. But the zerg just seem to be killing the biters and dying in turn, I don't think they have come even remotely to a hive. It doesn't matter how many biters you kill, they are functionally limitless, the only thing these new bugs have managed to do is make the bugs exponentially stronger. It's watching someone feed your enemy steroids and hand them gun to go shoot you with.
At least the oceans been having fun, the zerg tried I give them that, but there isn't much you can do to survive the oceans. On any other planet I don't doubt those massive zerg forms would dominate the waters, but here it may as well have been chumming the water. I had been planning on figuring out ocean bases finally, but with the feeding frenzy going on that's a non-option. The entire ocean is writhing and I have had more than a few tanks and drones eaten by things flopping onto the land for a bit.
But more on the conflict I can actually affect, the biters seem to have the zerg contained to within a few miles of each portal. The hives have already begun their 'containment' efforts as directed by a command bug. A new one special made no doubt given its relatively small size and lack of notable deviations from standard biter form. A ring of artillery and tower worms have been set up around each zerg outbreak.
So basically just the standard defenses around every hive, and hives are rapidly growing around the perimeter giving the biters a ready supply of chaff and a fair bit of terrain control. Never actually seen the hives mycelium do anything beyond passively absorbing energy but… learn new things every day. I mean they aren't doing much, but it's kind of neat to watch them push against the zergs own creeping version of the stuff.
Creeping version because that stuff spreads rapidly, and converts basically everything rather than just existing in everything. It'd eat a tree rather than hijack it. Also a good name for it if it ever comes up, creep.
As for what the zerg are doing to the bugs, well they are trying to kill all of them with the tactic of 'drown them in our blood' or at least it looks like that on a small scale. On the bigger picture it looks like the zerg have some form of command bug for themselves. They coordinate to corral and destroy the bugs raiding parties across massive distances, so some form of ranged communication is happening.
They also seem to have a very varied selection of forms, and they deploy them in a way somewhat reminiscent of a proper army. If one that doesn't care if its units die. Air capable zerg, artillery zerg, zerg who build things, armored zerg…. If an army needs to do it the zerg has something that does that.
The biters have all that too, but they don't use them as well even with a command bug. But it's basically like the biters got into a civil war with their smaller but slightly smarter cousins. And I do mean smaller, the largest one I've seen so far that actually fought was a fifteen meter armored variant, I mean it killed like twenty bugs in the fight it was in, so it's a mean thing but.. It be tiny.
The smallest bug's I fight are the underground ones or scouting ones, or airborn ones, or the ones used as ammunition…. You know what there are a bunch of tiny ones but they don't really fight, they serve utility roles, or as expendable chaff…. Which is fighting. The average biter actually made to fight on the surface is something like ten meters tall, and twenty five long. The armored ones are more like thirty tall. And while there is a bunch of variation, the largest 'standard' bug form is about forty two meters tall and seventy meters long.
On average a single biter is far bigger than a zerg, which just makes it very concerning to watch the zerg use that to their advantage. Tunneling under the bitters and killing them via a thousand deaths (I'd say cuts but the kill death ratio makes this accurate). The biters just struggle against a bunch of small and nimble opponents. It's about the only reason drones have a use still.
The zerg are dying in droves, and the biters are dying to those droves. I don't doubt this will cause some smaller variant biters to remake an appearance. In significant numbers, already seeing an increase in the biters that make smaller biters, the pseudo mobile hives. Those aren't too practical given they need to move slowly and tend to blow up if shaken but they caused me no end of trouble and I don't doubt it'll work on the zerg as well.
Honestly I am about an hour from just going full code black and nuking every single portal on my side. The bugs won't let the zerg back through if they get pushed all the way back but… well my own plans are fucked before I could even try to implement them.
None of the portals are near my bases, but some of them are near being near my bases. So I haven't needed to fight the zerg myself, but well…. The biters not on my continent aren't doing so hot. The ones here were prepared to fight me, and the zerg are at least somewhat similar. But the other biters don't have any of the specialized forms mine developed to fight me.
Sure they have the basic ranged and close quarters versions, and a wide variety of sizes at that. But that only means they fight the zerg more chaff to chaff, without any elite units to counter the zergs own. Really on my side its elite biters against elite and chaff, and so they are doing okay but not great, while there it's elite and chaff against plain old chaff.
The bugs on those continents are dying rapidly, hell they can't do anything besides fire ineffectual at the air units. And they keep getting flanked by burrowers, it's cathartic as hell but my god do I not want the zerg to take over two whole continents even if I have an ocean between myself and them.
Which makes it an amazing thing that I have a massive army ready to clear a continent of bugs on standby, not quite the bugs I had made it for, and not the same continent. But Balistraia will make do.
-------------------------------------
Subnatica
Panicking, panic more is best idea. Freak the fuck out.
Why why why why
Are we falling from orbit?!?!
INTO AN OCEAN!?!?!?
Fucking fuck the fuck fucked.
Plan time? We have plan time right!?
Engage the gliders, it'll slow our descent from terminal velocity. We have forty-eight seconds till impact.
First, split. Find the nearest landmass, scan the ocean while we still have a vantage point. Prep underwater combat systems and preform hot-swap on the components.
My mind races as I fall, panic blinding most of me but I work regardless. The sheer panic making my body work even as my mind is paralyzed. My armor's laser systems are swapped for discharge defenses, harpoon and spear launchers mounted where my ballistic weapons had been. A significant supply of air is stored, and my armor starts to glide as I automatically search for a safe spot to land.
What the fuck is this place?!? The ocean is fucking ten kilometers deep at its shallowest anywhere we can reach before impact. Ten is shallow! Fucking hell even if there aren't monsters we might just fucking sink till we starve.
Calm, we have basic underwater propulsion and there's a dormant volcano a few hundred miles north. If we get there it should only be a few hundred meters deep at its deepest. There might even be islands.
We just have to get there.
Yeah not touching the water fuck that. Drones are a go.
And there isn't a safe spot to land, not anywhere near me at least. My scans had detected a place that might have islands but it was two hundred and eighty seven miles north of my location. And my shield parachute would only let me glide a few dozen miles. Nothing like what I needed. But I'd be fucked if I crashed into the water, dozens of my logistics and construction drones poured out through my armor and clasped onto any available piece of my armor. Giving me enough lift to fly, though steering was a difficult prospect at the speeds I was going. I was going north though, and that was all that mattered. It'd only take ten minutes to get there at my current speed, and once I was on land I could finally breathe.
But what had even happened? I just remembered going into the portal and then immediately free falling from low orbit. Even my suits' cameras had gone straight from entering portal to orbit, and I hadn't even woken up until I was a scant kilometer in the air and traveling so fast my armor was a glowing missile at terminal velocity. I was physically incapable of being rendered unconscious unless I specifically engaged those systems. So what the straight fuck.
Uhhhh uhhhh panic again. Unknown energy buildup and it's POINTING at us.
Its from the volcano…. The only piece of land has fucking ANTI AIR
Yeah thats way to much energy buildup, try diverting course. Lets see if we can just land near the caldera instead of in it.
No change, deploying countermeasures.
Decoy missiles and chaff have failed, trying stealth systems.
Target lock is still engaged, energy buildup reaching estimated peak.
I fucking hate it hear, drop below its firing ark.
That's into the water.
Would you rather get hit by what looks like a plasma gun the size of a large building? We will melt.
……………we can dodge it.
It was a good thing my sensors were scanning the volcano, if they hadn't been I wouldn't have noticed the large energy buildup. My first thought diverted my course bringing me nowhere near the thing. But when that failed to change the energy buildup I deployed my seldom used chaff. Originally designed to protect me against machine targeting systems. It did precisely nothing, nor did outright hiding all of my energy emissions.
So I did the last thing I wanted to do, I dodged, down into the water. Dropping faster than gravity could push me, my drones practically chucked me towards the depths. Just as a bright flash of plasma and radiation lanced through the air, outright incinerating a few of my drones and draining my shields to half even at the distance I had gained from my past location. The sheer shockwave propelled me even faster into the water and I skipped across the surface for a few thousand feet before finally slowing enough to sink.
As I stared down into the pitch black depths I was actively sinking into I resolved to chuck this whole planet into the sun. Just to boil away the damned oceans that spited my so.
AN-
out of these three I can safely say the Starcraft one feels like the only good one. Still, already thinking it might be down to halo, mass effect, slime rancher, or starcraft. mainly because for all of those save slime rancher I've been itching to write more. Not to say I'm done though, unless you guys grow bored of this mini thing I'ma keep it up till I run out of ideas for the settings I got.
that does mean no more suggestions for mainline though.
likes, reviews, and thoughts are lovely. Patreon has mass effect one and soon to be a few more. as well as a short warhammer thing and a maybe canon thing.
- Pronouns
- That/Thing
You're not wrong there, but with a few months on earth the engineer could have a few hundred corvettes, also he has portals. which currently only work on the ground but well.... who says he can't just stick em on a ship and teleport it. And I'm pretty sure it still takes the covenant a few months or weeks to move across a fair portion of the galaxy. I wouldn't throw the engineer into a fight I wasn't sure he could win, also he has mac cannon defense platform equivalents (though not as good, but like, quantity). He is very good at defense and half his orbital weapons serve just as well as defenses if he shifts which way they are pointing.
good good, and helpful. Just what I wanted really.
Yeah, that's a plan if I end up using the setting. it wouldn't be a long one, maybe five chapters?
- Location
- RS,brasil
Love How the ocean meme is going strong
Makes him meet mako tsunami from the abridged séries
Mako: I am married to the ocean
MC: ...you are a braver Man than I would ever be
Makes him meet mako tsunami from the abridged séries
Mako: I am married to the ocean
MC: ...you are a braver Man than I would ever be
- Location
- Earth
Do not speak of the Ocean, do not look at the Ocean, do not think of the Ocean and all will be fine and dandy.
- Location
- UK
I'm getting a bit confused now… Are these all canon? If not, would writing in side story or apocrypha not be better?
Oh he is going to love Rad slimes, especially once he learns the slimes have favorite foods that double their output (except for the pink slimes which don't have a favorite).
Of the six new worlds (and their associated blurbs) you have introduced Halo and Slime Rancher are the ones I like most. The Androids are going to go nuts when they find Halo humanity.
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- Pronouns
- That/Thing
These are all potential canons, I'm going to pick one after a bit then move the rest to apcrypha.
TrueGuardian32
Unfinished Writer
- Location
- Arkansas
I came back to read more, and I loved it.