Fluid Pestilence (Sci-Fi, LitRPG)
- Thread starter E.I.G.
- Start date
- Original
Saphire
Lurking dragon
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So... Is it too early to welcome Flamescale into being a bit of a god, rather than just an eldritch monster to summon?
It sounds like their ritual latched onto Flamescale as a very close "good enough" match, including very close name use. But the question I have is whether or not this ends up somehow affecting other instances though Void/Synch bullshit or not. Because it would be quite interesting if they accidentally multiversally tied the concept of the Great Devourer to Flamescale thanks to this.
Hey look, she now can get missions without the game interface. Void Strike is truly a unique game huh? Or what was that one phrase...
Finally get to see almost an external observer description that properly shows most of what's happening. There's a reason people keep thinking she's the Great Devourer, and it's because a whole city-factory is just gone. Good on them all for stopping before going for a civilian city, righteous rage not blinding them into becoming a new season's enemy to cull.
Also wait what is that about a Girant Control Virus?
It sounds like their ritual latched onto Flamescale as a very close "good enough" match, including very close name use. But the question I have is whether or not this ends up somehow affecting other instances though Void/Synch bullshit or not. Because it would be quite interesting if they accidentally multiversally tied the concept of the Great Devourer to Flamescale thanks to this.
Hey look, she now can get missions without the game interface. Void Strike is truly a unique game huh? Or what was that one phrase...
Finally get to see almost an external observer description that properly shows most of what's happening. There's a reason people keep thinking she's the Great Devourer, and it's because a whole city-factory is just gone. Good on them all for stopping before going for a civilian city, righteous rage not blinding them into becoming a new season's enemy to cull.
Also wait what is that about a Girant Control Virus?
I have a suspicion that it involves nukes. Lots and lots and lots of nukes.
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E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
To be clear, Jplo's Great Devourer is Jovian, not Sledge.
- Location
- Colorado
This is what I get for not going back and checking, and leaves far less to wonder what with the Decay skill tree which I don't know why I didn't make note of that on the previous two times I read that chapter.
Saphire
Lurking dragon
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oops. Forgot who is who and trusted the comment ^^" I kinda get lost in the variety of characters at times. I have a bunch of facts about them, but the name - identity - fact linking is a bit loose.
Maybe someone could write an info post with the dramatis personae? Though dunno how to handle like, spoilers...
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
I do have a document that I use for development work that should have that information, but turning that into an info post and keeping it up to date is harder than it sounds. Even if I did include spoilers I would still need to clean up anything that was changed and only exists as a note on previous thoughts.
The only thing worse than starting a character post is the unhappiness made by not having updated it recently enough.
I would appreciate it greatly if anyone took up that task, but again I know it is a hard thing to do when I do have the design documents let alone without, so I don't want anything to feel obligated to do it instead.
Ghost in a wall
Just a bit spooky
You know, this does bring up a good point- we don't really know When Voidstrike happens compared to Earth's timeline right? I mean, for all the playerbase who are aware of the state of things know, Earth could just be.... primitive dinosaurs right now. I doubt that's an angle to go, as if one thinks about it, they can already realize that the Void is atemporal.
Afterall, instances and previous raids can still be done, despite years passing from their release dates. Gameplay wise, yeah, you'd want to keep access to that stuff. Lore wise? It brings up some interesting angles on not just how you can repeat an instance-- but how you can go back to the time of an instance, and jump back to the 'present' in another timeline/universe/instance.
I feel like I'm terrible at explaining these kinds of thoughts, but the summary is that if each instance is a river, and the void is the land between the rivers, players can leave a river and enter another one at any given point as long as there is a 'safe access point' for them to get in form.
Afterall, instances and previous raids can still be done, despite years passing from their release dates. Gameplay wise, yeah, you'd want to keep access to that stuff. Lore wise? It brings up some interesting angles on not just how you can repeat an instance-- but how you can go back to the time of an instance, and jump back to the 'present' in another timeline/universe/instance.
I feel like I'm terrible at explaining these kinds of thoughts, but the summary is that if each instance is a river, and the void is the land between the rivers, players can leave a river and enter another one at any given point as long as there is a 'safe access point' for them to get in form.
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It doesn't sound too far off from the Rhizocephala's relation to the Ancients, at least going by name and noted observed behaviour within the story ("feral" rhizo vs... not-feral)
Still horrifying? Yes! But with precedence. Which makes it worse.
this sentence reads a bit clumsily for me, not an actual error but it just feels a bit clunky. I'd suggest:
(hope that formats correctly... gah)
good chapter, though... this has a great many implications. especially on the time travel front that has been repeatedly brought up... either it's going to come to an actual head eventually, or it'll simmer out in the background and be left as one of those things better because it's left unexplained. Whichever path you choose, Author, is up to you.
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E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
I do think that commas don't work quite right here, and this might be better.
Let me try it a few different ways:
If none of these are great I might want to just rewrite that sentence to get across the idea without the interjection.
How long until a cosplayer with sync technology falls over, breaks something, and learns they can now breathe fire in the human instance? 🤔
Some people are srsly weird about their favorite vtubers.
Some people are srsly weird about their favorite vtubers.
Saphire
Lurking dragon
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oh no. I didn't think about the effect of "void entity emulation" on the human world. And why would it be any different from what's happening in Local Space? Oh no oh noooooo.
I am unsure how difficult it would be to get the stuff for emulation though, without basically working in Void/Synch lab like Helen.
Hmm. I'm now wondering how much lowercase-S skill transfers over to her from Flamescale, in sense of her being able to infiltrate places and fight. On one hand it would be neat to see. On another, shit's fucked if she ever has to for real. Though it could be some kind of artificial demonstration, just her showing off "Oh yeah I'm kinda an eldritch mercenary". Or maybe some dumbasses trying to attack their lab in protest, takeover or robbing attempt, and get their ass handed to them. Damn, now I low key want to see that...
Development Meeting
New
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
--- 44 - Development Meeting ---
Flamescale still had a lot of Slinks to find a new home for after nearly a week of interrogation to figure out how they made her into their demon goddess, although she was tempted to extend her accidental miracle to include shoving the surviving Slinks to the free Slink world of their home instance. It wasn't like they weren't already worshiping her on that world, brand new little pools of her infection included. She could always just dump all of them back there and deal with the consequences later.
Yellow-Glow did not look like he was doing much better as he scrambled to look over the details one last time before the big meeting. The fact that these Local Void Emulation constructs could interact with Void Entities had him split between trying to use that for his own ambitions to control random robots in any instance, and being horrified at the implications for how widespread side effects of this could impact Void Entities. This time, instead of as a threat to the Entities, there was a big chance this led to more Entity caused chaos across the instances of Local Space.
"Still nothing for me yet," Sixteen pointed out in his Void Entity form from next to a communications console inside the conspiracy's shared base, with Squeaky currently pacing around the room. Sledge and ThunderFang were nearby if they were needed, but the focus for the moment was on the technical experts they had and the issue with Flamescale's growing emulation construct. "I don't know if that is because mine are a subset of yours, or if we just haven't ran into any instances where they are trying for mine specifically."
"I'm upset with the few I've got as possibilities," Squeaky grumbled and continued to pace. "Most of them were started by 319 quartermasters named 'Squeaky' who decided to actually make good on the insult. I haven't checked closer if they are actual other versions of me yet, or just got the same name the same way."
"Do we know how many of the development team are coming?" Flamescale asked her old friend to somewhat distract from the topic of emulation constructs that targeted them. "Actually, do we know how many are still working on Void Strike?" There had been something that went wrong with the original office during the first few months, and quite a few people had quit around the time they stopped setting up tutorial missions.
"Two of them will be here," Yellow-Glow said, but he sounded a bit evasive. "Star Stride and Worthstone are in charge of this part of the development team's operations."
"Yellow-Glow, is this a fast meeting for the new massive issue of Void Entities possibly being made into gods, or is this a meeting you set up a while ago where we need to change topics on them?" Flamescale asked uneasily. Because she knew they were going to be contacted about helping the developers gather information and deal with the great taboo, but that was before they ran into more problems again.
"I have attempted to give them an update about this, but the current line of communications is slow. This meeting was intended to get us more direct contact instead of still using what works from the support system," Yellow-Glow admitted with a sigh. "It is very possible that we will need to break the news of this development to them. I am aware that some others have been tracing possible sources of the new Local developments, but I was hoping to find out how many have been more directly observing the results using Void scanners made from recovered ancient data."
"Has anyone else captured a Core Mucin yet?" Sixteen asked critically. "Because I've had people tell me that guide is a prank when I bring it up."
Flamescale's friend hesitated. "Yellow-Glow, we didn't get proper Void construct sensors that can detect these until we had your Core Mucin to work with," she pointed out to him, uneasy with the implication. "You do know someone else who has pulled it off again, right?"
"I believe that a full conversion of Mucin material is needed to succeed, and there are very limited options for that in Skill Trees. Fewer that are worth the attempt," Yellow-Glow clarified unhappily. "Your Contagion branches can overpower the lesser Mucin in the aftermath of the Core's death, and others have reproduced that with the expanded effect spreading beyond the Citadel to nearby bastion-network sites, but none have had reason and will to recreate what I have done. I fear that they might see it as an already conquered challenge of minimal value."
"It isn't like we are really sharing the tech we're making either," Squeaky pointed out and stopped pacing. Her four tails still lashed around behind her. "We can't exactly complain that nobody else has the tech if we aren't giving it out either. I know why we aren't, but that does limit how far anyone can get when they don't make an entire advanced civilization just to run some advanced R&D."
The discussion was then interrupted by the sudden arrival of two more Void Entities, an instant change that made Flamescale wish that there was more indication for people allowed into a shared base with an invitation. Star Stride was famously a suit of knights armor with added robotic and technological parts that often appeared in the announcements inside Void Strike, and a couple of the earlier promotions before the launch. Worthstone by contrast wasn't a developer that commonly was seen, and seemed to for some reason to have decided to just look like a generic Mucin.
"Oh, you have Local Space players too," Worthstone said first while they looked at Sixteen and Squeaky. "Recruited, or minions given accounts to fill out the group?"
"We were minions first, but Sixteen here volunteered while I went too far to avoid being able to use the forums," Squeaky grumbled. "So, you two are responsible for the exact kind of eldritch horrors Local Space is summoning?"
"We are- Wait, went too far doing what?" Worthstone started to reply.
"This is Death-Sound I take it?" Star Stride interrupted instead of letting them reply. "The one behind the new Local currency solution that Flamescale has implemented as part of her strategy of going to dozens of different instances at once."
"You say that like that is something nobody else is doing," Flamescale pointed out uneasily. "I know there are other players who are making their own little civilizations. Mother Mayview has an entire group of them."
"Not counting the recent odd situations where yourself and Mother Mayview among others are showing some error ridden minion results in instances you've never been to," Star Stride said and Flamescale flinched at the news that Mayview was having the same problem that the developers really needed to understand. "You are by far the most widespread player to be using minions long term."
"By a long shot. I'm still not sure what you did to get repeated gate-to-point openings," Worthstone added quickly afterwards. "Honestly that is the big one we are here for. They almost even look targeted, I've want to ask how you got one so close to that dead instance Macrophylla Void Lab ever since I worked out that you couldn't have gotten in with the first off target gate."
"We have quite a few problems going on then," Sixteen grumbled. "Because that was extremely targeted. We were hitting a secondary site first because it didn't have scanners that could track the insertion of a slow FTL shuttle, and the closer gate target was just to get our battleship in place to eliminate the guard cruiser. What exactly do you want from us with this partnership?"
"You have been to instances outside of the Hidden Galaxy," Star Stride started to answer, then sighed. "We deliberately restricted Void Rifts to just the one galaxy when we figured out what went wrong, but that doesn't help with the Local Void Gates. We can't track outside there either yet, even the instance information is lost if you go that far. As a result, we have no idea if it is possible for Locals to somehow reach out of Void Strike and to the regular world."
Flamescale snapped her face directly to Star Stride. "You don't know. You don't-" Flamescale hissed at the pair. "Squeaky has been to our home instance. We are using that to help develop tracking systems to see if gates have been opened there." She then shook her head. "But while we need to deal with that, I am now really worried about the latest development. How much do you know about the new Locals using powers like Void Entities?"
"You've found something?" Worthstone jumped on that topic immediately. "We've been trying everything to work it out, but no two labs making the stuff are giving the same data. It has been as rough as trying to work out how summoning a Rift works, and we have no idea what makes those work or not work in different instances yet. The best idea we have so far is it must be related to how the ancients break the normal laws of physics that instances work on, but there aren't many players who run their own labs and most of those are focused on just making better weapons or things to sell."
"This investigation would be going a lot better if the players who make or take over Local powers also tried to develop better stuff more often," Star Stride unfortunately confirmed that description. "Some are working on things like Void Gates, but it sounds like you have some practical results on that too. Did you manage to get some Locals to make something out of that ancient Citadel your group captured intact?"
Flamescale had the gate in the room open, to the clear surprise of the developers. "Come on, I think I'm going to need my R&D leads' help with explaining everything," she declared. "Then I think Squeaky might need to show you what her big project was."
---
"Yellow-Glow, please tell me that this is some kind of massive prank," Flamescale questioned harshly while the pair was distracted with R&D.
"With any luck it will be. I doubt that Entity controlled Void Labs are truly that rare, but if they are not detecting other fully functional gate-to-point systems yet then we may be ahead of everyone at the moment," Yellow-Glow agreed with her. "This is still a good result. If they can at minimum track which Entities are outside of Caldwell 5 then we should have a short list of violation possibilities."
"I can't believe they called it 'the Hidden Galaxy'," Flamescale complained, having done a minimum check for the name of the specific one in the old game promotions just before the meeting. "I don't suppose we're lucky and it is really far away by galaxy standards?"
"Caldwell 5 is historically known as 'the Hidden Galaxy' because the dust of the Milky Way blocks the light so it is not visible to the naked eye," Yellow-Glow unfortunately responded instead. "It is one of the closest, although not a truly 'local' galaxy."
"The galaxy is genuinely called- Right, okay..." Flamescale cut herself off, and then realized what Left-and-Right had shifted the topic to. "Move, my R&D has an idea and we need to do damage control." More specifically Left-and-Right had managed to get into technical details of the scanner's results about Void Strike, and the idea of modifications that could allow for better control over the emulation constructs.
"You are probably too late to stop them," Star Stride said to the Flamescale that had already been with them as the one with Yellow-Glow arrived. "Worthstone wanted something like a deity system to exist back during development, and has a few half finished pieces that he wants to use somehow before they drift into something dangerous."
"After days of trying to keep a merging pile of poorly made Void constructs from drifting into making me a doomsday plague across multiple instances, I fully understand that issue," Flamescale had to point out, even if it made Star Stride flinch since she used the newly arrived body instead of the one he had been talking with. "But Worthstone is talking about getting this made into 'an official third party tool' complete with an update message."
"Connection to Void Strike directly is not advised." "The system is too stable and may limit future modification too heavily." "While also possibly introducing unneeded risk to Void Entities," Left-and-Right were arguing, and a big part of the rush had been Flamescale realizing that her rather odd R&D leads were being the voice of reason here.
"The alternative to allow for greater control is to establish a synch with the construct more directly," Worthstone pointed out. "Can you guarantee that these will not become stable full synch situations? Being limited to Void Strike solutions is better if we can't be sure that an emergency destruction of the construct is possible."
"It is a secondary construct." "The rules that create it are dependent on another." "And as a result there is a clear hole in them," Left-and-Right argued. "The stability is increased by these actions." "But it will never be perfect enough to prevent all forms of destruction."
"If anything, making it this way means it is easier to replace," Vwsa pointed out a bit tiredly, and Flamescale noticed that this seemed to be her first contribution to this conversation. "When we were building it we honestly broke the thing a couple of times before we got this one going. That was using makeshift stuff built by Slinks who were getting lost in the religion part, and we didn't even know about other instances." Flamescale felt a bit bad about putting the former Slink in charge of that part.
"Why exactly did you make these sort of people?" Star Stride quietly asked the Flamescale next to Yellow-Glow.
"I just left them how I found them when I brought them back as Lava Vipers. Well, except for the ones Squeaky recruited directly, they weren't technically 'brought back' just converted," she answered with a huff. "And the refugees too I guess, but I try and just resettle those." It didn't always work, and for instances being overrun by the ancient forces the number who ended up converted because they had nowhere to go was becoming a bit notable.
"You are using revived locals for some of your minion forces?" Star Stride questioned to clarify, and Flamescale frowned at him. "We have been starting with anyone who builds up a large group of long term minions, any that are used for at least fifteen out of the last thirty days. Most of the ones we work with use custom made minds for their minions, and they are using a lot less than you are. You were already on the list to contact, but between your sheer size, how visible you've been lately making the bastion-network guides, and the trade station improvements we wanted to hold off until you contacted us."
"I think I'm only a bit over twenty thousand Vipers," Flamescale pointed out. "That is a lot less than most people can reach with the zombie Trees on missions."
"You have how many?" Yellow-Glow of all people half shouted. "What are all of them doing?"
"Most of them are civilians, but a lot are my industrial base, and I am running scout and attack missions in dozens of instances at a time," Flamescale pointed out. "I think Sixteen is using squads of four to ten for scout work now, with reserves too so that's probably a few hundred on its own. Then the actual attack forces are definitely in the thousands, and that is before we get to keeping a space fleet running to get them in and out. The shuttles for those scouts need at least three people each just for maintenance, without counting the manufacturing or trade side of things, and I am building up a proper fleet of warships that need even more for maintenance and crew." She was getting a bit too much disbelief from Yellow-Glow and Star Stride's reaction. "Sledge's anti-pirate group has to be at least twice that size."
"Sledge doesn't have or want a direct connection to their minds," Yellow-Glow pointed out.
"He will likely not avoid that if he wants this sort of system." "The control over the construct will require a degree of control and authority over those using it," Left-and-Right jumped into this side conversation.
"Not to mention that if we really have Void Entities that even just partially match gods and demons they probably are going to end up with control as well just from a side effect. With or without this modification and control method," Vwsa noted with a grumble. "I know it happened to me with Flamescale, so if 'Sledge' is planning on making a fake god thing for his people he probably will still end up with that part."
"The real issue is control," Worthstone countered quickly, but clearly thinking about his response. "We can't add or remove any external interfaces to Void Strike. We only have the ones that we started with, like the payment system, the synch connection system, the Void Rifts along with their mission interface, and the minion control system. Those are the only places where we can have the system interact with things other than Void Entities, along with some minor ones, but these connections can't be disabled or more added. Even if we do directly link this new construct it would only shift things to use the minion control system, so having it separated would give us some more options there, but it would need its own synch link to control it properly."
"We didn't actually plan on there being a real god controlling the system," Vwsa noted, but her mind showed Flamescale that this was mostly agreement. "In theory these systems should be able to be made with only outside control systems. I've double checked the notes we recovered, and I can confirm that the inputs and outputs can't be changed without damage to stability, but you can still set up a full control set first." The new Viper turned towards Left-and-Right.
"However, anything less than a solid synch link will result in a system that can destabilize due to drift in that way," Flamescale's R&D leads added to her statement. "The controls would be limited." "While the interpretation of the system would vary as users were added and removed." "Without a single core individual to focus the rules around." "Or a set of rules that is firm and complete with fixed external interfaces." "The system would break apart or become hazardous after some time."
Star Stride looked like he had heard this before, but didn't like hearing it from four people. "If your people are that far along then I almost want to leave Worthstone here with them while I see the rest of what you have myself," he sighed. "Because we need to stabilize this issue, and I want to make sure you can keep up with the R&D demands for it."
---
Flamescale had not really looked at her infrastructure in full before. The factories and other production equipment had been spread across multiple former Ancient Forge sites and other bastion style structures, so she had only ever seen individual structures as they finished. Similarly the cities she had more clearly deserved the title of "city" than she had really realized. Flamescale had thought she was joking when she called her Vipers a small civilization, but having to show someone else what she had drove in that it was in fact a true statement.
"So, now that you see what I have, can you answer some of my questions?" she asked. Just because she was intimidated didn't mean she needed to show it, and she wasn't sure that she entirely trusted the developers even after meeting them.
"Possibly," Star Stride said quietly while they took in the skyline of the single city on a molten lava covered world where Squeaky built that city on a whim. "What are the questions?"
"Why not just stop selling, or change the price to be high enough, that nobody could buy Void Strike if you can't just shut that down?" It had bothered Flamescale from the start. The developers had to know, but the easiest answer to stopping people from becoming unknowing killers had never happened.
"We can't. That is one part of the system we have very limited control over, and honestly the thing even gives the price in Local Space currency when a Local gets the link. Whatever currency is used actually," Star Stride answered tiredly. "We can't even put the game on sale, because that part was broken when we launched with a plan to fix it after for a first season sale price."
"I thought so. It seemed like it had to be something like that as soon as Squeaky said that Locals could buy them," Flamescale admitted and stopped standing. Lay down wasn't quite the right wording for it, because that implied that most of her body wasn't already on the ground. "What can you control to try and keep Entities contained?"
"We can control formation of Void Rifts to a degree. They have to be able to form somewhere, and the real issue is that it is technically the case that we limit where missions are recieved from," he explained, sitting down on the rocky ridge. "In reality, there is an endless variety of instances out there, and the only thing giving a feeling of progression is the methods we use to filter out missions set on an instance later in the relative timeline. We can control what a Rift can be opened to, but that doesn't do anything for Void Gates."
Star Stride sighed and looked up at the sky before he continued, "We are currently under investigation for the presence of what appears to be people making fictional-individual AIs illegally. We are trying to explain that we have a larger problem than that, and we are using this to look like we are talking about that larger issue, but the truth is that at least one group of players has worked out how to use gates to find real instances of fictional realities. That is our main concern at the moment."
"Are you certain they aren't people illegally making AIs think they are fictional characters, and then giving them accounts?" Flamescale questioned, although the account part was a guess. She couldn't really think of how the news of such a thing would get out otherwise.
"We can trace them to many of the situations where someone went to a location outside of our tracking range using referral data," Star Stride clarified. "We also have some idea how it started. Apparently sometimes when you die you really do end up in another universe instead. Someone worked out how to use that to track fictional instances, and from there used one shot gate-to-point systems to get into those instances. Some of the situation is clearly fictional characters with accounts, but other parts are reports of what looks like illegal AI environment systems connected to Void Strike. Places where Void Entities are interacting with worlds from fiction."
"Most people who want to take over a human world are going for human worlds that aren't ours," Flamescale realized, but she didn't like the other implications here. "You are too busy for the great taboo problem," she noted unhappily, not bringing up that those fictional instances could result in even worse breaches of the great taboo. She also now needed to ask Sledge if there really were people who ended up in other worlds after dying, because that was another possible source of great taboo violations she had not really considered by people who wanted to get back home.
"You have that handled better than anyone else can do it right now, the development team included," he said sadly. "We will give you our full support with your efforts there, and maybe if we get more free time we will see what else we can do. The new issue with Local Void developments is a bigger immediate problem to solve, and the things being done with the gates connected to fictional worlds we have detected so far is what we have to be focused on until we have an answer for it." He shrugged and leaned back. "So far nobody has been both able and willing to cause a problem in our home reality. We've done our best to make sure being able to do it is rather hard to pull off, so you just need to worry about anyone who is willing to do it despite that."
---
[Author's Note]
This one fought me. I'm not sure yet if it is getting a major rework to cut parts or not yet. I like the idea of clarifying how I imagine crossovers to happen, and that does address what could be causing other problems, but part of me thinks it is too far and should just be cut.
Also I can't decide if Flamescale's Lava Viper population is too large or too small, and slightly afraid it might somehow be both.
Flamescale still had a lot of Slinks to find a new home for after nearly a week of interrogation to figure out how they made her into their demon goddess, although she was tempted to extend her accidental miracle to include shoving the surviving Slinks to the free Slink world of their home instance. It wasn't like they weren't already worshiping her on that world, brand new little pools of her infection included. She could always just dump all of them back there and deal with the consequences later.
Yellow-Glow did not look like he was doing much better as he scrambled to look over the details one last time before the big meeting. The fact that these Local Void Emulation constructs could interact with Void Entities had him split between trying to use that for his own ambitions to control random robots in any instance, and being horrified at the implications for how widespread side effects of this could impact Void Entities. This time, instead of as a threat to the Entities, there was a big chance this led to more Entity caused chaos across the instances of Local Space.
"Still nothing for me yet," Sixteen pointed out in his Void Entity form from next to a communications console inside the conspiracy's shared base, with Squeaky currently pacing around the room. Sledge and ThunderFang were nearby if they were needed, but the focus for the moment was on the technical experts they had and the issue with Flamescale's growing emulation construct. "I don't know if that is because mine are a subset of yours, or if we just haven't ran into any instances where they are trying for mine specifically."
"I'm upset with the few I've got as possibilities," Squeaky grumbled and continued to pace. "Most of them were started by 319 quartermasters named 'Squeaky' who decided to actually make good on the insult. I haven't checked closer if they are actual other versions of me yet, or just got the same name the same way."
"Do we know how many of the development team are coming?" Flamescale asked her old friend to somewhat distract from the topic of emulation constructs that targeted them. "Actually, do we know how many are still working on Void Strike?" There had been something that went wrong with the original office during the first few months, and quite a few people had quit around the time they stopped setting up tutorial missions.
"Two of them will be here," Yellow-Glow said, but he sounded a bit evasive. "Star Stride and Worthstone are in charge of this part of the development team's operations."
"Yellow-Glow, is this a fast meeting for the new massive issue of Void Entities possibly being made into gods, or is this a meeting you set up a while ago where we need to change topics on them?" Flamescale asked uneasily. Because she knew they were going to be contacted about helping the developers gather information and deal with the great taboo, but that was before they ran into more problems again.
"I have attempted to give them an update about this, but the current line of communications is slow. This meeting was intended to get us more direct contact instead of still using what works from the support system," Yellow-Glow admitted with a sigh. "It is very possible that we will need to break the news of this development to them. I am aware that some others have been tracing possible sources of the new Local developments, but I was hoping to find out how many have been more directly observing the results using Void scanners made from recovered ancient data."
"Has anyone else captured a Core Mucin yet?" Sixteen asked critically. "Because I've had people tell me that guide is a prank when I bring it up."
Flamescale's friend hesitated. "Yellow-Glow, we didn't get proper Void construct sensors that can detect these until we had your Core Mucin to work with," she pointed out to him, uneasy with the implication. "You do know someone else who has pulled it off again, right?"
"I believe that a full conversion of Mucin material is needed to succeed, and there are very limited options for that in Skill Trees. Fewer that are worth the attempt," Yellow-Glow clarified unhappily. "Your Contagion branches can overpower the lesser Mucin in the aftermath of the Core's death, and others have reproduced that with the expanded effect spreading beyond the Citadel to nearby bastion-network sites, but none have had reason and will to recreate what I have done. I fear that they might see it as an already conquered challenge of minimal value."
"It isn't like we are really sharing the tech we're making either," Squeaky pointed out and stopped pacing. Her four tails still lashed around behind her. "We can't exactly complain that nobody else has the tech if we aren't giving it out either. I know why we aren't, but that does limit how far anyone can get when they don't make an entire advanced civilization just to run some advanced R&D."
The discussion was then interrupted by the sudden arrival of two more Void Entities, an instant change that made Flamescale wish that there was more indication for people allowed into a shared base with an invitation. Star Stride was famously a suit of knights armor with added robotic and technological parts that often appeared in the announcements inside Void Strike, and a couple of the earlier promotions before the launch. Worthstone by contrast wasn't a developer that commonly was seen, and seemed to for some reason to have decided to just look like a generic Mucin.
"Oh, you have Local Space players too," Worthstone said first while they looked at Sixteen and Squeaky. "Recruited, or minions given accounts to fill out the group?"
"We were minions first, but Sixteen here volunteered while I went too far to avoid being able to use the forums," Squeaky grumbled. "So, you two are responsible for the exact kind of eldritch horrors Local Space is summoning?"
"We are- Wait, went too far doing what?" Worthstone started to reply.
"This is Death-Sound I take it?" Star Stride interrupted instead of letting them reply. "The one behind the new Local currency solution that Flamescale has implemented as part of her strategy of going to dozens of different instances at once."
"You say that like that is something nobody else is doing," Flamescale pointed out uneasily. "I know there are other players who are making their own little civilizations. Mother Mayview has an entire group of them."
"Not counting the recent odd situations where yourself and Mother Mayview among others are showing some error ridden minion results in instances you've never been to," Star Stride said and Flamescale flinched at the news that Mayview was having the same problem that the developers really needed to understand. "You are by far the most widespread player to be using minions long term."
"By a long shot. I'm still not sure what you did to get repeated gate-to-point openings," Worthstone added quickly afterwards. "Honestly that is the big one we are here for. They almost even look targeted, I've want to ask how you got one so close to that dead instance Macrophylla Void Lab ever since I worked out that you couldn't have gotten in with the first off target gate."
"We have quite a few problems going on then," Sixteen grumbled. "Because that was extremely targeted. We were hitting a secondary site first because it didn't have scanners that could track the insertion of a slow FTL shuttle, and the closer gate target was just to get our battleship in place to eliminate the guard cruiser. What exactly do you want from us with this partnership?"
"You have been to instances outside of the Hidden Galaxy," Star Stride started to answer, then sighed. "We deliberately restricted Void Rifts to just the one galaxy when we figured out what went wrong, but that doesn't help with the Local Void Gates. We can't track outside there either yet, even the instance information is lost if you go that far. As a result, we have no idea if it is possible for Locals to somehow reach out of Void Strike and to the regular world."
Flamescale snapped her face directly to Star Stride. "You don't know. You don't-" Flamescale hissed at the pair. "Squeaky has been to our home instance. We are using that to help develop tracking systems to see if gates have been opened there." She then shook her head. "But while we need to deal with that, I am now really worried about the latest development. How much do you know about the new Locals using powers like Void Entities?"
"You've found something?" Worthstone jumped on that topic immediately. "We've been trying everything to work it out, but no two labs making the stuff are giving the same data. It has been as rough as trying to work out how summoning a Rift works, and we have no idea what makes those work or not work in different instances yet. The best idea we have so far is it must be related to how the ancients break the normal laws of physics that instances work on, but there aren't many players who run their own labs and most of those are focused on just making better weapons or things to sell."
"This investigation would be going a lot better if the players who make or take over Local powers also tried to develop better stuff more often," Star Stride unfortunately confirmed that description. "Some are working on things like Void Gates, but it sounds like you have some practical results on that too. Did you manage to get some Locals to make something out of that ancient Citadel your group captured intact?"
Flamescale had the gate in the room open, to the clear surprise of the developers. "Come on, I think I'm going to need my R&D leads' help with explaining everything," she declared. "Then I think Squeaky might need to show you what her big project was."
---
"Yellow-Glow, please tell me that this is some kind of massive prank," Flamescale questioned harshly while the pair was distracted with R&D.
"With any luck it will be. I doubt that Entity controlled Void Labs are truly that rare, but if they are not detecting other fully functional gate-to-point systems yet then we may be ahead of everyone at the moment," Yellow-Glow agreed with her. "This is still a good result. If they can at minimum track which Entities are outside of Caldwell 5 then we should have a short list of violation possibilities."
"I can't believe they called it 'the Hidden Galaxy'," Flamescale complained, having done a minimum check for the name of the specific one in the old game promotions just before the meeting. "I don't suppose we're lucky and it is really far away by galaxy standards?"
"Caldwell 5 is historically known as 'the Hidden Galaxy' because the dust of the Milky Way blocks the light so it is not visible to the naked eye," Yellow-Glow unfortunately responded instead. "It is one of the closest, although not a truly 'local' galaxy."
"The galaxy is genuinely called- Right, okay..." Flamescale cut herself off, and then realized what Left-and-Right had shifted the topic to. "Move, my R&D has an idea and we need to do damage control." More specifically Left-and-Right had managed to get into technical details of the scanner's results about Void Strike, and the idea of modifications that could allow for better control over the emulation constructs.
"You are probably too late to stop them," Star Stride said to the Flamescale that had already been with them as the one with Yellow-Glow arrived. "Worthstone wanted something like a deity system to exist back during development, and has a few half finished pieces that he wants to use somehow before they drift into something dangerous."
"After days of trying to keep a merging pile of poorly made Void constructs from drifting into making me a doomsday plague across multiple instances, I fully understand that issue," Flamescale had to point out, even if it made Star Stride flinch since she used the newly arrived body instead of the one he had been talking with. "But Worthstone is talking about getting this made into 'an official third party tool' complete with an update message."
"Connection to Void Strike directly is not advised." "The system is too stable and may limit future modification too heavily." "While also possibly introducing unneeded risk to Void Entities," Left-and-Right were arguing, and a big part of the rush had been Flamescale realizing that her rather odd R&D leads were being the voice of reason here.
"The alternative to allow for greater control is to establish a synch with the construct more directly," Worthstone pointed out. "Can you guarantee that these will not become stable full synch situations? Being limited to Void Strike solutions is better if we can't be sure that an emergency destruction of the construct is possible."
"It is a secondary construct." "The rules that create it are dependent on another." "And as a result there is a clear hole in them," Left-and-Right argued. "The stability is increased by these actions." "But it will never be perfect enough to prevent all forms of destruction."
"If anything, making it this way means it is easier to replace," Vwsa pointed out a bit tiredly, and Flamescale noticed that this seemed to be her first contribution to this conversation. "When we were building it we honestly broke the thing a couple of times before we got this one going. That was using makeshift stuff built by Slinks who were getting lost in the religion part, and we didn't even know about other instances." Flamescale felt a bit bad about putting the former Slink in charge of that part.
"Why exactly did you make these sort of people?" Star Stride quietly asked the Flamescale next to Yellow-Glow.
"I just left them how I found them when I brought them back as Lava Vipers. Well, except for the ones Squeaky recruited directly, they weren't technically 'brought back' just converted," she answered with a huff. "And the refugees too I guess, but I try and just resettle those." It didn't always work, and for instances being overrun by the ancient forces the number who ended up converted because they had nowhere to go was becoming a bit notable.
"You are using revived locals for some of your minion forces?" Star Stride questioned to clarify, and Flamescale frowned at him. "We have been starting with anyone who builds up a large group of long term minions, any that are used for at least fifteen out of the last thirty days. Most of the ones we work with use custom made minds for their minions, and they are using a lot less than you are. You were already on the list to contact, but between your sheer size, how visible you've been lately making the bastion-network guides, and the trade station improvements we wanted to hold off until you contacted us."
"I think I'm only a bit over twenty thousand Vipers," Flamescale pointed out. "That is a lot less than most people can reach with the zombie Trees on missions."
"You have how many?" Yellow-Glow of all people half shouted. "What are all of them doing?"
"Most of them are civilians, but a lot are my industrial base, and I am running scout and attack missions in dozens of instances at a time," Flamescale pointed out. "I think Sixteen is using squads of four to ten for scout work now, with reserves too so that's probably a few hundred on its own. Then the actual attack forces are definitely in the thousands, and that is before we get to keeping a space fleet running to get them in and out. The shuttles for those scouts need at least three people each just for maintenance, without counting the manufacturing or trade side of things, and I am building up a proper fleet of warships that need even more for maintenance and crew." She was getting a bit too much disbelief from Yellow-Glow and Star Stride's reaction. "Sledge's anti-pirate group has to be at least twice that size."
"Sledge doesn't have or want a direct connection to their minds," Yellow-Glow pointed out.
"He will likely not avoid that if he wants this sort of system." "The control over the construct will require a degree of control and authority over those using it," Left-and-Right jumped into this side conversation.
"Not to mention that if we really have Void Entities that even just partially match gods and demons they probably are going to end up with control as well just from a side effect. With or without this modification and control method," Vwsa noted with a grumble. "I know it happened to me with Flamescale, so if 'Sledge' is planning on making a fake god thing for his people he probably will still end up with that part."
"The real issue is control," Worthstone countered quickly, but clearly thinking about his response. "We can't add or remove any external interfaces to Void Strike. We only have the ones that we started with, like the payment system, the synch connection system, the Void Rifts along with their mission interface, and the minion control system. Those are the only places where we can have the system interact with things other than Void Entities, along with some minor ones, but these connections can't be disabled or more added. Even if we do directly link this new construct it would only shift things to use the minion control system, so having it separated would give us some more options there, but it would need its own synch link to control it properly."
"We didn't actually plan on there being a real god controlling the system," Vwsa noted, but her mind showed Flamescale that this was mostly agreement. "In theory these systems should be able to be made with only outside control systems. I've double checked the notes we recovered, and I can confirm that the inputs and outputs can't be changed without damage to stability, but you can still set up a full control set first." The new Viper turned towards Left-and-Right.
"However, anything less than a solid synch link will result in a system that can destabilize due to drift in that way," Flamescale's R&D leads added to her statement. "The controls would be limited." "While the interpretation of the system would vary as users were added and removed." "Without a single core individual to focus the rules around." "Or a set of rules that is firm and complete with fixed external interfaces." "The system would break apart or become hazardous after some time."
Star Stride looked like he had heard this before, but didn't like hearing it from four people. "If your people are that far along then I almost want to leave Worthstone here with them while I see the rest of what you have myself," he sighed. "Because we need to stabilize this issue, and I want to make sure you can keep up with the R&D demands for it."
---
Flamescale had not really looked at her infrastructure in full before. The factories and other production equipment had been spread across multiple former Ancient Forge sites and other bastion style structures, so she had only ever seen individual structures as they finished. Similarly the cities she had more clearly deserved the title of "city" than she had really realized. Flamescale had thought she was joking when she called her Vipers a small civilization, but having to show someone else what she had drove in that it was in fact a true statement.
"So, now that you see what I have, can you answer some of my questions?" she asked. Just because she was intimidated didn't mean she needed to show it, and she wasn't sure that she entirely trusted the developers even after meeting them.
"Possibly," Star Stride said quietly while they took in the skyline of the single city on a molten lava covered world where Squeaky built that city on a whim. "What are the questions?"
"Why not just stop selling, or change the price to be high enough, that nobody could buy Void Strike if you can't just shut that down?" It had bothered Flamescale from the start. The developers had to know, but the easiest answer to stopping people from becoming unknowing killers had never happened.
"We can't. That is one part of the system we have very limited control over, and honestly the thing even gives the price in Local Space currency when a Local gets the link. Whatever currency is used actually," Star Stride answered tiredly. "We can't even put the game on sale, because that part was broken when we launched with a plan to fix it after for a first season sale price."
"I thought so. It seemed like it had to be something like that as soon as Squeaky said that Locals could buy them," Flamescale admitted and stopped standing. Lay down wasn't quite the right wording for it, because that implied that most of her body wasn't already on the ground. "What can you control to try and keep Entities contained?"
"We can control formation of Void Rifts to a degree. They have to be able to form somewhere, and the real issue is that it is technically the case that we limit where missions are recieved from," he explained, sitting down on the rocky ridge. "In reality, there is an endless variety of instances out there, and the only thing giving a feeling of progression is the methods we use to filter out missions set on an instance later in the relative timeline. We can control what a Rift can be opened to, but that doesn't do anything for Void Gates."
Star Stride sighed and looked up at the sky before he continued, "We are currently under investigation for the presence of what appears to be people making fictional-individual AIs illegally. We are trying to explain that we have a larger problem than that, and we are using this to look like we are talking about that larger issue, but the truth is that at least one group of players has worked out how to use gates to find real instances of fictional realities. That is our main concern at the moment."
"Are you certain they aren't people illegally making AIs think they are fictional characters, and then giving them accounts?" Flamescale questioned, although the account part was a guess. She couldn't really think of how the news of such a thing would get out otherwise.
"We can trace them to many of the situations where someone went to a location outside of our tracking range using referral data," Star Stride clarified. "We also have some idea how it started. Apparently sometimes when you die you really do end up in another universe instead. Someone worked out how to use that to track fictional instances, and from there used one shot gate-to-point systems to get into those instances. Some of the situation is clearly fictional characters with accounts, but other parts are reports of what looks like illegal AI environment systems connected to Void Strike. Places where Void Entities are interacting with worlds from fiction."
"Most people who want to take over a human world are going for human worlds that aren't ours," Flamescale realized, but she didn't like the other implications here. "You are too busy for the great taboo problem," she noted unhappily, not bringing up that those fictional instances could result in even worse breaches of the great taboo. She also now needed to ask Sledge if there really were people who ended up in other worlds after dying, because that was another possible source of great taboo violations she had not really considered by people who wanted to get back home.
"You have that handled better than anyone else can do it right now, the development team included," he said sadly. "We will give you our full support with your efforts there, and maybe if we get more free time we will see what else we can do. The new issue with Local Void developments is a bigger immediate problem to solve, and the things being done with the gates connected to fictional worlds we have detected so far is what we have to be focused on until we have an answer for it." He shrugged and leaned back. "So far nobody has been both able and willing to cause a problem in our home reality. We've done our best to make sure being able to do it is rather hard to pull off, so you just need to worry about anyone who is willing to do it despite that."
---
[Author's Note]
This one fought me. I'm not sure yet if it is getting a major rework to cut parts or not yet. I like the idea of clarifying how I imagine crossovers to happen, and that does address what could be causing other problems, but part of me thinks it is too far and should just be cut.
Also I can't decide if Flamescale's Lava Viper population is too large or too small, and slightly afraid it might somehow be both.
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E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
... I have no idea what rating to give this post.
Which one is the best "that is horrifying": Funny, Insightful, or Meow?
- Location
- Colorado
Well, now there's new horrors to contemplate. So many new horrors.
Also lol at Flamescale for having not quite realized what scales she's operating at now. That's what happens when you intentionally don't think about things, they surprise you.
Also lol at Flamescale for having not quite realized what scales she's operating at now. That's what happens when you intentionally don't think about things, they surprise you.
greynoise
Professional Amateur
- Location
- Here, Now
Did most of the dev team walk out after they realized what they'd done? No wonder everything's going to shit, nobody's steering the ship because everyone left is too busy putting out fires.
Also Worthstone is absolutely a real Mucin isn't he?
As the author it's ultimately up to you how deep in the weeds you want to go, but the deciding factor would be how focused you want your story to be. Introducing the crossover element you described would either decrease focus from the other established elements or pad out the total story length to give it the necessary attention to develop the idea. It would also prevent you from publishing in the future if you use real properties, considering this story has been 100% original so far.
As far as population is concerned, 20k sounds about right for an industrial base supporting a couple thousand well-equipped soldiers. It would need to be significantly larger if she was building everything from scratch, but for mostly looted facilities and a fairly focused R&D it doesn't sound too small. I'd expect there to be significantly more if she's regularly rescuing refugees by converting them, but it doesn't sound like she included refugees in that number. And of course this is still rapidly building up without her keeping a very close eye on it; I wouldn't be surprised if she becomes an interplanetary civilization by the end of this story.
It can be as simple as that, sure, but it smells of something more complicated than that. Maybe ominous, maybe benign... but not helpful.
Ah.
Wonderful.
This chapter, in general, gave a pretty reasonable run-down on exactly how much of a clusterfuck this entire thing is, I think. The room opened for crossovers or whatever else you so decide to make (or allow others to make) feels like a natural consequence of the situation, however if I have to critique one thing it's how that conclusion is reached. How did people figure out you could reach universes that resembled specific fictions? Star Stride describes it as though it's trivial or otherwise below priority, but there's gotta be more to that.
edit: alternatively, I just misunderstand the explanation. My reading comprehension isn't a problem with your writing.
...perhaps, there's room for that, but I'd imagine most of the developers fall under the "not commonly seen" category. It'd be more obvious if they were explained as a "newer hire".
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Given the Mucin that was captured said they would "ascend again", implying Mucin are Ancients who lost most of their Void traits, and the previous theory they had that Void Entities might have helped create Void Strike so they could transfer to a game with better rules?
Almost certainly.
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
So, the current plan is for any real world media crossovers to be entirely offscreen stuff for fanfics of this or just for fun side stories. This is a hint at other problems, or a place for the main story to use fiction that is also technically original that was "written" in the over a hundred years between our time and when Fluid Pestilence occurs. At most references to things currently in the public domain in the main story.
The intent here is that Star Stride is currently too busy to help Flamescale because he is working how how they are doing this, and working out how to slow or stop them.
The developers are noted to not know how to make real gate-to-point Void Gates, so their understanding of those is also intended to be low at the moment.
"Below priority" is as a result really not how I want this to come across, as figuring out the why, where, and how is the developer focus at the moment.
On the one hand, maybe. On the other hand, they might find Basireablemon and have to also deal with whoever it is that owns the Digimon IP too.
Edit: and then they can commiserate about that whole being a corruption snake in the habit of converting people thing. Something something nickels.
Also re: walkouts. Are we sure they didn't just moved
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Jim Starluck
CO, ICS Vanguard
- Location
- Cincinnati, OH
Ah, I see Truck-kun has been hard at work.
I've got to wonder if there's a situation like Omphalos by Marcus Rowland, or if we have definitive proof of the literary agent hypothesis in-universe.
Saphire
Lurking dragon
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Okay this is a big and dense chapter full of sweet sweet answers. And so we finally meet THE DEV TEAM. Or at least two of them.
First up: Congratulations Flamescale, you're the winner! You won the game. Seriously though, she's basically #1 in many categories now, isn't she? Her own Ancient Core, own R&D team, own ships, own production facilities to keep them maintained rather than raiding others and all independent from anyone, own FUCKING CITY, own mini civilisation of actual people who she didn't need to baby or build from scratch which is apparently what others do instead.
Next, yay details about Void Strike!
Another oops - woo, it is time travel! This is going to suck to untangle if they start to mess more with it. Hope the part of the system that doesn't let you jump into an arbitrary point in time within an already contacted universe is in the ossified outer "shell" of the system, rather than just a part they can shift around.
Third oops to finish off - welcome to the multiverse, you fucked up. I love how despite the sheer weight of this, the actual conversation about this is relatively small. Definitely can see why this has been giving you trouble by the way, it's... a pretty heavy thing to include as a canon element of anything. Don't blame you if you'll retcon it later to something else. Whether it stays canon or an "author fanon", whee crossover potential~!
Flamescale's civilisation size of 20k is pretty small when we think of it even in terms of a single city. For me a city is something easily in hundreds of thousands of people. But it's pretty understandably small given what Flamescale has to do, and how it weighs on her. Though I am now wondering as to size of installations (did she ever take over a city?), and how often people end up impossible to convert back... Hm. Not sure what to suggest here. Honestly my mind sorta breaks from trying to understand the size and population of modern IRL cities, whee.
First up: Congratulations Flamescale, you're the winner! You won the game. Seriously though, she's basically #1 in many categories now, isn't she? Her own Ancient Core, own R&D team, own ships, own production facilities to keep them maintained rather than raiding others and all independent from anyone, own FUCKING CITY, own mini civilisation of actual people who she didn't need to baby or build from scratch which is apparently what others do instead.
Next, yay details about Void Strike!
Oops, it's runaway. The game is now an equivalent of this eldritch thing from beyond the veil of reality, offering you untold power, on a weird suspicious website you've never seen, a game that never been advertised, using technology you know isn't possible. Just $59.99, or $9.99/mo for premium- Anyway the point is that it's now straight up acting as a creepypasta, an offer from outside of reality anyone can take, if they find it...
Another oops - woo, it is time travel! This is going to suck to untangle if they start to mess more with it. Hope the part of the system that doesn't let you jump into an arbitrary point in time within an already contacted universe is in the ossified outer "shell" of the system, rather than just a part they can shift around.
Third oops to finish off - welcome to the multiverse, you fucked up. I love how despite the sheer weight of this, the actual conversation about this is relatively small. Definitely can see why this has been giving you trouble by the way, it's... a pretty heavy thing to include as a canon element of anything. Don't blame you if you'll retcon it later to something else. Whether it stays canon or an "author fanon", whee crossover potential~!
Flamescale's civilisation size of 20k is pretty small when we think of it even in terms of a single city. For me a city is something easily in hundreds of thousands of people. But it's pretty understandably small given what Flamescale has to do, and how it weighs on her. Though I am now wondering as to size of installations (did she ever take over a city?), and how often people end up impossible to convert back... Hm. Not sure what to suggest here. Honestly my mind sorta breaks from trying to understand the size and population of modern IRL cities, whee.
Unfortunately it seems voidstrike is so powerful and all consuming tech singularity wise that any setting they cross over to, would eventually start using void tech as well and start spreading out. If someone messed with a pokemon universe, eventually legendaries will start exporting themselves elsewhere.
The big question, for me, is who chose the local space for the target of all the void strike contracts. Or if it was the only existing option when they connected to the existing stuff.
And am I reading that there are alternatives of squeaky who are void entities themselves, or pre infected squeaky just putting it random stuff that corresponds to his void strike self like some kind of self referential making yourself your own OC thing? Especially if unintentionally.
The big question, for me, is who chose the local space for the target of all the void strike contracts. Or if it was the only existing option when they connected to the existing stuff.
And am I reading that there are alternatives of squeaky who are void entities themselves, or pre infected squeaky just putting it random stuff that corresponds to his void strike self like some kind of self referential making yourself your own OC thing? Especially if unintentionally.
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