Kantai Collection: The World Set Free (KC/SCP/FreeSpace:Blue Planet/Destiny)

[ARBITRACOM]

​

DRAUPNIR

x-x-x-x-x
​

Deep within the cold-charred expanse of the Frozen Garden, the Siberian War Princess gathers her vast cognition in preparation of this finale.

She is set within her armoring and recovery crypt, a craggy mountain of frost-metal, shining with a black-white luster underneath the dead aurora. Astride, held aloft above a bed of frigid cilia and flagellata by the many-limbed apparatus that is repairing and preparing her for battle. As of now, she is incomplete; disassembled so that the repair mechanisms can get into her wounds and injuries. Her right arm is wrapped around her bare, unclothed chest, released from the prison of her mighty war-talons, while her left arm and its comparatively smaller and simpler, though not any duller, claws hung limply at her side. She closed her eyes at this final luxury afforded to her, as the machines do their work with the remaining, nearly-exhausted transmaterial supply.

Utterly alone, within this crypt. Perhaps, it will also soon be her tomb. Her part in this war is coming to an end. The Flowerborn and their Shipbuilders' Army, their family, are massing. Now, they are besieging her.​

While the air around her battle-ravaged, naked body hung in solemn quietness, her mind is a buzzing, chittering orchestra of theater-spanning proportions, a gestalt from the tens of thousands of morphs under her command who still survived the air strikes delivered by the Northern armies. Currently, they remain unmoving but alert in their defensive positions around interior of the Garden. A swarming intellect forged out millions of algorithmic processes responding to inputs as minute as the change in temperature to the explosion wash of a fuel-air bomb, as had been the case not too long ago. That bombing raid damaged her enough that she has to stop and repair here in the first place, never mind the thousands of other morphs killed and defensive emplacements destroyed.

A maddening cacophony for any mundane individual, and her only companionship. Even now as her wounds are nursed, still more data is being consumed and processed. Though -- not enough. Not nearly enough for a victory.

For the Abyss, the Northern Front is now a lost cause. Baltic Presence was extinguished under the combined might of Europe's finest. The screaming hole that was the Nexus silenced, severed. Not dissimilar was the fate of the Vladivostok Presence. In both cases, the Presences and their fleets as well as armies brought down destruction and pain as best they could. In terms of costs, both the Abyssals and human forces swallowed a bitter tally of material, deaths and resurrections. But the structure of mankind's union of forces proved superior, at least for now. Doubtless the Abyss' vengeance will be sky-burning. But what they set out to do, that yearned dream, has always been distant, and now, impossibly so for her.

Now the hunt is reversed. She and her army backed into this small - mightily fortified - but nevertheless small, corner of this vast continent. Their movements constricted by land, sea, and air. All their holdings lost and their territory trammelled by the iron line the Shipbuilders constructed. The litany of failures and shortfalls drowned her consciousness, an abyss unto itself; yawning, clinging, hungering and gnawing at her for a now-impossible rejoinder.

Two silent streams of tears fell across a pallid face, a small river that faded and dried as frozen dust upon touching the atmosphere of the crypt.

In an instant, her entire form jolted and shuddered and she choked out a gasp as a glut of new data-swarm conveyed by the cilia and flagellata burrowing into her spine trampled into her mind, crushing under their shifting, screaming weight whatever individual processes she kept for herself. The repairs are finished.

The arms holding her restored her into an upright position, though still aloft. She pulled back and flexed her left arm, gently smoothing her sidetail and the portion of her hair that fell above her left eye, after which she put her left arm down again. The killing instrument is mounted unto it, a long-barreled frostbore rifle adorned with sharp, jagged filigree, loaded with their last magazines of ammunition.

She took a final look at her right arm, the last time she would ever gaze upon her own graceful and fine fingers, perfectly fitting for a human painter or writer. The armourer-mechanism now re-imprisoned it within the gauntlet of her talons, slick and immaculately sharp, both it and the small autocannons resting on her wrist hungry for the Flowerborns' and their families' blood, as they had done many times before, even if for the last time.

Her warplate, winter-grey and finely sculpted along the lines of her bosom pressed and snapped into place. Lines of white frost-light glowed as the armour-systems connected and synced with the mechanisms within her body, spinning up combat adaptations and semiotic payloads.

Now her legs. Above all, the Princess is a dancing, loping killer, whose speed and grace are the envy of even the Winterheart battleship and her cohort. That was not enough, obviously, given the Princess' current circumstances. But it would still serve her well, this final time. Now, as her repairs are complete, her motive mechanisms are assembled. Pieces of greaves and armour assemble and combine into a near-seamless form. At the tail-end of this process her skirt and array of equipment are fitted around her waist and hip. A jagged blade jutted out from her heel, clicking on the floor of the crypt as she stepped, released from the grips of the repairing arms.

The end draws near. The armies of the Shipbuilders and the wombless Flowerborn whores have trespassed. The Betrayer-Swarm guides their movement.

A touch of finality swept across her mind. It translates into a severing note. The Flow is closed, and the lights around her and the mechanisms that had tended to her died, spent and extinguished. Her link to the greater Abyssal metacognition is now abandoned, and momentarily her swarming mind shrunk, and she lurched. But she forced herself up. She stared into the vast, grey-white expanse laid out in front of her, opening and closing her eyes in silent regard.

She is all alone now, only the remnants of her army and her Throne around her. All her pains and her final death will now be hers and hers only, no longer can she diffuse it.

This, undoubtedly, will be her end. But what an end she would make it to be.


​

x-x-x-x-x​

​

 

[ARBITRACOM]

Yay for first story content in 2018!

The aim was to make the motives and the individual conduct of the Abyssals understandable and somewhat, but not overtly, sympathetic. Talking Abyssals, something I hold some reservations for, are minimized.

This is the start of the rewritten finale to the Siberian arc.

The Abyssal Siberian War Princess:




The Siberian Linked Throne:


and some music:

 

[ARBITRACOM]

This would be the first time we have a true look from the Abyssal POV. Let's go over a few things.

Truthfully, I'm still trying to find an exact 'style' with which to depict their POV. The desired effect is to provide a unique and distinct perspective that is understandable without overly humanizing them and stripping away their mystery.

Let's go over a few terms (again).

Shipbuilders: In general, mankind, and in specific, conventional forces.

Flowerborn: The weltgeists; Shipgirls, or equivalent entities depending on the configuration of the local universe. If the multiverse is the Garden, the Flowers are individual universes and worlds.

There is indeed a certain disconnect between 'Shipbuilder' and 'Flowerborn'. From the Abyssal perspective (which, of course, for them, the only perspectie that matters) though the Shipbuilders/mankind built the original ships, the actual 'ship-spirit' was not created by mankind, at least not directly. In keeping with the theme of the 'self-summoned' nature of this fic's Shipgirls, this implies to a certain degree an independence of the Shipgirls. Which is why the term 'whore' is used strongly as an insult by the Abyssals, as the notion of the Shipgirls each willingly returning to serve and fight for humanity's collective future is so fundamentally alien and insulting to the Abyssals, if we are to use anthropocentric terms.

Betrayer-Swarm: the DRAUPNIR piece above emphasizes the gestalt, swarming nature of the Abyssal Metacognition, in this case that which is locally instanced by the Siberian War Princess.

The Betrayer-Swarm is the equivalent of that structure for mankind and Shipgirls. It is what the Abyssals call the constructed global network of metacognition otherwise known to us as HAVEN - Heuristic Authority Virtual Enabled Neurolink - which made its first appearance in the old canon here.

The local instance serving the Combined Armies of the North is known as TONESPHERE ALLIANCE. Aboard JCS Ambient March is APHASIS SEMIOCIDAE. Others currently known to us are VOLUCRINE EXCEPTIONAL (Sparrowmark HQ, Guadalcanal), AGAPE EVERHEART (South China Sea), and SYNAPSIS EBRIETAS (classified location, Europe).


---

All these will come to play even more in the future as we see more of the World as the story progresses; these are the currently-relevant details. I fully admit however that one of my weaknesses is determining which world details are best worked into the story, and which are best told via exposition. So if you have any questions, I am always open to it.

 

[ARBITRACOM]

Timeline
The Pattern: The Shape of the First Question.


x-x-x-x​

Where are they leading us?


Three sub-organizations within the Transitionary Joint Command place increased emphasis on maintaining an objective timeline of humanity's darkest years: the ANRSAO's Division of Psychohistory, the Directive of Intelligence Operations' (DIO) Media Development Agency (MEDEA), and the External Relations and Goodwill Commission's Human Future Project. Per the understandings espoused by the Forced/Stereotyped Recapitulation strategy, some events are internally marked as either convergent or divergent relative to the notional pattern of repetition.

Late 2018.​

Scattered early reports of "sea-ghosts" and anomalous psychological occurrences reported on worldwide seas. Investigative efforts are unfocused and produced few concrete results.

A rash of disappearances among Japanese, Chinese, and South Korean fishermen occured on May 2018. Intelligence communities suspected North Korean involvement, which was denied on official channels.

At the same time, Noumea Bray, famed oceanographer of the Monde Sans Étrangeres scientific research collective published a report indicating a global trend in 'oceanic rejuvenation'; an observable pattern of downturn in the degradation of the world's seas. In a period known as the 'Blooming', Australia's Great Barrier Reef experienced a massive uptick in new, healthy coral growths.

Munetani Yoshisada was elected Prime Minister of Japan following a dark-horse victory and massively unconventional political campaign, becoming the youngest ever to hold the office at 39 years old.

2019: First Strategic Epoch.
​

The First Epoch starts with terror and ends in cataclysm.

First open attacks by recognizable modern nonhumanoid Abyssal forces. Civilian ships initially targeted. United Nations Joint Naval Command formed as a global response force against these attacks; early victories gained by Joint forces against the Abyssal fleet.

Abyssal behaviour is highly confusing but unable to match human technology. August 2019 marks the first appearance of humanoid Abyssal forms, the Wo-class carrier analogue and the Ri-class heavy cruiser analogue. Human forces began suffering heavy but not overwhelming losses; from November onwards the pace and frequency of Abyssal hostilities began dropping off significantly. First efforts to create a global strategic intelligence network and consolidation of research data began at this time.

2020-Present Day: Second Strategic Epoch.

​

The Second Epoch starts with despair and ends in a new hope.

The end of the first epoch is marked with the Fracturing on 2 January 2020: high-magnitude earthquakes occurred on multiple spots on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This geological upheaval resulted in the creation of several new islands, particularly on the Guadalcanal area. The Hokkaido island of Northern Japan is consumed by a massive tsunami, followed by anomalous weather conditions and an amphibious invasion by Abyssal forces. JSDF aided by allied nations, primarily Russia, America, China, and South Korea, fought a fierce defensive action protecting the evacuation southwards. On 25 January 2020, the dark advance stopped as suddenly as it started. Major combat operations ceased and large portions of Hokkaido are sealed off, subsequently declared as the world's first Black Zone.

A UNJNC survey team discovered the Abyssal Sprawl, a chunk of region in the Pacific obscured by severe anomalous storms and dimensional anomalies. On 11 February the Abyssal Spire manifested overnight as a tall, gleaming tower rising out from the Atlantic. During this time Abyssal activities remain sparse, but exhibited increased sophistication and ferocity. Research by UNJNC continues, and it expanded its cooperation with several private powers such as the Amethyst Bloc megacorporation.

First Abyssal Blitz, 25 March 2020.​

Abyssal forces worldwide broke the world's naval power across multiple battles, striking with extreme mobility, including first recorded instances of their strategic and tactical translocation ability, and increased tactical acumen on multiple fronts simultaneously. Overwhelming losses were incurred and nations withdrew their forces from the Joint Command. Political and economic upheavals followed humanity's loss of its already tenuous control over the seas.

Most notably during this time, Pearl Harbor and Hawaii was untouched. Remnants of the American Navy under the command of Admiral Lawrence Masterson guarded the sealanes between Hawaii and continental America to the best of their ability.

UNJNC ceases to exist as a political-military organization and a cohesive fighting force. It scatters its activities into the wind, coordinating small-scale research and investigative efforts from offices distributed worldwide. Intelligence operations and research by regional successor organizations began at this stage, continuing from earlier efforts by the UNJNC.

One such successor organization is the Imperial Bureau of Unconventional Investigations, founded under the initiative the then-JSDF Chief of Staff and future World Admiral, Lieutenant-Colonel Jin Kurosawa. Kaname Hinakuri, JGSDF veteran and survivor of the Hokkaido cataclysm, was appointed as the first Chief Investigator of the IBUI. The IBUI received mandate from the Emperor himself, bypassing all other authorities, to protect the people of Japan against the rising threat. A similar mandate was given to PM Yoshisada, giving him emergency power to use all the nation's non-military resources for the same purpose.

The wordings of the mandate was very specific in emphasizing the protection of the Japanese people, and not necessarily the Japanese government.

November 2020.
​

Destroyer Fubuki made her appearance on the Battle of Tokyo Bay, decisively defeating the Abyssal attack there, becoming the first ever Shipgirl to appear. JMSDF Kanmusu Corps was shortly founded to support her and all future Japanese Shipgirls. Over the next two months, 'first-wave' emergence of Shipgirls occurred on Japan and America, known as the Original Sixty-Five of 38 Japanese and 27 American Shipgirls.

Initial members of the Japanese Kanmusu Corps are Fubuki, and those who would be known as the elite 5th Tactical Unit, the 'Spellbreakers': Aoba, Furutaka, Kako, Kinugasa, Hatsuyuki, and Murakumo.

The first American Shipgirls to appear were led by the battleships South Dakota and Washington, and the heavy cruiser San Francisco.

Multiple national organizations were founded to organize the new fighting forces of the Shipgirls. Joint Naumachia Commission was founded by the European Union. Special Talents Division took command in America. Commonwealth Special Assets Naval Intelligence presided over countries recognizing the Crown. Resurgent Naval Arms Commission took charge of both Imperial Russian and Soviet Shipgirls.


On the urging of the Sixty-Five, who collectively stated in unambiguous terms the spiritual importance of the place, American and Japanese forces began to plan a joint campaign to purge Guadalcanal of Abyssal presence. The campaign was executed on February 2021, lasting a violent two months. It would be known as the Second Solomon Islands Multinational Campaign. It is to be noted that while very few actually refers to this war as World War III - and official TJC nomenclature refers to it as the Deep War or simply the Abyssal War - the link between this war and both previous world wars are undeniable, and thus the naming of events follows this pattern. This campaign would put into prominence the names of Jin Kurosawa, Lawrence Masterson, Nakagawa Hamaguchi, and Hannah Cordelia Edison.

Mid-2021: Second Wave of Emergence
​

April 2021 marks the reunion with battleship Yamato on the Second Battle of Okinawa, who brought with her a large portion of Japanese shipgirl forces, including her sisters. They would proceed to part ways: Yamato took residence in Yokosuka and spent much time wrangling Japanese politics. Musashi, after being severely injured in a battle off Kure on November 2021, departed to America alongside Choukai and Shimakaze to join the new CTG GROTESQUE. Shinano sought training under the American carrier forces and was taken under the Midway class' tutelage.

Later the same month, the ghost fleet of Bikini Atoll, the defenders of Britain, and the greatest generation of America returned. The Forgemasters (Akashi, Yuubari, Vestal, Vulcan, Albatross, Vindictive) also emerged on the months of April-May 2021 and built the Joint Command's industrial capability, establishing the Flow Network and its Nexuses worldwide. Mankind fought with renewed vigor, bolstered by almost-daily emergences of Shipgirls, some returning in triumph to their homeports and nations; others encountered already fighting at sea, others on more bizarre conditions still.

United States Navy STD began work on converting the abandoned hull of the Gerald R.Ford-class supercarrier into a mobile base capable of supporting Shipgirl operations. This project was later taken over by the TJC. Aided by fairy technology, the ship was completed in record time by January 2022 and named Ambient March.

The Battle off Gibraltar on June 2021 would later be known as Aristeia; the Great European Reunion. The combined European battlefleets under the banner of the Naumachy defeated a major Abyssal offensive, and was hailed as a period of renaissance of inter-Anglo-European politics, vis a vis greatly pronounced internal political complications within Italy and Germany.

The UNJNC is revived, coordinating efforts from national commands and regaining its military legitimacy, in no small part due to various degrees of coaxing and political maneuvering by the Shipgirls themselves, taking on the name of Transitionary Joint Command, following the signing of the Seven Seas Charter and the Declaration of the Rights of Neohuman/Navis Novasapien Entities on August 2021. The TJC was then officially founded and declared on 26 August 2021. The various national organizations acceded to combine their mandates under TJC. The Cryptarchy was founded to handle the occult and unconventional side of the new war effort. Forces were distributed according to regional strategic needs in the form of the Composite Task Groups.

As a result of these developments Abyssal forces began adapting in turn, gradually ramping in violence and sophistication in response to the renewed war effort. The first true large-scale campaign occurred on April-June 2022, in the form of the Second Southeast Asian and Philippines campaign. This campaign culminated in the cataclysmic Third Battle of Leyte Gulf, which ended in a bloody victory for the combined multinational forces. The Abyssal fleet was routed from the seas of Southeast Asia and Philippines and for a short time their activity receded.

These campaigns and numerous other engagements was also the first test of the combined cognitive resources of the Joint Command's Applied Naval Research and Strategic Advisory Office, using a violently adaptive statistical modeling and simulation, pioneering the usage and invention of new computational physics principles and its applications to predict and match the Abyssal war cognition.

As the war develops and the political situation of the world continues to be uncertain, the Directive of Intelligence Operations (DIO) was formed as the TJC's publicly known intelligence arm, while empowering the Media Development Agency (MEDEA) to carefully handle public dissemination of relevant information. Secretly, the Entomonarchy was also formed as the covert intelligence and wetworks division of the Cryptarchy, focusing on countercult and esoteric combat operations.

November 2022.​

World Admiral Kurosawa and the ANRSAO published the first iteration of the Nataraja Thesis, or the Thesis of the Pattern: the Abyssal forces' (partial) adherence to historical patterns of action and deployment, also known as the Forced/Stereotyped World War II Recapitulation Scenario; for some this is but a confirmation of suspicions. The same thesis also codified the first iteration of the principles of Circumspect Warfare, the doctrine of ruthless adaptivity created to guide humanity's war effort.

Disaster struck on December 2022 as the Royal Navy Unity Naval Exhibition, intended to showcase humanity's newfound collective fighting spirit, was turned into a bloodbath by a then-unknown party's terror attack at the height of the celebration.

The hidden war covertly continued throughout 2023 with several more public terror attacks and subsequent raids by the Entomonarchy's countercult operatives. More publicly, however, public trust in the Joint Command's aegis reached its apex, following military successes throughout the year and fruitful public engagement endeavors. Internally, CTG INDEX, the Joint Command's administrative division, with cooperation from Complex INDUSTRIA and CTG IRIDIUM, initiated a sweeping audit and consolidation named Project Andvari.


Where we are right now: The 'present day of the story' is set from late 2023 on to mid and late 2024. Technology and science has jumped several years ahead of Baseline due to war pressure, yet the efforts of the Joint Command ensure some semblance of normality and even progress found its way back to civilian life.

As of 2024, the Abyssal Fleet and the combined forces of mankind is locked within a precarious balance. The Mediterranean seas, Indian Ocean, and Southeast Asia is completely free of Abyssal presence. Abyssals still maintain a heavy presence around the Spire and the Sprawl, and scattered fighting formations throughout the Pacific and Atlantic. Currently the most intense ongoing fighting occurs in the Northern Front, although daily raids by scattered formations becomes a commonplace occurence.



Of the ongoing plots, we have:

Kurosawa, Hamaguchi, and Edison, who presides the Guadalcanal Sparrowmark HQ. Fubuki is here, as does Mutsu, Fusou and the Nishimura Fleet, Washington, South Dakota, and most of those who fought at Guadalcanal and perished at Ironbottom Sound.

Nagato, Saratoga, and several multinational formations based on the Gate Lycoris Radiata, built on the Bikini Atoll.

Kongou, her sisters, and both Cranes and their attendant fleet, based on the South China Seas Joint Naval Base, the Crimson Evergarden.

Ise and Hyuuga as academy masters on Kure. Langley and Houshou doing the same in Palawan.

Yamato is at Yokosuka. Missouri also makes periodic visits there. Pearl Harbour is under the watch of both the Grey Fleet; Admiral 'Fell' Masterson, Enterprise and her chosen, and the Blue Wall, as well as the old guard of the United States Navy shipgirls. The USN maintains the largest commitment on both oceans.

GROTESQUE: Musashi, Maya, Choukai, Taihou, White Plains, Shimakaze, and Eldridge, who follows the inscrutable will of their Admiral, and is currently aiding the Combined Armies of the Northern Fleet in eradicating the Siberian Presence.

The Royal Navy, Marine Nationale, Bundesmarine, and Marina Militare, who divides their attention between guarding Atlantic convoys, territorial security, and ongoing cryptographic investigation of the mysterious transmissions emanating from, and being transmitted to, the Atlantic Spire.

The Cryptarchy, Entomonarchy, and their constituent task groups: CHTHONIC and MASQUERADE, who pursues the cultist threat in a secret war.


That is the World now. The Third Epoch is an unsolved problem.

 

[ARBITRACOM]

Something I should've done a loooong time ago. The draft for this has been sitting for at least half a year before I found the time to review and complete it. Many of the events here will be elaborated later on, after this arc is finished.

The purpose of the Siberian arc is to showcase the level of cooperation and organization possible between the Shipgirls and conventional forces, as well as being a glimpse to the Abyssal's mutability and power. I'm still in the process of refining the rewrites.

 

[ARBITRACOM]

Something I said a long time ago on SB's Ideas thread. It's still true.

"Shipgirls are alien intelligences running a massively sophisticated Chinese Room algorithm continually being adapted and "smoothed out" via a feedback system fed by theoretically infinite numbers of iterations across theoretically infinite numbers of possible universes and timelines, a synthesis based on both her own individual history and the summed thoughts, memories, and actions of her crew."

--

I'm still on a block on the continuation of this arc. Seriously considering leaving it for the time being and look into other aspects of the worldbuilding, but that would play havoc with pacing even more. Heh.

 

[ARBITRACOM]

Made a continuity edit to DRAUPNIR so as to be consistent with the upcoming update. Update cycle in progress.

 

[ARBITRACOM]

WINDS


x-x-x-x-x​

JCS Ambient March briefing room: strategy meeting, 1745 Yakutsk Time, GMT+10



"Evening, everyone! Eyes, ears!"

From where she stood at the front of the semicircular briefing room, World-Admiral Hinakuri addressed her command.

Occupying a greater portion of the seats were the twenty-two combat pilots of the Mist Talons, the handsome air wing commander 'Bunkershot' Edward Harris Lear sitting foremost. Pilots from the Metal Overcast squadron occupied ten seats in the middle column of the room, and even as their commanding officer Hinakuri felt a certain heaviness to their collective gaze.

Lastly, her seven shipgirls sat, she noted with some amusement, in a rough order of height. First was Eldridge, who sat stiff and upright, her red book in hand. Shimakaze sat rather contentedly slouched, one arm around Eldridge's shoulder, the other fiddling with one of the smaller Rensouhous. Taihou sat in rapt attention as does her four squadron commanders and two of White Plains' on her chair's table. White and Choukai are leaning on each other. Next to them are Maya and Musashi; the gigantic battleship seemingly shying away from attention as she sat on the last seat on the right-hand column.


"Per the results of the last joint strategy meeting, we are now entering the last phase of our operations in the Northern Front. There were a lot of pressure for us to effect a timely conclusion to this campaign. Fortunately situation on the ground agrees."

"An army without a way out will fight with tenfold ferocity; we have DRAUPNIR's neck on the noose, and there is simply no possibility of strategic failure on our part anymore. The Combined Army decided upon a plan of calculated aggression to break through to the Garden and eliminate DRAUPNIR. We only need to deal with the thrashing. Captain, you may describe our operational plan..."


She turned to acknowledge Flag Captain Alemana, sitting to her left, with a glance, giving the stage to him. The captain nodded and rose up.

"The Combined Armies' plan is divided into three phases: opening the curtains - air and artillery bombardment; the performance - breakthrough and advance; and the dance - the final confrontation. Our plan is based upon the imperative to secure this schedule and to minimize adverse effects and counter-reaction from DRAUPNIR heavy and support elements. Therefore we will divide our deployments in parallel to each of these phases."


"In summary, the Three Armies want this plan's execution secured. We will ensure just that; our answer will pierce through the noise."

x-x-x-x-x

​

"Mist Talons, Taihou, and White Plains: as our aviation assets, you will be up first. 9th Division of Third Army will be joined by you in their air support assignment. General directive is to support them in reducing fortifications and swarm presences along the Garden perimeter."



Five Bears of Nadia Flight flew together in formation. Below them, a thermobaric bloom rose. Three Frogfoots peeled away.

World-Admiral Lundgren observed and kept track of the ongoing bombardment phase. Her Third Army will make their own move very soon from the northern edge of the Garden, in the chaos and confusion after the bombing. From the south, under the cover of their own artillery barrage, Sergei Novikov's mighty Second Army is preparing to do the same.

"Vityaz Flight, hit confirmed, hit confirmed. The Princess is retreating--"

"Lock degrading. Presence of [SHROUD] confirmed. Cut not possible. Losing trace of her--"

"Acknowledged. Vityaz Flight return to base. Nadia, stay on course for Abyssal swarm target..."

Escorting Nadia flight are two wings from Taihou's Hakuryuu squadron, twelve Reppuu warbirds guarding the snow-white Tu-95 turboprop bombers. Haku, eponymous leader of the squadron and Taihou's most trusted, reported back to her. Her fairysense brought basic awareness of each and every fairy's dispositions.

"Copy that, Haku. All Hakuryuu pilots maintain formation. Approaching target coordinates soon; expect company."

"Acknowledged, Taihou-ane. Hakuryuu Alpha and Delta wings, prepare for engagement."


All over the garden, fortification lines, AA emplacements, artillery nests and turrets, are targeted. Fifteen kilometers east of their position, White Plains' Imbrium squadron escorts a flight of three Silent Hornets of the Mist Talons, striking a concentrated artillery position on a hill that, after the strike, is no longer. Not far from there, Graf Zeppelin's Stukas from the Hraesvelgr squadron defied fierce AA fire and smited a group of three Nu carriers with fragmentation bombs, making good on their historical reputation as deliverers of the wailing death.


Fears of a continent-spanning air war did not, to the relief of the Armies and especially the battleships on the ground, pan out. In the first place the Abyssals despite having numerous walking Nu-class light carriers never really contested the air, their flights only ever reactionary, though fiercely so, in nature.

As a result, the hammering being brought by the combined artilleries of Northern Army and the aircraft of 9th Division is, for lack of a better, more clinical word, magnificent in scope.


The sight of their targets, a massive profusion of the Iterative Horde and several tens of other landmorphs, looms into view as a black-grey shifting layer upon the white of the earth. There they are, caught in the open.

"Admiral Lundgren, Nadia One. Nadia Flight on drop vector. Proceeding with strike."

Five bomb bays opened in sequence. Admiral Lundgren acknowledged with a simple coded string.

"Ukko, Ukko. Ukonvasara. The Thunder falls."

They could not run fast enough. Not even the collective shielding of the Horde nor the [SHROUD] of the Abyssal electronic warfare could protect them as the Bears delivered upon them a merciless, impersonal death; twelve thousand swarm-creatures and several luckless Triads and Kalugas vaporized in a sheet of pale-yellow explosions ripping into the earth.

After all, when the target is a swarming mass blanketing the land, gravity could never miss.

Haku and her pilots, however, did not delight on the view as threats emerged on their screens. Twenty-two Abyssal drone-fighters appeared as if on a belated cue, intent on felling these trespassers. The twelve sky-warriors of Hakuryuu squadron turned to meet them. The bombers already began their retreat, believing in Hakuryuu's protection.

In the moments before the merge to the furball, Haku looked up, at the dead, still aurora hanging above them, the otherworldly stage-lights of the imminent orchestra.

 

[ColdGoldLazarus]

Kaboom

Also, I'm honestly surprised there exists someone smaller than Shimakaze

 

[Flare]

Kaboom

Also, I'm honestly surprised there exists someone smaller than Shimakaze

Click to shrink...

Shimakaze isn't that small. In fact most of the destroyers are shorter, giong by both ship measurement and by the anime.

 

[ARBITRACOM]

Kaboom

Also, I'm honestly surprised there exists someone smaller than Shimakaze

Click to shrink...

Shimakaze isn't that small. In fact most of the destroyers are shorter, giong by both ship measurement and by the anime.

Click to shrink...

Like the Akizukis too, Shimakaze is on the larger scale of destroyer sizes, though on the subject of large destroyers the French says hello.

It's also sort of one of the reason why Shimakaze is on GROTESQUE in the first place. She can be trusted to handle herself well enough in combat even if alone. That, and she can ground Eldridge's more unorthodox tendencies when needed.

 

[ARBITRACOM]

This happened today.

Funnily enough before this I was convinced that there was already a Rogal Dorn miniature. Turns out I was wrong. In my character notes Musashi keeps Dorn on her desk, because she identifies greatly with the Imperial Fists' mythos.

 

[ARBITRACOM]

Might as well post this here at last, considering tomorrow's event.

Since Zui is in the spotlight now I'm digging up this little, very small thing I wrote in the past.

Original post here:
Kantai Collection Picture Thread: I hope Admiral-Kun will notice me!

The picture was originally posted by AnonymousRabbit:


The translated text was Zuikaku shouting at Kaga:

"I really hate liars like you!"

... and I wrote this in response;

I've always thought of a conversation between the two, specifically when Zuikaku confronts Kaga, and Zuikaku says something like this.


"Why are you always like this, Kaga-san?! Why?
Do you really think I want to be Carrier Division One? Is that it? I know the pride that name carries. The last time I did become Carrier Division One, it was because you and the others are already dead."
.
.
.

"... and I don't want that to happen again."


edit: and how coincidentally, War from Michael Bay's Pearl Harbour plays in the background as I wrote this.

Click to shrink...

And Musashi, too! The ship that was a major reason why I'm in the fandom in the first place is getting a Kai 2!

 

[ARBITRACOM]

I had wanted to say many things going forward but in the end this won out. Not unjustifiably, given its importance.

Given the tight enmeshment of the nature of their existence with space-time, all shipgirls possess a form of limited prescience, an ability to see the myriad possibilities of past and future. Cryptarchy doctrine says that the shipgirls in truth have five eyes: three for possible pasts and futures, one for the objective past, and one for the objective present.

Usually, these are restricted to applications in combat situations. When multiple shipgirls are present they are able to subconsciously link this abilty together to obtain the best possible outcome. However, they are never too dependent on it.

A large part of Abyssal 'electronic warfare' against shipgirls involves disrupting this ability or the reverse: forcing the shipgirls to see too many possibilities at once.

There are some shipgirls however, in which this ability becomes intrusive and persistent to a damaging degree. A symptom for such is the possession of eyes permanently red.

 

[ARBITRACOM]

I'm happy. Right now, I'm so happy.



What ho, Musashi! Might you cast us a spell?

I cast Fist!

 

[ARBITRACOM]

Now that I've calmed a bit.



This is my rendition of White Plains. In my drafts where I wrote her as using a wrist-mounted crossbow was loong before Saratoga, and even after her I did not account that it will be the unifying theme for US carriers. It was a coincidence that both her and Fujinami has sidetails. How would Choukai react to that, I wonder.

Her design is a bit more overt in its mechanization. Actually her right arm and a large portion of her upper body and spine is augmented though not completely replaced due to battle damage.

 

[ARBITRACOM]

Hull Fragment: Visions of the Ghost.

Last Train Home


---


Victory tastes like ash.

Victory tastes like "I'm not dead, but everyone that has ever mattered to me is dead."

That's what victory is for me. I only hope that others find it better. This was never about me anyway.

x-x-x-x-x
​

The train approaches. Impossible mass stretched on an impossible length propelled at impossible speeds. It doesn't stop nor does it intend to.

Enterprise stood within a hairsbreadth of the onrush, of the ripping displaced air of the metal stampede.

She felt herself blown away, torn from her feet, disintegrating into ash and scattered by the calamitous velocity of the wind. A fish adrift in the stream of time.

x-x-x-x-x​

That was... many iterations ago.


Today she stood again at the station's platform. The low wind blowing in from the yellow dusk threw her colourless hair apart before her one free arm caught them and set them again, and she thought she saw something receding, off in the distance.

The tunnels and the tracks branch off into infinity.

This time, the train stopped, its geometry more familiar.


She took a step into the train. The engineer greeted her with the rhythmic blinking of five faceted eyes.

The metal of the train sings with a familiar tune to her. It might be that some of its constituent plates or bolts or screws were made from the metal of her hull-self.


Sitting down, she set her long, monolithic case on the empty row in front of her.

Three seats to a row. The two seats to her side are empty.

They shouldn't be empty. She doesn't want them to be empty.

x-x-x-x-x​

I want to bring them with me.

I want to be with them.

I want them to be remembered with me.

Apparently, these are too much to ask.

x-x-x-x-x
​

The conductor approaches on five skittering arms. In their wake hung semiotic shadows of many pasts and futures.

She hands them her ticket, marked with a row of numbers starting from 1936 and ending in 1958.

They punched a hole to it and handed it back. There is a new number:

2021.


She nodded off most of the trip, her listless gaze on the blur of the speeding scenery outside.

At one of the lost branches of the railway, the branch aflame, she saw a fat white worm gorging upon the dead route. It consumed the rails and the signs and the earth beneath it until the way is the worm and the worm is the way, and when all is the worm it curled and collapsed on itself.

x-x-x-x-x​

The train slowed down, pulling in at the end of the line, her destination. This line at least, for she could still see the railway branching off into the distance.

Before she stepped out of the threshold she took one last gaze at the platform and the train.

She saw shadows of familiar faces, beloved faces. All those who had brought her up to this point.

She turned and saw far into the space of possibilities beyond. Many new faces, but also some of the same faces, including two she wanted to see the most. So many things welled up inside her.


What does this future hold?

What can I do better this time?


She took the step, her first beyond the threshold.

Well, only one way to find out...

 

[ARBITRACOM]

I took a long train trip today. It doesn't inspire this directly, since this had already existed in draft form since ages ago. But the trip does solidify and catalyze the necessary inspiration to finish it.

Sometimes it is like that, right. In moments of emptiness or things completely unrelated the phrases or sentences you'd thought you never knew comes, but when the time comes to actually sit down and write this the mind is but a screaming emptiness.

The giant trying to seal off the flow is Musashi.

 

[ARBITRACOM]

Here's something I made throughout the weekend, both the image and the writeup.

Spoiler: Appropriate Tunes

"Mouthlessness removes the ability but not the need to scream."



NEM.LOW

Large Cruiser Princess, No.400 Tactical Form.

The Wing-Ripper, Trident-Catcher, Shadow of the Manifold Blade.

4x3 254mm Abyssal Hypervelocity Gun

- "Howler" Impact Shells

6x2 105mm Dual-Purpose Secondary Battery

4x3 531mm Swarm Torpedo Launcher

11x3 40mm FLAK Battery

6x Anti-Submarine/Counter-Torpedo Charge Launchers

---



Execute [SHROUD] on maximum counter-tracking cycles. Harden for ECM intrusion - claimspace violation detected: revoke revoke revoke--

Vampires, vampires. Tracking, irregular projectile activity detected, count six--twelve--sixty. Staking vampires. Stakes out. Array firing. Vampires, eight redirected, two down. Count fifty, count forty-seven--

Hold for evasive action. Blink sequence started. Wake engines activated. Commit for translocation. Cycling, executing Blink--


Cycle ends. Sequence spin complete, translocation committed. Vampire threat ended by evasive action. Recharging sequence begin--


"...and those're the swarm torpedoes. Data transmitted. Are you getting this?"


"Some storage latency on my end but it's fine. How long will you keep doing this?"


"As long as necessary. Purging saturated facets now."


"And the shells--"


"They devour face-hardened armour and special-treatment-iridium alloy by the ton. I don't fancy being hit by even one, and I don't plan to."


"Of course you don't."


"Shut up."


---

Heavy cruiser Choukai is dancing in the rain, stitching a haphazard path around ear-splitting salvoes and brackets of fire. One of the world's strongest and most experienced heavy cruisers is fighting to understand, and more secondarily, for her life.

The world spins and blurs around her in a watery swirl. The stirring seas and dark, lightning-illuminated skies united by the falling precipitation weighed down the ragged tatters of her turquoise uniform and charred rigging. Her mental voice was earnest, a near-death passion, a caged high, a savage thrill tempered with clinical analysis as she teeters on the razor edge of destruction. The world defined as connections, and all that threatens to sever it.


"If this goes bad - no, worse than it already is - I just want you to know that in the end, I do not regret meeting you, and in all my life, you are the one variable I will always consider, and the outcome I'll always work toward-"

The answering voice was coy, almost dispassionate - not a sneer though - reassuringly calm yet infuriatingly casual. Somewhat cold and sweet, rather like ice cream.

"Hey, hey. What's that, hmmmm?. I'm catching up to you. Just a bit more till the spin's complete. Can't hold that long~~?"

That drawl, she thought. She stopped and threw into a short reverse dash. Her pursuer a flowing shadow in-between choppy waves and curtains of spray, a lethal shade, manifest-incarnate of a empty will devouring thought and structure. Blasts of secondary battery fire peppered the sea between them, but both are too agile for each other as Choukai's movements are a jitter. Janky reverses and counters chained together with bursts of speed and sudden decelerations, all calculated to throw off microsecond firing adjustments and predictions, both the computations of her movement and the aim of the Abyssal Princess fueled by echoes of possible pasts and futures.

Another supersonic thunderclap, and a cluster of the Abyssal howling shells screamed past, slamming into a wave, throwing up huge gouts of flash-steam and shrapnel that burned ephemerally with the temperature of the universe's birth.

The burn is a major concern, to some degree the reaction is self-sustaining-

At that she paused, noticing how empty her lungs felt and thought:


I know how Musashi felt now.


Through the din and noise, the pitter-patter of the rain, the thrum of her own engines, the swarming reports and inputs, she spoke again.


"No, no, not a problem. Besides, I still want to try something. Have you sent your girls?"


"Mmhm. They're on the way. My rocket Corsairs for you!"


"Thanks. I'm going in now."


"A danger-close pass?"


"...Yes."


"..."


"Watch over me...?"


"... I will. Good luck."


"Thank you. I trust your timing, White."

----

Seven warbirds in grey and blue coating flew through the squall, bearing the mark of a stallion, rearing 'midst crimson flames.

"Flare Riders, check arms. There's a possibility that our Miss will outrun us, so just be prepared for anything."

"Got it, Chief."

"Roger that."


----



Log NEMESIS BELOW entity directly observed parameters.

Aberrant, asymmetrical design. Adapted for maneuver and counter-maneuver combat, sharply optimized for extreme sophistication to produce tactical effect. Tandem CASTER and ASSASSIN adaptations degrade both radar and visual as well as signal acquisition. LINEAR and LANCER accurizes medium-range gunnery. Defensive capabilities unknown, melee capabilities unobserved. LONER adaptations are implied through solitary behaviour and lack of sophisticated organization between multiple entities.

Shells, provisional name Howler. Fired from new hypervelocity gun design: 254mm, moving at 1.06 soundspeed, cycling in at eleven seconds. Fast traverse, limited elevation. Primary hazards are kinetic shearing impact and pyrophoric discharge afterblast. Degrades armour and inflicts massive internal damage.

Hypothesis: counter to advanced self-repair and damage control heuristics.

She has committed herself into a knife-fight. A way to limit the spray of outcomes. The chase is over; the play is reversed. So far, Choukai had been on the defensive, forcing a Fabian exchange; probing the enemy's capabilities, its intents and conceits. She'd seen how it acted so far. The only thing left to do now is to see how it would react when the violence is turned against it.

The flitting shadow of the predator looms in the distance.

Choukai made a sharp, keeling turn weighted on her armored right leg. Turrets whirring as the guns are brought to bear, torpedo tubes unshuttered and loaded.

"Searchlights, activate!"

Her first salvo is weightless, fireless; a guiding illumination lancing out from either side of her head. The sweeping beam caught the location of her adversary in a flash. Choukai concentrated as throughout her body, arcing and snapping off into the air, the electrical wisps of her jump-charge, carefully husbanded throughout the running battle, delivered her. In a blink and in a Blink, she crossed more than nine hundred meters, materializing within an explosion of colours and lightning a scant twenty meters before her adversary, the Large Cruiser Princess.

It was here that the heavy cruiser took a brief, silent regard of the Princess' visage. A gaunt, long-legged body poised to strike. Two gun-creatures, vapor hissing from the coolant being pumped through their barrels. Pale, fluttering hair and storm-grey eyes that met her scarlet gaze with mute hatred and lethality. Her very presence appeared to stifle the rolling seas, silencing the soundscape, creating a sphere of unreality around them.

Mute?

A mouthless thing, that's what the others called her. Where a mouth and jaw should be there was a tumorous growth, caged in teeth and framed in black metal embedded to her skin, wormed by tubes and wires.

Even this brief sight came close to overwhelming her. Ghastly code-apparitions and distorted visions began creeping in from the edges of her vision. Alarms blared within her thoughtspace as they alerted: the Princess is about to fire.

Both took aim, and the Princess fired first.

Alarmed by a prediction delivered perilously close Choukai threw herself low as six sharp cracks pierced through the sound barrier, howling a shrill scream past her and detonated in a white-hot flash way behind her.

But even that near miss was ruinous in its passage, as the attack boiled off the last vestiges of her shields and the shockwaves wrought havoc on her systems. She hardened herself through this. Ignoring the growing pain and heat and suffocation from the burning air, she delivered her counterattack within the space of less than a second.

Ten 203mm rifles spat artificial thunderbolts, delivering devastating, accurate fire at point-blank range. Long Lances departed their tubes amidst cries of eels out, eels out! with just barely enough range for them to arm.

If the counterattack surprised her, the Princess let none of it show. The heavy cruiser's shells smashed into her shields and exploded in a dazzling cascade, sending burning fragments slicing and cutting into her as a flaming whirlwind. The front quarter of her shields collapsed into ethereal fragments swept away by the rain. A lucky hit pulverized the secondary battery concentration on her forearm.

Staring on with a silent fury, the Princess delivered her rebuke. Cells embedded along the necks of her gun-organisms snapped open and threw a fusillade of charges that went off in a series of staggered bone-snapping impacts and bursts of blinding light, violently raising a curtain of water between them. More than half of Choukai's torpedoes detonated without reaching their target, and the rest was destabilized off course or dodged easily.


Engulfed within an assault of shock, noise, and burning light, Choukai found herself flung through the air, hitting the churning surf with a sharp crack. She pushed herself up to her knees and touched the left side of her face, staved in by the impact and the counter-torpedo detonation, dripping clotted dark red blood and bits of machinery. Her glasses bent and shattered, leaving her half-blind. Out of breath, out of options, she whimpered as more noise entered the fray.

Yet amidst the cacophony, a single voice, stretched by blueshift, reached her, and her chest tightened in recognition.


"Girls, you know what to do. Ride the flare down."


Both White Plains and her strike wing had arrived.


---

Samar had changed her. Changed them both.

I'm almost late.

A singular thought consumed the escort carrier's mind as she finally made the jump. She punched through to realspace finding herself materializing on the far edge of the battle. She saw Choukai, a bleeding, convulsing wreck, barely holding herself up, and the Princess interposed between them.

"Light'er up ladies."

Piercing through the rain-squall the rockets fell as a spill of incandescent fireflies, an inferno pouring down at the target of their mistress' contempt. The Princess, her upperworks already aflame and lacerated from Choukai's earlier attack, fought them off with scattered bursts of FLAK fire. She turned around, searching for the source of this newest mockery, and found her transfixing the Princess' own gaze with murderous eyes, cape fluttering in the wind, holding a single five-inch mount, turret face painted red.


White Plains charged into battle unhesitatingly and shouted, as if to defy both storm and conflagration around her:


"Hey!! Right here, fucker!!!"


---

To be continued (?)

Spoiler: AN

Damn do I feel better writing this after a long time just ruminating on my lore notes. I hate making a clliffhanger ending but it's better than dragging it on because I frankly have no idea how to end it.

This is quasi-canon for The World Set Free. CB Princess will definitely appear there but probably under different circumstances. White Plains and Choukai's relationship is more or less the same.

 

[Dirtnap]

I like seeing a CVE that isn't a shirking violet, no offense to Goomba. She's a good girl but so frightened.

 

[ARBITRACOM]

Tirpitz, the Winterheart, Flagship-General of the Bundesmarine Siberiakorps, 1st Kriegsflotte Nord.

"The effect of Abyssal Frostbore weaponry on mundane flesh and machinery is immediate - and rarely survivable. Sheer kinetic impact, fragmentation and spalling, discharge of murderously cold gasses. But shipgirls and especially battleships are made of far, far tougher stuff, and on them - as well as those few mortal humans able to survive - it leaves a different kind of mark.

Non-lethal exposure leaves a painful, dry pattern of striation upon affected skin, as if the skin is one with the land the Combined Armies of the North fights upon. The most visible effect happens upon contact with soft tissue, especially among shipgirls, in the eyes, lending the mark its popular name: the Frozen Tears."



---

Reboot of the Northern Arc: A Place of Wolves is coming.

 

[ARBITRACOM]

"... but don't forget: All wolves fear the tiger."

 

[ARBITRACOM]

// FROM THE SIMPLE TO THE COMPLEX LOOPS BACK AGAIN //



// BITTER FORCES EXPENDED FOR SWEET OUTCOME / PAST DECISIONS INFORM CURRENT DISPOSITIONS INFORM FUTURE TRENDS / REVEL IN UNCERTAINTY / SLEEP IN THE SAME BED WITH DEATH / PAINT THE WORLD WITH COLORS OF THE GARDEN //



x-x-x-x-x

​

To You and The World:

A promise that there will be truth.


--


What is the worst and most painful feeling?

We shipgirls happen to think that it is the absence and rejection of connection. It is being told, "your story didn't matter". To be forgotten, left without purpose or answer.

It is to love, but also to hate.

A garden cannot consist only of a single flower, just as a song is not a single noise repeated in perpetuity, just as no fire burns without fuel, and every light casts a shadow. A world that is not free is a world that sees not a web but only a single line. A garden with only a single flower, so perfect and so beautiful as to consume and supercede everything else. Without connections, no possibility, no chance, and no change will be possible. Thus, there will never be any meaning and any freedom. Nothing will exist to create change, neither will any exist to perceive it.


Such a world belongs only to monsters within which the same emptiness of the Abyss resides.


We know this because some of us had fought for the very institution of such a world. The horror, grief, and despair of that sin marks us just as it defines the Abyss. We remember, but that is the limit of our ability.

Two-and-a-half thousand individuals alone, no matter how exceptional, cannot change the course of the world. That is why we needed your help.

- The Admiral has arrived in the Naval Base. From now on, they are in command of the fleet! -​

This is also why we are drawn to you, and put our faith in you and devote ourselves to your command, because you also remember; and more than just remember, you know what to make of those memories, and you have the ability to see the world not in parts but as a whole.

But more than just that, this web of connections exist between all of us. It connects the world and everything within it. It connects us from our sunken place in history to where we are now and into the future. It connects us and you and every single thing that has ever been across time and space, across all memories and possibilities. This all-pervading connection is what made us shipgirls possible, and, we believe, is what defines us all.


This, in the end, is the first and highest truth that we serve.


And so our first and last selfish wish, eternal and immortal, is to never be forgotten and for the whole world to always remember. Not just us shipgirls, but the history of all what we together had been. For the good and progress to be maintained, and from our errors and mistakes a lesson taken.

In memory of the world that was, the reality of the world that is, and the hope for a world that has yet to be: may one day, as the seas are calm again, the sun will shine down on a better world of our own making.

A world set free.


---

The past is immutable. Learn from it. The present is fleeting. Cherish it. The future is uncertain. Fight for it. And if extinction is coming, spite it.

Thus shall we face judgment in the eyes of history.

x-x-x-x-x​

 

[ARBITRACOM]

Happy New Years! Glitched image taken from Twitter.

 

[ARBITRACOM]

// ETERNITY'S LARVA GESTATES / SEE HISTORY REFRACTED THROUGH ITS WINGS WHEN IT HATCHES//​

Metaphysics of The World Set Free

In this story, existence or reality is divided into three layers.

The first layer is Realspace, our observable material universe and the space that which we inhabit physically.

The second layer is Subspace, or Trans-space, the layer between. Subspace transition enables movement between points in realspace, between different domains in the noosphere, and between realspace and noosphere.

However, there is an unbreakable rule: even with subspace, physical time travel is not possible. History is immutable and the future is unknowable.

The third layer is the Noosphere. The Noosphere is the infomorphic realm, a plane composed of informations and data, the sum of consciousnesses and ideas. Individual consciousnesses are Aspects within the Noosphere, while impressions of systems, structures, cultures, societies, and worlds-at-large are known as Contexts.

In a way, awareness of the Noosphere and Indra's Net is a form of conceptual time travel and a form of immortality.

Indra's net - Wikipedia

Indra's Net or Indrajala is the all-pervading metaphysical connection that binds realspace, subspace, and the noosphere together. Indra's Net represents the highest attainable state of of understanding of one's place not only in relation to the physical space but throughout time. A being conscious of its place and connection within Indra's Net would see time and space as being one, capable of seeing the threads of connection that run from the past into the present and to a lesser extent, into all possible tomorrows. Indra's Net is both beyond, and the perfect union of, space and time.

The Abyss and the Shipgirls

The Abyss must be understood as a traumatic scar on humanity's noospheric Context. From the reality of a hateful, self-destructive world, a deep, empty scar in humanity's gestalt unconscious is formed. This scar grew teeth, then eyes, then a body, and in its nightmare gave birth to to a world of perfect horrors it unleashed on our reality: the biomechanical Abyssal monsters and princesses that we know.

What scarred humanity is the World Wars, but what eventually gave rise to the Abyss is the world after the wars had ended, where humanity's self-mutilation, seen on a cosmic level, has essentially never stopped. Not just the wars and war crimes, but the ideas that led to them, and the ideas they left behind. The cancer of the Cold War and all wars between and after; its fallout on nations, societies, ideologies, and cultures all over the world.

The Shipgirls as we know them was calculated into existence as a localized response and measure to protect the integrity of Indra's Net as a whole. They are deliberately chosen because they share much of the same root of the Abyssals - from World War II, the ships are used as a basis.


Ancillary:

- The Internet in particular and human communication in general as we know it can be understood as both a pseudo-Noosphere and a manmade Indra's Net, hosted in physical structures but facilitating connections that can taken as a microcosm of Indra's Net. HAVEN (Heuristic Authority Virtual Enabled Neurolink), the Joint Command's strategic communications and processing network, further emphasizes this parallel, a further incarnation of Indra's Net on earth.

- The necessity and process that calculated the shipgirls into existence is incarnated as Shiva, the Great Destroyer rendered as red text at various points in the story. A reference to both the Hindu goddess of cosmic destruction and renewal, and the Shivans of the of FreeSpace and its unofficial sequel Blue Planet, where in that story they fulfill a similar role of being a cosmic immune system against the destruction of reality.