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Limit Theory [PA Multicross SI]

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CrazedGamma1721 said:
Question do you think you can post the world the self-insert has gone to because I'm a little lost.
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As other people have mentioned in the thread, it's Stellaris, which is a 4X video game.
It doesn't have a canon history or anything like that. It's just random galaxy with random factions getting into fights (normally.)
The most defining, kinda-fixed in a game of Stellaris is the endgame crisis, a sudden random interruption of a powerful new computer-controlled faction late in the game. The Prethoryns are one of three options for a "natural" endgame crisis (there are two ways for a player to become an endgame crisis, but let's ignore that, as Chrono would gleefully get rid of a "PC endgame crisis.")
 
For "Natural" Endgame crisis, if anyone curios, the other two are "Unbidden" (basically energy-based extra-dimensional lifeform invasion) and "Contingency" (basically Skynet infiltration that turned into all-out AI Nazi war once certain time passed). For player to become crisis, they either made a pact with End of The Cycle (Basically WH40K Chaos Undivided) or completing Menace path (basically by being biggest bully in the galaxy) (Require Nemesis DLC).
 
ltmauve said:
The Prethoryn Swarm is a canonical endgame crisis in Stellaris. They're running from something in canon that is never explained - I believe there's an event later where your scientists tell you "we took a real-time look at their galaxy and it's gone. Just missing." Me being me and having a metaplot, well, you can clearly see what's going on.
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Oh no Chrono gonna die from poking the forbidden egg.
 
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Chapter 244
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    • Chapter 244​


    "Aliana, contingency document 1! Execute now, if not sooner! Everyone out of the cluster!" Chrono interrupted Aliana with a message flagged as maximum priority, intended by the Progenitors for nuclear missile barrages or "MLA Metal Planet activating."

    "Chrono, what-"

    "Read it and do it. I'm going on a rescue mission."

    The link was silent for a moment. Chrono returned her attention to the Prethoryns.

    "I need the coordinates of past galaxies so I can help your people." Chrono forced down the link with all the care of a nuclear explosion. All the Prethoryns twitched.

    "No. This is not a negotiation. Stand aside so we can continue our journey, or perish now." Dela Eta-Jorn, the largest of the Prethoryns, spoke.

    Chrono narrowed her eyes. Seven seconds later, multiple hyperspace windows formed in the system. One each formed next to each cluster of Prethoryns, disgorging a dozen ships. Another one opened near the largest moon of the rocky planet the Prethoryns were trying to convert.

    These were Makos. While larger in overall dimensions compared to Skylords, the ships were spindly compared to the solid spearheads of the battleships. Each one had a small central core connected to three secondary hulls mounting massive curved "claws" and separate discs. These were evenly arranged around the the forward axis, with the peripheral components connected via a thin torus as well as the core.

    The Mako's particle lasers handled the sudden swarm of bio-psychic missiles, and the discs opened. Slices slid out, completely exposing the sphere at the center, as well as a ring of silvery metal.

    Then the metal glowed a familiar orange, as the psycoframe broadcast an intent of presence. It hummed in the back of Chrono's mind like dangerous machinery.

    "We are willing to fight, to ensure our mission." Dela stated again. "A few ensouled machines are not enough to stop us."

    "If you are actually interested in saving your people, then tell me." Chrono said. "Otherwise, you're just a bunch of cowards trying to run away and stepping on anyone else in your way."

    At her will, the thousands of Makos near the moon moved, their claws unfolding and a shimmering, water-like crystal pattern of orange extending from them as they brought their psychic power to bear. They swept forward, and the moon simply was not. There was no dust, no explosion, no light. Just a silent advance that erased a celestial body. The ships continued onward.

    "I have spent the past year dealing with enough selfish people who think that other people aren't worth listening to just because they're of a different species. And I'm getting the same kind of vibes out of you." Chrono said. "I would have thought that being refugees would have made you a bit better at accepting help."

    There was some activity over the Prethoryn network, before Dela gave Chrono the coordinates, her grudging resentment evident in the same way a double-ended stellar shotgun to the face was.

    -----------

    Aliana

    -----------

    The Exile command system was a vast thing. Aliana might have been able to coordinate a war across an entire planet, but at this scale she was slightly lost. Still, she had her instructions, and the interface was very well-designed, and the instructions were well-written. It hadn't taken her long to order every inhabited planet and space station to be beamed up into buffers. Properly defining the way to beam up parts of planets was taking too long, so she just ordered the entire things grabbed.

    That process was ongoing now. The mass of most of a galaxy took up quite a number of pods, and they were going down the portal as fast as possible. In the meantime, that left her to evacuate everything else that wasn't immediate available, including ships in hyperspace and plenty of shielded ships. Considering that she'd just removed a lot of planets from the galaxy, no one was going to try lowering their shields soon unless they were forced to.

    As far as the ships in hyperspace, she did have Installations to knock them out of hyperspace. That would give her a moment to grab them and buffer them. Which still gave her a lot of targets that she would need to take care of on an individual basis.

    Before she really dove into the weeds on that, she ordered the buffer pods through the inter-cluster portal. It would not be a quick process, which meant that she needed to start it as soon as possible.

    -------------------

    Chrono

    -------------------

    Chrono nearly launched her rescue fleet right to the target before she realized that she might just be translocating directly into demon-controlled territory. Which would be bad. If the demons didn't have translocation, they'd gain it right away. Besides, she had no clue exactly where a galaxy dozens of Hubble distances away was. She might wind up with her fleet in a black hole or neutron star, or just overlapping with the Prethoryns she was trying to rescue. So....

    She ordered a construction run of Nimbi loaded with the longest-range psychic sensors in their equipment bays. And did she have a blueprint for a really big telescope for fast large-scale galaxy locating? No, but she did have medium-sized telescopes and a interpolation program for them already made. Workable, but more work.

    Macro writing, go!

    Minutes later, a hundred Nimbi translocated one Hubble distance away, the last point where Chrono could make sure they missed every galaxy in the region. Upon not finding the massive psychic signature that the demons would hopefully have, each Nimbus shed nanobots. A moment later, each one entered hyperspace.

    A minute later, and each one had performed a complicated dance of repeatedly dipping out and in of hyperspace, dropping a flood of nanobots at each location. The Nimbi parked themselves a lightyear forward of the nanobot clouds. Those clouds were constructing the medium-sized telescopes, and the macro would automatically connect them and give her a much better accounting of photons coming in her general direction.

    Fifteen minutes later, the next wave of a hundred Nimbi translocated even farther away.

    Chrono, unable to stop her avatar from twitching, had delinked and begun laying out grids of Nimbi to act as tripwires in case the demons started charging at her.

    Actually, didn't the Vortigaunts say something about other cells? Chrono frowned, and then ordered more grids of Nimbi constructed and deployed in the rest of the cells in the cluster. If the demons wanted to do a run around her, she was happy to watch them. And her fleet was growing nicely. She had enough Makos to outmass the galaxy, and the number continued to grow.

    "Aliana, want a hand?" She asked. She likely wouldn't have any news for a few hours, and her big core could certainly help with the operations.


    A/N: Oops, I thought I introduced the Makos in the previous chapter instead of this chapter. The real "teehee" derp is Blue, not Chrono.
    @Cheaf Min has joined the party.
     
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    • Chapter 245
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    • Chapter 245

    Chrono excused herself moments before she expected to get the coordinates for the target galaxy. The Prethoryns had taken nearly a week to travel this far.

    A thousand Nimbi translocated close to the galaxy. Moments later, 55 billion ships translocated, each half a lightyear from each star. Then, with a series of quick hyperspace jumps, the ships blinked around each star system, beaming up any Prethoryn they found, and then leaving into hyperspace. There was barely enough time for the screaming to start.

    It was a good thing that Chrono had sent so many ships. The Prethoryns were everywhere, strange structures growing through planets like stabbing an apple with a knife. All those were beamed up as well, stored in more buffer pods. The pods were being automatically sent through the inter-cluster portal, and then they would be sent through the incoming portal in that cluster, just to give more separation. Maybe she should send them through the third inter-cluster portal?

    Well, she might as well. The demons might be able to trace her or wake up the demons in the next cluster. There wasn't any psychic activity through the portal at the moment, which made that unlikely.

    Still, it wasn't too hard to queue up and would hardly cause more problems for her, right?

    That left her to wait, and wait, and wait some more. She took her grids of Nimbi tripwires and rotated them, making them all point towards a galaxy about thirty degrees away from their current base of operations. Tripwire Nimbi were scattered about randomly, so that way Chrono could see where the demons were going without leaving a pattern for them to find.

    Hopefully, the demons wouldn't show up until after they had gotten out of the cluster and blown the portal.

    Two hours later, with most of the buffer pods through the portal, their luck ran out. The Nimbi started self-destructing, their sensors picking up a massive spike in psychic energy. The effect was more a wave than a point source, sweeping towards the ships, only for them to self-destruct moments before the wave reached them. At millions of lightyears per second, the ships barely had milliseconds to self-destruct.

    Except not all of the Nimbi past the previous Prethoryn galaxy were being destroyed. Only a fraction were, with the demons advancing in a line straight towards the galaxy. Not exactly straight, though. It bent and went on strange arcs it traveled, at one point going perpendicular to the straight-line path.

    Chrono ground her teeth, jaw clenched. Several galaxy masses worth of Makos translocated closer to that galaxy.

    The demons reached the galaxy, and then stayed still for a moment. Then they exploded, a massive wave suddenly growing in every direction, faster than the old wave.

    The Makos had been waiting patiently until that second. They suddenly fired, massive lances of orange light spearing into a blue wave. 97 seconds until all the pods were through. Every group was engulfed, their beams protecting them from the creepy blue sludge.

    Withy the demons this close - sometimes getting close enough to ignore the shields, Chrono could see inconsistencies in the energy. Flows, like a fluid getting deeper.

    "Chrono!" Aliana said. "When are we getting out of here?"

    "Busy! Use my chassis." Chrono barked.

    The balls of Makos grew, new members translocating in. The demons had covered too much space for her to translocate and then use hyperspace quickly.

    83 seconds left. The growing masses of Makos were gaining ground, pushing back against the blue.

    Then the next second, the beams stopping working. The energy shifted slightly. The blue surged around them, only to be pushed back by the psychic self-destruct of the warships.

    Chrono split her rallies between the portal and the other evacuated galaxy, her ships quickly outmassing galaxies. The shell around the portal was growing rapidly. With sixty seconds left on the clock, her defences were lightyears thick.

    Then hyperspace stopped working. The constants changed in every cell, all three billion of them. The picogates closed, unable to connect. She was reduced to just the portal and the defensive fleet. No more reinforcements were arriving - she'd set everything to self-destruct immediately if disconnected from her, as part of Contingency 1.

    Another fifteen seconds passed, with just 42 seconds left before they were out of there. The wave arrived, flaying off the outer layer of the shell. But that bought a precious half-second, and then the demons moved again, practically crawling. The Makos formed barriers, concentric shells surrounding the portal. The demons didn't slow down, weaving in between the ships.

    Chrono self-destructed the ships that were surrounded. The orange pulses tore apart the thin mesh, and then every time the demons tried to sneak past a ship it detonated, buying precious instants.

    But it wasn't enough. The demons were just moving too quickly, and without them burying the Makos, the time bought by detonations was not enough. The blue was averaging tens of thousands of times the speed of light even with the pushback from explosions.

    Chrono turned her attention to Aliana, whose core was clutched in the hands of Chrono's chassis. Both their avatars were wedged in a finger joint.

    "Aliana?" Chrono asked.

    There was silence, active ignorance. Chrono linked to her avatar.


    A/N: Yup. Anyway, I noticed @memzak and @Odd1todd89 likebombing this time.
     
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    • Blokkats? Lol. Doesn't really fit with the excessive use of energy since the Blokkats collect instead of waste energy.
     
    UnfortuWatcher said:
    Blokkats? Lol. Doesn't really fit with the excessive use of energy since the Blokkats collect instead of waste energy.
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    They're the interdimensional demons from before the dawn of time first mentioned on the stargate verse by ancient Ori texts

    I also remember someone wondering if the blue stuff was Phyraxian Oil (?) from MTG (?) IIRC, but im not even sure if i spelt that correctly
     
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    Unori! said:
    They're the interdimensional demons from before the dawn of time first mentioned on the stargate verse by ancient Ori texts

    I also remember someone wondering if the blue stuff was Phyraxian Oil (?) from MTG (?) IIRC, but im not even sure if i spelt that correctly
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    If its Phyrexian, you implode that universe the moment you discover that fact. Full Stop.

    Even if you're still in it.

    Modern Phyrexia is, for all that it came from MtG, is effectively one of THE most deadly 'plagues' to have ever been conceived. Borg + Tyranid (with adaptive speeds more on par with Primal Zerg) + the Thing + Photonio Birds/Xeelee power sources. All mixed into a Hellraiser/Event Horizon/40k Warp setting.

    If you've played SCORN? That's Phyrexia on a very, very, very, good day. Free non-STD hookers & unlimited blackjack vacation day in the tropics, for the usual Phyrexian inhabitant.
     
    To put it in a bit of context, MtG Planeswalkers are to gods what gods are to ants, and a single drop of Phyrexian Oil can turn them into fanatical slaves of the Phyrexian project.

    It's like with WH40K orks, where a single spore can regrow an entire WAAAGH if you aren't diligent enough in burning it all away, except that orks are a parody while Phyrexia is deadly serious in being a hyper evil biomechanical hive mind superhell.

    Phyrexia is one of the rare cases where the only reason Step One isn't exterminatus is that due diligence requires being thorough. Leaving so much as a single atom of that stuff is unacceptably sloppy.
     
    ltmauve said:
    Only a fraction were, with the demons advancing in a line straight towards the galaxy. Not exactly straight, though. It bent and went on strange arcs it traveled, at one point going perpendicular to the straight-line path.
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    ltmauve said:
    The demons reached the galaxy, and then stayed still for a moment. Then they exploded, a massive wave suddenly growing in every direction, faster than the old wave.
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    Entity is displaying pathing traits of a slime mold.
    SirKaid said:
    It's like with WH40K orks, where a single spore can regrow an entire WAAAGH if you aren't diligent enough in burning it all away, except that orks are a parody while Phyrexia is deadly serious in being a hyper evil biomechanical hive mind superhell.
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    Yeah, but Orks don't act like a virus. Kill the Orks, you kill the WAAGH. Kill the spores, no more Orks. They are rogue fighting machines.
    Phyrexian Oil is something more than merely an army creator. Mainly, because it's not subverting things sub-optimally like Orks do - why fight and destroy when you can turn the enemy to your side after all?
     
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    Chapter 246
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    • Chapter 246​


    "Aliana!?" Chrono said, staring at the curled-up, unfocused-eyed woman, and then something clicked. Useless alone. She reached out.

    Pale white to deep purple... and then to orange.

    The Makos changed, the glow of their psycometal changing from orange to white flecked through with orange and purple. The barriers changed, a geometrically thin surface becoming a physical barrier of white water with a slight teal tinge, growing thicker over time. It annihilated with the demons on contact, canceling them out and actually slowing them down.

    "Chrono?" Aliana asked, her avatar grabbing Chrono's hand.

    "Psychic powers!" Chrono shouted. "Stay with me!"

    The self-destructing Makos now released a wave of that liquid with their shockwave. Chrono flew into the portal behind the last of the pods. Each shell of Mako was being destroyed individually now, with a noticeable gap between the alerts. The antidemon liquid was doing its job, slowing down the wave.

    The minutes spent traveling down the portal tube were spent in silence, Aliana attempting to crush Chrono's hand.

    With three layers of ships left, Chrono flew out and immediately translocated away as both ends of the portal self-destructed.

    "So..." Chrono said. "Uh."

    "Wait, we lived?" Aliana said.

    "Somehow." Chrono said. "Aliana, have you encountered those demons before?"

    "... How would I remember that?" Aliana responded, moving herself to a slightly more comfortable position in Chrono's chassis hand.

    "Ah. Yeah." Chrono shrugged. "But you froze up when it got close, and your soul had some weird thing that I shared to the Makos that actually worked against it."

    "But how did you actually do that?"

    "Psychic powers~" Chrono wiggled her hand.

    "Okay...." Aliana said. "But how?"

    "Penny has hundreds of Aura Strains and we have no clue how each one works or which ones I got or how they mutated." Chrono tilted her head. "Psychic powers are bullshit, as mom always says."

    "Wow." Aliana said.

    "Yeah." Chrono shrugged. Then she sat up. "You know what? I'm done going big. We've been hammering at this stupid galaxy for months I'm going home. I'm not taking anything out of the buffers until we have a plan."

    "Sounds good." Aliana nodded.

    A/N: Yup. That was short.
    Also noticed @LENDAR-NOT dropping many likes here.
     
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    • ltmauve said:
    "Yeah." Chrono shrugged. Then she sat up. "You know what? I'm done going big. We've been hammering at this stupid galaxy for months I'm going home. I'm not taking anything out of the buffers until we have a plan."
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    "Fuck this shit I'm out" is an appropriate response to cosmic slimemolds of doom.
     
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