The Practice War [Complete]

CircleTheSkies · Dec 28, 2017

I definitely appreciate the view in this setting towards interstellar war - it feels very much like a practical 'hard' scifi approach, with the sheer amount of resources in many solar systems meaning "resource demand" is far less pressing of a reason. I wager a race will go for a second and maybe a third system for safety and possibly grasp for a particularly appealing system (minimal needed terraforming, especially rich system, "filling in" the territory) in the neighborhood, but probably not go much further.

Snowfire said:
Apart from the First and Second? Not as far as you've ever seen. The Shiplords allow any race that weathers the Tribute Fleet assaults to continue to access the Secrets they've unlocked until such time as they defeat a Tribute Fleet, give up, or delve too deeply and are summarily executed.

Ah, so I quite misunderstood then - it's that the First and Second secret are forbidden until the test is passed then? I assume those are the two that would make a race particularly dangerous in a plague-like fashion (ie, being able to viably spread outside the home system, and being able to self-modify into <something forbidden> or <something unable to be handled> - the former being 'mystery' and the latter involving Singularity-esque acceleration, perhaps).

I suppose the other Secrets, while potent and (I would assume) able to allow a race to face a Tribute Fleet, mean no more than a local thread then. I'm definitely looking forward to learning more about them - and how they play in to the Shiplords' system. Are the first two dangerous in a "will invite Bad Things In" (Event Horizon style) while the other can mitigate the threat? Are the Shiplords trying to push races towards understanding the Secrets in their own way in hopes (not unlike the Entities in Worm) of someone finding a solution among them to a Very Major Problem? Or perhaps it 'just' ties into their alien-seeming duty/religion/etc as self-appointed caretakers of the galaxy. That they stomp on total genocide is interesting, as are the other 'limitations' they place upon the test-passing races. Did they destroy that race because it showed no promise of furthering the overall study of the Secrets, or because they showed some fatal flaw?

All these questions and more... one day we shall find answers. I hope

I'm rather looking forward to Second Contact, I'll be honest. The reactions of the different representatives to different aspects of humanity (not just Practice and the Words, but other things as well) and vice versa... I'm anticipating a good read.

No pressure ^_~

EDIT:

Shard said:
Do the Shiplords target a race, with, say, only the 1st Secret? What happens were a race to qualify for survival without using the Secrets? By sheer numbers, for instance.

Hmmm... I wager they'd definitely target a race that 'just' has the First Secret, at least once they start actually leaving the system in a serious way. I suppose they might interdict and destroy any craft leaving without a trace to discourage further attempts, while waiting for the race to discover the Second Secret.

I'm guessing that similarly they'd push a test through for a race that 'just' has the Second Secret at a certain point in research, even if they don't show signs of understanding the First.

I do wonder if the First and Second Secrets are 'necessary gateways' to the rest - that is, could a race figure out some set of the other Secrets but not the first two? Or what if a race researches the First and Second Secret, but never actually uses them - would the Shiplords still start the Tribute cycle, or would they simply wait until the race actually deployed them? Or what if humanity somehow developed Practice without the Secrets, then used it to effectively 'mimic' the effects (ie, Practicing FTL-capable vessels into existence, say) - how would they react?

All fun questions ^_^

Shard · Dec 28, 2017

Well, we do know that the 1st and 2nd aren't needed, because the exterminated race has the 1st and 6th secrets.

Snowfire · Dec 28, 2017

Pyro Hawk said:
So @Snowfire What IS the Third Secret? Or at least, what do we think it does?

Well, the best image you have of the Third Secret in use involves a ship of the Luminary fleet firing what looked for all intents and purposes like lightning bolts at the Tribute Fleet. To good effect, too.

Shard said:
Do the Shiplords target a race, with, say, only the 1st Secret? What happens were a race to qualify for survival without using the Secrets? By sheer numbers, for instance.

They do. As to the rest...um...no offence meant here but

CircleTheSkies said:
definitely appreciate the view in this setting towards interstellar war - it feels very much like a practical 'hard' scifi approach, with the sheer amount of resources in many solar systems meaning "resource demand" is far less pressing of a reason. I wager a race will go for a second and maybe a third system for safety and possibly grasp for a particularly appealing system (minimal needed terraforming, especially rich system, "filling in" the territory) in the neighborhood, but probably not go much further.

^_^ Yay! It makes sense (ish). As to expansion, you might be surprised, although this is largely my fault due to mistyping seven hundred instead of seventeen hundred last night in regards to how long the Nileans have been around. Of course, what is claimed and what's actually colonised are two very different things. Developing through the Tribute Fleet system has a way of embedding stable, long-term decision making in species. It doesn't always work, but most of those that it doesn't work on die during the process.

CircleTheSkies said:
All these questions and more... one day we shall find answers. I hope

Oh, you will. Eventually. I will say though, that it's killing me how close you're coming to the truth in some areas, only to flip around in your next sentence and lose all the good work you've been doing. Especially when I won't get to actually pull that curtain back until after Practice War ends and we move into SC. Still, it's good to see the speculation hasn't stopped

CircleTheSkies said:
I'm rather looking forward to Second Contact, I'll be honest. The reactions of the different representatives to different aspects of humanity (not just Practice and the Words, but other things as well) and vice versa... I'm anticipating a good read.

No pressure ^_~

None felt -_^

Second Contact is a big moment, and it's one I'm hoping to give justice to, but also aware that trying to give absolute perfection on the matter would be not just foolish but stupid. Yes, they're different

I have a good portion of it planned out at this point, which definitely helps, and I'll probably actually write out a document similar to what I put together for the Second Battle of Sol when I come to it for mechanical concerns. Should be fun!

Shard · Dec 28, 2017

Snowfire said:
Well, the best image you have of the Third Secret in use involves a ship of the Luminary fleet firing what looked for all intents and purposes like lightning bolts at the Tribute Fleet. To good effect, too.

Ah, electromagnetic force?

uju32 · Dec 28, 2017

Snowfire said:
Apart from the First and Second? Not as far as you've ever seen. The Shiplords allow any race that weathers the Tribute Fleet assaults to continue to access the Secrets they've unlocked until such time as they defeat a Tribute Fleet, give up, or delve too deeply and are summarily executed.

I wonder what happened when a First Secret species beat the very first Tribute fleet sent to their system. As in, literally on the very first attempt.

I mean, the Shiplords have been running around for millions of years across what sounds like millions of lightyears of cubic volume; in that time frame and over that volume of space, even low-probability events will happen. Especially if, as you say, it's entirely possible for the Shiplords to be "distracted" periodically. By, say, whatever those War Fleets were built to counter.

Snowfire said:
You are. Those were Nilean Community ships and personnel

These were. But I see no reason why the Shiplords would restrict that sort of infiltration to only the Nileans.

The Schorvan, for example, with their essentially libertarian approach to governance, or the Cich'swa, with Shiplord approved Second Secret modifications to all their species, are basically obvious targets for getting key personnel bodyjacked or Manchurian-candidated without their governments knowing any better. Like they did to us.

And the Nileans are necessarily limited in penetrating and guarding those societies, while retaining the manpower to keep their own governmental structures clean of infiltration.

Of course, we should probably remember that there is no certainty that whatever subverted the Nilean admiral and his staff is of Shiplord origin.
I mean, the Strand thinks so, and he's the expert on the ground, but there's no guarantee one way or the other.
Especially since he characterized it as the result of a mistake.

Snowfire said:
You're also the first in the memory and uncovered history of all involved to have ever beaten back a Tribute Fleet on the second attempt (without being scheduled for obliteration). That means you know or learnt something that none of them have come close to. The power calculations here are complex, but you shouldn't expect to be treated as an automatic inferior. Your status as a single system polity will matter, for sure, but there are other matters in play.

Noted.

Snowfire said:
Except on those occasions when the Shiplords are 'too distracted' to take action until the campaign has been pursued to its completion. At which point the victor usually ends up blasted out of creation. Not that it stops the occasional ambitious species trying to make it stick anyway.

Usually =/= not always.
I wonder how many times that distraction is faked, whether due to a deal with the SLs or just the SLs sitting back to see what the combatants will do.
And more worryingly, how many times it's real.

Snowfire said:
Something to note, however, is that one of the reasons Kendl was called on the timing of the meeting in Alien Reactions was because that meeting took months to put together. Most of that was travel time. Travelling from the mid-rim to the outer spiral, like the Contact Fleet is doing, has taken them years. So in general, the cost effective comment holds. It's so much easier to just expand in other directions as necessary.

That puts a different spin on things.
And gives some idea of the strategic speed of First Secret FTL available to the younger races.

The Milky Way has a radius of some 50,000 light years, and the Solar System is ~28,000 light years from the Galactic Center, all according to Wiki.
If it's taking them multiple years to get here in their fastest ships, we're looking at a top speed on the order of four or low-five digit lightyears in a year, assuming a straightline course, constant speeds, and no stopovers to refuel/repair.

Doesn't need to be more specific than that, I don't think.

Lailoken said:
The Nileans do not strike me as the sort of people who care.
As the wise man once said, "A mastery of tradecraft means never having to say you're sorry."

I don't really agree.
Even the closest of friends is going to take umbrage to you assuming the right to terminal sanction it's officials and citizens without so much as a by your leave. And while the Nileans are good, they are demonstrably not perfect.

I mean, this is the Nilean PoV

"How long should it take, Fleet Leader?" Your question was very calm, and you wondered if he recognised the faint dilation in your pupils. After so long with a stack in your head, it was unnoticeable to all but the most observant until you triggered it. But given your suspicions, you weren't going to assume; the last time someone had done that with someone this highly placed the Long Peace had come within a hairsbreadth of being broken. The Community had learnt a lot from that, and with it had come a solemn promise. Never to let it happen again.

And that's inside the Nilean Community, where de-escalation channels are familiar to all; targeted assassinations outside it will come with exponentially worse risks.

EDIT
Note:

Snowfire said:
Neras Emergence Starhome Alternate Nutrient Source Advised
Location Unknown
You floated in the deep dark, only the faintest light of decades past glinting on the surface of your home. Almost two weeks by the measure of Earth in that vast emptiness, waiting patiently for others to come; little surprise you'd grown lonely as the days ticked by. Out here, there was no central star, or planets to judge the passage of time by eye, and a Starhome was far smaller than those. Half again the size of a Collector, yes, but when distance made even the stars small?

Snowfire said:
Through Project Insight, the truly relevant Directives placed by the Shiplords have been narrowed down to the following:

You shall abandon the First Secret

You shall abandon the Second Secret.

~~You shall not go beyond your star.~~

To linger in the spaces between stars is unwise.

Look deeper into the Void at your peril.

With

Evidently the spaces between the stars hold no terrors for the Neras.

justinkal · Dec 28, 2017

Snowfire said:
They do. As to the rest...um...no offence meant here but

Well, in theory a species with an extremely unusual direction of scientific progress could just plain never discover the First or Second Secrets.

Would the Shiplords even make first contact with a species that has Secrets, but doesn't have the First or Second?

What about one that managed to get things like Cold Fusion, high power laser weaponry, and Cloning without discovering any Secrets at all?

uju32 · Dec 28, 2017

Of possible relevance, from across two different updates and three PoVs:
The Alien diplomatic mission

Snowfire said:
"It would help if everyone wasn't so obvious about wanting to get out of here again." You muttered, and he chuckled pleasantly. Even after so many years, the Nilean Community had never managed to find out why the Shiplords gave their warning about the space between stars. It was simply respected, and no one wanted to find out for themselves if it was there for a reason. Testing the Shiplords tended to end poorly for the race(s) involved.

"They'll get used to it." His voice held a certainty you weren't sure you believed. It must have shown on your face, too, as he gestured at the empty dark on the viewscreen. "There aren't many who can call themselves Navigators, Ambassador. That means something." You nodded, almost against your will. That title was almost universal among the many species the Community had interacted with over the cycles, as an informal recognition for those who jumped into interstellar space and returned from it. "You'll be one too, after all this is over."
"Even so," you shivered against your will as you followed his gaze to the screen, picking out the faint slivers of reflected starlight that were the rest of the tiny flotilla. "It just feels wrong."

The Presence in the Void

Snowfire said:
The handful of minnows vanished into the dark, followed moments later by the last two of their shoal and the presence that had hovered around the suddenly active space in the vast emptiness between stars stirred. They were so far from their homes, heading even further away from them in pursuit of…was it really hope?

The presence rippled in the Void between, stretching out to track their path, then reaching towards others that shared the endless Space. Could there be that possibility again, after so long. As it waited for the others to respond, it wondered itself. It would have to be one of the younger ones, if they took the chance at all, but maybe.

Ah, there they were, but my some of them looked dusty. It had been so very, very long after all, and by their standards too. But there were things to do now, and as the shoal of sparkling minnows slipped ever onwards, the presence began to speak.

Reactivation of Project Insight

Snowfire said:
You raced onwards, blurring between the movements that the old system had forced you to dodge or wait to pass, following the wayfinder of tempered instinct as you bore down on a collection of tiny lights. You ducked beneath the shadow of a greater presence, the shell of light around you moulding to match it, and pulled to a sudden stop as the path terminated.

These points of light? They were so small…

Suggestive pieces of data, especially when you consider that said presence can apparently read minds/hopes/intentions....

Coda · Dec 28, 2017

justinkal said:
What about one that managed to get things like Cold Fusion, high power laser weaponry, and Cloning without discovering any Secrets at all?

As far as I can tell, that's not happening: the physics of this universe don't seem to support the first two, and the metaphysics of it don't seem to support the third.

(And even if it did support the third, cloning without the Second Secret isn't particularly useful for uplift.)

justinkal · Dec 28, 2017

Coda said:
As far as I can tell, that's not happening: the physics of this universe don't seem to support the first two, and the metaphysics of it don't seem to support the third.

(And even if it did support the third, cloning without the Second Secret isn't particularly useful for uplift.)

My point was what happens if a species manages to max out every non-Secret tech tree without discovering any Secrets.

Coda · Dec 28, 2017

justinkal said:
My point was what happens if a species manages to max out every non-Secret tech tree without discovering any Secrets.

If they keep to within their own system, they'll die out on their own from resource exhaustion and the Shiplords won't have any need to intervene.

I personally speculate that the only thing in this case that would garner the Shiplord's notice is a generational ship -- something that would cause a species that can't defend itself to find itself lingering in the spaces between stars.

I... do suddenly wonder...

What if "the spaces between the stars" doesn't refer to deep space?

If I'm right, this could explain why the Neras aren't afraid of it -- they have an insight we lack in that regard; they know that deep space isn't where the danger lives. If the admonition is more metaphysical then perhaps "the spaces between the stars" means something more along the lines of "the astral plane". If this is true, then the Neras aren't going to go Thoughtcasting where angels fear to tread, but they'll send a First Secret drive around wherever they want.

justinkal · Dec 28, 2017

Coda said:
If they keep to within their own system, they'll die out on their own from resource exhaustion and the Shiplords won't have any need to intervene.

I personally speculate that the only thing in this case that would garner the Shiplord's notice is a generational ship -- something that would cause a species that can't defend itself to find itself lingering in the spaces between stars.

I was including them expanding outside their home system without the aid of the First Secret. I expect that doing so is very difficult, and makes communication impractical, but I can see it being possible.

And what about my other question? A species that discovers Secrets, but doesn't discover the First or Second.

Coda · Dec 28, 2017

justinkal said:
I was including them expanding outside their home system without the aid of the First Secret. I expect that doing so is very difficult, and makes communication impractical, but I can see it being possible.

Yes, that's what I meant by a generational ship. I think that's the only thing that would get the Shiplords to take notice. Anything else and they're probably not worth the effort.

uju32 · Dec 28, 2017

Coda said:
If they keep to within their own system, they'll die out on their own from resource exhaustion and the Shiplords won't have any need to intervene.

No they won't.
People REALLY underestimate just how much resources there are in a single system. Our Oort Cloud alone is estimated to mass five times the mass of Earth. A star system the size of ours is swimming in resources, especially if you're using what's essentially mining nanotech for resource extraction.

Unless you are involved in building Dyson Spheres and similar megastructures, running short of resources is a very, very low order problem.

EDIT
For example, Mercury is about 5.5% the mass of Earth.
That puts it at 330 million trillion tons of mass. That's just Mercury.

Our resource requirements are not going to significantly deplete that, regardless of what we're building. At most every couple of years we'll tow in an asteroid or comet and drop it on the planet to replenish what we've collected for the navy. And everytime we have derelicts, we recycle them by dumping them into the same pile and have it turned into more smart matter.

Jupiter, in comparison, outmasses every other planet in our solar system. Combined.
If Sol is an average example of a lifebearing system, then I don't really see any spacefaring species running short of resources as long as it has economical spaceflight inside it's own star system.

Coda · Dec 28, 2017

uju32 said:
No they won't.
People REALLY underestimate just how much resources there are in a single system. Our Oort Cloud alone is estimated to mass five times the mass of Earth. A star system the size of ours is swimming in resources, especially if you're using what's essentially mining nanotech for resource extraction.

Unless you are involved in building Dyson Spheres and similar megastructures, running short of resources is a very, very low order problem.

Yes, they will. Eventually. If not from resource exhaustion, then from their star dying of old age. The only way out is to discover the First Secret, or to build a generational ship. (And nanotech isn't an available option to a species that hasn't discovered the Sixth Secret.)

EDIT: I see your edit, and I raise you my own:

Just because those resources are THERE doesn't mean they're the resources we NEED. Ore alone isn't going to cut it. You need ENERGY to process that ore. You need organic compounds to sustain life. You need gaseous oxygen. You need bioavailable nitrogen (which is surprisingly difficult to get; we rely on bacteria for it). Et cetera.

So sure, go ahead, build all of the structures you want. Not going to do you much good if you can't grow food in them.

uju32 · Dec 28, 2017

Coda said:
Yes, they will. Eventually. If not from resource exhaustion, then from their star dying of old age. The only way out is to discover the First Secret, or to build a generational ship. (And nanotech isn't an available option to a species that hasn't discovered the Sixth Secret.)

Stars have lifespans on the order of billions of years; Sol has an estimated lifespan of ten billion years or so, and red dwarfs can get into the trillions.
Even the shortest lived stars are still expected to get into the 7-digit year range. That's multiple orders of magnitude longer than human recorded history.
The Nileans, who we have time for, have only been together for less than two thousand years. The Shiplords have only been at this gig for millions of years.

Outliving their star is not really a major issue for most species, unless there's a supernova happening in the local cluster.
Won't be surprised if there are species somewhere puttering around their home system who've never bothered to go outside it; with no observable emissions or evidence of intelligent life beyond, why move?

At most, send out robotic probes STL.

Coda · Dec 28, 2017

uju32 said:
Won't be surprised if there are species somewhere puttering around their home system who've never bothered to go outside it; with no observable emissions or evidence of intelligent life beyond, why move?

Wouldn't surprise me either. They'll have a long, isolated existence, and then eventually they'll stop existing for some reason or another. Which means the Shiplords simply don't need to care about them. They'll die on their own. Someday. It doesn't matter when.

uju32 · Dec 28, 2017

Coda said:
EDIT: I see your edit, and I raise you my own:
Just because those resources are THERE doesn't mean they're the resources we NEED. Ore alone isn't going to cut it. You need ENERGY to process that ore. You need organic compounds to sustain life. You need gaseous oxygen. You need bioavailable nitrogen (which is surprisingly difficult to get; we rely on bacteria for it). Et cetera.
So sure, go ahead, build all of the structures you want. Not going to do you much good if you can't grow food in them.

Ten commonest elements in the galaxy are, in order of prevalence:
Hydrogen, Helium, Oxygen, Carbon, Neon, Iron, Nitrogen, Silicon, Magnesium and Sulfur. Sam

Organic compounds? Really not an issue.
Energy? In a system with a thermonuclear furnance outputting hundreds of thousands of tons of mass-energy equivalent each second?
Also not a problem.

For reference, Earth, by mass is, and I quote:

Wikipedia said:
The mass of the Earth is approximately 5.98×1024 kg. In bulk, by mass, it is composed mostly of iron (32.1%), oxygen (30.1%), silicon (15.1%), magnesium (13.9%), sulfur (2.9%), nickel (1.8%), calcium (1.5%), and aluminium (1.4%); with the remaining 1.2% consisting of trace amounts of other elements.[12]

Hydrogen is the 16th most common element on Earth by mass; Carbon is the 15th most common. And those are two of the three essential building blocks of our carbon-hydrogen-oxygen biosphere. We use fractions of that here on Earth.

And that's without looking at how much we have locked up in places like Jupiter or Titan.
We have mind-bogglingly vast amounts of material available to any civilization with cheap access to space.

Still, this begins to feel like a derail, so I'm going to spoiler it.
We're not running a hard science quest anyway, so if the GM says they're running short of McGuffin in said system, that's that.

Snowfire · Dec 28, 2017

If you're looking for a theme for this post, this is what I wrote almost the entire section to. You have been warned.

February 16th, 2121

There wasn't a word for how you felt on stepping out of the aircar. Your heart shuddered, as you took in the familiar street, still burned into your memory in a way you couldn't escape. You'd made peace with that pain once, even if it still existed. But seeing it back again, seeing it real; it tore at scars that you thought had faded a long time ago. Amanda tried to hide her amazement, but it was obvious to you. She'd only ever seen this place on holovids, or images after the Sorrows. The walls and windows that had housed the leading lights of human science, and their families.

You were in some of those vids. A smiling girl, happy in the world she'd been born into. Free of the terrible wounds the Shiplords had inflicted. You'd not watched those in decades, until you chose to revisit them in the last months of 2120. It had been one of the only things you could do to prepare. Going back to Mytikas would be returning to your past, after all. And not in a way that you'd ever been prepared for. Not even after Skylark, or the Harmonic Miracle that had restored the Elder's Vault.

Amanda was a step behind you, a comforting warmth that showed no signs of leaving you. Deciding if you were glad for that was being impossible. On the one hand, you'd wanted to face this alone, at least at first. But on the other... One the other, you weren't sure if you could get through the doorway without her steadying presence. Let alone further in to the house that loomed above you, far taller to your mind then it was in truth. You'd been born and had grown through the first half of a childhood here, then lost it all in a figurative instant that you barely remembered. But the place itself…

The steps up to the house from the street were missing the flowers your mother had used to grow; you remembered the blue and yellow blossoms. The pots were there, ancient ceramic restored by power beyond human comprehension. But there was nothing in them. No earth. No life. All of that was still gone.

Amanda's hand brushed against your shoulder, squeezing it comfortingly, and you took another step. Each one was like a vast weight, the inviting door of the home you'd lost beckoning to your emotions despite the knowledge that there was no one behind it. Bearing down on you like a tumbling mountain, and you were no colossus. You reached up, touching a hand to the panel beside the door, and the lock clicked off. There was no greeting, no welcome from the house as there'd been before. Then the door slid open, laying out an entrance hall that haunted your dreams.

You didn't remember the steps you took to leave that hall, past the static memories that had been stripped of the life that had made them real. There a painting your father had brought home from a trip to Earth. Opposite it, light shone through a thin set of drapes that had been passed down by your grandmother, and from mother to mother before her for centuries. They…were probably yours now, weren't they? You didn't want to think about it.

Uncertain footsteps brought you to another door, the world rippling in front of your eyes like a dream, or maybe it was a nightmare. The room that had made the house most truly a home, that you'd come to fear above all others. Half the ground floor, it had been the living space of the household, the centre of your original family. You looked back, and you couldn't have described the mix of emotion that rushed through you as you saw her standing there just behind you if you'd had all the years in existence. Something passed between you in that silence, and you straightened, forcing your shoulders back. This was going to break you. It wasn't a matter of if, or even when. But it didn't matter.

You opened the door.

Dead silence, and the cold of an empty house greeted you, scattered about the memories of a world that you'd thought lost to you half a century ago. No. Not just thought. Accepted. You had made peace with that loss, with the pain. A human could do that, and move on. But this was something else, and you weren't sure there was a word in the languages of humanity to describe it. It was like it was taunting you, and you felt tears that you'd thought spent sixty years past burn on your cheeks.

Amanda was humming something, a gentle melody, but you couldn't hear it properly. You were lost in the world in front of you, set out perfectly and yet missing its heart. A jagged wound torn through where you'd once lived and played. Then you saw it, through your tears. A picture. A simple photograph, on the paper that had almost been obsolete then. Colour painted the sky behind a smiling couple, above a sea of vibrant green, rich gold, and faded red that stretched to the horizon.. And a girl beamed out at you, her eyes sparkling with joy from between the arms of her parents…

That…that was… You couldn't think it. Your thoughts rebelled, tightening your throat and forcing you to breathe faster. A step towards the mantlepiece turned into a stumble, and something in your legs just gave out. Hands caught you, turning the fall into a controlled descent, but your eyes never moved. That picture. The child in it.

Something twitched at the edge of your mind, something dark and light and all things in between, pushing against it. A memory you'd not wanted, that you'd learned to live without, because you'd never be able to see it again.

"Who is that?" You cried out, tears streaming down your face as you searched desperately for the rest of the memory that was beyond you. "I know who it is! I know I do! But I can't," you hiccupped around a sob, wishing the tears would cloud your vision, but they just kept flowing. "I…I." The single syllable turned in your head.

It turned again, and again, spinning around the picture burning in front of your eyes. Your body shook, trapped between a crushed past and a future that had never been thought possible. All you'd ever wanted was your family. Your family. Your family!

That was your mother. Your father. Naomi and Michael. And that meant…

The girl was you.

You felt something shatter deep inside of you, like a wall giving way, or foundation crumbling. Raw emotion battered against your psyche, the controls you'd set around your mind so carefully and over so many years swept away. Like sand in a whirlwind. Then there were tears, and pain, and a bone-deep loss that pulled a keening wail from the depths of your mind and body. You were the child in that picture, but equally you couldn't be. That Mary D'reve had died with the Burning, when her family had been taken. You couldn't be her, you didn't know how.

You do when you're with Mandy and Iris a treacherous thought whispered, and you batted it savagely away. Or you tried to, except it wouldn't move. The world didn't make sense, all the mental furniture you'd thought locked in place had come lose. Sliding, and falling, and breaking bits off of itself and you. How were you meant to find yourself in that? Why had you thought you even could? You felt another wave of tears pour down your cheeks, and couldn't understand why.

There is a final vote before this section resolves, and it's not what you might expect. I know what Amanda is going to say. To be blunt, giving you a vote on it wouldn't work for me, and I hope you can understand that. I'm not going to throw the burden of that social at you when I already know exactly what Mandy is going to say and do to help bring Mary out her spiral. I can only hope I do the scene justice – and it will be from Amanda's PoV. But if you don't get to pick what she says, you can influence it. This is going to be a strange vote, because the options probably aren't going to make sense on the first pass. This is intentional. Amanda is trying to understand the deeper source of Mary's pain here, not just that it exists, and that requires an understanding of the room.

What I'm going to do here is ask you to vote on the object that Amanda uses as her focus point when building that understanding. None of these are trap options, I want to make that exceptionally clear. It's a directional vote, and Amanda isn't stupid or unobservant enough to lose herself when her friend/sister/whatever needs her. Your options are as follows:

[] Mantlepiece
[] Dining Table
[] Mother's Easel
[] Bookshelf
[] Music Player

This is a ranked vote, please number low to high by preference.

Snowfire · Dec 28, 2017

I cannot express how difficult it was for me to write this. I really can't. I stopped multiple times and almost deleted the entire section, because I truly did not want to write this section. Regardless of how it was impossible to avoid this pain, and how it's really needed for Mary to eventually grow past the way the world twisted her (despite the help she's been given). There aren't words to express the way in which she's being affected by this, but I hope I've come close enough for you to understand and empathise.

As someone who truly does hate to cause pain to the characters I grow close to, as I see them less as narrative constructs and more as people…yeah. This was hard. Sincere and heartfelt thanks go to @Jeboboid and @Tayta Malikai for letting me rant to them about this. Without them, I'm not sure I would have been able to finish it. Happy voting, and I'll see you on the other side. Any questions, and I'm pretty sure there will be ones, please feel free to ask. I'll try to make sense of them for you.

DarknessSmiles · Dec 28, 2017

[2] Mantlepiece
[1] Dining Table
[5] Mother's Easel
[4] Bookshelf
[3] Music Player

Killer_Whale · Dec 28, 2017

[5] Mantlepiece
[4] Dining Table
[1] Mother's Easel
[3] Bookshelf
[2] Music Player

Coda · Dec 28, 2017

Once again, Coda gets a big smug "I told you so." Panic attack, check!

[1] Mantlepiece
[2] Music Player
[3] Mother's Easel
[4] Bookshelf
[5] Dining Table

tenchifew · Dec 28, 2017

[5] Mantlepiece
[4] Dining Table
[1] Mother's Easel
[3] Bookshelf
[2] Music Player

Varano · Dec 28, 2017

[2] Mantlepiece
[1] Dining Table
[5] Mother's Easel
[4] Bookshelf
[3] Music Player

veekie · Dec 28, 2017

[2] Mantlepiece
[1] Dining Table
[3] Mother's Easel
[4] Bookshelf
[5] Music Player

The Practice War [Complete]

One and Many

Polyglot of Chimera

One and Many

Polyglot of Chimera

Polyglot of Chimera