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The Practice War [Complete]
- Thread starter Snowfire
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Ehh, I wouldn't go that far. It's more that they'll be able to work it out, and that how you introduce yourself will be analysed again when they have a full grasp of the cultural mores in effect.
Well, that will depend on several things. If there are infiltrators, if you detect them, and how you react to their presence. As a fun tip, Amanda's instinctual reaction would be to Speak Heal at them. Try to take that into account
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
And I tought it would be "be free" or "Freedom".Well, that will depend on several things. If there are infiltrators, if you detect them, and how you react to their presence. As a fun tip, Amanda's instinctual reaction would be to Speak Heal at them. Try to take that into account
- Location
- Somewhere out there
Well, consider that Words are colored by the Speaker's worldview. If healing a possessed Nilean includes freeing them from mind control, then that's what it's going to do. But healing implies MORE than simply terminating ongoing mind control -- it implies returning the individual to wholeness and sanity.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
In this case I literally thought about that scenario before Snowfire posted his post and was thinking something along the lines of 'be free from the foreign influence', hence 'freedom' or something similar as a spoken word.
Not really her focus, although I imagine another Practice user could use "Freedom" to a similar effect.
But we have seen during battle that Amanda sees the Shiplords infiltration nanites as illness, if I remember correctly.
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- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
More as "violation of natural order" (from memory. Might be wrong here)
Good thing she doesn't always act on instinct.Well, that will depend on several things. If there are infiltrators, if you detect them, and how you react to their presence. As a fun tip, Amanda's instinctual reaction would be to Speak Heal at them. Try to take that into account
Well, at least some of the time
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Good thing she doesn't always act on instinct.
Well, at least some of the time
*looks at Amanda's history of actions*
Um....
[X]PLAN SUNSHINE
Hey, she was president for fifteen years, and before that spent time rebuilding huge chunks of society. She's Diplomacy 31.
She couldn't have gotten through her term without learning impulse control.
Right? Right?
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Although, if her impulses are right ...
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Mostly done through simply doing the 'right thing' exceptionally well, extremely fine-tuned empathy, and a healthy helping of Practiced BS.
The majority of which is the above, although her time as President did teach her a few things.
Joking aside, the main point is that she does have good (if not excellent) impulse control...right up until events start brushing up against her Focus. At that point...all bets are off.
- Location
- Somewhere out there
Is this a common trait among Potentials, or is Amanda particularly well-attuned to her own Focus?
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Vote Tally : Original - Sci-Fi - The Practice War | Page 371 | Sufficient Velocity [Posts: 9281-9335]
##### NetTally 1.9.9
[9] Plan: ◈SUNSHINE
[3] Plan: ◈Minister of Culture
[1] Plan: ◈Unison
Total No. of Voters: 13
I'll close this in the next few hours. Seems to have landslided pretty solidly.
##### NetTally 1.9.9
[9] Plan: ◈SUNSHINE
[3] Plan: ◈Minister of Culture
[1] Plan: ◈Unison
I'll close this in the next few hours. Seems to have landslided pretty solidly.
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- Location
- Staring into the void
[X]PLAN SUNSHINE
Mini-turn: Second Contact - Part 3
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
"The sensor readbacks have been confirmed?" You asked quietly, looking over the scans in front of you. The Winter Moon had been running continuous sweeps ever since they'd entered the system. Sol, the word for star or sun in an archaic language of the inhabitants. As good a name as any, when all was said and done. You'd heard far worse.
"They have, Ambassador." Isper motioned in the affirmative, and your fingers twitched, trying to form a sign for curious confusion. You suppressed the urge easily, but you couldn't get rid of the feelings behind it so easily. You'd known going out that you were going to meet a world that had defeated the Shiplords thirty cycles after encountering them for the first time. You'd seen the systems of races that threw off the Shiplords earlier than average, and it was rarely less than chilling. The type of determination required to win free of the Tributary system even that quickly verged on self-destructive, and a small part of you had feared what you might find. This, though?
Any race that won free of the Shiplords quickly did so through a fleet engagement, the Nilean exception notwithstanding. The problem was that the proportions in front of you were all wrong. Naval craft were easy to identify; combat profiles weren't hard to isolate even when you didn't understand a race's design philosophies yet, and that was before drive gradient analysis. There weren't enough of them, not unless humanity had gained access to half a dozen Secrets in the thirty cycles between their first contact with the Shiplords. An immediate thought had been that they'd moved military craft over to civilian duties after the Tribute Fleet had been defeated, but the civilian profiles didn't match.
By conventional wisdom, defeating a Tribute Fleet in a battle line engagement when a species was still early in its development required vast numerical superiority, as it was impossible to match their armaments. Loss rates of eighty percent or higher were common, and that left enough wreckage to form a minor planetoid lying around, usually in orbit of the species' homeworld. There was a debris field, yes, but it was in the wrong place and there wasn't nearly enough of it. Some of that could be put down to the station that had been constructed nearby, that was currently tearing apart a Collector's prow, but the density was simply too low. The battle that had been fought here hadn't been between a vastly superior Shiplord squadron and a horde of barely effective human warships. Everything your scans were telling you implied an engagement more akin to what a race that had been a Tributary centuries would fight. Most of those fought in orbit of their homeworld, where the most advanced orbital defences were. And even then they often lost. How was this possible?
You only realised that you'd spoken out loud when you noticed Isper looking you with a faint expression of amusement on his face, curiously similar to a human one according to the contact package you'd received. And wasn't that a nest of vipers on its own. A new Tributary should have reacted with fear, or at least suspicion. But the humans had greeted you without any of that, forwarding a contact package that couldn't have been produced in the minutes between the Fleet's arrival and contact being established. It had to have been built beforehand, but why?
"I'm sorry, Captain," you formed a common sign for apology. "My thoughts were elsewhere."
"I think we're all in that place, Ambassador." It was soothing to hear your confusion echoed by another. Unfortunately, it didn't solve the mystery in front of you. "Have you seen what they've done with their first primary?"
"I don't think anyone could miss it. I just wish that our analysis didn't point to its creation having occurred after the Tribute Fleet was defeated. A planetary nanoforge would have explained a lot." It had been one of the few possibilities to make sense of everything. A nanoforge on that scale could have supplied the means to retool their fleet as quickly as they did, and provided a means to swiftly remove a large debris field. Unfortunately, the expansion profile wasn't consistent with it existing until after the Tribute Fleet had been defeated. Every possible answer only added more questions to a steadily growing list, and that was making absorbing the irritatingly complete first contact package a struggle. Even with the aid of your stack.
In the end, though, most of what you were looking at you could explain in terms you could understand. Vastly accelerated development wasn't something unknown, it just usually went too far too fast and ended up dead to a War Fleet. The real problem was something else, which only the Winter Moon and her sisters' sensors could detect.
"Anything new on the energy spikes we've been picking up everywhere?" You weren't expecting an affirmative, your analysts were being buried by the things they had some context for. Total unknowns, although generally a priority, were being mostly left for the moment. There just wasn't time.
"A few of the other ships in the flotilla have refined their sensor algorithms and are picking up similar emissions, but they're much fainter." He shot you a look very similar to those that Bertlant would sometimes give you when you mentioned a minor fact that you really shouldn't know. You knew he wanted to ask where the Winter Moon's sensors had come from, but you also knew he wasn't the type to push the issue. The Community and the Confederation were on good terms, but not that good. "The added datastreams should speed up our analysis, but there aren't any results yet. It's going to take time, Ambassador."
"Damn." It was still a total unknown, then. That gnawed at you as the Contact Fleet began their approach towards the station you'd been escorted to.
On entering the system, the first thought had been that it was a sensor glitch. Strange, random energy patterns that didn't match anything in the database. The only discernible constant was that where they were, there were humans. They overlapped and clustered around stations, military craft and industrial zones, but some were present in every corner of the system that was inhabited.
One of the virtual display tabs around you pinged in your stack, and you opened it absently as you watched the station grow on the viewscreen. Initial results from the fine-grain scans of the squadron that had escorted you in? That had been fast. The slender, sharp-edged capital ships had certainly been impressive to look at, but as you started to scan through the initial report you started to find it hard to believe. The baseline data was from one of the Winter Moon's sister ships, however, which made that a lot harder to do.
The hull was a non-standard atomic-scale composite, similar to that of your own vessel. Lines of sealed launch tubes were scattered along both sides of her bladelike profile, and the analysts were almost certain that the secondary armament was entirely particle based. Laser mounts required a different structure. Unusual, but not unexpected, especially if they'd had time to retool the class since their engagement with the Tribute Fleet. Gravitational disruptors weren't impossible either, they'd clearly taken several of the Shiplord Collectors intact, or close enough that equipment could be salvaged.
Except those weren't Tribute Fleet models. The sensor profiles were all wrong. And the Winter Moon's hull plating was the product of more than a thousand cycles of your people's progress in the Sixth Secret. The technological prowess and mastery of the Secrets required to construct those lethal craft should have been impossible for a race this young to the Tribute tests. You didn't think that, you'd known that. Every analysis, every historical record agreed, those ships couldn't exist. And yet there they were, like a needle in the eye of an intelligence apparatus second only to the Shiplords' in recent times.
In hindsight, reading that report just before you docked might not have been the wisest choice you'd ever made.
"They have, Ambassador." Isper motioned in the affirmative, and your fingers twitched, trying to form a sign for curious confusion. You suppressed the urge easily, but you couldn't get rid of the feelings behind it so easily. You'd known going out that you were going to meet a world that had defeated the Shiplords thirty cycles after encountering them for the first time. You'd seen the systems of races that threw off the Shiplords earlier than average, and it was rarely less than chilling. The type of determination required to win free of the Tributary system even that quickly verged on self-destructive, and a small part of you had feared what you might find. This, though?
Any race that won free of the Shiplords quickly did so through a fleet engagement, the Nilean exception notwithstanding. The problem was that the proportions in front of you were all wrong. Naval craft were easy to identify; combat profiles weren't hard to isolate even when you didn't understand a race's design philosophies yet, and that was before drive gradient analysis. There weren't enough of them, not unless humanity had gained access to half a dozen Secrets in the thirty cycles between their first contact with the Shiplords. An immediate thought had been that they'd moved military craft over to civilian duties after the Tribute Fleet had been defeated, but the civilian profiles didn't match.
By conventional wisdom, defeating a Tribute Fleet in a battle line engagement when a species was still early in its development required vast numerical superiority, as it was impossible to match their armaments. Loss rates of eighty percent or higher were common, and that left enough wreckage to form a minor planetoid lying around, usually in orbit of the species' homeworld. There was a debris field, yes, but it was in the wrong place and there wasn't nearly enough of it. Some of that could be put down to the station that had been constructed nearby, that was currently tearing apart a Collector's prow, but the density was simply too low. The battle that had been fought here hadn't been between a vastly superior Shiplord squadron and a horde of barely effective human warships. Everything your scans were telling you implied an engagement more akin to what a race that had been a Tributary centuries would fight. Most of those fought in orbit of their homeworld, where the most advanced orbital defences were. And even then they often lost. How was this possible?
You only realised that you'd spoken out loud when you noticed Isper looking you with a faint expression of amusement on his face, curiously similar to a human one according to the contact package you'd received. And wasn't that a nest of vipers on its own. A new Tributary should have reacted with fear, or at least suspicion. But the humans had greeted you without any of that, forwarding a contact package that couldn't have been produced in the minutes between the Fleet's arrival and contact being established. It had to have been built beforehand, but why?
"I'm sorry, Captain," you formed a common sign for apology. "My thoughts were elsewhere."
"I think we're all in that place, Ambassador." It was soothing to hear your confusion echoed by another. Unfortunately, it didn't solve the mystery in front of you. "Have you seen what they've done with their first primary?"
"I don't think anyone could miss it. I just wish that our analysis didn't point to its creation having occurred after the Tribute Fleet was defeated. A planetary nanoforge would have explained a lot." It had been one of the few possibilities to make sense of everything. A nanoforge on that scale could have supplied the means to retool their fleet as quickly as they did, and provided a means to swiftly remove a large debris field. Unfortunately, the expansion profile wasn't consistent with it existing until after the Tribute Fleet had been defeated. Every possible answer only added more questions to a steadily growing list, and that was making absorbing the irritatingly complete first contact package a struggle. Even with the aid of your stack.
In the end, though, most of what you were looking at you could explain in terms you could understand. Vastly accelerated development wasn't something unknown, it just usually went too far too fast and ended up dead to a War Fleet. The real problem was something else, which only the Winter Moon and her sisters' sensors could detect.
"Anything new on the energy spikes we've been picking up everywhere?" You weren't expecting an affirmative, your analysts were being buried by the things they had some context for. Total unknowns, although generally a priority, were being mostly left for the moment. There just wasn't time.
"A few of the other ships in the flotilla have refined their sensor algorithms and are picking up similar emissions, but they're much fainter." He shot you a look very similar to those that Bertlant would sometimes give you when you mentioned a minor fact that you really shouldn't know. You knew he wanted to ask where the Winter Moon's sensors had come from, but you also knew he wasn't the type to push the issue. The Community and the Confederation were on good terms, but not that good. "The added datastreams should speed up our analysis, but there aren't any results yet. It's going to take time, Ambassador."
"Damn." It was still a total unknown, then. That gnawed at you as the Contact Fleet began their approach towards the station you'd been escorted to.
On entering the system, the first thought had been that it was a sensor glitch. Strange, random energy patterns that didn't match anything in the database. The only discernible constant was that where they were, there were humans. They overlapped and clustered around stations, military craft and industrial zones, but some were present in every corner of the system that was inhabited.
One of the virtual display tabs around you pinged in your stack, and you opened it absently as you watched the station grow on the viewscreen. Initial results from the fine-grain scans of the squadron that had escorted you in? That had been fast. The slender, sharp-edged capital ships had certainly been impressive to look at, but as you started to scan through the initial report you started to find it hard to believe. The baseline data was from one of the Winter Moon's sister ships, however, which made that a lot harder to do.
The hull was a non-standard atomic-scale composite, similar to that of your own vessel. Lines of sealed launch tubes were scattered along both sides of her bladelike profile, and the analysts were almost certain that the secondary armament was entirely particle based. Laser mounts required a different structure. Unusual, but not unexpected, especially if they'd had time to retool the class since their engagement with the Tribute Fleet. Gravitational disruptors weren't impossible either, they'd clearly taken several of the Shiplord Collectors intact, or close enough that equipment could be salvaged.
Except those weren't Tribute Fleet models. The sensor profiles were all wrong. And the Winter Moon's hull plating was the product of more than a thousand cycles of your people's progress in the Sixth Secret. The technological prowess and mastery of the Secrets required to construct those lethal craft should have been impossible for a race this young to the Tribute tests. You didn't think that, you'd known that. Every analysis, every historical record agreed, those ships couldn't exist. And yet there they were, like a needle in the eye of an intelligence apparatus second only to the Shiplords' in recent times.
In hindsight, reading that report just before you docked might not have been the wisest choice you'd ever made.
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Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Apologies if I'm breaking this up, but this was a natural stopping point in the narrative. I hope you were able to enjoy the 'wtf are these humans even doing' that Kendl is currently doing everything her power to keep under control and failing. This has some interesting effects in the next post, but they're more minor than you might have expected due to my forgetting that Amanda's Intrigue is the worst stat she has. And she's rolling social vs a totally-not-a-spy. For those worried that the other side of this might be a long time in coming, I have over half of it already written. The reason you've waited until now to get this is because I wasn't going to post it until I was at least halfway through the followup.
Next part tomorrow or Wednesday - hopefully tomorrow. I really need to stop updating at 2am...
Next part tomorrow or Wednesday - hopefully tomorrow. I really need to stop updating at 2am...
TLDR: Practice is bullshit
They
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
You don't have your system scale jamming field up. Take from that what you will