Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
I mean, just Regular Fleet every Tribute Race before they develop any secret past the First. KKV their world. Easy. Fast.
The Practice War [Complete]
- Thread starter Snowfire
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi
But where would they get
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
If they really only wanted that, and if I remember SF correctly in saying 'not every visit of a tribute fleet is about abductions' - take the whole population in your first visit.
Renewable farming dude.
Ten billion now is certifiably less than seven billion every century, even if you have to skip one or two trips to fatten up the livestock.
I mean, we know OOC that they aren't killing species just for bioslurry, but it seems to be one hell of a useful byproduct.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I got the impression that large scale abduction (after the first one?) is moderately rare. Otherwise I would agree, get multiple uses, steer them to become Uninvolved and get some megatons of slurry.
Not really.
IIRC, the way the priests of the Telas Luminary came to power was because the Shiplords had repeatedly harvested them for population in mass abductions, and the then-leaders were attempting to sacrifice the rest of the population to save their own skins. Meantime the Luminary shared the same risks with the general population. Thus the people revolted.
- Location
- Somewhere.
Wait a minute. Is that the same sort of way we got Practice?
- Location
- PA
Not precisely...
I hate to say it but I think Practice comes from the Dragons tapping the power of Sacrifice, and effectively their entire race was sacrificed for humanity.
The joke might be that we're a Magical Girl society, but the truth I suspect to be more that we're kind of running with Exalted Dragon-Blooded, in a sense...
But then, why the ever-growing power? Their pilots ALSO were sacrificed, and I'm willing to bet those deaths are what tied the Dragon's greater sacrifice and the power behind it to humanity, as well as providing the 'spark' for the lesser baseline 'Potential' power normal humans have. Potentials like Amanda Hawk, on the other hand, are the 'Dragon-Blooded'-the people lucky enough to directly tap the power of the dragons. It's ever-growing I'd bet because the dragons were too young. Because they barely got a chance to really do anything, it's literally what they potentially could have done that's powering humanity right now. Whenever the Dragons themselves would have died out for one reason or another, that's when the power-well for Potentials runs dry, I think.
Which implies there's SOMETHING watching/tallying how much effect a given Race might have wrought, or somehow the weight of their existence needs to play out in some form, and getting killed in the crib like that? Just means a bigger bang. Now to the Shiplords!
I suspect that the Shiplords, 'help cultivate' said power via their fleet battles in general, and the Tribute fleets taking a large portion of the population is how they keep Practice out of the hands of other races-they're farming us for the 'bioslurry' to prevent the build-up required to get Potentials, and we got up-jumped because they weren't testing one sapient race, they tested two, and one gave themselves up for the other. That's that sacrifice stuff that the Shiplords so love, and it's WHY they don't like the Second Secret- it's not hard to take it and make some sort of servant race that only exists to serve their masters, and it's not hard to go from there to outright sacrificing them for the power of Practice, of Potentials, and to grow drunk off it.
I THINK this theory keeps the Shiplords from being ENTIRELY stupid, and it'd explain the ban behind the Second Secret, the Shiplords' standard operations, and why Humanity seems to be so out of context for them. They're used to seeing Races that have our Potentials KNOW precisely what they did to get that, and to be hungry for more, more, MORE! And once they figure out how to get it from other races...
...I wonder if the Tribute Fleets are so revered because they're actually the limit of non-Secret technology, or from a time before the Shiplords started doing the Bioslurry thing. I suspect given the precedent set by the Medicant, that Regular and War Fleet ships are made via the power of that Bioslurry, and thus the Tribute Fleets are basically 'retro' Shiplords- think something like historical re-enactors taking stuff like Viking tactics from the Viking era and trying to use it against another Empire that's fighting with all it's got, versus modern day armies with the finest doctrines and equipment Humanity has to offer.
Of course, I could be hilariously wrong, or dead on the money and not find out until next year when this Quest-chain finally gets to the point Snowfire can reveal what's going on behind the scenes.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That would mean Practice was more common before the SL came to power. If there only were a friendly contemporary of them that could be asked about old galactic history ...
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
*mysterious fungus sounds*
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
... how do they do that, in the vacuum of space
...
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
Clearly a use of the 3rd Secret.... how do they do that, in the vacuum of space
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
... how do they do that, in the vacuum of space
I never said they were producing those sounds in a vacuum. That's your assumption
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
... we are hopelessly infiltrated.I never said they were producing those sounds in a vacuum. That's your assumption
Shwaggy
Weapon of Math Instruction
- Location
- Texas
- Pronouns
- he/him/his
The fungus among us.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Or the Fourth.
Maybe the Fourth Secret is "cool sound effects in space."
...
No seriously I'm actually curious.
The First is space-warping, FTL, and teleportation-like effects.
The Second is biology and also life-creation including AI.
The Third is mastery of the EM spectrum to the point where you can actually inflict meaningful torment on the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
The Fifth is gravitic manipulation including gravitic weaponry and drives.
The Sixth is nanotechnology on large scales and with high capability.
...
But what is the Fourth? We see no clear sign of it among the Group of Six. We've seen no clear sign of it among the Shiplords, either through Insight or in their ships (though the Regular Fleet may have it and it may enable the 'soul tearing' anti-Practice weapons).
We can be reasonably sure it's not a component of Practice as such since there's no sign that humanity or the Dragons had it before. It could be anti-Practice in some way, some kind of psychic or metaphysical technology, perhaps?
Too small. It's mastery of sound. Including such feats as providing situationally appropriate background music.
Interlude: Beacons Light
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
There had been a tension aboard the relay station ever since the Regular Fleet had departed. No, that was wrong. The tension had been there ever since Captain Peros had submitted your report to Sector Command, which had begun the steady escalation of the data towards the analysts of Central Command. According to your own, quiet, enquiries, it had proven sufficient even there, based upon all available sourcing. In another situation that would have made you happy. You made do with the pride in knowing that you'd produced a document that had risen so highly without rebuke.
When the listing for the Regular Fleet dedicated to the examination of humanity arrived, that, too, was lost to the grim reality. You knew Regular Fleet assignment numbers. You'd spent a full tour of duty aboard one as flag staff, and the numbers in the listing just didn't add up properly. Was it just the ongoing alert status, or something more? Questions you couldn't ask, not as a Relay Officer, and even your other roles would be hard pressed to answer. The orders had been cut by Central Command, and in the end, that was all that truly mattered.
When the truth did arrive, it did so only slowly. First one courier drone, then another, each one adding to the picture of a race that that might be about to become something that yours hadn't seen in thousands of cycles. As your report on them had climbed the chain of command, you'd wondered if a word might have been used to describe them, but it never made it into official correspondence.
It wasn't the Secrets they wielded or the ships they'd built that brought you to that decision, though you could see how the Tribute Fleet might have reacted to it. Regulars were different, however, and you could see that in their reactions. The steadily growing loss figures, though. If Central Command hadn't ordered such a powerful response, they might not have been able to effectively reply to what humanity could do.
The energy burst against the first engagement group's drones had been easy to analyse given a station AI like Lijthe, and for the first time in your service period you found yourself wishing that you could monitor such engagements in real time, no matter the huge distances involved. It would have brought the rest of the fleet in sooner, saving your people losses. The service could weather them, but that wasn't the point. Looking at the data, and how humanity had reacted, it was very clear that they'd known what was coming. The question was how.
The sensor readings around the unit of single point combat sources could be one answer, but you didn't know enough about them to be sure. The standard outlines on the matter had never described this sort of utilisation. It was similar, yes, but not what your weapons had been designed to fight. Action from those entities would have been obvious, too, and the sector grid hadn't even flickered in reaction to the bursts of energy unleashed by those humans. Perhaps knowing sooner would have brought the fleet in sooner, but perhaps not. It was too easy to rationalise when you weren't there.
And all of it came to naught in a single instant of burning light that blinded the sensors of the courier drones rushing towards the edge of the system. After that, nothing more came. The burst of energy had been focused around two of the point sources, one of which Lijthe identified as the source of a focused energy burst that the other point source had disrupted shortly before. The appropriate weapons had had an effect there, but they hadn't been enough to save the ships mounting them. The lack of further courier drones after that event only had driven tensions aboard the station higher. You'd been lucky to have something of a distraction in taking the data recovered from the drones and sending it on in easily accessible format, but the realisation of what you were actually sending hadn't helped. The report on humanity before had been directional. Suspicious, but not entirely damning.
This one was much, much easier to produce, but you didn't enjoy inputting the data behind the findings or the conclusion drawn from the abundantly available data. Whatever had disrupted the sector shortly before the Tribute Fleet had gone missing was almost certainly the work of humanity. It was possible it could have been another entity, but given the sensor readback from the last courier drones, it was blazingly unlikely. Any race with this sort of power was a threat. A race that reacted faster than it had any right to, to a visit they shouldn't have known was coming. Those factors, above all, hardened belief into grim certainty.
By the time the remains of the Regular Fleet exited jump, you'd received a polite demand for a more detailed report from Central Command. The fleet still existing made that a lot easier, and the combat data on the matter made for exactly what you needed to create a more complex and in-depth report. By this point, you had been given priority sourcing to your station's AI, as had been done before. Yet there had been far more concern in Captain Peros' manner this time. You did not disagree with its presence.
Yet, as you dug into the new data transmitted by what was left of the Regular Fleet detachment, you couldn't avoid the suspicion that his concern was far less than what was actually required. The capability of this species to recover and rise so swiftly from their first evaluation was unlike anything in modern history. You'd had to go all the way back to the enemy that had forced the Zlathbu Adjustment to find a race that came close.
If you wanted a species that could match humanity's seeming ability to pull energy out of nowhere, you had to go back even further. And every record that matched that search was sealed with flag codes you'd never seen. Central Command would be able to access them, but the privileges of a Relay Captain weren't enough. You'd have to leave that in the hands of Central Command's analysts. Yet none of that touched upon the most chilling part of the report by far.
That tenuous honour belonged to something else. A single transmission from one of the combat point sources, that had brought the entire system to stillness after helping wipe almost half the Regular detachment from reality with perfect precision:
"I know you can understand me. And I'm done waiting on you. Tell us why. We cannot call it from the stars. But the fire we wield can still be your doom."
Those words spoke of an understanding of your species that went far beyond what any younger race should be able to grasp. As an Analyst of some skill, you knew that the key to victory lay in understanding your enemy. If humanity was willing to say this much openly, what more did they know? Not the full truth, but who was to say they knew to ask the right questions. Or that they could choose what to ask.
You weren't sure which would be worse. A race that delved into your past would discover the truth of it eventually, but that had ended a war once. A race that could only ask certain questions would find only the answers that they needed to make any conflict devastating. Maybe that was why the leader of the Regular Fleet had communicated with them, before the fleet's departure.
Maybe that would be enough. You weren't hopeful.
War was coming.
And humanity was going to be an enemy.
When the listing for the Regular Fleet dedicated to the examination of humanity arrived, that, too, was lost to the grim reality. You knew Regular Fleet assignment numbers. You'd spent a full tour of duty aboard one as flag staff, and the numbers in the listing just didn't add up properly. Was it just the ongoing alert status, or something more? Questions you couldn't ask, not as a Relay Officer, and even your other roles would be hard pressed to answer. The orders had been cut by Central Command, and in the end, that was all that truly mattered.
When the truth did arrive, it did so only slowly. First one courier drone, then another, each one adding to the picture of a race that that might be about to become something that yours hadn't seen in thousands of cycles. As your report on them had climbed the chain of command, you'd wondered if a word might have been used to describe them, but it never made it into official correspondence.
It wasn't the Secrets they wielded or the ships they'd built that brought you to that decision, though you could see how the Tribute Fleet might have reacted to it. Regulars were different, however, and you could see that in their reactions. The steadily growing loss figures, though. If Central Command hadn't ordered such a powerful response, they might not have been able to effectively reply to what humanity could do.
The energy burst against the first engagement group's drones had been easy to analyse given a station AI like Lijthe, and for the first time in your service period you found yourself wishing that you could monitor such engagements in real time, no matter the huge distances involved. It would have brought the rest of the fleet in sooner, saving your people losses. The service could weather them, but that wasn't the point. Looking at the data, and how humanity had reacted, it was very clear that they'd known what was coming. The question was how.
The sensor readings around the unit of single point combat sources could be one answer, but you didn't know enough about them to be sure. The standard outlines on the matter had never described this sort of utilisation. It was similar, yes, but not what your weapons had been designed to fight. Action from those entities would have been obvious, too, and the sector grid hadn't even flickered in reaction to the bursts of energy unleashed by those humans. Perhaps knowing sooner would have brought the fleet in sooner, but perhaps not. It was too easy to rationalise when you weren't there.
And all of it came to naught in a single instant of burning light that blinded the sensors of the courier drones rushing towards the edge of the system. After that, nothing more came. The burst of energy had been focused around two of the point sources, one of which Lijthe identified as the source of a focused energy burst that the other point source had disrupted shortly before. The appropriate weapons had had an effect there, but they hadn't been enough to save the ships mounting them. The lack of further courier drones after that event only had driven tensions aboard the station higher. You'd been lucky to have something of a distraction in taking the data recovered from the drones and sending it on in easily accessible format, but the realisation of what you were actually sending hadn't helped. The report on humanity before had been directional. Suspicious, but not entirely damning.
This one was much, much easier to produce, but you didn't enjoy inputting the data behind the findings or the conclusion drawn from the abundantly available data. Whatever had disrupted the sector shortly before the Tribute Fleet had gone missing was almost certainly the work of humanity. It was possible it could have been another entity, but given the sensor readback from the last courier drones, it was blazingly unlikely. Any race with this sort of power was a threat. A race that reacted faster than it had any right to, to a visit they shouldn't have known was coming. Those factors, above all, hardened belief into grim certainty.
By the time the remains of the Regular Fleet exited jump, you'd received a polite demand for a more detailed report from Central Command. The fleet still existing made that a lot easier, and the combat data on the matter made for exactly what you needed to create a more complex and in-depth report. By this point, you had been given priority sourcing to your station's AI, as had been done before. Yet there had been far more concern in Captain Peros' manner this time. You did not disagree with its presence.
Yet, as you dug into the new data transmitted by what was left of the Regular Fleet detachment, you couldn't avoid the suspicion that his concern was far less than what was actually required. The capability of this species to recover and rise so swiftly from their first evaluation was unlike anything in modern history. You'd had to go all the way back to the enemy that had forced the Zlathbu Adjustment to find a race that came close.
If you wanted a species that could match humanity's seeming ability to pull energy out of nowhere, you had to go back even further. And every record that matched that search was sealed with flag codes you'd never seen. Central Command would be able to access them, but the privileges of a Relay Captain weren't enough. You'd have to leave that in the hands of Central Command's analysts. Yet none of that touched upon the most chilling part of the report by far.
That tenuous honour belonged to something else. A single transmission from one of the combat point sources, that had brought the entire system to stillness after helping wipe almost half the Regular detachment from reality with perfect precision:
"I know you can understand me. And I'm done waiting on you. Tell us why. We cannot call it from the stars. But the fire we wield can still be your doom."
Those words spoke of an understanding of your species that went far beyond what any younger race should be able to grasp. As an Analyst of some skill, you knew that the key to victory lay in understanding your enemy. If humanity was willing to say this much openly, what more did they know? Not the full truth, but who was to say they knew to ask the right questions. Or that they could choose what to ask.
You weren't sure which would be worse. A race that delved into your past would discover the truth of it eventually, but that had ended a war once. A race that could only ask certain questions would find only the answers that they needed to make any conflict devastating. Maybe that was why the leader of the Regular Fleet had communicated with them, before the fleet's departure.
Maybe that would be enough. You weren't hopeful.
War was coming.
And humanity was going to be an enemy.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Sorry about the wait on getting this out, needed to do some minor rewrites, and working out where to put them ended up being more difficult than I'd thought it would be. I've not done anything major to it, but sometimes all that needs doing is little things. I feel like the framing is a lot better now. I hope it comes through well to yourselves, and should have what will probably be the penultimate update of the quest out in the next week. Last week was back into classes after reading week, which made things a minor circle of hell for a little while.
Many thanks as always to my betas.
Many thanks as always to my betas.
- Location
- Seattle, Washington
Do we have the FTL computer yet?
Interesting phrasing.
Not "We're going to have to try to exterminate them in one strike" but "War is coming". An extended campaign of multiple battles.
That exhibits a singular lack of confidence in the ability of a War Fleet to end the threat.
Either that, or a suspicion that Humanity's existence is going to trigger a wider conflict with involvement from other factions, even if a War Fleet managed to pull off an extermination.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
You're getting there. Insight's latest run gives you some time to get it done, but they're monitoring that subject heavily. There's also how the Shiplords are about to get kicked in the face by six other races, the moment you get your comm relay online. Which isn't going to take long.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Oooooh.
They showed weakness.
And now all the people they've been brutalizing all this time are going to start kicking back, huh? And Practice is an OCP enough to them that they can't use their most reliable toolkit on it.
After all, those soulrend weapons work but aren't a panacea for them... Which..
(Thinks)
Huh, if those Soulrender weapons are meant for fucking up Uninvolved, wouldn't it work by just cutting them off from their connection to wherever they're intervening? But humans are based in the same realm--so even if it hurts it's not functionally 'Yeeting them out of the battlespace' like the Soulrender weapons would against an ascended being. "It's similiar, but not what our weapons were designed to fight" after all. If it's just a non-sapient, non-intelligent well of power on the 'Ascended' plane, then hurting it only disrupts the flow, not cutting it off because you sent them running in retreat--and since the connection is anchored by the Potentials, it regenerates quickly enough.
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