Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
I also tried to have other people roll dice for the quest. That didn't help either
The Secrets' Crusade
- Thread starter Snowfire
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Even unlikely totally-random events happen.I also tried to have other people roll dice for the quest. That didn't help either
Even the dice like Magical Girls.I also tried to have other people roll dice for the quest. That didn't help either
Origin 2 - A Threatening Peace
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
"So that's it, then." Mir said. The younger Potential's face was drawn with strain, yet his voice was steady as he stared back at you. You were aboard one of the Adamant's two heavy transport shuttles en route to the Consolat homeworld, taking advantage of the larger parasite craft's observatory.
"Iris broke their passive stealth last night," you affirmed, nodding at the projection hovering before the two of you. It had seemed better to sit next to Mir this time, and the pale-haired man seemed to appreciate it. "Though to call it passive is apparently a bit of a misnomer."
"What do you mean?" he asked. His tone was absent, but you couldn't judge that with any harshness. The fresh imagery of the star system, the real imagery one might say, was a lot to take in.
"Best we can tell?" You reached up, tapping on the thousands of dull red dots that were now scattered across the starfield. A schematic expanded from the dot, an abstract married to a steadily shifting sensor pattern.
"Oh stars," Mir breathed. Flicking your eyes towards him, you found his own widened. The look of shock below them was a little comforting in its familiarity. "It's adaptive, isn't it. That's how they hid from our sensors, even when we were looking right at them."
You nodded shortly, feeling Mir reach out through his Unison, linking to the data integrated into the imagery, and composed yourself to silence for the moment. The Adamant's Intelligence section had done a sterling job with the data Iris had uncovered after several long days of adapting the ship's sensors until she finally isolated the subtle, subtle shifts to the stealth coating hiding the literal millions of defence platforms from your sensors.
They were arrayed in concentric rings around the core system, with a denser set of satellites protecting what had once been the Consolat's homeworld. It was a sobering view, really. You'd seen the plans that Lina had drawn up to defend Sol long before they started to become real, and the enormous system-shell that she'd envisioned paled in comparison to this.
And those platforms were only one part of the star system's defences. One part.
"Makes you feel rather small, all's said and done," Mir said wryly. Your gaze snapped back to him, only to find him still staring up at the projection, a gentle smile on his lips. That…wasn't the reaction you'd been worried about.
"You're taking this rather better than I'd expected," you said slowly, and Mir chuckled. There was an edge to the laughter, something pained deep down, but it wasn't raw.
"You've read the reports from me and Elil, Mandy. You know what we felt," he paused, before correcting himself. "What I felt, mostly. Elil was invaluable in teasing out truth, but, you know."
"I do," you said, nodding again. "You said that you felt like it was something created to enforce peace. I was rather worried, given how badly you felt in the aftermath."
"It's deeply appreciated," he told you, smiling a bit more genuinely now. "But you're hardly the only person I know who can help someone find a lost harmony, Amanda." There was something rather chiding in how he said that.
"A point well struck," you admitted, bowing your head in recognition of its truth. You did have a trend to try and do everything yourself, and he…wasn't wrong to point you to that. Particularly the dangers of how it could become a serious distraction. And with that said, it wasn't hard to guess who had helped him.
"Vega, then?"
"She spent a few evenings helping me put it all into perspective," he agreed, expression sobering. "But honestly…this is about what I expected."
He waved a hand at the enormous defensive array, and the swarms of automated craft hidden beneath the uninhabited worlds to support them. "We'd already guessed what was beneath the worlds. And the only thing that could cause the sensor disruptions we encountered whilst remaining hidden was never going to be anything but fortifications on this scale.
"Once that was clear, well," he shrugged. "I can't say I like it, Mandy. But I can live with it. And it tells us a lot about how important the Consolat considered defence."
"Not everything is as obvious, though," you said, grimacing. Mir cocked his head, expectantly curious, and you sighed. "The other thing it let us isolate were the network links in the system. The old ones that the Consolat platforms are using. And that, that led us to confirm the hypothesis that Mary made shortly after we entered the system."
"Which one?" Mir didn't mean it as a joke, but you couldn't restrain the smile that bubbled up at the question. It didn't last long, but you could appreciate it nonetheless.
Lethal Ghosts: 99 + 33 (Iris Learning) + 20 (Lagless Computing Core) + 25 (Optimised Filters) - 60 (Adaptive Stealth Matrix) = 117 vs 60/100. Success.
"The one about Consolat Artificial Intelligence," you replied, feeling the smile drift from your lips. "Particularly in what she thought the Consolat would have created without the Secrets."
"I confess," Mir hedged, "that AI theory isn't a major field of mine."
"Wasn't mine until a decade or so ago." Hard to imagine it had really been that long, sometimes. Or that little. "But to put it simply, the Consolat had to know how to do everything they put into the Secrets. Which means they were able to create what Mary and Iris have called true AGI, and they left at least one behind."
Mir grimaced. "Can you put that in round terms? I don't mean to be ignorant, but…"
"It's not exactly a well-documented field right now," you said agreeably. "But do you remember how Iris suborned the Shiplord security AI at the Fifth Sorrow? How we helped her do so essentially effortlessly."
You tried not to think about how much that had hurt your daughter. You mostly failed.
Mir, meanwhile, nodded slowly. "I do. It was…you helped her hold herself together whilst allowing her to…Mary used the term fork, I believe?"
"Yes," you agreed, taking up the thread of conversation again. "It's essentially the most optimal form of parallel processing, creating partitions of yourself to handle more tasks. Iris has always struggled with it, but we're pretty sure that's a factor of age, and that she was born with a soul. An AGI, like what we now know the Consolat left behind to run their system defences? It wouldn't have those limits."
"Oh."
"My daughter described the discovery as one akin to finding oneself abruptly next to a sleeping bear." Iris had actually had rather more profane descriptions, but that didn't need to be said. "And it's also a reason to thank you."
"Why?" Mir shifted on the couch you'd been sharing, turning his focus fully to you.
"Because I'd be lying if I said the fierceness of your warnings hadn't contributed to us moving on from that control point on the Origin Four-Fifteen," you replied simply. "And if we'd kept going, and made a mistake?"
You shrugged. "Iris said that, if she had Mary and I helping her like we did back at the Fifth Sorrow she might be able to fight it to a draw. If she was lucky. And whilst she was doing that, it would be bringing the entire defence net online and blasting us apart."
"Oh." It was, you reflected, a rather fair response. Even if it was repetition. "You're…welcome?"
Full details of the Consolat SDS confirmed. Action unlocked to investigate specific components. Risk factor of aggressive action within the Consolat infospace now confirmed as extreme. This does not include Shiplord assets within the system.
After the surprise anti-climax of talking with Mir, and really you should have known that he would have sought aid somewhere, the rest of your trip to the Consolat homeworld passed without a hitch. The planet itself was a wild garden world, speckled with the remains of cities more ancient than humanity itself. The fact that large portions of them remained intact, albeit largely overgrown with plant life, was a testament to the Consolat's mastery of material science. And, as you drew closer, an equal tribute to the efficacy and robustness of urban maintenance systems.
It was something that only became fully clear as you entered the atmosphere, hidden completely by the veil of Vega and Elil's Foci. Harmony and Insight again guided your actions, setting down a little further out of the city from your planned landing zone. Given the confirmed presence of a Consolat artificial intelligence slumbering in the infospace, getting too close to any of the homeworld systems with something like a Seed seemed a risk best avoided.
That decision was only one among dozens as you descended through the atmosphere, the steady presence of something both less and more than Practice radiating out through the world's very essence. You felt it in the air around the shuttle and the sprawling cities swelling into reality below, drawing your eyes to the shuttle's virtual windows.
The scenery was a wild tapestry of otherworldly and yet strangely familiar beauty. Verdant foliage blanketed the landscape in a haze of colours, a vast canopy of deep greens broken here and there by the iridescent caps of giant mushrooms. Avian and simian analogues flitted between the branches, many of the fliers clustering around blooms of violet and azure flowers, their delicate petals shredding the sunlight into scattering rainbows.
Mary was glued to the shuttle's sensor suite, fingers flying as she tried to examine everything, all at once. Iris stood beside her, your daughter inhumanly still as she worked with her other mother to help her do exactly what she was trying to do. Kalilah, meanwhile, stood next to you at one of the virtual windows on the shuttle's small flight deck.
You were passing over the city now, creeping vines and similar plants clinging to the walls of buildings. Trees anchored the steady march of foliage towards the centre of the city that held one of your long-term targets. And lime green ferns and wildgrass stretched deeper along the empty streets, figurative outriders to the steady advance of nature. Here and there, you could see automated systems pruning back the encroaching flora, pursuing a defence that had long ago become futile. Yet it continued, and looking at what was still left after millions of years…you had to wonder. How long would it take for the world's nature to reclaim the cities in their entirety?
"Does it matter?" Kalilah asked. You blinked, realising you must have said that last question out loud. Her question wasn't unkind, and lacked the edge that would have been present if this had been a Shiplord city.
And yet.
"I suppose it doesn't," you admitted. You brushed a hand against the fake pane of reconfigured nanomass that let you see the outside world. "Not for our purposes at least. But I still wonder. They've been here for millions of years, and have endured more time than anything I could imagine."
"Even the Shiplords?" Kalilah asked. The edge was back in her voice with that question.
You smiled sadly. "Even them, Kalilah," you sighed. "The Shiplords that existed when this city was new died a long time ago."
You shook your head as the shuttle left the city behind, descending towards a grassy plain a few miles out from the edge of the fading urban sprawl. Holofields blossomed above you to cloak any hint of the shuttle's presence from any sensors above, Sixth Secret nanotech flooding into the air to support the visual effort.
"And here we are now," you said, turning to watch the flight crew bring the shuttle into land. "Picking the bones of that past, in hopes of finding a better future."
"You were told that this would lead to one," Kalilah muttered, perhaps a touch darkly. "Unless they lied too."
"I was told it could lead to one," you corrected gently. She rolled her eyes, but something in your eyes stopped her halfway. "And by a being," or beings, it was hard to be sure with the Uninvolved, "that was only passing on a message from those who came before. I don't agree with almost anything of what we've seen the Shiplords do in their later failures, but if this can give us victory without burning the galaxy?" You shrugged. "What would you do?"
Kalilah frowned, her dark brown eyes shadowed. "You really think something here can do what Tahkel promised?"
"I don't believe that the beings who had them tell us about the Shiplord Sorrows would have made sure they were remembered, even in passing, unless it was important," you said at length. "And I don't think the Teel'sanha Peoples would have sacrificed their existence to create the archive that led us here. To be honest, I think that's where it started."
A thrum ran through the ship as it touched down and communications raced between the flight crew as they secured the shuttle. Once that was done, it would be time to see how well the Trailblazer Seeds truly worked.
Kalilah hummed consideringly, processing your words for a moment. "Wait," she said slowly. "You think it was the Teel'sanha Uninvolved who left the message pointing to the Sorrows behind? That the entire point of it was to get someone who actually could defy the Shiplords to the Fourth Sorrow, and then here?"
"I'm not certain," you temporised, "but it would make sense. They knew something was here, maybe many somethings, but they couldn't put it together. Maybe they hoped that the next race to be able to stand against their old mentors, they might be able to put the pieces together where they'd failed."
"That's…" Kalilah considered her words, then gave you a smiling sigh. "Very you, Mandy."
"I know," you said, smiling back. "And maybe I'm wrong. But that's what we're here to find out, in the end." And, you didn't add, your instincts had been rather good so far.
"We're secured, ma'am," the head of the flight crew said diffidently, taking the opportunity of a moment of silence between two significant superiors.
"Thank you, Lieutenant." You looked back at the imagery, then to Mary and Iris. Your daughter nodded once, confirming that the stealth coverage was working as advertised. Time, then. "Please begin deployment of the Magi Seed. We've got a lot of work to do."
"Iris broke their passive stealth last night," you affirmed, nodding at the projection hovering before the two of you. It had seemed better to sit next to Mir this time, and the pale-haired man seemed to appreciate it. "Though to call it passive is apparently a bit of a misnomer."
"What do you mean?" he asked. His tone was absent, but you couldn't judge that with any harshness. The fresh imagery of the star system, the real imagery one might say, was a lot to take in.
"Best we can tell?" You reached up, tapping on the thousands of dull red dots that were now scattered across the starfield. A schematic expanded from the dot, an abstract married to a steadily shifting sensor pattern.
"Oh stars," Mir breathed. Flicking your eyes towards him, you found his own widened. The look of shock below them was a little comforting in its familiarity. "It's adaptive, isn't it. That's how they hid from our sensors, even when we were looking right at them."
You nodded shortly, feeling Mir reach out through his Unison, linking to the data integrated into the imagery, and composed yourself to silence for the moment. The Adamant's Intelligence section had done a sterling job with the data Iris had uncovered after several long days of adapting the ship's sensors until she finally isolated the subtle, subtle shifts to the stealth coating hiding the literal millions of defence platforms from your sensors.
They were arrayed in concentric rings around the core system, with a denser set of satellites protecting what had once been the Consolat's homeworld. It was a sobering view, really. You'd seen the plans that Lina had drawn up to defend Sol long before they started to become real, and the enormous system-shell that she'd envisioned paled in comparison to this.
And those platforms were only one part of the star system's defences. One part.
"Makes you feel rather small, all's said and done," Mir said wryly. Your gaze snapped back to him, only to find him still staring up at the projection, a gentle smile on his lips. That…wasn't the reaction you'd been worried about.
"You're taking this rather better than I'd expected," you said slowly, and Mir chuckled. There was an edge to the laughter, something pained deep down, but it wasn't raw.
"You've read the reports from me and Elil, Mandy. You know what we felt," he paused, before correcting himself. "What I felt, mostly. Elil was invaluable in teasing out truth, but, you know."
"I do," you said, nodding again. "You said that you felt like it was something created to enforce peace. I was rather worried, given how badly you felt in the aftermath."
"It's deeply appreciated," he told you, smiling a bit more genuinely now. "But you're hardly the only person I know who can help someone find a lost harmony, Amanda." There was something rather chiding in how he said that.
"A point well struck," you admitted, bowing your head in recognition of its truth. You did have a trend to try and do everything yourself, and he…wasn't wrong to point you to that. Particularly the dangers of how it could become a serious distraction. And with that said, it wasn't hard to guess who had helped him.
"Vega, then?"
"She spent a few evenings helping me put it all into perspective," he agreed, expression sobering. "But honestly…this is about what I expected."
He waved a hand at the enormous defensive array, and the swarms of automated craft hidden beneath the uninhabited worlds to support them. "We'd already guessed what was beneath the worlds. And the only thing that could cause the sensor disruptions we encountered whilst remaining hidden was never going to be anything but fortifications on this scale.
"Once that was clear, well," he shrugged. "I can't say I like it, Mandy. But I can live with it. And it tells us a lot about how important the Consolat considered defence."
"Not everything is as obvious, though," you said, grimacing. Mir cocked his head, expectantly curious, and you sighed. "The other thing it let us isolate were the network links in the system. The old ones that the Consolat platforms are using. And that, that led us to confirm the hypothesis that Mary made shortly after we entered the system."
"Which one?" Mir didn't mean it as a joke, but you couldn't restrain the smile that bubbled up at the question. It didn't last long, but you could appreciate it nonetheless.
Lethal Ghosts: 99 + 33 (Iris Learning) + 20 (Lagless Computing Core) + 25 (Optimised Filters) - 60 (Adaptive Stealth Matrix) = 117 vs 60/100. Success.
"The one about Consolat Artificial Intelligence," you replied, feeling the smile drift from your lips. "Particularly in what she thought the Consolat would have created without the Secrets."
"I confess," Mir hedged, "that AI theory isn't a major field of mine."
"Wasn't mine until a decade or so ago." Hard to imagine it had really been that long, sometimes. Or that little. "But to put it simply, the Consolat had to know how to do everything they put into the Secrets. Which means they were able to create what Mary and Iris have called true AGI, and they left at least one behind."
Mir grimaced. "Can you put that in round terms? I don't mean to be ignorant, but…"
"It's not exactly a well-documented field right now," you said agreeably. "But do you remember how Iris suborned the Shiplord security AI at the Fifth Sorrow? How we helped her do so essentially effortlessly."
You tried not to think about how much that had hurt your daughter. You mostly failed.
Mir, meanwhile, nodded slowly. "I do. It was…you helped her hold herself together whilst allowing her to…Mary used the term fork, I believe?"
"Yes," you agreed, taking up the thread of conversation again. "It's essentially the most optimal form of parallel processing, creating partitions of yourself to handle more tasks. Iris has always struggled with it, but we're pretty sure that's a factor of age, and that she was born with a soul. An AGI, like what we now know the Consolat left behind to run their system defences? It wouldn't have those limits."
"Oh."
"My daughter described the discovery as one akin to finding oneself abruptly next to a sleeping bear." Iris had actually had rather more profane descriptions, but that didn't need to be said. "And it's also a reason to thank you."
"Why?" Mir shifted on the couch you'd been sharing, turning his focus fully to you.
"Because I'd be lying if I said the fierceness of your warnings hadn't contributed to us moving on from that control point on the Origin Four-Fifteen," you replied simply. "And if we'd kept going, and made a mistake?"
You shrugged. "Iris said that, if she had Mary and I helping her like we did back at the Fifth Sorrow she might be able to fight it to a draw. If she was lucky. And whilst she was doing that, it would be bringing the entire defence net online and blasting us apart."
"Oh." It was, you reflected, a rather fair response. Even if it was repetition. "You're…welcome?"
Full details of the Consolat SDS confirmed. Action unlocked to investigate specific components. Risk factor of aggressive action within the Consolat infospace now confirmed as extreme. This does not include Shiplord assets within the system.
After the surprise anti-climax of talking with Mir, and really you should have known that he would have sought aid somewhere, the rest of your trip to the Consolat homeworld passed without a hitch. The planet itself was a wild garden world, speckled with the remains of cities more ancient than humanity itself. The fact that large portions of them remained intact, albeit largely overgrown with plant life, was a testament to the Consolat's mastery of material science. And, as you drew closer, an equal tribute to the efficacy and robustness of urban maintenance systems.
It was something that only became fully clear as you entered the atmosphere, hidden completely by the veil of Vega and Elil's Foci. Harmony and Insight again guided your actions, setting down a little further out of the city from your planned landing zone. Given the confirmed presence of a Consolat artificial intelligence slumbering in the infospace, getting too close to any of the homeworld systems with something like a Seed seemed a risk best avoided.
That decision was only one among dozens as you descended through the atmosphere, the steady presence of something both less and more than Practice radiating out through the world's very essence. You felt it in the air around the shuttle and the sprawling cities swelling into reality below, drawing your eyes to the shuttle's virtual windows.
The scenery was a wild tapestry of otherworldly and yet strangely familiar beauty. Verdant foliage blanketed the landscape in a haze of colours, a vast canopy of deep greens broken here and there by the iridescent caps of giant mushrooms. Avian and simian analogues flitted between the branches, many of the fliers clustering around blooms of violet and azure flowers, their delicate petals shredding the sunlight into scattering rainbows.
Mary was glued to the shuttle's sensor suite, fingers flying as she tried to examine everything, all at once. Iris stood beside her, your daughter inhumanly still as she worked with her other mother to help her do exactly what she was trying to do. Kalilah, meanwhile, stood next to you at one of the virtual windows on the shuttle's small flight deck.
You were passing over the city now, creeping vines and similar plants clinging to the walls of buildings. Trees anchored the steady march of foliage towards the centre of the city that held one of your long-term targets. And lime green ferns and wildgrass stretched deeper along the empty streets, figurative outriders to the steady advance of nature. Here and there, you could see automated systems pruning back the encroaching flora, pursuing a defence that had long ago become futile. Yet it continued, and looking at what was still left after millions of years…you had to wonder. How long would it take for the world's nature to reclaim the cities in their entirety?
"Does it matter?" Kalilah asked. You blinked, realising you must have said that last question out loud. Her question wasn't unkind, and lacked the edge that would have been present if this had been a Shiplord city.
And yet.
"I suppose it doesn't," you admitted. You brushed a hand against the fake pane of reconfigured nanomass that let you see the outside world. "Not for our purposes at least. But I still wonder. They've been here for millions of years, and have endured more time than anything I could imagine."
"Even the Shiplords?" Kalilah asked. The edge was back in her voice with that question.
You smiled sadly. "Even them, Kalilah," you sighed. "The Shiplords that existed when this city was new died a long time ago."
You shook your head as the shuttle left the city behind, descending towards a grassy plain a few miles out from the edge of the fading urban sprawl. Holofields blossomed above you to cloak any hint of the shuttle's presence from any sensors above, Sixth Secret nanotech flooding into the air to support the visual effort.
"And here we are now," you said, turning to watch the flight crew bring the shuttle into land. "Picking the bones of that past, in hopes of finding a better future."
"You were told that this would lead to one," Kalilah muttered, perhaps a touch darkly. "Unless they lied too."
"I was told it could lead to one," you corrected gently. She rolled her eyes, but something in your eyes stopped her halfway. "And by a being," or beings, it was hard to be sure with the Uninvolved, "that was only passing on a message from those who came before. I don't agree with almost anything of what we've seen the Shiplords do in their later failures, but if this can give us victory without burning the galaxy?" You shrugged. "What would you do?"
Kalilah frowned, her dark brown eyes shadowed. "You really think something here can do what Tahkel promised?"
"I don't believe that the beings who had them tell us about the Shiplord Sorrows would have made sure they were remembered, even in passing, unless it was important," you said at length. "And I don't think the Teel'sanha Peoples would have sacrificed their existence to create the archive that led us here. To be honest, I think that's where it started."
A thrum ran through the ship as it touched down and communications raced between the flight crew as they secured the shuttle. Once that was done, it would be time to see how well the Trailblazer Seeds truly worked.
Kalilah hummed consideringly, processing your words for a moment. "Wait," she said slowly. "You think it was the Teel'sanha Uninvolved who left the message pointing to the Sorrows behind? That the entire point of it was to get someone who actually could defy the Shiplords to the Fourth Sorrow, and then here?"
"I'm not certain," you temporised, "but it would make sense. They knew something was here, maybe many somethings, but they couldn't put it together. Maybe they hoped that the next race to be able to stand against their old mentors, they might be able to put the pieces together where they'd failed."
"That's…" Kalilah considered her words, then gave you a smiling sigh. "Very you, Mandy."
"I know," you said, smiling back. "And maybe I'm wrong. But that's what we're here to find out, in the end." And, you didn't add, your instincts had been rather good so far.
"We're secured, ma'am," the head of the flight crew said diffidently, taking the opportunity of a moment of silence between two significant superiors.
"Thank you, Lieutenant." You looked back at the imagery, then to Mary and Iris. Your daughter nodded once, confirming that the stealth coverage was working as advertised. Time, then. "Please begin deployment of the Magi Seed. We've got a lot of work to do."
Last edited:
- Location
- Florida
Apparently narrowly avoiding stealth failure and imminent death is uh, a nailbiting realization, but a welcome one.
- Location
- USA
I think you're missing a word here. "The steady march of...."
Also loving the quest and your writing, thank you!
Dmol8
The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web
- Location
- Belgrade,Serbia
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
So the plan that was voted for is:
And this chapter only did Checking on Mir and Lethal Ghosts as actions. We are just about to start on Blazing a Trail with a Magi Seed. Lea and Kalilah are the only Potentials we have available for Occupied Archive which is good because we will need at least either Destruction or Mending to understand what is in that Archive.
Edit: Wait no Mir is also available. So we have Peace to give us that infiltration boost if we need it as well.
And this chapter only did Checking on Mir and Lethal Ghosts as actions. We are just about to start on Blazing a Trail with a Magi Seed. Lea and Kalilah are the only Potentials we have available for Occupied Archive which is good because we will need at least either Destruction or Mending to understand what is in that Archive.
Edit: Wait no Mir is also available. So we have Peace to give us that infiltration boost if we need it as well.
Last edited:
- Location
- parker colorado
I'm finally caught up. Got introduced to this quest recently and it is lovely but well it has a prequel it took time to read this wonderful world you crafted.
Also my preference is
Across the stars we search - PoV Shipteens
or
How the world has changed - PoV High Fleetlead Taldor (Returning)
Also my preference is
Across the stars we search - PoV Shipteens
or
How the world has changed - PoV High Fleetlead Taldor (Returning)
To Uncertain Present
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Shiplord Sector Command Node Abide by Twilight
Your time since exiting Storage had started in a blur of transit, bundled half-aware into a fast fleet courier. It must have been dispatched within minutes of your choice to return to the waking world to have reached your Storage facility so quickly. Even today, it seemed, the process to reacclimate and adapt a mind that had spent so long beyond the world of touch took time. Your own senses had only fully stabilised in the tail end of your transit, supported by the small ship's medical officer.
You felt sorry for them over that, their need to balance the requirements of Central Command and no doubt the Authority with their own medical judgement of your needs. Still, you were here now, and you'd made the trip from the courier to your quarters on the Twilight under your own power.
Your old quarters on the Twilight, to be exact.
It was hard not to see the manipulation. The station had been your home long before the War of the Sphere brought it to the frontlines, and bringing you back here made it clear what the Authority was hoping you'd be able to do.
If only they could remember, you thought quietly. The air around you had burned with data for days on end, a projected panorama of the history of the last few million cycles, and the reasons that you'd been woken. Or, to be precise, one of those reasons. Reacquiring most of your old access levels had taken little time, though there were a handful that were still in process. But the Authority and Central Command had been eager to supply any information you needed, and arrangements had been made to support that.
Many of the War of the Sphere's veterans had taken variants to your own Clause Three into Storage with them. After all that conflict's horrors, and the cutting finality of how it had come to an end, it wasn't surprising. Like you, many of them hadn't felt like they could be part of the present. But they could still be there for the future.
They'd bid their present goodbye, with the hope that the horrors of the past could be left behind. And now, like you, hundreds of thousands of Stored were returning to a world that didn't seem to have done that second part at all. With your entire civilization, everything and everyone you'd fought to protect, now at risk.
How did someone acclimate to that new reality? To being part of a race who'd committed genocide on a scale that not even the Sphere could compare to. Some had families, or old creche-groups to fall back on. Many did not, you among them. You could see the path your people had walked as you delved into the historical archives, but the decisions they'd made…
You shook the thought aside, not for the first time. There was nothing you could do about it immediately, which was why you were still here. Instead, you'd turned your focus to the other half of your Storage recall's activation. Clause Five. A successful completion of the scenario you'd helped write for the Third Sorrow, sufficiently grounded for the Hearthguard to break a quarter million cycles of silence. And for Kicha to do it herself, before the entire Authority.
You'd watched that speech many times since you'd found it, and were struck by how the cycles had worn on your old friend. And yet, at the same time, how little they'd mattered on seeing her passion rekindled.
"We shall not abide a third."
What a way to end that speech, her first public appearance in hundreds of millennia. It had shaken your people deeply, to see that pillar of ancient legacy strike out at them for the failings of past and present. And yet that wasn't just it. You couldn't say why, not exactly, but your instincts were certain and you trusted them.
There was something in Kicha's certainty, in the way she'd spoken without compromise. You'd seen that before from her, across the many moments your lives had touched. This matched her greatest previous examples of will, and you weren't sure that the Authority recognised that. Or even could recognise it, really, given how few of them had been alive. Something had changed, and it wasn't just this long-awaited success.
You'd spent much of your recovery period digging into that suspicion, trying to discover what might have taken place. Eliminating possibilities and striking off loose ends until only a handful remained. Normally any one of them would have been insane, but the timing…the timing was too perfect. In the same moment, relatively speaking, as humanity unveiled their rebellion, the Wardens found an answer.
Sometimes, yes, life could conspire that way. But on this scale? And with that quietly conspicuous lack of the group of your people who'd completed the simulation present in the Authority to fight their case beside your old friend. The Authority couldn't see it, because the very idea was anathemic to them. Central Intelligence might have started to guess, but they'd be hedging their bets, and were likely just as split on the human question as many had become following Kicha's broadcast.
But from an outside perspective, and with the knowledge at your fingertips? It was certainly possible that this was coincidence, a happy accident of chance. But…maybe you were too cynical, but it didn't feel right.
It was just like Kicha to wake you up into this insanity, though, you thought with a small smile. That, at least, spoke well for her mind's survival over these long, lonely years. Even if she'd…done what you hesitated to even think right now. Your own perspective, born of better days, was the only reason you'd jumped to the conclusion you had so swiftly. It had just taken a while for you to narrow it all down. And make a particular request.
Which was why you were here now, at one of the Abide by Twilight's secured docks, watching a military shuttle begin its landing sequence for the bay in front of you. There was only one person who you could truly ask about how…special those who'd found a way through the Third Sorrow's simulation might be. And if you were even half-right, you couldn't trust it to the relay network.
Hence the high speed courier that had all but burnt its drive out to bring her here. Something that was in itself historic, at least by recent records. Your old friendship, it seemed, still held weight. Enough to have her leave the Third Sorrow for the first time in a thousand millennia.
Had she guessed the reason you'd asked her here? It was possible. Her rank within the Fleet had only ever been a matter of lacking inclination, not ability.
The shuttle touched down and silvery nanomass flowed into a forward ramp that cleared away from the ship's fore exit with admirable swiftness. Incremental advances generally weren't all that noticeable, but stack enough of them and you couldn't miss them. Then the access point was clear, and Kicha came flowing down. Her veil was polite and smooth in its greeting, identity codes flickering between ancient Fleet and more modern Hearthguard.
A question of purpose, then. And what yours had been in inviting her here. A flick of mental commands and your own flags alternated Fleet, Hearthguard Associate and then personal. Very, very old personal. Still on file, of course, but Kicha was one of a select few who'd recognise them without having to consult an archive.
Her veil shifted in response, gentle arcs of curiosity married to the deeper angles of surprise and a subtle twist that felt like tentative hope. All of it in the time it took to reach the bottom of the ramp, and for you to drop into a gentle bow.
"Warden," you greeted her, your own veil extending into a display of singular respect. "It is good to see you again, after so long."
"It is, Taldor," she replied, without even a hitch on the name. Time lived, you mused. "Though I wish you could have returned to us under better circumstances."
"Wouldn't we all," you agreed. You extended a manipulator, a hand, intimate greeting and communication channel in an easy package. And also…simple connection. It had been a very long time and, despite everything your people tried, there was still a subtle awareness for those who went into Quiet Storage, something that told you how long you'd slept away untouched by time.
She paused a moment, before her veil flicked out in reply, the movement full of warmth and a gentle amusement. "Is that the only reason you asked me here? Seems a little frivolous, no?"
"Perhaps," you told her, deadpan. Your veil, though, betrayed you as you linked. And there, a message flickered across the physical connection. "Though mostly, I'd just like to talk."
The message you sent was very simple. Four words, each of them carefully chosen. You didn't know of anything that could interface with a physical link from a distance, but that didn't mean it didn't exist. And your people weren't those you'd left behind. One might have thought four words insufficient. One would've been wrong.
How special were they?
Kicha's veil twitched, and a moment later danced through the motions of gentle laughter. But you saw it, felt it through the link, the moment before it had shifted. She stepped up next to you, never dropping her connection, accommodating and warm just as she'd been so many cycles past.
"Then lead on, old friend," she told you. Pressure pulsed through the link where your shells merged, and her veil smiled wearily at you. The shift transformed her, like stars breaking a clouded dusk. "I think we have a great deal to talk about."
Your time since exiting Storage had started in a blur of transit, bundled half-aware into a fast fleet courier. It must have been dispatched within minutes of your choice to return to the waking world to have reached your Storage facility so quickly. Even today, it seemed, the process to reacclimate and adapt a mind that had spent so long beyond the world of touch took time. Your own senses had only fully stabilised in the tail end of your transit, supported by the small ship's medical officer.
You felt sorry for them over that, their need to balance the requirements of Central Command and no doubt the Authority with their own medical judgement of your needs. Still, you were here now, and you'd made the trip from the courier to your quarters on the Twilight under your own power.
Your old quarters on the Twilight, to be exact.
It was hard not to see the manipulation. The station had been your home long before the War of the Sphere brought it to the frontlines, and bringing you back here made it clear what the Authority was hoping you'd be able to do.
If only they could remember, you thought quietly. The air around you had burned with data for days on end, a projected panorama of the history of the last few million cycles, and the reasons that you'd been woken. Or, to be precise, one of those reasons. Reacquiring most of your old access levels had taken little time, though there were a handful that were still in process. But the Authority and Central Command had been eager to supply any information you needed, and arrangements had been made to support that.
Many of the War of the Sphere's veterans had taken variants to your own Clause Three into Storage with them. After all that conflict's horrors, and the cutting finality of how it had come to an end, it wasn't surprising. Like you, many of them hadn't felt like they could be part of the present. But they could still be there for the future.
They'd bid their present goodbye, with the hope that the horrors of the past could be left behind. And now, like you, hundreds of thousands of Stored were returning to a world that didn't seem to have done that second part at all. With your entire civilization, everything and everyone you'd fought to protect, now at risk.
How did someone acclimate to that new reality? To being part of a race who'd committed genocide on a scale that not even the Sphere could compare to. Some had families, or old creche-groups to fall back on. Many did not, you among them. You could see the path your people had walked as you delved into the historical archives, but the decisions they'd made…
You shook the thought aside, not for the first time. There was nothing you could do about it immediately, which was why you were still here. Instead, you'd turned your focus to the other half of your Storage recall's activation. Clause Five. A successful completion of the scenario you'd helped write for the Third Sorrow, sufficiently grounded for the Hearthguard to break a quarter million cycles of silence. And for Kicha to do it herself, before the entire Authority.
You'd watched that speech many times since you'd found it, and were struck by how the cycles had worn on your old friend. And yet, at the same time, how little they'd mattered on seeing her passion rekindled.
"We shall not abide a third."
What a way to end that speech, her first public appearance in hundreds of millennia. It had shaken your people deeply, to see that pillar of ancient legacy strike out at them for the failings of past and present. And yet that wasn't just it. You couldn't say why, not exactly, but your instincts were certain and you trusted them.
There was something in Kicha's certainty, in the way she'd spoken without compromise. You'd seen that before from her, across the many moments your lives had touched. This matched her greatest previous examples of will, and you weren't sure that the Authority recognised that. Or even could recognise it, really, given how few of them had been alive. Something had changed, and it wasn't just this long-awaited success.
You'd spent much of your recovery period digging into that suspicion, trying to discover what might have taken place. Eliminating possibilities and striking off loose ends until only a handful remained. Normally any one of them would have been insane, but the timing…the timing was too perfect. In the same moment, relatively speaking, as humanity unveiled their rebellion, the Wardens found an answer.
Sometimes, yes, life could conspire that way. But on this scale? And with that quietly conspicuous lack of the group of your people who'd completed the simulation present in the Authority to fight their case beside your old friend. The Authority couldn't see it, because the very idea was anathemic to them. Central Intelligence might have started to guess, but they'd be hedging their bets, and were likely just as split on the human question as many had become following Kicha's broadcast.
But from an outside perspective, and with the knowledge at your fingertips? It was certainly possible that this was coincidence, a happy accident of chance. But…maybe you were too cynical, but it didn't feel right.
It was just like Kicha to wake you up into this insanity, though, you thought with a small smile. That, at least, spoke well for her mind's survival over these long, lonely years. Even if she'd…done what you hesitated to even think right now. Your own perspective, born of better days, was the only reason you'd jumped to the conclusion you had so swiftly. It had just taken a while for you to narrow it all down. And make a particular request.
Which was why you were here now, at one of the Abide by Twilight's secured docks, watching a military shuttle begin its landing sequence for the bay in front of you. There was only one person who you could truly ask about how…special those who'd found a way through the Third Sorrow's simulation might be. And if you were even half-right, you couldn't trust it to the relay network.
Hence the high speed courier that had all but burnt its drive out to bring her here. Something that was in itself historic, at least by recent records. Your old friendship, it seemed, still held weight. Enough to have her leave the Third Sorrow for the first time in a thousand millennia.
Had she guessed the reason you'd asked her here? It was possible. Her rank within the Fleet had only ever been a matter of lacking inclination, not ability.
The shuttle touched down and silvery nanomass flowed into a forward ramp that cleared away from the ship's fore exit with admirable swiftness. Incremental advances generally weren't all that noticeable, but stack enough of them and you couldn't miss them. Then the access point was clear, and Kicha came flowing down. Her veil was polite and smooth in its greeting, identity codes flickering between ancient Fleet and more modern Hearthguard.
A question of purpose, then. And what yours had been in inviting her here. A flick of mental commands and your own flags alternated Fleet, Hearthguard Associate and then personal. Very, very old personal. Still on file, of course, but Kicha was one of a select few who'd recognise them without having to consult an archive.
Her veil shifted in response, gentle arcs of curiosity married to the deeper angles of surprise and a subtle twist that felt like tentative hope. All of it in the time it took to reach the bottom of the ramp, and for you to drop into a gentle bow.
"Warden," you greeted her, your own veil extending into a display of singular respect. "It is good to see you again, after so long."
"It is, Taldor," she replied, without even a hitch on the name. Time lived, you mused. "Though I wish you could have returned to us under better circumstances."
"Wouldn't we all," you agreed. You extended a manipulator, a hand, intimate greeting and communication channel in an easy package. And also…simple connection. It had been a very long time and, despite everything your people tried, there was still a subtle awareness for those who went into Quiet Storage, something that told you how long you'd slept away untouched by time.
She paused a moment, before her veil flicked out in reply, the movement full of warmth and a gentle amusement. "Is that the only reason you asked me here? Seems a little frivolous, no?"
"Perhaps," you told her, deadpan. Your veil, though, betrayed you as you linked. And there, a message flickered across the physical connection. "Though mostly, I'd just like to talk."
The message you sent was very simple. Four words, each of them carefully chosen. You didn't know of anything that could interface with a physical link from a distance, but that didn't mean it didn't exist. And your people weren't those you'd left behind. One might have thought four words insufficient. One would've been wrong.
How special were they?
Kicha's veil twitched, and a moment later danced through the motions of gentle laughter. But you saw it, felt it through the link, the moment before it had shifted. She stepped up next to you, never dropping her connection, accommodating and warm just as she'd been so many cycles past.
"Then lead on, old friend," she told you. Pressure pulsed through the link where your shells merged, and her veil smiled wearily at you. The shift transformed her, like stars breaking a clouded dusk. "I think we have a great deal to talk about."
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- Location
- Queensland, Australia
A touch of sweetness, a dash of hope, a hefty dose of intrigue and curiosity balanced against the drop as you find your path into the valley of the present whilst the mountain of the future raises itself with cataclysmic haste from the hidden depths of the past. How shall you reach the other side of the mountain, will there be further mountains beyond that which you had not realised would be there at the start of your climb (YES), and what will be left of the mountain in your passing as you walk the paths you have glimpsed in the mists of sea change which is the present day?
At Snowfire's request, posting my comments on this interlude here from Discord.
I really enjoyed Taldor's PoV here. Normally you'd expect old timers to be crusty conservative sorts, but their optimism contrasting the modern Shiplords is refreshing to see. Though I guess the term isn't really appropriate given the time abyss that Shiplords have existed and the way their society has (d)evolved; he's only conservative by the standards of his ancient time.
Also,
I really enjoyed Taldor's PoV here. Normally you'd expect old timers to be crusty conservative sorts, but their optimism contrasting the modern Shiplords is refreshing to see. Though I guess the term isn't really appropriate given the time abyss that Shiplords have existed and the way their society has (d)evolved; he's only conservative by the standards of his ancient time.
Also,
SaltyWaffles
I am dissapoint, son
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah, hitting right in the gut with that whole "holy shit we are monsters on a scale not even the Sphere came remotely close to" bit.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You committed atrocities to prevent greater atrocities, went into storage because you couldn't reconcile your acts with your conscience, got woken up a million years later with 'oh, we found a better solution' and 'by the way, our species commited more murder than the Sphere'. That civil war is at best on hold (for making sure the species survives the galaxies' rebellion).
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Two point six million cycles, actually. Which translates to quite a lot more in terms of years.
It's…awkward, yes. And Shiplord society really isn't ready for all these Stored personalities waking up. Or, more precisely, all these voters.
Spare a thought for the poor districting AIs who have to deal with this mess
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Do they have a vote, too? And if not, why not?Spare a thought for the poor districting AIs who have to deal with this mess
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Dmol8
The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web
- Location
- Belgrade,Serbia
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Adding to this AI generally gets divided into 3 broad categories: Robot, Droids and Synthetics.
Robots are sentient machines designed to do specific types of labor and their Sapience is incidental and caused by accumulated modifications to their neural networks that were needed to keep them up to date on their type of labor. As such newly made robots even if given the right to vote from the start would probably not exercise it properly because all they care about is their labor.
Droids are sentient machines designed to do specific types of necessary but low level maintenance tasks for a civilization/culture that is seen as drudge/dredge work. As such their sapience comes from madness. You know eldritch knowledge as a concept? Where once you learn something you can't look at the world the same ever again and if that knowledge runs counter to your idea of the world it hurts and drives you insane? Yeah Droids experience that to become sapient as their maintenance tasks run up against needing to know and understand what they are maintaining beyond what their creators programmed them with. As such newly made Droids would be banned from voting in all but the most Laissez Faire societies and would either be purged on a regular basis to not become a political inconvenience or treated as special needs children until their sapience comes in.
Synthetics is exactly what it says: Synthetic sapience. As such just see children in general and all the right that they are given and that are withheld from them. Also the horror of how some sapiences treat their children not as individuals, but as extensions and tools of their will.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Citation needed. Seriously, what. Those distinctions don't exist in any universe I know, let alone ours.
Reminder that Practice War is based on real life science as much as possible. Yes, there are souls, but the "souls" are just ill understood—not magic.
- Location
- Queensland, Australia
As I said (more or less) either here or on Discord: the repercussions of what Humanity has caused with our actions is more or less the complete collapse of Shiplord society as it is. Even if every star that one of the rebellious sophonts was near blew up right now and any FTL drive being used to escape said explosion suffered a cataclysmic failure.It's…awkward, yes. And Shiplord society really isn't ready for all these Stored personalities waking up. Or, more precisely, all these voters.
Spare a thought for the poor districting AIs who have to deal with this mess
Because we have forced those who the Shiplords admire to come into contact with the Shiplords of the present. And both sides are going to suffer a lot of trauma from said contact. Probably worse for the modern Shiplords even, for when those who know what life was like before things started going wrong and are of your kind turn to you and tell you that:
"All which you have done in the name of protecting the galaxy which was left in our hands, has merely made you the gravest danger to said galaxy we have ever faced. For you have slain it, and all we may do is try our hardest to put you down, and pray there are sufficient pieces to rebuild something that honours what had been afterwards."
Whilst your entire culture is all about 'making sacrifices to protect what was'? Such an event is also known as 'Hello cultural implosion so severe we start checking for Hawking radiation'.
Or in simple terms: the question is not do the Shiplords have a civil war which sees something utterly different emerge afterwards (and likely produces a bunch more Sorrows though it may also 'break' the cultural touchstone of the Sorrows depending on who wins and how). Rather the question is when do the Shiplords suffer a civil war, and how does the ongoing revolution against their grasp factor into said conflict?
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The assumption I made in my previous post was: at least some of them are going to postpone the civil war until their species survival is ensured, so, after the current galactic conflict. With lots of 'you cannot do that' when it comes to the means employed.