The Secrets' Crusade
- Thread starter Snowfire
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yes, it is. There's nothing a nation can do that's bad enough to move the reasonable response from "make sure they can't do that again" to "do that and then keep going until none remain alive", because that's complete nonsense.
Yes. The Shiplords have been adamant about never communicating openly when other options have been available, and it's bitten them and the entire rest of the universe in the ass repeatedly for millions of years. We've pushed for as close to the opposite of that as we could get away with.
- Location
- PA
Pain.
So it's not even a 'I'm mad enough to see you dead even if I die.' Response…
It's a 'aaaaaAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!'
The kind of thing you come up with mantras like 'Fear is the Mind-Killer', etc,etc. or Grudges, Books and all, to contain.
It somewhat feeds into how that Shiplord reacted and then calmed down…
And it…
Hrrrm.
The Tribute fleet's place of honor.
That in some ways it's the Best of the Shiplords that carry out that doctrine.
Because they have to face that screaming pain and CONTAIN it, sticking to their script.
And yet…
It doesn't change that, that we humans are like the Gauls staring down the Roman Empire.
But.
Hrrrm.
It reframes things a little but how precisely is…
It's not helpful, frankly.
Then again.
Witness, or Remember, I think, is how the Shiplords put it?
That…That suggests a level of emotional maturity? Attempts to address the issue…
It's not coming together for me personally. Not beyond any speculation I've offered in the past, I think, so if I'm on point or was on point then woo-hoo but…
…
Why was there no Dragon uninvolved? Because the power that would have been used to do that was handed to Humanity.
But then, the Gyrisians or w/e the hungry people were called…
…
History.
Rome, in many ways considered an apex of Western Civiliazation. Why?
Because when they lost armies, they pulled together another one and rallied again and again.
When they conquered, they confined Ares to his shrines and built roads to offer trade and a share of the spoils to those they bested.
And they held, held so long that when they fell, those who once were their captives wept at the loss.
Or so the story goes…
So what? We're the Consolat the Greece to Shiplord's Rome?
The Gyrian hungry peoples. Is that meant to be a reflection of Modern day capitalism's constant hustle?
So what then are the spared birds? The idea of MAD played to the hilt?
…
Ugh, a pretentious AND useless angle.
I got nothing now that I didn't have before, I really don't.
But then again.
Timeline.
We have the Consolat doing a Dragon.
We have the Sorrows. I think we went out of order and that's going to make this a crapshoot.
First world: recreation of what was, but missing…Something.
Second world: I think this was the hungry hungry hippos. Freaked them out to see God himself say NAY!
Third world?….Bird people maybe?
Fourth world: ETA soon.
Fifth…I dunno.
Agh.
That's it I'm out of angles.
So it's not even a 'I'm mad enough to see you dead even if I die.' Response…
It's a 'aaaaaAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!'
The kind of thing you come up with mantras like 'Fear is the Mind-Killer', etc,etc. or Grudges, Books and all, to contain.
It somewhat feeds into how that Shiplord reacted and then calmed down…
And it…
Hrrrm.
The Tribute fleet's place of honor.
That in some ways it's the Best of the Shiplords that carry out that doctrine.
Because they have to face that screaming pain and CONTAIN it, sticking to their script.
And yet…
It doesn't change that, that we humans are like the Gauls staring down the Roman Empire.
But.
Hrrrm.
It reframes things a little but how precisely is…
It's not helpful, frankly.
Then again.
Witness, or Remember, I think, is how the Shiplords put it?
That…That suggests a level of emotional maturity? Attempts to address the issue…
It's not coming together for me personally. Not beyond any speculation I've offered in the past, I think, so if I'm on point or was on point then woo-hoo but…
…
Why was there no Dragon uninvolved? Because the power that would have been used to do that was handed to Humanity.
But then, the Gyrisians or w/e the hungry people were called…
…
History.
Rome, in many ways considered an apex of Western Civiliazation. Why?
Because when they lost armies, they pulled together another one and rallied again and again.
When they conquered, they confined Ares to his shrines and built roads to offer trade and a share of the spoils to those they bested.
And they held, held so long that when they fell, those who once were their captives wept at the loss.
Or so the story goes…
So what? We're the Consolat the Greece to Shiplord's Rome?
The Gyrian hungry peoples. Is that meant to be a reflection of Modern day capitalism's constant hustle?
So what then are the spared birds? The idea of MAD played to the hilt?
…
Ugh, a pretentious AND useless angle.
I got nothing now that I didn't have before, I really don't.
But then again.
Timeline.
We have the Consolat doing a Dragon.
We have the Sorrows. I think we went out of order and that's going to make this a crapshoot.
First world: recreation of what was, but missing…Something.
Second world: I think this was the hungry hungry hippos. Freaked them out to see God himself say NAY!
Third world?….Bird people maybe?
Fourth world: ETA soon.
Fifth…I dunno.
Agh.
That's it I'm out of angles.
Did the Consolat, the first and oldest friend species of the Shiplords, perhaps even the Shiplords *mentors* that taught the Shiplords to be teachers, sacrifice themselves in their entirety to create enough power to use some different form Practice with which to mend reality when some idiot set off a actual reality collapse? And did they also create the Secrets with their sacrifice much like the Dragons' sacrifice created Practice for humanity?
That would explain the berserk rage out of pain at another race dabbling in reality collapsing bullshit and be the first steps in the dark path the Shiplords have gone down.
That would explain the berserk rage out of pain at another race dabbling in reality collapsing bullshit and be the first steps in the dark path the Shiplords have gone down.
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Vortex279
Changer of Fate, Seeker of Donuts
- Location
- Del Rio, Texas
Wait, Answers? what are these arcane things that you reference @Snowfire ? Honestly though, I really look forward to some explanation of just what is going on with the shiplords. Iris' scene there at the end of the chapter after decoding the shiplord archive is really twisting my nogin into pretzels. Just how badly did loosing their friends drive the Shiplords along? Going as far as they have for so long, up to this time really, feels wrong. Yeah, reacting to reality breakers with excessive measures is not that weird, but what we are seeing here seems almost contradictory, in that the Shiplords started crazy strong, then leveled off and stayed at what they do now. Humanities actions and achievements up to this point have to be ringing all the alarm bells for the SL, yet they haven't pushed beyond what we have seen so far. Yeah, a part of that is the pov of this story, which is much slower paced with it's focus on details, but still. Answers await!
- Location
- San Ramon, CA
...If I recall correctly, the second time the Shiplords came to Earth, they deployed a weapon that was theorized to be made of the "recycled" flesh of the people they had abducted the first time.
Understanding your enemy is great and all, and I'm sure that the Shiplords' pain is very real and may have left lasting scars on their cultural psyche, but this doesn't change the fact that they have spent the millions of years since being the most traumatic thing to happen to EVERYONE ELSE.
- Location
- PA
How's that saying go?
The Abused has become the abuser?
It's paying it forward only with pain and suffering.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
There's no way to excuse what the Shiplords are doing. Don't take Mary's comment as implying it's acceptable; I don't believe it was meant that way. It's an explanation, not forgiveness. Rather, the way I'm reading it is that there might be no safe path through this.
Given (a) a universe in which not having an empire capable of such monstrosities leads to the destruction of reality, and (b) the members of said empire being fallible (im)mortals, instead of uncorruptible buddhas, (c) what we're seeing here may be impossible to prevent. Is she right? Well... our own track record on the subject isn't that good, even with lower stakes.
There are universes in which the Shiplords don't exist. Those universes are, largely, ash.
Given (a) a universe in which not having an empire capable of such monstrosities leads to the destruction of reality, and (b) the members of said empire being fallible (im)mortals, instead of uncorruptible buddhas, (c) what we're seeing here may be impossible to prevent. Is she right? Well... our own track record on the subject isn't that good, even with lower stakes.
There are universes in which the Shiplords don't exist. Those universes are, largely, ash.
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The First Sorrow sounds like it could've been avoided by the Shiplords saying "that thing you're asking about destroys the universe" from the start instead of giving the Gysians' leaders the runaround.
The second could've been avoided by the Shiplords responding to the first by destroying the nation responsible from the start, instead of jumping to killing every individual who happened to live inside the nation and needing to be talked down. That's not a standard that only incorruptible Buddhas can meet.
We've got the third covered. Maybe other people that the Shiplords genocided could've also figured it out, but the Shiplords decided that their desire for new viewpoints to see where they went wrong wasn't quite as strong as their desire to keep their museum super duper extra secret to protect the experience of going for the first time.
And as far as I can tell, the fifth and most of the genocides they haven't bothered to record could've been avoided by the Shiplords moving the fuck on? Not even as individuals, as a culture. They could've built memorials that didn't do their best to reproduce the trauma of living through the event. We've got that covered. Iris is only a generation removed from first contact, and she's already talking about not sharing the pain of her parents. Reacting to traumatic events in any way other than the specific way the Shiplords have means a million years is a million chances for people to say "whoa, what the fuck grandma, why are you doing all these genocides", instead of only at pivotal points where the Keepers of the Trauma exchange their high scores in trauma for tickets to be redeemed in Congress.
Like, I get that forgetting the past means you're doomed to repeat it, but a 9/11 memorial that really goes out of its way to teach kids how it felt for boomers to realize that the fall of the Soviet Union wasn't the last time they'd ever have to be scared of anything also seems like a good way to get stuck repeating the past.
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- Location
- Somewhere out there
They did say that. The problem is that the Gysians already distrusted the Shiplords, so they didn't trust the rationale behind it.
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Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
They said that eventually, after a period of communicating as clearly as we're used to, during which the Gysians became convinced that they were hiding something that threatened their monopoly on force.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
This isn't...at all what was described in the First or Second Sorrow - mostly the Second, mind. To be clear: the Gysians were a paranoid, xenophobic and expansionist state who refused to accept that there were some things that they were simply unready to learn. If the Shiplords had told them precisely what merging the First and Sixth Secret could do in the right context, then the Gysians would have been essentially handed the tools to inflict MAD on all reality. And they would have done so, too.
From the perspective of a Shiplord society that was at that point a pretty damn effective example of a teaching/mentoring Elder Civilisation, there weren't really any good options. Telling the Gysian everything would have just handed them weapons that they'd threaten to use anyway, and lose the Shiplords the ability to contain the problem. Not telling them would lead to the Gysians trying anyway, but the hope there was that the scale of horror they'd found a way to unleash would...temper them. It didn't, but that's also because the Gysian science teams got their math wrong and believed the false vacuum collapse would either stop or be something that could be stopped.
If you think there was a better solution to this, then I'm happy to hear it, and I'll accept entirely that I can miss things. But the Gysian scenario is such a tragedy in part because it was a situation that the Shiplord teaching system couldn't effectively resolve. Their species wanted everything the Shiplords knew, immediately, and the Shiplords weren't willing to give that for the same reason that you don't hand a toddler a carving knife.
Which led to the Gysians developing their own program, which the Shiplords learned about but weren't willing to sabotage because they hoped the discoveries on their own terms would change the cultural outlook. And they kept on hoping, right until the Gysian government chose to try and end reality.
The enormity of what the Gysians tried to do at the First Sorrow is hard to properly express, because as a species we lack the ability to apply context at that scale. But vacuum collapse weaponry presents an extant danger to everything in existence. Once a collapse gets properly started there's no stopping it, and that means a single mistake can end the lives of countless trillions - honestly trillions is probably too low a number here. The Shiplords had known that intellectually and it's why they kept certain parts of how the Secrets worked obscure until a race seemed stable enough to handle knowing that.
But that doesn't always work. And when you're playing with the fate of all creation, you don't get second chances.
Should the Shiplords have reacted differently in how they acted against Gysian civilisation following the First Sorrow? Yes, certainly, and part of the Second Sorrow's purpose is trying to teach that. It worked pretty well up until the war with the Hjivin Sphere threw everything sideways, and the Fifth Sorrow finished off what was left because the idea of a stellar convertor in the hands of a rebellious race triggered a whole bunch of threat upgrades and trauma points.
Does this excuse them for that, and everything else? No. Nothing can. I'm not trying to excuse the Shiplords for what they've done. But the Sorrows are a tale of tragedy millions of years old, charting the fall of a civilisation that was once very close to humanity's ideal. Presented with that, and the stakes of a failure state, is it a surprise that Amanda, Mary and Iris are looking at this as a warning for humanity in a future where they win?
Someone will, after all, have to prevent this sort of scenario from happening again.
How will they do it?
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Wrong-ish, perhaps? But maybe there's something to it.Well, first thing that comes to mind is the friend race sacrificing themselves to create the Secrets
But that feels wrong.
I'm thinking about it. What's the deepest and weirdest restructuring of the universe as we know it now in-quest, the breaking of rules everyone thought were universal and patterns of evolution that seemed to apply universally to all species of intelligent life across hundreds of millennia? Practice.
Other things the Shiplords encounter aren't new. They're similar in kind to other things the Shiplords already knew about, even if slightly different or slightly better. But Practice seems to be like nothing else the Shiplords have encountered in a long time, maybe in all of their own immense history. We're breaking all the patterns they're accustomed to, and certainly all the patterns any now living intelligent species knows of, and indeed most of the ones within the living memory of the Uninvolved (though their lifespan seems to be measured in hundreds of thousands of years at most).
So maybe, when it comes to leaving a really permanent mark on the cosmos, it would have to be something like the sacrifice/transcendence/loss of an entire sentient species that would fuel it.
Also that might explain it.
In an attempt to be maximally fair, telling the Shiplords "you're asking for reality-breaking secrets" might well have just led the Gysians to get mad. "Are you seriously suggesting I want to break the universe? Screw you! I bet you're lying to hoard power for yourself!"
Given how the Gysians reacted to what actually happened, I'm not sure it was entirely within the Shiplords' power to ensure that the Gysians reacted well to anything the Shiplords could have done.
Still. Yeah... this.
That assumes that the younger population outnumbers the older population, which, given that immortality is in play and the universe isn't a ball of shiplord flesh expanding outwards faster than the speed of light, is questionable.
The Last Memory
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Your first impression of the Fourth Sorrow was a vision of the beauty possessed by dying stars. Not the immediate death that a Lumen-class could enforce, but the slow, slow death of a main-sequence star that had bloomed into a red supergiant. Bloody red light washed across the system's planets, none of them living and a massive bank of stations stretched around the star at its heart. It took a few moments to realise what they were for, but the immense energy readings were hard to miss.
Mary's fingers were a blur across her virtual panels as she examined the data, pulling together the field readings until the full picture came into view. "The stations, they're stacked with Third Secret emitters," she breathed, awestruck. "It's like the beginning of a stellar converter, but stopped short to contain the supergiant's mass ejections, keep it at this point of its lifecycle. The scale of it-" she broke off, shaking her head.
"Stellar engineering, to protect this place from destruction." You nodded. If only they were so willing to do the same for the living, instead of the dead.
"There's something else," Mary said, pointing to a distant planet. Once, it would've sat squarely at the centre of a main-sequence star's goldilocks zone. A wire-pattern overlaid itself over the world, flexing organically under the star's titanic output. "The magnetosphere of that world is much stronger than it should be, enough to protect it from the red giant's radiation."
Fingers flicked, another scan began as the Adamant began the long trek towards the system's core. You were met by the same greeting, subtly different as always. This one spoke of those who'd once been here as...it was difficult to be sure. The title Shiplord messages used carried connotations of deep honour and sorrow, but something about this one felt...wrong.
"That's the message we're looking for, right?" Iris asked, voice a whisper.
"It must be," you agreed, reading it again. A single finger stabbed down at the title the Shiplords were using instead of a species name. "I guess we'll have to go down there to find out why the Shiplords called them this. Lina?"
"Course already locked, Amanda," your captain replied. "Three days."
"Three days, then." You looked down at where your finger intersected the message on the virtual screen. "And then we find out why the Shiplord would call a race the Lament."
It wasn't, all things considered, a perfect translation. According to your systems, a better one would've been the Lostguard, or possibly Hopelost. Lament, however, was what stuck aboard ship as you dived into the gravity well for the world that Mary had noted as standing protected from the vast local star. That the Shiplords had found a way to place it on stellar life support wasn't surprising in and of itself, but the resource cost for that had to be significant.
Of course it was significant: the Shiplords hadn't given a title to any of the other races lost to the Sorrows. Not one that they'd shared in the initial messages, at least The planet ahead of you had been heavily colonised, a homeworld, but one curiously absent the signs of battle. And there was something else, an ancient resonance to the system that felt to your soul like a place where enormous power had been worked. You weren't sure what that meant, but the home of the Sphere hadn't felt anything like this, and that had seen the end of a species.
Something else had happened here - but what? You'd never seen an Uninvolved form, but this felt similar enough to the process to guess this might have been a place that had seen one born. Though that just raised more questions - like why the Shiplords would let a race worthy of becoming a Sorrow simply...remove themselves from the board. Especially when your best guess was that the Fourth had taken place less than fifty thousand cycles after the Third.
Passing into the depths of the star system was like walking through a graveyard, all the other planets of the system ravaged by the terrible solar winds of the supergiant at its core. Gas giants stripped away until only cold and dead planetary cores remained. Closer planets burnt and split by radiation far stronger than any natural magnetosphere could've deflected. Moons slowly eroded over hundreds of thousands of years by the touch of a star's frozen death. It made it very easy to see what the Shiplords considered important.
And that was the world before you, where life still blossomed across its surface. Enormous city complexes sprawled across its continents, safe beneath a magnetosphere strong enough that it would have a passable chance of deflecting low intensity laser fire. Mary had deciphered the means of that on your second day in the system: a planet-based Emitter array of tremendous power. You'd known intellectually that stellar engineering was something that the Shiplords had a considerable breadth of experience with, but seeing it in action was impressive and intimidating all at once.
And all of it done in such a way that the life of the world had barely been touched. The high forests of the world were untouched, and the biosphere of the planet was still flourishing, and there was no sign of the sensor clouds that had drifted above the worlds within the Third Sorrow. It had simply been preserved, as close to intact as it could be. Only missing the race that had once called the place home.
Sensor beacons directed you down into low orbit of the world, where the boosted magnetosphere would provide additional protections for parasite craft. The spaceport below seemed to offer berths to ships even larger than the Adamant, and Warden Yarin had offered you one in his initial message. You'd considered that offer, but the danger of detection had felt too high, and there'd been enough other craft in orbit to make refusing seem safe.
The shuttle ride passed in a blur, barely any attention paid to the sweeping presence of life all around you as your focus narrowed steadily with every second closer you got to the ground. The words Entara had said ran through your mind over and over, swirling out into the Heartcircle's network, where it met and merged with matching repetitions. It wasn't that you weren't curious about the truth of this place, you were. But you also had a much more important purpose driving you, and a deadline.
Then you were down, landing in the shadow of one of the planet's vast cities. The monoliths of ancient metal loomed high around the spaceport, and you were surrounded by the bustle of people and silent machines. The air hummed at a level below standard human perception, the feeling of energy being cast up far beyond the planet's atmosphere. And that ancient, immeasurable presence that you'd sensed first on entering the system was far stronger here on the ground. Enough that you thought you might be able to understand it, given time.
You had a moment to take in the sight, and then a Shiplord was approaching you, walking with a slow, deliberate pace. Warden Yarin seemed much more solemn than all the other Wardens you'd met except Kicha, perhaps a result of what this place was. He stepped forward, spreading manipulators to speak a greeting you knew more than well enough by now. And you...you broke through it.
"I mean no disrespect in this, Warden," you said, the perfect translation impossible to notice thanks to the Masques' systems. "But I was sent here with a message. A question for you, that I believe would make the offer you are about to make moot." The Shiplord paused, shifting their nanoshell into curiosity, but also an undertone of concern blended with a curiosity too faint to be certain from where it sprung.
"What do you seek, then?" He asked, expressions stilling back into solemnity.
"We were told to ask for the last memory."
If he'd been human, you were certain that Yarin's eyes would've widened to the size of saucers. It was just the impression you got from the reaction of shock and...was that concern? It was difficult to be sure. And yet for all that, he didn't question it.
"Of course," he said, turning quickly. "Follow me." He was already moving as the second word finished forming, fast enough that you had to rush a moment to keep up. Signals leapt out from the Warden to automated systems built into the memorial, and a transport pad arced down from the viridian sky to land a few steps before him.
He turned, gesturing sharply. "Come."
You stepped onto the pad, and it rose smoothly into the sky before streaking out across the lonely city. The avenues here were large enough to fit a FSN destroyer into them, but they seemed to have been built to handle beings much the same size as yourselves. The size of the streets had been a deliberate choice, one informed by a desire for artistry that the Shiplord had preserved, as sections of parkland and small rivers wove between the roads and sprawling structures.
It was peaceful, and in a way that you'd not expected from a planetary scale grave. As if the world was quietly waiting for the old residents to reappear. You didn't think that could ever happen, but the sentiment was there.
The transport pad carried you in total silence for almost ten minutes, landing at last on the edge of a vast structure of metal and stone with the sun behind it. You looked up, seeing black stone rising into the sky like the peaks of mountains, the walls reaching so high that they seemed to almost scrap the clouds. It was an illusion, you knew, but that didn't make it any less impressive. And yet that was the secondary concern to you and the rest of your Heartcircle. The place seemed to resonate with the presence of the planet, like an enormous tuning fork that your presence had somehow struck to life.
It made concentrating a bit of a challenge, one that made you glad of the stabilising and entirely unaffected presence of Iris and Mary. Fortunately, Yarin seemed to take your reaction to the planetary citadel as simple awe at the scale of it. You thought for a moment he almost smiled, actually, before leading you off the pad and down into the installation. One that, you realised quickly, was still very operational. Targeting systems for an enormous array of security systems tracked your every step as you approached it, and further scanners and weapon systems littered the path deeper into the complex.
It was odd, actually. The place was clearly similar in underlying aesthetics to the cities and more that you'd seen from orbit and then on approach, but there were differences too. As if it had been constructed much later, all at once, and for a very different purpose. And the deeper you went, the more certain you became: this place hadn't been built to defend the planet, but to protect something inside it. And you'd seen construction like this exactly once before, the result of it was back on the Adamant.
:This is the work of an Uninvolved,: Vega sent suddenly, as if reading your mind. :I don't know how they did it - how they were allowed to do it. But this was the work of one of them.:
:You're certain?: Mary sent back, ducking down another flight of stairs sinking you deeper into the planet, and closer to the centre of the installation.
:We are,: you said. :It feels like the drive Tahkel made for us. Just...more focused.:
:What does that mean?: Iris asked.
:I have no idea.:
It took nearly an hour to reach the centre of the citadel, only for Yarin to turn to you at the final door and speak. "This is as far as I go, pilgrims. I know what is beyond, but it is not for me, and has not been for any who've come here since the Lament left the world. I wish you luck. And I will be here once you are finished."
Somehow you weren't sure if he meant that last sentence to be ordered that way. The way he said it felt more like 'once it's finished with you'. Whatever that nebulous it might be. Fun.
"Then let's get this done," you said, flicking your nanoshell through a soothing expression of solemn appreciation. "Our thanks, Warden."
The door vanished as you stepped up to it. Not retracted, not slid aside: literally vanished. It left nothing behind but an empty frame and the sense of being watched. But that wasn't going to stop you now. Not when you were so close. Looking through the darkness beyond you saw a low pillar or table, perhaps eight metres across. It was carved out of the same black stone as the rest of the enormous structure. You looked right and left, feeling the presence of your fellows.
All of you stepped through the doorway together.
The moment you crossed the threshold your senses were full of the enormity of presence of an Univolved's actions, seemingly unaltered by over a million cycles of history. You didn't know how you knew that number so perfectly, but somehow now you did. You took another step, another, and emerged from the line of darkness into a gently lit chamber beyond. The circular construction resolved itself into a recessed column with a single rune engraved on its surface, one you didn't recognise. A moment later you felt the door materialise again behind you. As if the curtain of shadow hadn't been enough?
"Everyone alright?" you asked. Your Heartcircle was still all there, cycling the energy of the room between you in a constant circuit to keep it from becoming overwhelming. It was extremely intimidating given how old this had to be, but what was almost worse was how you could tell it was affecting you less than the other Potentials here.
"Fine here," Mary and Iris said, the former already several steps ahead of you and examining the central column of the room. A haze of micro-sensors swept out from her, scanning everything and feeding the combined image back to her nanoshell. That had been an upgrade she'd managed to add with the Trailblazer systems aboard the Adamant. You'd not used that nearly as much as you'd hoped to, but for tweaks to personal nanoshells it had proven more than capable.
"I'm not picking up anything," Iris reported a moment later. "Nothing my avatar can connect to, or any general signalling."
"But there's something here," Vega said, confirming what all of the Potentials in the room could feel. "Something very old, but also incomplete. Like a remnant?"
You only had a moment's warning as the energy around you suddenly spiked. The circuit between the Heartcircle splintered, almost breaking for a moment before you could channel enough of it away into the space around you. The rune at the centre of the column flickered blue-white like an electrical spark, like it was reflecting the sudden surge of discharge.
Then a shape of curved light and bare colour filled the space above it. It reminded you a little of Vision, the same evershifting patterns contained within a simple ring, but this felt...it was just like Vega had said. Ancient, powerful here in the centre of a citadel seemingly constructed purely to protect it, but also intensely limited. Incomplete, compared to the AI the Elder First had left behind.
"Not like." The room rang with a voice in Shiplord standard. "Exactly as you have said. A remnant, a memory, of those called Lament but who were truly the Teel'sanha peoples. The last who remained who'd witnessed the horrors of the Sphere, and the only with the will and potential to oppose what we could see our mentors becoming."
Images flashed across the walls, moving from speeches before grand galleries full of armoured figures to the flickering movements of War Fleets in full flight. Planets lost, planets won, and all through it a wish that was less than a demand but more than a plea. That had driven these people to fight, even when they'd known their enemy was beyond them. But they'd tried all the same, and the Shiplords hadn't killed them for it. Why?
"You will have to be more specific," the voice replied, and you flushed beneath the nanoshell as you realised you'd asked that last question out loud. "This system was never fully completed, and despite certain conversational routines, is not a full AI."
"I see," you said carefully. Looking up at the walls, you found them already back to their mirror-bright black sheen. You glanced about the room, checking for consensus. No one objected. "Would direct enquiries be better?"
"They would."
"Very well." You took a breath, and started to ask.
What will you ask a-
[X] Who were the Consolat?
Oh. Ok then. Pick two additional focus points?
[] The Teel'sanha Peoples - Will cover the details of who the Teel'sanha were, and how they became the Lament.
[] The Lamentable War - Details of the war fought between the Teel'sanha and the Shiplords as well as how it ended.
[] The Last Memory - The creation of this place, clearly the work of an Uninvolved.
[] Write-in?
Mary's fingers were a blur across her virtual panels as she examined the data, pulling together the field readings until the full picture came into view. "The stations, they're stacked with Third Secret emitters," she breathed, awestruck. "It's like the beginning of a stellar converter, but stopped short to contain the supergiant's mass ejections, keep it at this point of its lifecycle. The scale of it-" she broke off, shaking her head.
"Stellar engineering, to protect this place from destruction." You nodded. If only they were so willing to do the same for the living, instead of the dead.
"There's something else," Mary said, pointing to a distant planet. Once, it would've sat squarely at the centre of a main-sequence star's goldilocks zone. A wire-pattern overlaid itself over the world, flexing organically under the star's titanic output. "The magnetosphere of that world is much stronger than it should be, enough to protect it from the red giant's radiation."
Fingers flicked, another scan began as the Adamant began the long trek towards the system's core. You were met by the same greeting, subtly different as always. This one spoke of those who'd once been here as...it was difficult to be sure. The title Shiplord messages used carried connotations of deep honour and sorrow, but something about this one felt...wrong.
"That's the message we're looking for, right?" Iris asked, voice a whisper.
"It must be," you agreed, reading it again. A single finger stabbed down at the title the Shiplords were using instead of a species name. "I guess we'll have to go down there to find out why the Shiplords called them this. Lina?"
"Course already locked, Amanda," your captain replied. "Three days."
"Three days, then." You looked down at where your finger intersected the message on the virtual screen. "And then we find out why the Shiplord would call a race the Lament."
It wasn't, all things considered, a perfect translation. According to your systems, a better one would've been the Lostguard, or possibly Hopelost. Lament, however, was what stuck aboard ship as you dived into the gravity well for the world that Mary had noted as standing protected from the vast local star. That the Shiplords had found a way to place it on stellar life support wasn't surprising in and of itself, but the resource cost for that had to be significant.
Of course it was significant: the Shiplords hadn't given a title to any of the other races lost to the Sorrows. Not one that they'd shared in the initial messages, at least The planet ahead of you had been heavily colonised, a homeworld, but one curiously absent the signs of battle. And there was something else, an ancient resonance to the system that felt to your soul like a place where enormous power had been worked. You weren't sure what that meant, but the home of the Sphere hadn't felt anything like this, and that had seen the end of a species.
Something else had happened here - but what? You'd never seen an Uninvolved form, but this felt similar enough to the process to guess this might have been a place that had seen one born. Though that just raised more questions - like why the Shiplords would let a race worthy of becoming a Sorrow simply...remove themselves from the board. Especially when your best guess was that the Fourth had taken place less than fifty thousand cycles after the Third.
Passing into the depths of the star system was like walking through a graveyard, all the other planets of the system ravaged by the terrible solar winds of the supergiant at its core. Gas giants stripped away until only cold and dead planetary cores remained. Closer planets burnt and split by radiation far stronger than any natural magnetosphere could've deflected. Moons slowly eroded over hundreds of thousands of years by the touch of a star's frozen death. It made it very easy to see what the Shiplords considered important.
And that was the world before you, where life still blossomed across its surface. Enormous city complexes sprawled across its continents, safe beneath a magnetosphere strong enough that it would have a passable chance of deflecting low intensity laser fire. Mary had deciphered the means of that on your second day in the system: a planet-based Emitter array of tremendous power. You'd known intellectually that stellar engineering was something that the Shiplords had a considerable breadth of experience with, but seeing it in action was impressive and intimidating all at once.
And all of it done in such a way that the life of the world had barely been touched. The high forests of the world were untouched, and the biosphere of the planet was still flourishing, and there was no sign of the sensor clouds that had drifted above the worlds within the Third Sorrow. It had simply been preserved, as close to intact as it could be. Only missing the race that had once called the place home.
Sensor beacons directed you down into low orbit of the world, where the boosted magnetosphere would provide additional protections for parasite craft. The spaceport below seemed to offer berths to ships even larger than the Adamant, and Warden Yarin had offered you one in his initial message. You'd considered that offer, but the danger of detection had felt too high, and there'd been enough other craft in orbit to make refusing seem safe.
The shuttle ride passed in a blur, barely any attention paid to the sweeping presence of life all around you as your focus narrowed steadily with every second closer you got to the ground. The words Entara had said ran through your mind over and over, swirling out into the Heartcircle's network, where it met and merged with matching repetitions. It wasn't that you weren't curious about the truth of this place, you were. But you also had a much more important purpose driving you, and a deadline.
Then you were down, landing in the shadow of one of the planet's vast cities. The monoliths of ancient metal loomed high around the spaceport, and you were surrounded by the bustle of people and silent machines. The air hummed at a level below standard human perception, the feeling of energy being cast up far beyond the planet's atmosphere. And that ancient, immeasurable presence that you'd sensed first on entering the system was far stronger here on the ground. Enough that you thought you might be able to understand it, given time.
You had a moment to take in the sight, and then a Shiplord was approaching you, walking with a slow, deliberate pace. Warden Yarin seemed much more solemn than all the other Wardens you'd met except Kicha, perhaps a result of what this place was. He stepped forward, spreading manipulators to speak a greeting you knew more than well enough by now. And you...you broke through it.
"I mean no disrespect in this, Warden," you said, the perfect translation impossible to notice thanks to the Masques' systems. "But I was sent here with a message. A question for you, that I believe would make the offer you are about to make moot." The Shiplord paused, shifting their nanoshell into curiosity, but also an undertone of concern blended with a curiosity too faint to be certain from where it sprung.
"What do you seek, then?" He asked, expressions stilling back into solemnity.
"We were told to ask for the last memory."
If he'd been human, you were certain that Yarin's eyes would've widened to the size of saucers. It was just the impression you got from the reaction of shock and...was that concern? It was difficult to be sure. And yet for all that, he didn't question it.
"Of course," he said, turning quickly. "Follow me." He was already moving as the second word finished forming, fast enough that you had to rush a moment to keep up. Signals leapt out from the Warden to automated systems built into the memorial, and a transport pad arced down from the viridian sky to land a few steps before him.
He turned, gesturing sharply. "Come."
You stepped onto the pad, and it rose smoothly into the sky before streaking out across the lonely city. The avenues here were large enough to fit a FSN destroyer into them, but they seemed to have been built to handle beings much the same size as yourselves. The size of the streets had been a deliberate choice, one informed by a desire for artistry that the Shiplord had preserved, as sections of parkland and small rivers wove between the roads and sprawling structures.
It was peaceful, and in a way that you'd not expected from a planetary scale grave. As if the world was quietly waiting for the old residents to reappear. You didn't think that could ever happen, but the sentiment was there.
The transport pad carried you in total silence for almost ten minutes, landing at last on the edge of a vast structure of metal and stone with the sun behind it. You looked up, seeing black stone rising into the sky like the peaks of mountains, the walls reaching so high that they seemed to almost scrap the clouds. It was an illusion, you knew, but that didn't make it any less impressive. And yet that was the secondary concern to you and the rest of your Heartcircle. The place seemed to resonate with the presence of the planet, like an enormous tuning fork that your presence had somehow struck to life.
It made concentrating a bit of a challenge, one that made you glad of the stabilising and entirely unaffected presence of Iris and Mary. Fortunately, Yarin seemed to take your reaction to the planetary citadel as simple awe at the scale of it. You thought for a moment he almost smiled, actually, before leading you off the pad and down into the installation. One that, you realised quickly, was still very operational. Targeting systems for an enormous array of security systems tracked your every step as you approached it, and further scanners and weapon systems littered the path deeper into the complex.
It was odd, actually. The place was clearly similar in underlying aesthetics to the cities and more that you'd seen from orbit and then on approach, but there were differences too. As if it had been constructed much later, all at once, and for a very different purpose. And the deeper you went, the more certain you became: this place hadn't been built to defend the planet, but to protect something inside it. And you'd seen construction like this exactly once before, the result of it was back on the Adamant.
:This is the work of an Uninvolved,: Vega sent suddenly, as if reading your mind. :I don't know how they did it - how they were allowed to do it. But this was the work of one of them.:
:You're certain?: Mary sent back, ducking down another flight of stairs sinking you deeper into the planet, and closer to the centre of the installation.
:We are,: you said. :It feels like the drive Tahkel made for us. Just...more focused.:
:What does that mean?: Iris asked.
:I have no idea.:
It took nearly an hour to reach the centre of the citadel, only for Yarin to turn to you at the final door and speak. "This is as far as I go, pilgrims. I know what is beyond, but it is not for me, and has not been for any who've come here since the Lament left the world. I wish you luck. And I will be here once you are finished."
Somehow you weren't sure if he meant that last sentence to be ordered that way. The way he said it felt more like 'once it's finished with you'. Whatever that nebulous it might be. Fun.
"Then let's get this done," you said, flicking your nanoshell through a soothing expression of solemn appreciation. "Our thanks, Warden."
The door vanished as you stepped up to it. Not retracted, not slid aside: literally vanished. It left nothing behind but an empty frame and the sense of being watched. But that wasn't going to stop you now. Not when you were so close. Looking through the darkness beyond you saw a low pillar or table, perhaps eight metres across. It was carved out of the same black stone as the rest of the enormous structure. You looked right and left, feeling the presence of your fellows.
All of you stepped through the doorway together.
The moment you crossed the threshold your senses were full of the enormity of presence of an Univolved's actions, seemingly unaltered by over a million cycles of history. You didn't know how you knew that number so perfectly, but somehow now you did. You took another step, another, and emerged from the line of darkness into a gently lit chamber beyond. The circular construction resolved itself into a recessed column with a single rune engraved on its surface, one you didn't recognise. A moment later you felt the door materialise again behind you. As if the curtain of shadow hadn't been enough?
"Everyone alright?" you asked. Your Heartcircle was still all there, cycling the energy of the room between you in a constant circuit to keep it from becoming overwhelming. It was extremely intimidating given how old this had to be, but what was almost worse was how you could tell it was affecting you less than the other Potentials here.
"Fine here," Mary and Iris said, the former already several steps ahead of you and examining the central column of the room. A haze of micro-sensors swept out from her, scanning everything and feeding the combined image back to her nanoshell. That had been an upgrade she'd managed to add with the Trailblazer systems aboard the Adamant. You'd not used that nearly as much as you'd hoped to, but for tweaks to personal nanoshells it had proven more than capable.
"I'm not picking up anything," Iris reported a moment later. "Nothing my avatar can connect to, or any general signalling."
"But there's something here," Vega said, confirming what all of the Potentials in the room could feel. "Something very old, but also incomplete. Like a remnant?"
You only had a moment's warning as the energy around you suddenly spiked. The circuit between the Heartcircle splintered, almost breaking for a moment before you could channel enough of it away into the space around you. The rune at the centre of the column flickered blue-white like an electrical spark, like it was reflecting the sudden surge of discharge.
Then a shape of curved light and bare colour filled the space above it. It reminded you a little of Vision, the same evershifting patterns contained within a simple ring, but this felt...it was just like Vega had said. Ancient, powerful here in the centre of a citadel seemingly constructed purely to protect it, but also intensely limited. Incomplete, compared to the AI the Elder First had left behind.
"Not like." The room rang with a voice in Shiplord standard. "Exactly as you have said. A remnant, a memory, of those called Lament but who were truly the Teel'sanha peoples. The last who remained who'd witnessed the horrors of the Sphere, and the only with the will and potential to oppose what we could see our mentors becoming."
Images flashed across the walls, moving from speeches before grand galleries full of armoured figures to the flickering movements of War Fleets in full flight. Planets lost, planets won, and all through it a wish that was less than a demand but more than a plea. That had driven these people to fight, even when they'd known their enemy was beyond them. But they'd tried all the same, and the Shiplords hadn't killed them for it. Why?
"You will have to be more specific," the voice replied, and you flushed beneath the nanoshell as you realised you'd asked that last question out loud. "This system was never fully completed, and despite certain conversational routines, is not a full AI."
"I see," you said carefully. Looking up at the walls, you found them already back to their mirror-bright black sheen. You glanced about the room, checking for consensus. No one objected. "Would direct enquiries be better?"
"They would."
"Very well." You took a breath, and started to ask.
What will you ask a-
[X] Who were the Consolat?
Oh. Ok then. Pick two additional focus points?
[] The Teel'sanha Peoples - Will cover the details of who the Teel'sanha were, and how they became the Lament.
[] The Lamentable War - Details of the war fought between the Teel'sanha and the Shiplords as well as how it ended.
[] The Last Memory - The creation of this place, clearly the work of an Uninvolved.
[] Write-in?
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- Location
- USA
[X] The Teel'sanha Peoples - Will cover the details of who the Teel'sanha were, and how they became the Lament.
[X] The Last Memory - The creation of this place, clearly the work of an Uninvolved.
Moratorium?
[X] The Last Memory - The creation of this place, clearly the work of an Uninvolved.
Moratorium?
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Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
None, just go.
- Location
- Australia
[X] The Lamentable War - Details of the war fought between the Teel'sanha and the Shiplords as well as how it ended.
[X] The Last Memory - The creation of this place, clearly the work of an Uninvolved.
[X] The Last Memory - The creation of this place, clearly the work of an Uninvolved.
[X] The Teel'sanha Peoples - Will cover the details of who the Teel'sanha were, and how they became the Lament.
We're not here for a good time, but hopefully a long one. So we need to start sharing secrets.
[X] Who were the Consolat?
- [X] Let us tell you about humanities Dragons, and of their sacrifice, and of Practice. Why do the shiplords hate that we profane that gift?
We're not here for a good time, but hopefully a long one. So we need to start sharing secrets.
[X] Who were the Consolat?
- [X] Let us tell you about humanities Dragons, and of their sacrifice, and of Practice. Why do the shiplords hate that we profane that gift?
- Location
- Staring into the void
[X] The Last Memory - The creation of this place, clearly the work of an Uninvolved.
Lurker183839
Question Machine Gun
[X] Who were the Consolat?
- [X] Let us tell you about humanities Dragons, and of their sacrifice, and of Practice. Why do the shiplords hate that we profane that gift?
[X] The Last Memory - The creation of this place, clearly the work of an Uninvolved.
- [X] Let us tell you about humanities Dragons, and of their sacrifice, and of Practice. Why do the shiplords hate that we profane that gift?
[X] The Last Memory - The creation of this place, clearly the work of an Uninvolved.