- Location
- Thailand
[X] Find some food and conversation, get to know the people
Transdimensional (Isekai/Jumpchain inspired) quest
1.2 Sidetracked
Z488411
Scatterbrained
- Location
- Europa
[X] Find some food and conversation, get to know the people
Food first. You would deal with your weird piece of paper and everything else later. You could at least read the street signs and some of the signs above the shops. The others had to have been written in a different language, but being able to make sense of the majority would have to do. Many had smaller signs in the language you could read too. Apparently knowing all the languages spoken in this place would have been too much to ask, but one was at least better than none.
You had no idea what sorts of food would be on offer in this bizarre place, but stepping forwards you -
"So sorry! Shit! Hide me!"
Something crashed into you. Something struggling wildly while you tried to get a grasp on what was going on and tried not to fall over, before winding itself from your hands and bolting into the alley behind you. Probably female, long violet hair and wearing a red jacket. A flash of red eyes and that was all you'd gotten, apart from her voice and the rustling noise in the alley behind you.
A moment later, two people in slightly mismatched armor came around the corner, one of them holding a small battered drone in one hand, while the other held a humming sword. The second just had some kind of rifle-like weapon. Its barrel might be sensible enough, but the other end was a bit fatter than you expected and the entire thing was a bit shorter as well. You still didn't want to get hit by it or see anyone else suffer that fate. The guy - probably guy, with the helmet obscuring their face, had very pale skin from the parts you could see but otherwise looked human enough. Their shorter partner's short cropped hair, tattooed skin, and rough appearance, in combination with the tail, reminded you a bit too much of yourself for comfort. At least he didn't look completely unbothered by his armaments and the other things he carried.
They stood in front of you before you could do much more than stare, obviously looking you up and down. and immediately dismissing you as well, or very nearly so. Your fellow alien of unknown relation had looked at your muscles a bit longer than you were comfortable with, but you were neither armed nor armored and they were obviously in a hurry."
"You. Did you see a girl pass by here?" The helmeted partner was already looking over your shoulder into the alley, but it was narrow enough for you to do fairly well at blocking the entrance. And possible relative or not, he looked a bit too violent for your tastes.
At least you didn't have to try looking shocked. "A girl?"
"About this tall, red jacket, Dinejan. You seen her?" His nearly black eyes were boring into you, blade far too close for comfort... but he wasn't holding in like an experienced fighter. Wasn't in a good position to strike at you, dangerous or not. He was too close. You could block it and wrest it from his hand or should be able to. You could picture it. His stance let you trip him, the armour would help too. Maybe throw him into the other guy and run for it or use that sword on his hands...
"Rickar, come on! We'll lose her!" His partner as pulling him back. Your muscles relaxed unconsciously.
How did you know any of this? Your fighting skills were pathetic! Well maybe not entirely, but you'd never been able to do this! It was useful, sure, and you still somehow had your name, but this was starting to feel like a complete bodyswap. You hoped this Alice wouldn't mind being stuck as your pathetic self too much...
"Ohhh. Thanks. I think they're gone. You're looking a bit tense there! I mean, I've got an excuse, you know, but you? Did you piss them off too?" The girl was back. slightly taller than you, with bright red eyes, Omega-shaped pupils, translucent skin and violet hair over an equally red jacket with long limbs, you couldn't help but be reminded a bit of an albino axolotl. A very excited and not at all mute albino axolotl. You really hoped talking would work just as well as understanding her.
"I don't think so. What did you do?" Everyone else had been pointedly ignoring the two men too. This wasn't normal, was it?
"Those degenerate scum of the Izane gone wrong took my brother. They're not leaving for five days but fuck knows which ship he'll be on. Hey! Did you get hit over the head or something?"
...Actually...
"Maybe?" You had an accent and you didn't know half the things around here. Amnesia happened, especially with all sorts of sci-fi gadgets and drugs around, didn't it? Should you risk it?
"Maybe? How do you get maybe hot over the head, either your head hurts or it doesn't, right?"
"I don't know, my head hurts a bit, but it could have been a drug, right? I'm sort of... missing the last few hours." Well, technically a lot more than the last few hours if this Alice HAwkings had any life at all before you dropped in. No matter how empty your contact list was. Amnesia happened, especially with all sorts of sci-fi gadgets and drugs around, didn't it? Should you risk it?
[ ] Yes, you have no good way to bluff yourself through, there are too many things you don't know. If people will try to take advantage of you, they might have done it anyway and this way you at least won't talk yourself into anything too awkward.
[ ] No. context should help, as long as you don't commit too much and stay vague if you're confused. No need to draw attention to yourself. You should be fine as long as you are careful, right?
"Damn, are you okay? I thought Merai are supposed to be sturdy! You got anyone you think wants to knock you out? Still got all your stuff or at least what's important?"
"Um..." You patted yourself down. "I might have lost something, but I've still got some credits..." And that was about it. Although the street advertisements told you that food went for around twenty credits, if those were the same credits anyway. You didn't have to feign a sigh.
"Shit, well, better here than on one of their ships, right?" She was obviously nervous, scratching the skin behind her ear. Probably younger than you, and obviously worried. She also looked a bit lost in her big, thick, red jacket and boots that may well have once belonged to someone else. "Um. Are you going to be okay?"
"Once I have some food in me, maybe." You looked around and definitely didn't have to feign the confusion. "Is there anywhere you think would be good?" You couldn't help but be somewhat worried about what the girl had said so far, but she was definitely friendly if she hadn't been straight up lying to you. You had wanted to meet someone from around here after all. Your tail flicked behind you.
The girl jumped. "Oooh! Sure! I don't know about Merai, I mean the ones I've met don't eat rock but maybe they just don't want to be rude. But I know a place! You're okay with dumplings, right?" HEr hand clamped around your wrist before you could get another thought in. "Come on!" You didn't even try to resist. You could have and it felt good knowing that you could overpower her if you had to, you definitely looked ahead for any sign of danger, but this was what you wanted, right? With some effort, you were running behind her. Making far higher and faster jumps than the girl could manage to put yourself ahead of her whenever she threatened to get away from you. This body felt good!
You were a bit disappointed when you stopped less than five minutes later, flinging yourself after her into the fried dumpling place with less than ten tables and a giant pan of what was probably near boiling oil.
"You've got to try the Mantids! Two mantids and a veggie! And drinks!" "Got it, Cavvie!" You had to dodge her flinging herself - or maybe intending to fling you - into the only booth the place had. She definitely looked disappointed enough to make you grin. Cavvie.
"Hey! You're sure you're gonna be okay? You... wait, what's your name anyway?" You were really starting to wonder whether she was fourteen and what you had just gotten yourself into, but you dodged another arm and sat down, while the sound of sizzling oil filled the place and a couple came in seemingly determined to ignore the rest of the world entirely, his tails wrapped around a woman who looked if not human at least almost entirely so. With her distracted by his face and vice versa, it was a miracle that they managed to order at all and you could look back at Cavvie.
"You didn't even introduce yourself."
"Are you suuure you didn't just forget? My name's Caverua Underwood." You stared at that but couldn't help snorting at her haughty expression a moment later. The perfect face of royalty, dressed in perfectly fashionable distressed clothing, of course. "You've heard of me, right?" Her pose was downright impressive.
You grinned. "Nope. Alice Hawkings. I would say it's nice to meet you but... well..." If he existed, was her brother going to be okay? "What's happening between you and those guys? I mean the long version."
"You know how you're not supposed to borrow money from them, right? If you don't have a passport, no one important is gonna miss you and you can't pay, you're the payment. Where do you think they get half their money? Yeah I know it's stupid and it's just going to get me in more trouble, but I can't just let them do that! If I can find him and we get on board the next ship we'll be fine, if they don't know which ship we're on. One slave's not worth calling everyone in for." She shrugged. You were pretty sure she didn't believe her own words, but that obviously wasn't going to stop her.
"And... that's the only thing you can do?"
Should you...
[ ] Get more details first.
- [ ] Offer to help if you can work out a good plan
- [ ] Offer to help after making sure she knows she and her brother owe you
- [ ] Don't offer to help.
[ ] Offer your help and get planning
[ ] Try to extract yourself from the conversation
[ ] write in.
Alice Hawkings
Status: Healthy
Currency:
10000 credits Cyvren Imperial
1000 credits Izane
2000 credits Echoton
CP: 0
Food first. You would deal with your weird piece of paper and everything else later. You could at least read the street signs and some of the signs above the shops. The others had to have been written in a different language, but being able to make sense of the majority would have to do. Many had smaller signs in the language you could read too. Apparently knowing all the languages spoken in this place would have been too much to ask, but one was at least better than none.
You had no idea what sorts of food would be on offer in this bizarre place, but stepping forwards you -
"So sorry! Shit! Hide me!"
Something crashed into you. Something struggling wildly while you tried to get a grasp on what was going on and tried not to fall over, before winding itself from your hands and bolting into the alley behind you. Probably female, long violet hair and wearing a red jacket. A flash of red eyes and that was all you'd gotten, apart from her voice and the rustling noise in the alley behind you.
A moment later, two people in slightly mismatched armor came around the corner, one of them holding a small battered drone in one hand, while the other held a humming sword. The second just had some kind of rifle-like weapon. Its barrel might be sensible enough, but the other end was a bit fatter than you expected and the entire thing was a bit shorter as well. You still didn't want to get hit by it or see anyone else suffer that fate. The guy - probably guy, with the helmet obscuring their face, had very pale skin from the parts you could see but otherwise looked human enough. Their shorter partner's short cropped hair, tattooed skin, and rough appearance, in combination with the tail, reminded you a bit too much of yourself for comfort. At least he didn't look completely unbothered by his armaments and the other things he carried.
They stood in front of you before you could do much more than stare, obviously looking you up and down. and immediately dismissing you as well, or very nearly so. Your fellow alien of unknown relation had looked at your muscles a bit longer than you were comfortable with, but you were neither armed nor armored and they were obviously in a hurry."
"You. Did you see a girl pass by here?" The helmeted partner was already looking over your shoulder into the alley, but it was narrow enough for you to do fairly well at blocking the entrance. And possible relative or not, he looked a bit too violent for your tastes.
At least you didn't have to try looking shocked. "A girl?"
"About this tall, red jacket, Dinejan. You seen her?" His nearly black eyes were boring into you, blade far too close for comfort... but he wasn't holding in like an experienced fighter. Wasn't in a good position to strike at you, dangerous or not. He was too close. You could block it and wrest it from his hand or should be able to. You could picture it. His stance let you trip him, the armour would help too. Maybe throw him into the other guy and run for it or use that sword on his hands...
"Rickar, come on! We'll lose her!" His partner as pulling him back. Your muscles relaxed unconsciously.
How did you know any of this? Your fighting skills were pathetic! Well maybe not entirely, but you'd never been able to do this! It was useful, sure, and you still somehow had your name, but this was starting to feel like a complete bodyswap. You hoped this Alice wouldn't mind being stuck as your pathetic self too much...
"Ohhh. Thanks. I think they're gone. You're looking a bit tense there! I mean, I've got an excuse, you know, but you? Did you piss them off too?" The girl was back. slightly taller than you, with bright red eyes, Omega-shaped pupils, translucent skin and violet hair over an equally red jacket with long limbs, you couldn't help but be reminded a bit of an albino axolotl. A very excited and not at all mute albino axolotl. You really hoped talking would work just as well as understanding her.
"I don't think so. What did you do?" Everyone else had been pointedly ignoring the two men too. This wasn't normal, was it?
"Those degenerate scum of the Izane gone wrong took my brother. They're not leaving for five days but fuck knows which ship he'll be on. Hey! Did you get hit over the head or something?"
...Actually...
"Maybe?" You had an accent and you didn't know half the things around here. Amnesia happened, especially with all sorts of sci-fi gadgets and drugs around, didn't it? Should you risk it?
"Maybe? How do you get maybe hot over the head, either your head hurts or it doesn't, right?"
"I don't know, my head hurts a bit, but it could have been a drug, right? I'm sort of... missing the last few hours." Well, technically a lot more than the last few hours if this Alice HAwkings had any life at all before you dropped in. No matter how empty your contact list was. Amnesia happened, especially with all sorts of sci-fi gadgets and drugs around, didn't it? Should you risk it?
[ ] Yes, you have no good way to bluff yourself through, there are too many things you don't know. If people will try to take advantage of you, they might have done it anyway and this way you at least won't talk yourself into anything too awkward.
[ ] No. context should help, as long as you don't commit too much and stay vague if you're confused. No need to draw attention to yourself. You should be fine as long as you are careful, right?
"Damn, are you okay? I thought Merai are supposed to be sturdy! You got anyone you think wants to knock you out? Still got all your stuff or at least what's important?"
"Um..." You patted yourself down. "I might have lost something, but I've still got some credits..." And that was about it. Although the street advertisements told you that food went for around twenty credits, if those were the same credits anyway. You didn't have to feign a sigh.
"Shit, well, better here than on one of their ships, right?" She was obviously nervous, scratching the skin behind her ear. Probably younger than you, and obviously worried. She also looked a bit lost in her big, thick, red jacket and boots that may well have once belonged to someone else. "Um. Are you going to be okay?"
"Once I have some food in me, maybe." You looked around and definitely didn't have to feign the confusion. "Is there anywhere you think would be good?" You couldn't help but be somewhat worried about what the girl had said so far, but she was definitely friendly if she hadn't been straight up lying to you. You had wanted to meet someone from around here after all. Your tail flicked behind you.
The girl jumped. "Oooh! Sure! I don't know about Merai, I mean the ones I've met don't eat rock but maybe they just don't want to be rude. But I know a place! You're okay with dumplings, right?" HEr hand clamped around your wrist before you could get another thought in. "Come on!" You didn't even try to resist. You could have and it felt good knowing that you could overpower her if you had to, you definitely looked ahead for any sign of danger, but this was what you wanted, right? With some effort, you were running behind her. Making far higher and faster jumps than the girl could manage to put yourself ahead of her whenever she threatened to get away from you. This body felt good!
You were a bit disappointed when you stopped less than five minutes later, flinging yourself after her into the fried dumpling place with less than ten tables and a giant pan of what was probably near boiling oil.
"You've got to try the Mantids! Two mantids and a veggie! And drinks!" "Got it, Cavvie!" You had to dodge her flinging herself - or maybe intending to fling you - into the only booth the place had. She definitely looked disappointed enough to make you grin. Cavvie.
"Hey! You're sure you're gonna be okay? You... wait, what's your name anyway?" You were really starting to wonder whether she was fourteen and what you had just gotten yourself into, but you dodged another arm and sat down, while the sound of sizzling oil filled the place and a couple came in seemingly determined to ignore the rest of the world entirely, his tails wrapped around a woman who looked if not human at least almost entirely so. With her distracted by his face and vice versa, it was a miracle that they managed to order at all and you could look back at Cavvie.
"You didn't even introduce yourself."
"Are you suuure you didn't just forget? My name's Caverua Underwood." You stared at that but couldn't help snorting at her haughty expression a moment later. The perfect face of royalty, dressed in perfectly fashionable distressed clothing, of course. "You've heard of me, right?" Her pose was downright impressive.
You grinned. "Nope. Alice Hawkings. I would say it's nice to meet you but... well..." If he existed, was her brother going to be okay? "What's happening between you and those guys? I mean the long version."
"You know how you're not supposed to borrow money from them, right? If you don't have a passport, no one important is gonna miss you and you can't pay, you're the payment. Where do you think they get half their money? Yeah I know it's stupid and it's just going to get me in more trouble, but I can't just let them do that! If I can find him and we get on board the next ship we'll be fine, if they don't know which ship we're on. One slave's not worth calling everyone in for." She shrugged. You were pretty sure she didn't believe her own words, but that obviously wasn't going to stop her.
"And... that's the only thing you can do?"
Should you...
[ ] Get more details first.
- [ ] Offer to help if you can work out a good plan
- [ ] Offer to help after making sure she knows she and her brother owe you
- [ ] Don't offer to help.
[ ] Offer your help and get planning
[ ] Try to extract yourself from the conversation
[ ] write in.
Alice Hawkings
Status: Healthy
Currency:
10000 credits Cyvren Imperial
1000 credits Izane
2000 credits Echoton
CP: 0
Last edited:
- Location
- Milky Way, Orion Arm, 3rd rock from the sun
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] No. context should help, as long as you don't commit too much and stay vague if you're confused. No need to draw attention to yourself. You should be fine as long as you are careful, right?
[X] Get more details first.
- [X] Offer to help if you can work out a good plan
- [X] Offer to help after making sure she knows she and her brother owe you
do we need plan names?
[X] Get more details first.
- [X] Offer to help if you can work out a good plan
- [X] Offer to help after making sure she knows she and her brother owe you
do we need plan names?
- Location
- USA
[X] No. context should help, as long as you don't commit too much and stay vague if you're confused. No need to draw attention to yourself. You should be fine as long as you are careful, right?
[X] Get more details first.
- [X] Offer to help if you can work out a good plan
- [X] Offer to help after making sure she knows she and her brother owe you
[X] Get more details first.
- [X] Offer to help if you can work out a good plan
- [X] Offer to help after making sure she knows she and her brother owe you
[X] No. context should help, as long as you don't commit too much and stay vague if you're confused. No need to draw attention to yourself. You should be fine as long as you are careful, right?
[X] Get more details first.
- [X] Offer to help if you can work out a good plan
- [X] Offer to help after making sure she knows she and her brother owe you
[X] Get more details first.
- [X] Offer to help if you can work out a good plan
- [X] Offer to help after making sure she knows she and her brother owe you
- Location
- Thailand
[X] No. context should help, as long as you don't commit too much and stay vague if you're confused. No need to draw attention to yourself. You should be fine as long as you are careful, right?
[X] Get more details first.
- [X] Offer to help if you can work out a good plan
- [X] Offer to help after making sure she knows she and her brother owe you
[X] Get more details first.
- [X] Offer to help if you can work out a good plan
- [X] Offer to help after making sure she knows she and her brother owe you
1.3 Sidequest
Z488411
Scatterbrained
- Location
- Europa
[X] No. context should help, as long as you don't commit too much and stay vague if you're confused. No need to draw attention to yourself. You should be fine as long as you are careful, right?
[X] Get more details first.
- [X] Offer to help if you can work out a good plan
- [X] Offer to help after making sure she knows she and her brother owe you
Sidequest
You had... so many questions. You must have spent a good minute just staring at the increasingly insecure looking girl just trying to wrap your head around everything. Telling her you had no idea about any of this obviously wasn't an option, but...
Pinching the bridge of your nose, you sighed. "Listen, I need a minute to think." Or more. There were so many things that you didn't know enough about. First of all, you had a passport, but apparently, that was unusual, although you didn't know exactly how unusual or what that would mean for you. You were stuck on a space station with some sort of mafia, who seemed to have no problems taking slaves and this sort of thing may or may not be legal, at least for people without a passport. You had no idea whether just your Cyvren passport would be considered valid or whether there were other types as well. You had three types of currency on you, but you didn't even know what those meant, never mind whether they came from separate nations or not or where said nations began and ended. You didn't even know whose territory you were in.
You had to get internet access. Even an hour of whatever these people's equivalent of Wikipedia was would help.
Just five minutes would be an improvement!
Unfortunately, you had none of that and she was still looking at you. You sighed. Best to go about this methodically. "I think I need the really long version. I can't tell you if I can help you if I don't even know what's going on. So, how much does your brother owe them and would paying it back do anything at all right now? Who exactly does he owe the money and what do you know about them? Not the organisation, the people."
"Yeah. Um. Right. He... I'm not sure but it could be ten thousand Cyvren! Maybe more now with interest. I'm not sure, but it's not like We've got that kind of money to spare anyway. Even if we did, I'm not sure Avery would take it. They make more money with slaves and I can't exactly go up to them and." She grinned, but you could see the cracks and hear her heart beating much faster than your own. Her fingers twitched, no matter how determined she might be.
"They're black Myr. Rusted Needle is what Avery calls his group. Avery Jekante, yeah. You've seen Rickar and I don't know what the other guy's name is, but Avery has ten, fifteen scrappers under him. I'm faster of course!" Her grin was a bit too brittle for your liking. "But that's not much use getting Duvaere back, if I don't get some help. They almost killed me just trying to figure out where they took him."
You had absolutely no idea what a Black Myr was, but... shit, this was hard to watch. But you couldn't do anything but get yourself and this girl killed if you didn't know what you were getting into. So Black Myr was the umbrella organisation and this Rusted needle was a subset, which probably meant... "Are you sure Avery still has your brother at all and didn't pass or sell him on to anyone else yet? How closely are they working with the rest of the Black Myr?"
Cavuera, Cavvie, was obviously trying to calm herself, but you could still see her nails digging into her palms and hear her heart fluttering inside her chest. "No! I mean, they probably haven't, but you don't look into black Myr stuff if you don't want to get hurt. I know a bit, I'm not stupid and I'm not blind, I should have a few days, but that's it. They have a weekly meeting to trade, they're not subtle."
Right. "How much is 'a few days'?"
"Err... The day after tomorrow? Not tomorrow! I'm not that bad, you know?" Her heart fluttered a little faster, One hand twirled into her hair before she could pull it back.
So two days. Essentially. Two days or less to come up with some sort of coherent plan if you wanted to try. Right. "So why are they after you as well?" Would you have to be careful not to be seen around her just in case or would they talk to you just fine if it came up? You were reasonably sure you had lost contact with reality and normalcy, but that could wait.
"Err... I might have gone off on them once I found out! Bastards fucking deserved it too." Yu didn't say anything. You could see that wasn't everything and Cavvie was getting more and more fidgety. You had to wait for over half a minute, but she finally cracked. "I tried to break in, okay? I'm not... I'm not used to doing this! I mean I am a bit, but fuck, not like this and one of them saw me looking at their data. I didn't even get everything transferred!"
Okay, you were a bit impressed. But first: "How much did you get?"
Cavvie's expression, her folded arms and how she sagged a moment later told you all you needed to know. "I lost the chip. Running away, I mean. I was gonna upload it and everything, but I didn't have time! I've got a few chat histories and that's it."
Of course. You couldn't help but pinch the bridge of your nose again. The pressure helped, somehow, although it was surprisingly easy to turn it into pain. You still didn't have nearly enough information. "You mentioned there are about fifteen of them and a place you tried breaking into. How many are actually there at any point? What kinds of weapons or defenses do they have?" How suicidal would the straightforward approach be? You probably weren't some kind of super alien after all, there had been one guy who looked kind of like you and no matter how light everything felt, it would probably be naive to think you were the only one not adjusted to lower gravity.
At least Cavvie was calming down slightly. Seeing her sink into herself was... not really what you wanted to see, but you were trying to find a solution for her and rushing into this would just get both of you killed. "Just two plasmacasters, a rifle and a pistol type, a bunch of kinetic ones and two suits of power armor. The guy with Merai in him is stronger, but he's not that much stronger, I think. Didn't exactly stop to check, you know? Good for intimidation, but I'm not sure how well he can back it up." She shrugged. "There's four or five there, maybe down to three if it's a slow time."
Merai. You seemed to remember... A quick check and you were sure. Your Passport put you down as Merai (*3A). That must have been the one you met. You put the thing away before Cavvie could get a proper look. You still had absolutely no idea how your body compared. Well... you weren't from around here were you? "Really? I wouldn't have thought he's as strong as me, the gravity here is pretty low, so..."
Cavvie was staring. "Hey! I know it's spingrav, from before warp ships and all because it's old and no one cares, but down here it's standard gravity! You'd have to be pure fucking Merai or something to bounce around here like you can on the upper levels!"
That... answered that question. You were absolutely certain you were blushing, but if nothing else, you seemed to have distracted her and the other ancestry fields on your passport were blank. Just something modification standard 3A... Right. How to save this? You really needed Wikipedia. "Ah... low for me I should say. I'm used to higher gravity on my spaceships, sorry. You've never met a Merai before?"
"Wait. Shit, really? With those muscles? Seriously? How do you do that? I mean I've seen half, because someone paid for the samples, but over 90 percent?" You were definitely missing something here, but admitting you had absolutely no idea what was going on would never go well for you, especially not against some probably shady and definitely desperate girl who might not even be 20 yet. "That's like... well okay it's not quite glowing rainbow death fluff level, but still."
You were already committed might as well try to play your part. "Well, it's what I am. I don't know if you'd find any death fluffs here, but this station has a spaceport doesn't it? I wouldn't be too surprised if you could find one if you went looking." A hopefully irreverent smile should play that off just fine.
The girl shuddered. "I've lost, well, I mean my family's nearly lost everything because of them during the war. Just one left and that's because she wasn't there to get sick! We never got our land back either, why do you think half the families here ended up stuck on this station? I know Merai weren't really hit, not like half the other core races, but still! They say the others aren't as bad but how do we know?"
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry. I was just joking, we don't have to go looking for death fluffs." No matter how useful or useless one of them might be, whatever they were. You just didn't know enough! "Listen, I need to look a few things up. I'm not saying I'm not going to help you, but I'd rather not just go and get myself killed. Don't get me wrong, if we pull this off you and your brother owe me, but I'm not going to just ditch you right now either. You went in and you almost died or got yourself in the same situation as your brother. If you try that again, it's not going to work out any better is it?"
"I need to look a few things up, then we get to planning and compensation, okay?"
She still sounded nervous. Very nervous in fact, but she hadn't sunk down completely. There was despair under her mask, no matter how much she tried to hide it, but a bit of hope as well. The girl nodded at you. "Y... yeah. I guess, but I couldn't just sit there and do nothing!" When she stood up her fists were on the table.
"That's not how it works!"
"I know, but I'd like to succeed, you know? So we need to get as many advantages as we can first." You smiled at her, despite yourself. You weren't sure you would have been able to do the same, but you definitely wouldn't have done better. And you would never have forgiven yourself for hiding either...
"I know a good place with a translight relay, come on!"
You never got to finish your food. Getting dragged along wasn't so bad, especially once you decided to just run after her and ended up being faster anyway, especially up ladders and stairs, until you wound up on a metal walkway snaking around a building, under a sign potentially assembled from scrap if the different components were anything to go by, looking into a den full of cables, helmets and a piece of machinery in the centre that looked more fit for a spaceship or company basement than any normal commercial enterprise.
It was also stuffed to the only partially present gills with people either using the helmets or just standing in corners looking at smartphones, tablets and holographic slates or their own visors. Some just stared off into space. Maybe they had contact lenses or brain links?
"Here we are! five credits imperial an hour!"
What do you want to research first? (choose 10)
Alice Hawkings
Status: Healthy
Currency:
10000 credits Cyvren Imperial
1000 credits Izane
2000 credits Echoton
CP: 0
Sorry I was away for so long. Things happened. Anyway, the quest database is being updated.
[X] Get more details first.
- [X] Offer to help if you can work out a good plan
- [X] Offer to help after making sure she knows she and her brother owe you
Sidequest
You had... so many questions. You must have spent a good minute just staring at the increasingly insecure looking girl just trying to wrap your head around everything. Telling her you had no idea about any of this obviously wasn't an option, but...
Pinching the bridge of your nose, you sighed. "Listen, I need a minute to think." Or more. There were so many things that you didn't know enough about. First of all, you had a passport, but apparently, that was unusual, although you didn't know exactly how unusual or what that would mean for you. You were stuck on a space station with some sort of mafia, who seemed to have no problems taking slaves and this sort of thing may or may not be legal, at least for people without a passport. You had no idea whether just your Cyvren passport would be considered valid or whether there were other types as well. You had three types of currency on you, but you didn't even know what those meant, never mind whether they came from separate nations or not or where said nations began and ended. You didn't even know whose territory you were in.
You had to get internet access. Even an hour of whatever these people's equivalent of Wikipedia was would help.
Just five minutes would be an improvement!
Unfortunately, you had none of that and she was still looking at you. You sighed. Best to go about this methodically. "I think I need the really long version. I can't tell you if I can help you if I don't even know what's going on. So, how much does your brother owe them and would paying it back do anything at all right now? Who exactly does he owe the money and what do you know about them? Not the organisation, the people."
"Yeah. Um. Right. He... I'm not sure but it could be ten thousand Cyvren! Maybe more now with interest. I'm not sure, but it's not like We've got that kind of money to spare anyway. Even if we did, I'm not sure Avery would take it. They make more money with slaves and I can't exactly go up to them and." She grinned, but you could see the cracks and hear her heart beating much faster than your own. Her fingers twitched, no matter how determined she might be.
"They're black Myr. Rusted Needle is what Avery calls his group. Avery Jekante, yeah. You've seen Rickar and I don't know what the other guy's name is, but Avery has ten, fifteen scrappers under him. I'm faster of course!" Her grin was a bit too brittle for your liking. "But that's not much use getting Duvaere back, if I don't get some help. They almost killed me just trying to figure out where they took him."
You had absolutely no idea what a Black Myr was, but... shit, this was hard to watch. But you couldn't do anything but get yourself and this girl killed if you didn't know what you were getting into. So Black Myr was the umbrella organisation and this Rusted needle was a subset, which probably meant... "Are you sure Avery still has your brother at all and didn't pass or sell him on to anyone else yet? How closely are they working with the rest of the Black Myr?"
Cavuera, Cavvie, was obviously trying to calm herself, but you could still see her nails digging into her palms and hear her heart fluttering inside her chest. "No! I mean, they probably haven't, but you don't look into black Myr stuff if you don't want to get hurt. I know a bit, I'm not stupid and I'm not blind, I should have a few days, but that's it. They have a weekly meeting to trade, they're not subtle."
Right. "How much is 'a few days'?"
"Err... The day after tomorrow? Not tomorrow! I'm not that bad, you know?" Her heart fluttered a little faster, One hand twirled into her hair before she could pull it back.
So two days. Essentially. Two days or less to come up with some sort of coherent plan if you wanted to try. Right. "So why are they after you as well?" Would you have to be careful not to be seen around her just in case or would they talk to you just fine if it came up? You were reasonably sure you had lost contact with reality and normalcy, but that could wait.
"Err... I might have gone off on them once I found out! Bastards fucking deserved it too." Yu didn't say anything. You could see that wasn't everything and Cavvie was getting more and more fidgety. You had to wait for over half a minute, but she finally cracked. "I tried to break in, okay? I'm not... I'm not used to doing this! I mean I am a bit, but fuck, not like this and one of them saw me looking at their data. I didn't even get everything transferred!"
Okay, you were a bit impressed. But first: "How much did you get?"
Cavvie's expression, her folded arms and how she sagged a moment later told you all you needed to know. "I lost the chip. Running away, I mean. I was gonna upload it and everything, but I didn't have time! I've got a few chat histories and that's it."
Of course. You couldn't help but pinch the bridge of your nose again. The pressure helped, somehow, although it was surprisingly easy to turn it into pain. You still didn't have nearly enough information. "You mentioned there are about fifteen of them and a place you tried breaking into. How many are actually there at any point? What kinds of weapons or defenses do they have?" How suicidal would the straightforward approach be? You probably weren't some kind of super alien after all, there had been one guy who looked kind of like you and no matter how light everything felt, it would probably be naive to think you were the only one not adjusted to lower gravity.
At least Cavvie was calming down slightly. Seeing her sink into herself was... not really what you wanted to see, but you were trying to find a solution for her and rushing into this would just get both of you killed. "Just two plasmacasters, a rifle and a pistol type, a bunch of kinetic ones and two suits of power armor. The guy with Merai in him is stronger, but he's not that much stronger, I think. Didn't exactly stop to check, you know? Good for intimidation, but I'm not sure how well he can back it up." She shrugged. "There's four or five there, maybe down to three if it's a slow time."
Merai. You seemed to remember... A quick check and you were sure. Your Passport put you down as Merai (*3A). That must have been the one you met. You put the thing away before Cavvie could get a proper look. You still had absolutely no idea how your body compared. Well... you weren't from around here were you? "Really? I wouldn't have thought he's as strong as me, the gravity here is pretty low, so..."
Cavvie was staring. "Hey! I know it's spingrav, from before warp ships and all because it's old and no one cares, but down here it's standard gravity! You'd have to be pure fucking Merai or something to bounce around here like you can on the upper levels!"
That... answered that question. You were absolutely certain you were blushing, but if nothing else, you seemed to have distracted her and the other ancestry fields on your passport were blank. Just something modification standard 3A... Right. How to save this? You really needed Wikipedia. "Ah... low for me I should say. I'm used to higher gravity on my spaceships, sorry. You've never met a Merai before?"
"Wait. Shit, really? With those muscles? Seriously? How do you do that? I mean I've seen half, because someone paid for the samples, but over 90 percent?" You were definitely missing something here, but admitting you had absolutely no idea what was going on would never go well for you, especially not against some probably shady and definitely desperate girl who might not even be 20 yet. "That's like... well okay it's not quite glowing rainbow death fluff level, but still."
You were already committed might as well try to play your part. "Well, it's what I am. I don't know if you'd find any death fluffs here, but this station has a spaceport doesn't it? I wouldn't be too surprised if you could find one if you went looking." A hopefully irreverent smile should play that off just fine.
The girl shuddered. "I've lost, well, I mean my family's nearly lost everything because of them during the war. Just one left and that's because she wasn't there to get sick! We never got our land back either, why do you think half the families here ended up stuck on this station? I know Merai weren't really hit, not like half the other core races, but still! They say the others aren't as bad but how do we know?"
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry. I was just joking, we don't have to go looking for death fluffs." No matter how useful or useless one of them might be, whatever they were. You just didn't know enough! "Listen, I need to look a few things up. I'm not saying I'm not going to help you, but I'd rather not just go and get myself killed. Don't get me wrong, if we pull this off you and your brother owe me, but I'm not going to just ditch you right now either. You went in and you almost died or got yourself in the same situation as your brother. If you try that again, it's not going to work out any better is it?"
"I need to look a few things up, then we get to planning and compensation, okay?"
She still sounded nervous. Very nervous in fact, but she hadn't sunk down completely. There was despair under her mask, no matter how much she tried to hide it, but a bit of hope as well. The girl nodded at you. "Y... yeah. I guess, but I couldn't just sit there and do nothing!" When she stood up her fists were on the table.
"That's not how it works!"
"I know, but I'd like to succeed, you know? So we need to get as many advantages as we can first." You smiled at her, despite yourself. You weren't sure you would have been able to do the same, but you definitely wouldn't have done better. And you would never have forgiven yourself for hiding either...
"I know a good place with a translight relay, come on!"
You never got to finish your food. Getting dragged along wasn't so bad, especially once you decided to just run after her and ended up being faster anyway, especially up ladders and stairs, until you wound up on a metal walkway snaking around a building, under a sign potentially assembled from scrap if the different components were anything to go by, looking into a den full of cables, helmets and a piece of machinery in the centre that looked more fit for a spaceship or company basement than any normal commercial enterprise.
It was also stuffed to the only partially present gills with people either using the helmets or just standing in corners looking at smartphones, tablets and holographic slates or their own visors. Some just stared off into space. Maybe they had contact lenses or brain links?
"Here we are! five credits imperial an hour!"
What do you want to research first? (choose 10)
- [ ] Cyvran empire
- [ ] this space station
- [ ] Slavery and legality
- [ ] current political situation
- [ ] Merai
- [ ] Dinejan
- [ ] Izane
- [ ] rainbow death fluffs
- [ ] Echoton
- [ ] Costs of living
- [ ] Modification *3A
- [ ] The rusted Needle
- [ ] Black Myr
- [ ] write in (multiple write ins allowed)
Alice Hawkings
Status: Healthy
Currency:
10000 credits Cyvren Imperial
1000 credits Izane
2000 credits Echoton
CP: 0
Sorry I was away for so long. Things happened. Anyway, the quest database is being updated.
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Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa
[X] Costs of living
[X] Modification *3A
[X] Cyvran empire
[X] this space station
[X] current political situation
[X] Merai
[X] Izane
[X] rainbow death fluffs
[X] The rusted Needle
[X] Black Myr
Z488411
Scatterbrained
- Location
- Europa
Z488411
Scatterbrained
- Location
- Europa
I'm not sure why you would think so, but that is going onto the reading list.
I saw 'cyvren' and science fiction dystopia. Cyteen (basically not a spoiler) is a 80's book about a rebellious corporate colony that implemented its own industrialized caste/slavery system based on biotechnology and mass production of 'brain-state altered' human clones (so the rebellion wasn't crushed). It's not exactly slavery because the clones are 'rented' and (ofc) only want to work for the company but it's super bad.
It's not very 'horrific' because you're seeing it from the perspective of some ultra privileged and frankly spoiled people on it, and most of the conflict comes from the power struggle that is both familiar, incestual (if you read it you'll understand) and corporate, but it passes some shit under the radar right on the first chapter that is never addressed i won't spoil. The whole 'corporate/family culture' is obsessed with eugenics and psyops naturally. Gattacca from the privileged side.
[x] Cyvran empire
[x] this space station
[x] current political situation
[x] Modification *3A
[x] Black Myr
[x] Avery Jekante
[x] Port Authority
[x] melee weapon collectors/sellers (for decoration ofc)
[x] Spaceship piloting course
[x] Spaceship model plans
I think you can figure out what i'm trying right? Grand Theft Pirate Spaceship.
Find which berth and ship Avery Jekante owns/travels in, infiltrate it with a weapon, hide, wait until it's ongoing, kill some slavers, free guy(s) on random planets, adventure.
There are no innocents transporting slaves so i feel safe in feeling that even if the spaceship is rented, the waste of beings operating it deserve a sword chop to the neck.
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Z488411
Scatterbrained
- Location
- Europa
Ahh right. This is... not that. It's a very interesting idea and I won't say you'll never find stuff like that, but not quite the direction I was going to take it. You'll find out more about the political situation sooner or later. Now planet hopping, freeing slaves etc. on the other hand...
I can definitely see where you are going with this and the write-in option exists for a reason. And it's not like you don't know how to fly a spaceship.
Also those books are definitely going onto the reading list now.
Z488411
Scatterbrained
- Location
- Europa
Well...
I really wish I had more participation on this, but it looks like a decision has been made and I'd rather not have a week between posts again.
I'm putting this here to roll for random events.
@SCO looks like your plan can to some degree be incorporated, although you won't get as much detail.
I really wish I had more participation on this, but it looks like a decision has been made and I'd rather not have a week between posts again.
I'm putting this here to roll for random events.
@SCO looks like your plan can to some degree be incorporated, although you won't get as much detail.
1.4 Research time
Z488411
Scatterbrained
- Location
- Europa
[X] Costs of living
[X] Modification *3A
[X] Cyvran empire
[X] this space station
[X] current political situation
[X] Merai
[X] Izane
[X] rainbow death fluffs
[X] The rusted Needle
[X] Black Myr
- Infodump incoming
1.4 Research time
First of all, you got yourself four hours of internet, pulling out your smartphone, ignoring the massive machine inside the hall and trying to fit in with the people milling about the edges instead. Crowds still made you entirely too nervous and you had only gotten more noise sensitive. Not being sleep deprived let you focus better though and you could sort of make sense of what the attendant had done when you'd put down your fee.
You were still too nervous to pair your phone to the helmet next to you, but Cavvie was also trying to look over your shoulder...
"Stop that! I'm trying to think."
She recoiled fast enough you almost felt bad, but letting her know what you were searching for would make for some very awkward questions. You sighed. "Do you mind checking what sort of weapons we could get a hold of here? You know your way around here better than I do." You even had a different accent than her.
But Cavvie still didn't look happy. She was puffing up, actually... "What, do you think I'm unarmed? I don't have money for any fancy weapons!"
Calm down. "But I might. My last one got stolen and I think I might need a replacement for all this. I'm not going to get lost in here, am I?"
Expecting her to quite believe you would have been a bit much to ask, but you thought you could hear her heartbeat calm a little. She deflated slightly, but her confidence was moving from frantic to a little more relaxed, while she twisted her hand into her hair. "...Alright! But you promised you would try to help!"
If you could figure out how to do that without killing yourself in the process. You watched her turn back to look at you one last time before she ran outside. The vaguely disturbing thing was that you weren't sure she wasn't just always this energetic. At least you could let out that breath you hadn't realised you were holding and g back to what you were doing before: Figure out exactly how much five Cyvren Imperial credits were worth.
...
Well, apparently there was more than just one internet. There was even more than one local network, several interplanetary ones you could find on first glance, and probably sub networks for all sorts of other places too. And that was only what you could access with this 'translight relay'. Which threw up a whole slew of other questions, but back to your original one:
That was... more than you expected. Probably. This place was anything but well off, living anywhere else would probably be much more expensive, but here you could buy a meal, or at least a snack, for half a credit here. Sure, in a Cyvren core world, you could probably only live on what you had for two months or even less depending one where you went, but here? Ten thousand credits was a lot. It just still wasn't enough to buy any interstellar spaceship from what you could tell. You could probably live here on what you had for a year at least, depending on what sort of standard of living you wanted.
Now what the hell was up with this Cyvren Empire anyway?
That was about when you had a quick look and decided to use the helmet instead. You only had so much time to do research it it was far, far faster, without doing something like making you lose control of your body. It was still a struggle. Part of you had seen the Matrix, read and seen enough science fiction to know it was a terrible idea, how much could possibly go wrong. But the rest of you was staring at something you had been dreaming about for years. Okay it wasn't full immersion, but a real, working, perfect VR helmet!
That part won when you saw people taking the things off just fine. This wasn't that kind of story you hoped. You were nobody (hopefully) and you really, really wanted to try this. So you paired your phone with the thing, closed your eyes and let it adjust around your head, before your phone screen stretched across your eyes and you could use each icon with a single thought.
So... there was... entirely too much information. You were forced to go for the current political situation first just try and make any sense of all this. The Cyvren empire was, as best as you could tell, the dominant power over a little less than a third third of the known and populated galaxy, one of the two largest powers overall, definitely in terms of population, together with the Alarenne confederation - which seemed to be some odd hybrid of attempted theocracy, empire and actual confederation... you got off topic there. If you wanted to understand this to any degree of detail, you would have to dig further into it and you were on the clock.
All of the other powers were significantly smaller, regardless of the fuzzy edges of systems declaring independence or being only nominal members of either the Cyvrans or the Alarenne. You had various trade organisations, smaller confederations, rogue systems and a phenomenal cold war between the Alarenne and Cyvrans that was a good bit colder than you expected. It somehow allowed more neutral parties than you could see would make sense. There were still fights going on, people being drafted into the fleets, skirmishes and system invasions, but just looking at this map - it was slightly familiar to you but that may just be because it was another spiral galaxy - there were better places to fight. They just... didn't.
Maybe digging through recent history would help.
...
You had watched star trek, you were used to a decent amount of weirdness, but it didn't quite prepare you for finding this. Apparently, there had been a war, this current war in fact, both Cyvren and Alarenne fighting over who were the true second empire. There had to be a story there too but you didn't have time for that and you were sure it would be touched upon elsewhere. The major differences between the two were obviously cultural as well as associated with how governance worked. Why the Alarenne were closer to an actual empire than the Cyvrans, at least a traditional one was not something you wanted to get into, but it seemed like they were at least more obviously stratified. Their systems had a government each, which then combined into one council and from there region leaders under their current Crown Prophet. Said systems were independent only in as far as they complied with the regulations from above and they were fond of saying that the Cyvrans would bring about a second dark age. Right.
Your own faction according to your passport seemed to have actual, overarching political parties, system commanders, system governors, party leaders and a ranking system for its systems dependent on contribution to the empire. More contribution meant more power, although the whole thing was supposedly - and potentially actually as well - skewed towards certain core territories. They als had a military apparatus semi separate and disturbingly independent from the current Imperial council although said council did technically command the military. You weren't entirely sure how that worked, but it seemed to boil down to how the military was linked to the Cyvren systems. It was still independent enough to have some colonies of its own and oversight only insofar as getting the job done was concerned unless the complaints grew too powerful to ignore (which lead to more ongoing protests than you could count).
The core systems in question were Merai space, with four systems, including Merasre, their, your, homeworld, Eosynthian space and Eosynth, the Phyren's home, The Arraki's system, and a bit further away Tarkan space. Integrated after fierce battles with the Merai and Arraki, with the Phyren sitting it out until enough bloodshed forced the formation of the Cyvren Empire, named after one of the caches from before the apocalypse that allowed them to finally create their first advanced warp drives, creating what they thought to be the successor to the first human civilisation.
...Apparently, Arraki were basically human, with a few cosmetic alterations and the ability to survive on extremely little water and Tarkans were so close to human that there was little difference.
All of the Cyvren core factions were if anything a little too much into scientific experimentation, if the Alarenne's problems were anything to go by, by it certainly seemed to be working. Now you just had to deal with the dangers of only semi checked capitalism and an empire wide somewhat lax approach to what happened to non citizens. Who were people registered and born in Cyvren territory or those who chose to buy citizenship by means of contributing to the cause. Or bribing officials.
Apparently, your people were somewhat lax on a few things, although you did have some form of social security and very clear advantages over all non citizens who could say but the government had no obligation to, with periodic crackdowns wherever problems didn't sort themselves out. They also used to interfere more with the surrounding systems than they did now and the same applied to the Alarennes too...
Which handily brought you back to your previous question about the current political situation. After the war had escalated to the point of tens if not hundreds of quadrillions dead, they had apparently suffered interference by... someone who wasn't a human descendant so unhappy with the current political position that he apparently decided to just bomb systems with bioweapons for a while, until both factions had task forces set to eliminate one single crew and maybe some pirate allies.
That... you had to be missing something.
Because that looked like literal magical powers. Which... were apparently a thing, but on a much smaller scale and usually the result of genetic engineering with the help of some actually alien (not terraformed and derived from the first space age) species and science you didn't even begin to understand and was poorly explored on top of that. So, not exactly magical but might as well be.
Which... apparently spiraled into an alliance with one arm, of the Cyvren military in exchange for freeing his people, stealing a colony ship... and threatening both empires into peace by proving himself essentially unkillable and capable of either teleportation or more or less range unlimited biokinesis or both.
You had to take a moment to stare there.
Which was then used to... get the rest of his people delivered, make an alliance with a very much not human alien species from another galaxy, you had no idea how one of its members got involved in this, but they were apparently far more technologically advanced than any of the humans around you, and another alliance with an AI left over from causing the end of the first space age. Which had been levied into some kind of deal with the biokinetic ending with him and his people in a ship with the population of a planet around his homeworld, said homeworld slowly being built up with orbital infrastructure, some his people being transformed into something more humanoid... and ongoing negotiations with the extragalactic aliens over a technology treaty, while warfare was kept to a minimum lest either of them interfere. That was the stand of things a little over 200 years ago and not much had changed afterwards.
Right.
The picture was... well... a few minutes later you knew what Cavvie meant by 'rainbow death fluffs'. With their... you might as well call him a God-Emperor for all it was worth, if you were at the point where you could simultaneously resurrect a colony ship worth of people and potentially much, much more the distinction became sort of meaningless anyway, known as Zarhail throughout his campaigns, real name unknown or at least not listed, titled as Red God, Red Death and about fifteen others... you took a moment to close your eyes before you kept reading.
If this was normal for the species... If it was anything anywhere near approaching normal...
It wasn't. No, apparently they were just an arboral creature the size of a medium to large dog, with fur in some variation of grey, white, or black in various lengths depending on climate. Very soft, large heads, small, somewhat fox-like snouts, huge, colourful eyes, massive pointed ears and long, fluffy, prehensile tails and jewel-like structures on their back. You wanted to squish it and hug it and never let go of the adorable ball of death on screen. It even had an extra fluff fur collar, which apparently marked an adult of the species.
Unfortunately, those jewel like organs on their back were somehow part of their brains and produced shards floating in the air above them the creatures could reshape according to their will, limited only by volume and those shards could be somehow turned into all sorts of weird abilities. At least biokinesis wasn't common. Pyrokinesis was, and from there it seemed to follow a sort of theme. Water, air, stone/earth, metal, with weirder and more esoteric abilities less common than those basic ones. Grows more powerful if strained and used a lot, each one only had one of those abilities, more power meant more and bigger shards. Burned shards recover over time. So far so good.
You got your explanation for the events around the colony ship once you found the section on some rare ability to burn all of their shards at once to get much greater effects. Right.
And apparently cutting off the core, the strange jewel-like structure on their backs, from the brain more or less lobotomised them and made them unable to use their powers and perfect for the pet trade...
Which they were still unhappy about, although more humanoid ones were now starting to explore space away from a still primitive homeworld and hyperadvanced space station. They were called Jewelled Zerdarions then, but even 'Rainbow Death Fluff' was more polite and less likely to make one attack. Ziruuashjawr was the polite version, even if it wasn't a direct translation from their language.
People were terrified of them, because attacks on one would make the rest retaliate as well and even if the vast majority was much, much weaker than their Emperor, there were more biokinetics about and the memory still cut deep. Those planets still hadn't recovered and most people stayed dead after all.
The good news was that there genuinely weren't that many of them and they were still dealing with rehabilitating people and building their own system up, so you hopefully wouldn't have to deal with them. Rainbow death fluffs, they even glowed when using their powers.
Against that...
Looking up your own race? species? was decidedly more pleasant. You had a planet around a star smaller than the sun, with five times earth's gravity, cloud cover and more than half converted into one large city, with a solar system filled with orbital habitats, solar collectors and eight more planets of varying sizes, dominion very three neighbouring , larger systems still being filled with more colonies, a rather practical approach to life in general and some of the absolute best music in the entire empire.
You even drew some of that onto your phone, even if the tracks were probably not at all representative, listening to music, good music, with your new ears was bound to be an experience.
The Merai's durable ships had in the end won against the Phyren, the Arraki joined them, you, rather than continue to fight and your principles of reliability and adaptability formed the backbone of the Cyvren military, aided by Phyren, Arraki and Tarkare technologies, weapons systems and certain logistics. You saw the wonders of underground cities navigated as much by sound as by light, found famous warriors, generals and governors and read about a system of governance that might allow an odd independence but was in the end perfectly willing to make exceptions, squash corporations who would harm the whole, willing to do questionable things, looked out for itself and its own people and was deeply intertwined with the Cyvren military. The voting system was weird with all sorts of classes and some things that reminded you of communism, but if nothing else, Merasre and its dominion were stable, able to very quickly react to new threats, and fond of warm colours.
They engaged in a certain range of large scale, approved genetic manipulation, generally bought or handed out for certain jobs. *3A was apparently a reasonably rare one too. Enhanced learning ability, increased radiation resistance, higher lifespans, better fine motor control and increased efficiency. You just needed a higher sugar intake and the modification was slightly less stable than the standard. It was also usually applied to explorers, captains, special operations was rumoured to sue something similar and anyone sent out into dangerous environments or breaking new ground might receive or get one for themselves as well.
Apparently, Izane were decidedly more proactive about modifications than the Merai. They didn't have a homeworld so much as a few very large space stations and temples/modification centres in many other places. People were suspicious of the, but they were still tolerated and both did work for and had significant ties to the Cyvren government, giving them certain protections. This... reminded you more of a religion than a race or species. Although the members of most religions didn't go about changing anything from their skin colour to their complete body plan on a regular basis.
Striving for ascension, enlightenment, to throw away the shackles of the body one was born with and become whatever you wanted to be. No matter how many accidents might happen along the way, the Izane would support you. Nature was not perfect and there was no reason not to improve oneself after all.
They also seemed to have a military research division you were less certain about, generally didn't mind safety concerns as long as all participants agreed and had some shady rumours about forced trials floating around. Still... at least there were as many Izane trying to stop the others. You were more concerned about their continued attempts to get a hold of Ziruuashjawr samples of all types. Technology and people... and the problems that had already caused.
Izane credits were apparently used to purchase modifications (Safe, tested ones) at their temples and the thousand you had would probably be enough for a few minor ones, such as skin or hair colour, skin texture, and small height modifiers, or one moderate one, like significantly better eyes, or less all-encompassing neural modifications. You would have to think about that.
You had just passed three hours and you didn't even get to the most immediately relevant stuff! You'd almost gotten lost down the wikipedia rabbithole so many times, you felt like you had a lifetime of reading to d and could have spent months stuck inside VR, but...
You didn't want to be useless again and let that girl down. Not if you could avoid it.
First of all, where were you exactly?
Your local networks, fortunately, did have names and a little bit of searching... 'Kerean's Rest - ABg7yJRk0ylOW08', Kineja system, with only a single readily habitable and continuously inhabited planet and three more that were colonised, but had been hit by the virus attacks. Kinejan had lost 98% of its original population and been flooded by people looking for a home, most of the floating stations were still dead and being scavenged for materials. You were at the edge of Cvran space, in what used to be a military manufacturing system, but had never been rebuilt after the attack. There was even a destroyed military laboratory no one dared venture out to.
Kerean's Rest was an old station, several thousand years old in fact, hidden inside a large asteroid in the asteroid belt, that had closed its port in time and then been flooded by refugees. The system had collapsed far enough that not all births had been registered and it had only ever counted as peripheral to begin with. Cyvren control was weak. Most people weren't registered citizens and people from main Cyvren systems and other outlying ones were still streaming in to replace the lost population.
It would probably fall back under full Cyvren control in time but for now, it was still disorganised and organised crime had taken hold, especially in places like this one, which served as a hub for all sorts of things. People venturing out to find scrap or reactivate stations, goods being funneled in and out and yet more people using it as a hub to move outwards.
It was also reliant on food from outside because its population had swelled far past what the station could support itself and thus the surrounding stations - towed in or already present - served mainly as subsidiaries for just that.
You were starting to feel seriously sorry for Cavvie's family. They used to live on that planet after all. They probably used to be Citizens too.
But that brought you back to your last research topic.
What was up with the Rusted Needle, Avery Jekante and the Black Myr. Starting with the Needle.
Which was apparently an ancient spaceship, a hundreds of years old, rusty spaceship, but a spaceship nonetheless. It was already stripped of its engines long ago, but its hull at least was still recognizable and intact enough for its shape to give the whole building its name.
Jekante must have named his gang after the building they used as its headquarters. They had to have one more functioning spaceship, probably a smaller one, without as much armour and without the pointed shape of the needle. A Needle, which was actually just about fifteen minutes walking distance to where you were right this moment and about another thirty in walking and short-range transports from the spaceport itself, located at the ends and some of the centre section of the cylinder that made up the station.
That alone would give you at least a little bit of time to intercept, but from what you could figure out they had at least one somewhat sloppily armoured walker transport for at least part of the way.
But with enough people outside and some rough ideas about how the spaceship was built suggesting narrow corridors, you could probably take advantage of your strength and maybe some kind of shield to avoid getting shot and not have to deal with multiple opponents surrounding you. It also explained Cavvie's plan of sneaking in, but you had the suspicion that you would need their keys or worse some kind of scan to get what you wanted. It wasn't as if they had access to any purely military grade weaponry apart from maybe one plasmacaster.
Although a stray thought reminded you that apparently, you could pick at least some locks now. Huh.
You would still very much like to know what sort of spaceship they were going to use to take them away, for purely academic purposes. Not because you just discovered that you could absolutely fly one. Of course not.
The Black Myr though... the Black Myr gave you pause.
Black Myr was short for Black Myrhellion Syndicate. And the Black Myrhellion was a stolen Cyvren colony class vessel, Myrhellion type, a giant warship with the population or crew equivalent to an entire colony. A massive Behemoth carrying its own fleet of smaller ships, made to assault planets and push through blockades and they lost one.
During the attacks, with 99% of its crew dead from viruses, of course, but still. Pirates and smugglers had gotten in, cleared out the dead and retrofitted the possibly experimental titanic vessel for their purposes. Its warp drive made it not the fastest but certainly not slow either and worse, it had some form of insane camouflage technique reducing its footprint to make it damn near invisible while traveling.
The thing only moved maybe once a week or less, but it was still chilling. Armed to the point of being able to threaten whole planets and only really itself threatened by another ship of its own size, technological superiority or a very large fleet of smaller ships willing to sacrifice many of their number in the process.
It had been added to over the roughly two hundred years since it has been taken over, mismatched additions and factions warring inside, but it still served as the Syndicate's unassailable home base. The Cyvren Empire didn't attack it because doing so would likely cost them a colony class vessel as well and the syndicate didn't interfere with the empire too much because if they did, this calculation might change. But independent systems or poorly controlled ones were not so lucky.
The Black Myr were the biggest crime syndicate in the sector by mercy of that alone, no matter how fractured they might be. Involved in just about anything that would bring in money, with Reannon Azai as the current head and captain of the Black Myrhellion. A floating colony of anything illegal and profitable to do. The few pictures that you could find made it out to be some dark, mad, wonderland, at least if you didn't mind the people who probably had to suffer for it.
If Cavvie's brother was taken by them, getting him back would be infinitely more difficult.
When you took the helmet off, your hands shook slightly. Your citizen status should protect you, but...
Cavvie was impatiently tapping at a scratched tablet. What now?
[ ] Try to buy yourself a weapon
[ ] Visit the Needle and see if you can find more information instead
[ ] look up more information
- [ ] On what?
[ ] write in
Alice Hawkings
Status: Healthy
Currency:
9980 credits Cyvren Imperial
1000 credits Izane
2000 credits Echoton
CP: 0
Current random event chance: 30%
1-10, 11-25,96-100
[X] Modification *3A
[X] Cyvran empire
[X] this space station
[X] current political situation
[X] Merai
[X] Izane
[X] rainbow death fluffs
[X] The rusted Needle
[X] Black Myr
- Infodump incoming
1.4 Research time
First of all, you got yourself four hours of internet, pulling out your smartphone, ignoring the massive machine inside the hall and trying to fit in with the people milling about the edges instead. Crowds still made you entirely too nervous and you had only gotten more noise sensitive. Not being sleep deprived let you focus better though and you could sort of make sense of what the attendant had done when you'd put down your fee.
You were still too nervous to pair your phone to the helmet next to you, but Cavvie was also trying to look over your shoulder...
"Stop that! I'm trying to think."
She recoiled fast enough you almost felt bad, but letting her know what you were searching for would make for some very awkward questions. You sighed. "Do you mind checking what sort of weapons we could get a hold of here? You know your way around here better than I do." You even had a different accent than her.
But Cavvie still didn't look happy. She was puffing up, actually... "What, do you think I'm unarmed? I don't have money for any fancy weapons!"
Calm down. "But I might. My last one got stolen and I think I might need a replacement for all this. I'm not going to get lost in here, am I?"
Expecting her to quite believe you would have been a bit much to ask, but you thought you could hear her heartbeat calm a little. She deflated slightly, but her confidence was moving from frantic to a little more relaxed, while she twisted her hand into her hair. "...Alright! But you promised you would try to help!"
If you could figure out how to do that without killing yourself in the process. You watched her turn back to look at you one last time before she ran outside. The vaguely disturbing thing was that you weren't sure she wasn't just always this energetic. At least you could let out that breath you hadn't realised you were holding and g back to what you were doing before: Figure out exactly how much five Cyvren Imperial credits were worth.
...
Well, apparently there was more than just one internet. There was even more than one local network, several interplanetary ones you could find on first glance, and probably sub networks for all sorts of other places too. And that was only what you could access with this 'translight relay'. Which threw up a whole slew of other questions, but back to your original one:
That was... more than you expected. Probably. This place was anything but well off, living anywhere else would probably be much more expensive, but here you could buy a meal, or at least a snack, for half a credit here. Sure, in a Cyvren core world, you could probably only live on what you had for two months or even less depending one where you went, but here? Ten thousand credits was a lot. It just still wasn't enough to buy any interstellar spaceship from what you could tell. You could probably live here on what you had for a year at least, depending on what sort of standard of living you wanted.
Now what the hell was up with this Cyvren Empire anyway?
That was about when you had a quick look and decided to use the helmet instead. You only had so much time to do research it it was far, far faster, without doing something like making you lose control of your body. It was still a struggle. Part of you had seen the Matrix, read and seen enough science fiction to know it was a terrible idea, how much could possibly go wrong. But the rest of you was staring at something you had been dreaming about for years. Okay it wasn't full immersion, but a real, working, perfect VR helmet!
That part won when you saw people taking the things off just fine. This wasn't that kind of story you hoped. You were nobody (hopefully) and you really, really wanted to try this. So you paired your phone with the thing, closed your eyes and let it adjust around your head, before your phone screen stretched across your eyes and you could use each icon with a single thought.
So... there was... entirely too much information. You were forced to go for the current political situation first just try and make any sense of all this. The Cyvren empire was, as best as you could tell, the dominant power over a little less than a third third of the known and populated galaxy, one of the two largest powers overall, definitely in terms of population, together with the Alarenne confederation - which seemed to be some odd hybrid of attempted theocracy, empire and actual confederation... you got off topic there. If you wanted to understand this to any degree of detail, you would have to dig further into it and you were on the clock.
All of the other powers were significantly smaller, regardless of the fuzzy edges of systems declaring independence or being only nominal members of either the Cyvrans or the Alarenne. You had various trade organisations, smaller confederations, rogue systems and a phenomenal cold war between the Alarenne and Cyvrans that was a good bit colder than you expected. It somehow allowed more neutral parties than you could see would make sense. There were still fights going on, people being drafted into the fleets, skirmishes and system invasions, but just looking at this map - it was slightly familiar to you but that may just be because it was another spiral galaxy - there were better places to fight. They just... didn't.
Maybe digging through recent history would help.
...
You had watched star trek, you were used to a decent amount of weirdness, but it didn't quite prepare you for finding this. Apparently, there had been a war, this current war in fact, both Cyvren and Alarenne fighting over who were the true second empire. There had to be a story there too but you didn't have time for that and you were sure it would be touched upon elsewhere. The major differences between the two were obviously cultural as well as associated with how governance worked. Why the Alarenne were closer to an actual empire than the Cyvrans, at least a traditional one was not something you wanted to get into, but it seemed like they were at least more obviously stratified. Their systems had a government each, which then combined into one council and from there region leaders under their current Crown Prophet. Said systems were independent only in as far as they complied with the regulations from above and they were fond of saying that the Cyvrans would bring about a second dark age. Right.
Your own faction according to your passport seemed to have actual, overarching political parties, system commanders, system governors, party leaders and a ranking system for its systems dependent on contribution to the empire. More contribution meant more power, although the whole thing was supposedly - and potentially actually as well - skewed towards certain core territories. They als had a military apparatus semi separate and disturbingly independent from the current Imperial council although said council did technically command the military. You weren't entirely sure how that worked, but it seemed to boil down to how the military was linked to the Cyvren systems. It was still independent enough to have some colonies of its own and oversight only insofar as getting the job done was concerned unless the complaints grew too powerful to ignore (which lead to more ongoing protests than you could count).
The core systems in question were Merai space, with four systems, including Merasre, their, your, homeworld, Eosynthian space and Eosynth, the Phyren's home, The Arraki's system, and a bit further away Tarkan space. Integrated after fierce battles with the Merai and Arraki, with the Phyren sitting it out until enough bloodshed forced the formation of the Cyvren Empire, named after one of the caches from before the apocalypse that allowed them to finally create their first advanced warp drives, creating what they thought to be the successor to the first human civilisation.
...Apparently, Arraki were basically human, with a few cosmetic alterations and the ability to survive on extremely little water and Tarkans were so close to human that there was little difference.
All of the Cyvren core factions were if anything a little too much into scientific experimentation, if the Alarenne's problems were anything to go by, by it certainly seemed to be working. Now you just had to deal with the dangers of only semi checked capitalism and an empire wide somewhat lax approach to what happened to non citizens. Who were people registered and born in Cyvren territory or those who chose to buy citizenship by means of contributing to the cause. Or bribing officials.
Apparently, your people were somewhat lax on a few things, although you did have some form of social security and very clear advantages over all non citizens who could say but the government had no obligation to, with periodic crackdowns wherever problems didn't sort themselves out. They also used to interfere more with the surrounding systems than they did now and the same applied to the Alarennes too...
Which handily brought you back to your previous question about the current political situation. After the war had escalated to the point of tens if not hundreds of quadrillions dead, they had apparently suffered interference by... someone who wasn't a human descendant so unhappy with the current political position that he apparently decided to just bomb systems with bioweapons for a while, until both factions had task forces set to eliminate one single crew and maybe some pirate allies.
That... you had to be missing something.
Because that looked like literal magical powers. Which... were apparently a thing, but on a much smaller scale and usually the result of genetic engineering with the help of some actually alien (not terraformed and derived from the first space age) species and science you didn't even begin to understand and was poorly explored on top of that. So, not exactly magical but might as well be.
Which... apparently spiraled into an alliance with one arm, of the Cyvren military in exchange for freeing his people, stealing a colony ship... and threatening both empires into peace by proving himself essentially unkillable and capable of either teleportation or more or less range unlimited biokinesis or both.
You had to take a moment to stare there.
Which was then used to... get the rest of his people delivered, make an alliance with a very much not human alien species from another galaxy, you had no idea how one of its members got involved in this, but they were apparently far more technologically advanced than any of the humans around you, and another alliance with an AI left over from causing the end of the first space age. Which had been levied into some kind of deal with the biokinetic ending with him and his people in a ship with the population of a planet around his homeworld, said homeworld slowly being built up with orbital infrastructure, some his people being transformed into something more humanoid... and ongoing negotiations with the extragalactic aliens over a technology treaty, while warfare was kept to a minimum lest either of them interfere. That was the stand of things a little over 200 years ago and not much had changed afterwards.
Right.
The picture was... well... a few minutes later you knew what Cavvie meant by 'rainbow death fluffs'. With their... you might as well call him a God-Emperor for all it was worth, if you were at the point where you could simultaneously resurrect a colony ship worth of people and potentially much, much more the distinction became sort of meaningless anyway, known as Zarhail throughout his campaigns, real name unknown or at least not listed, titled as Red God, Red Death and about fifteen others... you took a moment to close your eyes before you kept reading.
If this was normal for the species... If it was anything anywhere near approaching normal...
It wasn't. No, apparently they were just an arboral creature the size of a medium to large dog, with fur in some variation of grey, white, or black in various lengths depending on climate. Very soft, large heads, small, somewhat fox-like snouts, huge, colourful eyes, massive pointed ears and long, fluffy, prehensile tails and jewel-like structures on their back. You wanted to squish it and hug it and never let go of the adorable ball of death on screen. It even had an extra fluff fur collar, which apparently marked an adult of the species.
Unfortunately, those jewel like organs on their back were somehow part of their brains and produced shards floating in the air above them the creatures could reshape according to their will, limited only by volume and those shards could be somehow turned into all sorts of weird abilities. At least biokinesis wasn't common. Pyrokinesis was, and from there it seemed to follow a sort of theme. Water, air, stone/earth, metal, with weirder and more esoteric abilities less common than those basic ones. Grows more powerful if strained and used a lot, each one only had one of those abilities, more power meant more and bigger shards. Burned shards recover over time. So far so good.
You got your explanation for the events around the colony ship once you found the section on some rare ability to burn all of their shards at once to get much greater effects. Right.
And apparently cutting off the core, the strange jewel-like structure on their backs, from the brain more or less lobotomised them and made them unable to use their powers and perfect for the pet trade...
Which they were still unhappy about, although more humanoid ones were now starting to explore space away from a still primitive homeworld and hyperadvanced space station. They were called Jewelled Zerdarions then, but even 'Rainbow Death Fluff' was more polite and less likely to make one attack. Ziruuashjawr was the polite version, even if it wasn't a direct translation from their language.
People were terrified of them, because attacks on one would make the rest retaliate as well and even if the vast majority was much, much weaker than their Emperor, there were more biokinetics about and the memory still cut deep. Those planets still hadn't recovered and most people stayed dead after all.
The good news was that there genuinely weren't that many of them and they were still dealing with rehabilitating people and building their own system up, so you hopefully wouldn't have to deal with them. Rainbow death fluffs, they even glowed when using their powers.
Against that...
Looking up your own race? species? was decidedly more pleasant. You had a planet around a star smaller than the sun, with five times earth's gravity, cloud cover and more than half converted into one large city, with a solar system filled with orbital habitats, solar collectors and eight more planets of varying sizes, dominion very three neighbouring , larger systems still being filled with more colonies, a rather practical approach to life in general and some of the absolute best music in the entire empire.
You even drew some of that onto your phone, even if the tracks were probably not at all representative, listening to music, good music, with your new ears was bound to be an experience.
The Merai's durable ships had in the end won against the Phyren, the Arraki joined them, you, rather than continue to fight and your principles of reliability and adaptability formed the backbone of the Cyvren military, aided by Phyren, Arraki and Tarkare technologies, weapons systems and certain logistics. You saw the wonders of underground cities navigated as much by sound as by light, found famous warriors, generals and governors and read about a system of governance that might allow an odd independence but was in the end perfectly willing to make exceptions, squash corporations who would harm the whole, willing to do questionable things, looked out for itself and its own people and was deeply intertwined with the Cyvren military. The voting system was weird with all sorts of classes and some things that reminded you of communism, but if nothing else, Merasre and its dominion were stable, able to very quickly react to new threats, and fond of warm colours.
They engaged in a certain range of large scale, approved genetic manipulation, generally bought or handed out for certain jobs. *3A was apparently a reasonably rare one too. Enhanced learning ability, increased radiation resistance, higher lifespans, better fine motor control and increased efficiency. You just needed a higher sugar intake and the modification was slightly less stable than the standard. It was also usually applied to explorers, captains, special operations was rumoured to sue something similar and anyone sent out into dangerous environments or breaking new ground might receive or get one for themselves as well.
Apparently, Izane were decidedly more proactive about modifications than the Merai. They didn't have a homeworld so much as a few very large space stations and temples/modification centres in many other places. People were suspicious of the, but they were still tolerated and both did work for and had significant ties to the Cyvren government, giving them certain protections. This... reminded you more of a religion than a race or species. Although the members of most religions didn't go about changing anything from their skin colour to their complete body plan on a regular basis.
Striving for ascension, enlightenment, to throw away the shackles of the body one was born with and become whatever you wanted to be. No matter how many accidents might happen along the way, the Izane would support you. Nature was not perfect and there was no reason not to improve oneself after all.
They also seemed to have a military research division you were less certain about, generally didn't mind safety concerns as long as all participants agreed and had some shady rumours about forced trials floating around. Still... at least there were as many Izane trying to stop the others. You were more concerned about their continued attempts to get a hold of Ziruuashjawr samples of all types. Technology and people... and the problems that had already caused.
Izane credits were apparently used to purchase modifications (Safe, tested ones) at their temples and the thousand you had would probably be enough for a few minor ones, such as skin or hair colour, skin texture, and small height modifiers, or one moderate one, like significantly better eyes, or less all-encompassing neural modifications. You would have to think about that.
You had just passed three hours and you didn't even get to the most immediately relevant stuff! You'd almost gotten lost down the wikipedia rabbithole so many times, you felt like you had a lifetime of reading to d and could have spent months stuck inside VR, but...
You didn't want to be useless again and let that girl down. Not if you could avoid it.
First of all, where were you exactly?
Your local networks, fortunately, did have names and a little bit of searching... 'Kerean's Rest - ABg7yJRk0ylOW08', Kineja system, with only a single readily habitable and continuously inhabited planet and three more that were colonised, but had been hit by the virus attacks. Kinejan had lost 98% of its original population and been flooded by people looking for a home, most of the floating stations were still dead and being scavenged for materials. You were at the edge of Cvran space, in what used to be a military manufacturing system, but had never been rebuilt after the attack. There was even a destroyed military laboratory no one dared venture out to.
Kerean's Rest was an old station, several thousand years old in fact, hidden inside a large asteroid in the asteroid belt, that had closed its port in time and then been flooded by refugees. The system had collapsed far enough that not all births had been registered and it had only ever counted as peripheral to begin with. Cyvren control was weak. Most people weren't registered citizens and people from main Cyvren systems and other outlying ones were still streaming in to replace the lost population.
It would probably fall back under full Cyvren control in time but for now, it was still disorganised and organised crime had taken hold, especially in places like this one, which served as a hub for all sorts of things. People venturing out to find scrap or reactivate stations, goods being funneled in and out and yet more people using it as a hub to move outwards.
It was also reliant on food from outside because its population had swelled far past what the station could support itself and thus the surrounding stations - towed in or already present - served mainly as subsidiaries for just that.
You were starting to feel seriously sorry for Cavvie's family. They used to live on that planet after all. They probably used to be Citizens too.
But that brought you back to your last research topic.
What was up with the Rusted Needle, Avery Jekante and the Black Myr. Starting with the Needle.
Which was apparently an ancient spaceship, a hundreds of years old, rusty spaceship, but a spaceship nonetheless. It was already stripped of its engines long ago, but its hull at least was still recognizable and intact enough for its shape to give the whole building its name.
Jekante must have named his gang after the building they used as its headquarters. They had to have one more functioning spaceship, probably a smaller one, without as much armour and without the pointed shape of the needle. A Needle, which was actually just about fifteen minutes walking distance to where you were right this moment and about another thirty in walking and short-range transports from the spaceport itself, located at the ends and some of the centre section of the cylinder that made up the station.
That alone would give you at least a little bit of time to intercept, but from what you could figure out they had at least one somewhat sloppily armoured walker transport for at least part of the way.
But with enough people outside and some rough ideas about how the spaceship was built suggesting narrow corridors, you could probably take advantage of your strength and maybe some kind of shield to avoid getting shot and not have to deal with multiple opponents surrounding you. It also explained Cavvie's plan of sneaking in, but you had the suspicion that you would need their keys or worse some kind of scan to get what you wanted. It wasn't as if they had access to any purely military grade weaponry apart from maybe one plasmacaster.
Although a stray thought reminded you that apparently, you could pick at least some locks now. Huh.
You would still very much like to know what sort of spaceship they were going to use to take them away, for purely academic purposes. Not because you just discovered that you could absolutely fly one. Of course not.
The Black Myr though... the Black Myr gave you pause.
Black Myr was short for Black Myrhellion Syndicate. And the Black Myrhellion was a stolen Cyvren colony class vessel, Myrhellion type, a giant warship with the population or crew equivalent to an entire colony. A massive Behemoth carrying its own fleet of smaller ships, made to assault planets and push through blockades and they lost one.
During the attacks, with 99% of its crew dead from viruses, of course, but still. Pirates and smugglers had gotten in, cleared out the dead and retrofitted the possibly experimental titanic vessel for their purposes. Its warp drive made it not the fastest but certainly not slow either and worse, it had some form of insane camouflage technique reducing its footprint to make it damn near invisible while traveling.
The thing only moved maybe once a week or less, but it was still chilling. Armed to the point of being able to threaten whole planets and only really itself threatened by another ship of its own size, technological superiority or a very large fleet of smaller ships willing to sacrifice many of their number in the process.
It had been added to over the roughly two hundred years since it has been taken over, mismatched additions and factions warring inside, but it still served as the Syndicate's unassailable home base. The Cyvren Empire didn't attack it because doing so would likely cost them a colony class vessel as well and the syndicate didn't interfere with the empire too much because if they did, this calculation might change. But independent systems or poorly controlled ones were not so lucky.
The Black Myr were the biggest crime syndicate in the sector by mercy of that alone, no matter how fractured they might be. Involved in just about anything that would bring in money, with Reannon Azai as the current head and captain of the Black Myrhellion. A floating colony of anything illegal and profitable to do. The few pictures that you could find made it out to be some dark, mad, wonderland, at least if you didn't mind the people who probably had to suffer for it.
If Cavvie's brother was taken by them, getting him back would be infinitely more difficult.
When you took the helmet off, your hands shook slightly. Your citizen status should protect you, but...
Cavvie was impatiently tapping at a scratched tablet. What now?
[ ] Try to buy yourself a weapon
[ ] Visit the Needle and see if you can find more information instead
[ ] look up more information
- [ ] On what?
[ ] write in
Alice Hawkings
Status: Healthy
Currency:
9980 credits Cyvren Imperial
1000 credits Izane
2000 credits Echoton
CP: 0
Current random event chance: 30%
1-10, 11-25,96-100
Last edited:
1.5 Shopping trip!
Z488411
Scatterbrained
- Location
- Europa
[X] Try to buy yourself a weapon
1.5 Shopping Trip!
If you could, you would have curled up in your room and just not dealt with the world for a day. Put everything off until tomorrow, just read or spend time on the internet, because what you were about to do... what you were planning to do...
But you had no idea how to get to your room or home at all. Everything felt far too real.
There was no way any dream could be this realistic, but to go out and just... attack a bunch of gangsters? But if she didn't... Looking back at Cavvie. Thinking about what you now knew...
You weren't even armed. You didn't even have a knife, never mind a gun or any armour at all. But... would you be able to forgive yourself if you just stood back and let her kill herself. Get into the same situation as her brother? From what you read it didn't seem like a lie and she looked like she was barely eighteen. Could you live with yourself, if you thought you had a chance or could at least try to get one?
+1 Willpower
You softly lifted the helmet, disconnected your phone and slipped it back into your pocket. There was no way you could just forget what you read or even put it aside for long, but you didn't have much time. Your hands were shaking, tail flicking back and forth, like a caged animal, but even so, you had things to do. Didn't matter that you were just guessing at how to use this technology and only had the vaguest idea of what was possible in this world, you would either wake up or figure it out sooner or later. You told yourself you had things to do, even if you had to force yourself to move one step at a time. This could go wrong in so many ways...
But Cavvie looked up and smiled at you. Just as brittle as you felt and just as uncertain. You just hoped your issue didn't show on your face. Merai were supposed to be confident. Granted, you still didn't feel like much of a Merai, but you were trying to pretend to be one, so just don't think about it. You kept on going and smiled back, even if it felt just as fragile as hers.
"Hey. Are you okay?"
Cavvie nodded. There went your excuse. No matter how insecure you felt, you tried to steel yourself. You flexed your arms, then the rest of your body, tried to take solace in how light everything felt and breathed, almost making you miss her reply.
" I mean, I like her, I dunno what you're used to, you not being from around here and all, but I promise it's the best you can get for that price! And it'll be safe, I think. I've been there before and I think she's with a different bunch. I mean she's probably still Myr, but as long as you don't ask they're not going to do anything, they've got good stuff, and they won't ask for a passport or anything."
Right. More criminals. "You know your way around here better than I do, so I'll take your word for it." You swallowed. "I should have everything I need to know, We'll have to see what kind of weapons we can get but... I think..." It felt as if you'd swallowed your helmet. There was ice spreading through your limbs and you had to take a moment, but... you knew how to fight. You could see it in your mind's eye and feel it at the back of your head. You were in another world. You were maybe, possibly, even the protagonist.
You... you couldn't live with yourself, the you that stayed up until 5 am to read or watch anime or you that was looking at the girl's face. Maybe you at least wouldn't die doing something worthless.
+1 Willpower
"I think we might be able to do this. We'll have to see what we can buy but I was going to buy myself a new weapon anyway." And body armour if you could find any. Merai carried weapons often enough, right? At least out here, you liked to think they might and it was too late now anyway.
Cavvie was shifting from foot to foot, you could see the "You think so?" Her heart was still beating quite fast. Not reassured yet, but it wasn't too hard to interpret. You were confident you could have interpreted it even if she had been less obvious, but you put that out of your mind.
Later. All of this could wait.
She had put the tablet away, your tail was whipping back and forth behind you, she looked back and around one last time and then you suddenly had to keep up.
She slipped between the bodies far more easily than you did. You still misjudged how much power you put into your strides, bumping into people, almost losing track of her once or twice and desperately trying to avoid running into any more of them took up enough of your attention that only your ears honing in on her steps saved you from losing the girl entirely.
Even so, there was nothing subtle about the way you bounced or propelled yourself along the ground. Your ankles didn't even seem to notice those landings, but you shot up higher than any of them could have jumped at times and you really were leaping rather than running, awkwardly grabbing pipes and occasionally hugging a building, to the point where you were cursing gravity under your breath. And probably got quite a few amused stares too. Four levels up, one down, three lefts and one right, dodging pedestrians, one more left...
It had to be at least half an hour later, but your sides didn't sting yet. You were breathing harder, sure, but despite everything that didn't compare to Cavvie;'s panting (filling you with an incredible sense of satisfaction). You never knew how good not being out of shape felt. Actually, you were probably in pretty good shape even for a Merai, maybe you should find a mirror... No.
You had something you needed to do. Just because your heart was beating in your ears didn't mean you could just walk away. No matter how shady the place looked or how much you thought the place was armored to the teeth. Heavy steel shutters, bulletproof kind, and all. The tentacle-haired guy leaning against the wall in front of the shop made you think of some eldritch thing scrutinizing you with a hundred eyes, but his gaze just swept over you, his starkly pattered white, black and blue skin shifting its mosaic ever so slightly. He even seemed to have some more tendrils coming out of his back... and wore a pretty heavy looking coat, as well as carrying at least a pistol and some kind of rifle you couldn't identify, but had a fairly heavy back end combined with the narrow barrel.
Well. Cavvie was looking at him somewhat nervously, but no matter what else he was involved in, he did ignore her and you couldn't show weakness here. Didn't matter that he was almost two head taller than you. You just nodded and let your tail flick once before you got the thing under control and kept it from wrapping around your leg instead. Swallow, breathe and just walk in as if you weren't about to do something that almost had to be illegal. And might be legal only because the government of the station didn't even care enough to forbid it, because otherwise you genuinely hoped you would not be seeing something disturbingly like an assault rifle for sale.
Behind the counter was a woman of your own height. Hair braided back from multiple into just a single thick braid flowing over her shoulder and speckled with strands of colour against the dark blue of her hair. The armour she wore made you think organic instead of mechanical, dark muscles flowing over her body and ending at the neck, leaving only her fingers exposed, the gloves like empty husks of skin doubles of said hands still attached to the wrists. Her translucent skin and pale pink eyes with the dumbbell shaped pupils reminded you far too much of Cavvie to be a coincidence.
If Cavvie was a puffed up, panicked songbird, this was a hawk watching its prey or sizing up its rivals. You couldn't help but notice her eyes rest on your muscles for a moment. Those were some amazing cat eyes, but now really wasn't the time to feel inadequate about your own makeup skills.
"Your friend? She even has the right skin texture. We don't see your kind here too often, do we?" Okay, her smile was definitely predatory enough she had to have practiced in front of a mirror unless she was somehow born half tiger.
It felt like if you back down now she might pounce on you right then and there. You swallowed and straightened yourself as best as you could. Once this was over you were going to find a dark closet to hyperventilate in but right now you were the protagonist. You were good at this, you were the hero walking into trouble because you knew you could beat them. At least you could make them believe it and you needed those weapons.
"Look, we're just here to buy something. You don't mind if I look around, do you?"
"Mmm... I think I do. You see, Cavuera here is telling me you're fine, but I can't just go around arming someone who's going to turn around, bring some friends and shoots up my shop, can I? This stuff is expensive to replace after all." She was lazily tapping on the counter somewhere, but your attention was too caught up on her smile to care. She managed equal parts affection and poison entirely too well for your liking.
"Er." Think. What would Han Solo do? "Don't you think if I were involved in your kind of business you would have heard of me?" You invested your smile with every bit of the confidence you didn't feel.
The woman just extended a hand, but she was too focused on you to properly look at her nails. Her heart was beating a bit faster than it should have as well... "I suppose. But you're not necessarily involved in the same things I am? You sure look like a proper Imperial after all..." Her pupils were shifting minutely like she was trying to focus through you and somehow dissect you with her gaze.
"Somehow I doubt the Empire cares enough about this place right now. If they did, they would have sent more than one person... and I'd imagine if that had happened you would have heard of it too, right?" There was absolutely no way she couldn't see that you were nervous too, but you couldn't back out now. Fuck this was such a bad idea...
But the woman nodded slowly. Her eyes were still running over your features one last time, but then she leaned back. "I suppose I would have. But you understand it's rare to see any pure-blooded Merai around here, I would be foolish not to be careful, wouldn't I?"
Too far in to back out, too far in to back out. You're Han Solo. "But we're not just Imperial drones, are we? Isn't that a bit racist?" The closest thing you could manage anyway, because you had absolutely no idea how to flirt with women and you would die.
The woman scoffed and then sighed. "I suppose not. Call me Vaierja, stay away from any blue rings and we're not going to have a problem. Get rid of some needles and I might even be grateful." This smile at least was less predatory. And with a nod, you could finally look around.
You couldn't believe you pulled this off. Hell, Cavvie looked surprised too.
There was definitely enough on display to make for a hard decision, from monocles that promised to let you see through walls over reconnaissance drones, a clawed drone that looked more than unpleasant and some kind of extra soles for your shoes over armoured jackets and coats to swords, suspiciously high tech brass knuckles, even more suspicious hilts and pistols ver to one actual assault rifle and something that may well be an actual flame thrower. Out in the open.
You definitely had questions and you had no idea whether you wanted forcefields to be real in this place or not.
But first of all...
Vote for anything you want to get as long as it fits your budget.
Melee weapons:
[ ] Nanotube steel knife - a knife with a blade a little longer than your hand, black, sturdy and inconspicuous, but probably pretty sharp - 30 Imperial credits
[ ] Steel baton - is a blunt weapon, less lethal but with your strength still probably lethal enough - 30 Imperial Credits
[ ] segmented staff - three batons or a single staff, all made of steel - 50 Imperial Credits
[ ] Electrified Brass knuckles - a bruiser and a taser all in one - 100 Imperial Credits
[ ] Electrified Blade - a stabber and a taser all in one! - 250 Imperial Credits
[ ] Plasma Blade - Well this looks lethal. A sword with a plasma producing edge. Makes you feel like a real anime protagonist - 1000 Imperial Credits
[ ] Semi-intelligent, electrified grappling chain - for all your bondage needs and works for subduing enemies too. - 1200 Imperial Credits
[ ] write in
Ranged weapons:
[ ] Looks like a standard handgun - Marked as kinetic and supersonic and takes surprisingly familiar kinds of bullets - 120 Imperial Credits
[ ] Coilgun, handgun - Marked as Kinetic, subsonic and supersonic, takes steel balls for slugs and requires batteries - 250 Imperial Credits
[ ] Taser - An electric pistol, minus the wires you are used to, requires specialized cartridges but can fit twelve of those into its handle, also requires batteries and is short to medium ranged, not lethal - 300 Imperial Credits
[ ] Plasmacaster - requires batteries, definitely lethal and subsonic - 3000 Imperial Credits
[ ] submachine gun - kinetic and supersonic, takes the same bullets as the handgun above. You're oddly reassured that these types of guns still exist, bigger than a handgun - 500 Imperial Credits
[ ] Assault rifle - definitely obvious, still kinetic and supersonic, takes different cartridges, but with your strength might still count as one-handed - 2000 Imperial Credits
[ ] Coilgun, rifle - bigger batteries, subsonic and supersonic, armour piercing capabilities, still takes steel balls for slugs, looks like what the guy in front is carrying - 3000 Imperial Credits
[ ] Plasma rifle - This thing scares you and kind of excites you, definitely obvious, takes batteries, definitely armour piercing, still subsonic or at least won't create any loud sonic booms - 5000 Imperial Credits
[ ] Lightning caster - Produces arcs of electricity, probably pretty obvious and loud. Lethal or nonlethal has big batteries, makes you want to take it and cackle - 6500 Imperial Credits
[ ] Portable high powered laser - like a lightsaber, with no range limit. Point and click, in a scarily literal way, has no kick and is silent, is also very lethal, runs on batteries and can only fire continuous beams for five seconds at once. Has beam mode and single shot mode, can't possibly be legal to carry anywhere - 20000 Imperial Credits - you will need to negotiate for this.
[ ] Flamethrower - is a flamethrower, requires fuel, sets things on fire. Also makes you want to cackle. 5000 Imperial Credits
[ ] write in
Armour:
[ ] Stab proof vest - is stab proof but far less unwieldy than you are used to, also bullet resistant. - 150 Imperial Credits
[ ] Bullet resistant, heat resistant jacket, less stab resistant - 300 Imperial Credits
[ ] Bullet resistant, heat resistant, electricity resistant, somewhat stab resistant coat with internal reflectors - makes your inner goth and matrix fan squee, comes in black, grey, brown, red and blue - 1000 Imperial Credits
[ ] Leather? Armor suit - looks like a motorcycle suit, more protective against bullets and knives, just as heat proof as the coat but has no reflectors and the same electricity resistance, probably breathes less - 1500 Imperial Credits
[ ] Somewhat organic looking armour - all around protection and some strength augmentation, is what Vaierja wears, you probably don't need this, but would t be for you? - 6000 Imperial Credits
[ ] Exoskeleton - serious armour, more serious strength modifier, seriously obvious, currently delayed - 20000 Imperial Credits
[ ] write in
Accessories:
[ ] Portable EMP - knocks out electrical devices in the area, including yours, not including all guns of that variety. - 150 Imperial Credits
[ ] Smoke grenade - 50 Imperial Credits
[ ] Tear gas - 100 Imperial Credits
[ ] Incendiary grenade - 50 Imperial Credits
[ ] Fragmentation Grenade - 100 Imperial Credits
[ ] Spy drone - beetle sized drone complete with camera and heat vision, controlled with your favourite electronic device - 800 Imperial Credits
[ ] Small armed drone - about the size of your head, with a built in coilgun, has hands, is sort of cute - 1500 Imperial Credits
[ ] see-through-walls monocle - sees through walls, gives you that great steampunk and cyberpunk feel - 2000 Imperial Credits
[ ] medium armed drone - this looks a bit like a cross between a spider and a monkey, if monkeys had head mounted guns. Has four spider like legs, a long prehensile tail, two hands and is also sort of cute. Like an adorable murderpet. - 5000 Imperial Credits
[ ] Optical redirection cloak - makes you blurry when moving and nearly invisible when you're not, makes you feel like you're playing Skyrim again - 8000 Imperial Credits
[ ] write in
All write ins need to be approved
You were pretty sure there had to be a maniacal grin tugging at your lips. This was completely and utterly insane, but you were already so far out of your comfort zone that it wasn't even funny anymore and feeling way too floaty to care. You may or may not have flipped from being terrified to plain shock and you'd be having a meltdown later, but right now?
You were carrying your loot to the counter. Hopefully, those guys at the needle had some credits you could take, you were absolutely not going to think about the fact that you'd never been in a real fight in your life and now you were going to...
[ ] Find a hotel room, sit down, distribute the weapons and plan.
- [ ] Plan ideas (write in)
[ ] Go out and buy something else
- [ ] What are you getting? Write in.
[ ] Stash your new equipment in a hotel room and have a look at the needle.
Alice Hawkings
Status: Healthy, Dissociated
Currency:
9980 credits Cyvren Imperial
1000 credits Izane
2000 credits Echoton
CP: 0
Current random event chance: 35%
1-11, 12-29,95-100
Edit: writing in all sorts of scifi ish stuff is fine, I might just veto it or change the price.
1.5 Shopping Trip!
If you could, you would have curled up in your room and just not dealt with the world for a day. Put everything off until tomorrow, just read or spend time on the internet, because what you were about to do... what you were planning to do...
But you had no idea how to get to your room or home at all. Everything felt far too real.
There was no way any dream could be this realistic, but to go out and just... attack a bunch of gangsters? But if she didn't... Looking back at Cavvie. Thinking about what you now knew...
You weren't even armed. You didn't even have a knife, never mind a gun or any armour at all. But... would you be able to forgive yourself if you just stood back and let her kill herself. Get into the same situation as her brother? From what you read it didn't seem like a lie and she looked like she was barely eighteen. Could you live with yourself, if you thought you had a chance or could at least try to get one?
+1 Willpower
You softly lifted the helmet, disconnected your phone and slipped it back into your pocket. There was no way you could just forget what you read or even put it aside for long, but you didn't have much time. Your hands were shaking, tail flicking back and forth, like a caged animal, but even so, you had things to do. Didn't matter that you were just guessing at how to use this technology and only had the vaguest idea of what was possible in this world, you would either wake up or figure it out sooner or later. You told yourself you had things to do, even if you had to force yourself to move one step at a time. This could go wrong in so many ways...
But Cavvie looked up and smiled at you. Just as brittle as you felt and just as uncertain. You just hoped your issue didn't show on your face. Merai were supposed to be confident. Granted, you still didn't feel like much of a Merai, but you were trying to pretend to be one, so just don't think about it. You kept on going and smiled back, even if it felt just as fragile as hers.
"Hey. Are you okay?"
Cavvie nodded. There went your excuse. No matter how insecure you felt, you tried to steel yourself. You flexed your arms, then the rest of your body, tried to take solace in how light everything felt and breathed, almost making you miss her reply.
" I mean, I like her, I dunno what you're used to, you not being from around here and all, but I promise it's the best you can get for that price! And it'll be safe, I think. I've been there before and I think she's with a different bunch. I mean she's probably still Myr, but as long as you don't ask they're not going to do anything, they've got good stuff, and they won't ask for a passport or anything."
Right. More criminals. "You know your way around here better than I do, so I'll take your word for it." You swallowed. "I should have everything I need to know, We'll have to see what kind of weapons we can get but... I think..." It felt as if you'd swallowed your helmet. There was ice spreading through your limbs and you had to take a moment, but... you knew how to fight. You could see it in your mind's eye and feel it at the back of your head. You were in another world. You were maybe, possibly, even the protagonist.
You... you couldn't live with yourself, the you that stayed up until 5 am to read or watch anime or you that was looking at the girl's face. Maybe you at least wouldn't die doing something worthless.
+1 Willpower
"I think we might be able to do this. We'll have to see what we can buy but I was going to buy myself a new weapon anyway." And body armour if you could find any. Merai carried weapons often enough, right? At least out here, you liked to think they might and it was too late now anyway.
Cavvie was shifting from foot to foot, you could see the "You think so?" Her heart was still beating quite fast. Not reassured yet, but it wasn't too hard to interpret. You were confident you could have interpreted it even if she had been less obvious, but you put that out of your mind.
Later. All of this could wait.
She had put the tablet away, your tail was whipping back and forth behind you, she looked back and around one last time and then you suddenly had to keep up.
She slipped between the bodies far more easily than you did. You still misjudged how much power you put into your strides, bumping into people, almost losing track of her once or twice and desperately trying to avoid running into any more of them took up enough of your attention that only your ears honing in on her steps saved you from losing the girl entirely.
Even so, there was nothing subtle about the way you bounced or propelled yourself along the ground. Your ankles didn't even seem to notice those landings, but you shot up higher than any of them could have jumped at times and you really were leaping rather than running, awkwardly grabbing pipes and occasionally hugging a building, to the point where you were cursing gravity under your breath. And probably got quite a few amused stares too. Four levels up, one down, three lefts and one right, dodging pedestrians, one more left...
It had to be at least half an hour later, but your sides didn't sting yet. You were breathing harder, sure, but despite everything that didn't compare to Cavvie;'s panting (filling you with an incredible sense of satisfaction). You never knew how good not being out of shape felt. Actually, you were probably in pretty good shape even for a Merai, maybe you should find a mirror... No.
You had something you needed to do. Just because your heart was beating in your ears didn't mean you could just walk away. No matter how shady the place looked or how much you thought the place was armored to the teeth. Heavy steel shutters, bulletproof kind, and all. The tentacle-haired guy leaning against the wall in front of the shop made you think of some eldritch thing scrutinizing you with a hundred eyes, but his gaze just swept over you, his starkly pattered white, black and blue skin shifting its mosaic ever so slightly. He even seemed to have some more tendrils coming out of his back... and wore a pretty heavy looking coat, as well as carrying at least a pistol and some kind of rifle you couldn't identify, but had a fairly heavy back end combined with the narrow barrel.
Well. Cavvie was looking at him somewhat nervously, but no matter what else he was involved in, he did ignore her and you couldn't show weakness here. Didn't matter that he was almost two head taller than you. You just nodded and let your tail flick once before you got the thing under control and kept it from wrapping around your leg instead. Swallow, breathe and just walk in as if you weren't about to do something that almost had to be illegal. And might be legal only because the government of the station didn't even care enough to forbid it, because otherwise you genuinely hoped you would not be seeing something disturbingly like an assault rifle for sale.
Behind the counter was a woman of your own height. Hair braided back from multiple into just a single thick braid flowing over her shoulder and speckled with strands of colour against the dark blue of her hair. The armour she wore made you think organic instead of mechanical, dark muscles flowing over her body and ending at the neck, leaving only her fingers exposed, the gloves like empty husks of skin doubles of said hands still attached to the wrists. Her translucent skin and pale pink eyes with the dumbbell shaped pupils reminded you far too much of Cavvie to be a coincidence.
If Cavvie was a puffed up, panicked songbird, this was a hawk watching its prey or sizing up its rivals. You couldn't help but notice her eyes rest on your muscles for a moment. Those were some amazing cat eyes, but now really wasn't the time to feel inadequate about your own makeup skills.
"Your friend? She even has the right skin texture. We don't see your kind here too often, do we?" Okay, her smile was definitely predatory enough she had to have practiced in front of a mirror unless she was somehow born half tiger.
It felt like if you back down now she might pounce on you right then and there. You swallowed and straightened yourself as best as you could. Once this was over you were going to find a dark closet to hyperventilate in but right now you were the protagonist. You were good at this, you were the hero walking into trouble because you knew you could beat them. At least you could make them believe it and you needed those weapons.
"Look, we're just here to buy something. You don't mind if I look around, do you?"
"Mmm... I think I do. You see, Cavuera here is telling me you're fine, but I can't just go around arming someone who's going to turn around, bring some friends and shoots up my shop, can I? This stuff is expensive to replace after all." She was lazily tapping on the counter somewhere, but your attention was too caught up on her smile to care. She managed equal parts affection and poison entirely too well for your liking.
"Er." Think. What would Han Solo do? "Don't you think if I were involved in your kind of business you would have heard of me?" You invested your smile with every bit of the confidence you didn't feel.
The woman just extended a hand, but she was too focused on you to properly look at her nails. Her heart was beating a bit faster than it should have as well... "I suppose. But you're not necessarily involved in the same things I am? You sure look like a proper Imperial after all..." Her pupils were shifting minutely like she was trying to focus through you and somehow dissect you with her gaze.
"Somehow I doubt the Empire cares enough about this place right now. If they did, they would have sent more than one person... and I'd imagine if that had happened you would have heard of it too, right?" There was absolutely no way she couldn't see that you were nervous too, but you couldn't back out now. Fuck this was such a bad idea...
But the woman nodded slowly. Her eyes were still running over your features one last time, but then she leaned back. "I suppose I would have. But you understand it's rare to see any pure-blooded Merai around here, I would be foolish not to be careful, wouldn't I?"
Too far in to back out, too far in to back out. You're Han Solo. "But we're not just Imperial drones, are we? Isn't that a bit racist?" The closest thing you could manage anyway, because you had absolutely no idea how to flirt with women and you would die.
The woman scoffed and then sighed. "I suppose not. Call me Vaierja, stay away from any blue rings and we're not going to have a problem. Get rid of some needles and I might even be grateful." This smile at least was less predatory. And with a nod, you could finally look around.
You couldn't believe you pulled this off. Hell, Cavvie looked surprised too.
There was definitely enough on display to make for a hard decision, from monocles that promised to let you see through walls over reconnaissance drones, a clawed drone that looked more than unpleasant and some kind of extra soles for your shoes over armoured jackets and coats to swords, suspiciously high tech brass knuckles, even more suspicious hilts and pistols ver to one actual assault rifle and something that may well be an actual flame thrower. Out in the open.
You definitely had questions and you had no idea whether you wanted forcefields to be real in this place or not.
But first of all...
Vote for anything you want to get as long as it fits your budget.
Melee weapons:
[ ] Nanotube steel knife - a knife with a blade a little longer than your hand, black, sturdy and inconspicuous, but probably pretty sharp - 30 Imperial credits
[ ] Steel baton - is a blunt weapon, less lethal but with your strength still probably lethal enough - 30 Imperial Credits
[ ] segmented staff - three batons or a single staff, all made of steel - 50 Imperial Credits
[ ] Electrified Brass knuckles - a bruiser and a taser all in one - 100 Imperial Credits
[ ] Electrified Blade - a stabber and a taser all in one! - 250 Imperial Credits
[ ] Plasma Blade - Well this looks lethal. A sword with a plasma producing edge. Makes you feel like a real anime protagonist - 1000 Imperial Credits
[ ] Semi-intelligent, electrified grappling chain - for all your bondage needs and works for subduing enemies too. - 1200 Imperial Credits
[ ] write in
Ranged weapons:
[ ] Looks like a standard handgun - Marked as kinetic and supersonic and takes surprisingly familiar kinds of bullets - 120 Imperial Credits
[ ] Coilgun, handgun - Marked as Kinetic, subsonic and supersonic, takes steel balls for slugs and requires batteries - 250 Imperial Credits
[ ] Taser - An electric pistol, minus the wires you are used to, requires specialized cartridges but can fit twelve of those into its handle, also requires batteries and is short to medium ranged, not lethal - 300 Imperial Credits
[ ] Plasmacaster - requires batteries, definitely lethal and subsonic - 3000 Imperial Credits
[ ] submachine gun - kinetic and supersonic, takes the same bullets as the handgun above. You're oddly reassured that these types of guns still exist, bigger than a handgun - 500 Imperial Credits
[ ] Assault rifle - definitely obvious, still kinetic and supersonic, takes different cartridges, but with your strength might still count as one-handed - 2000 Imperial Credits
[ ] Coilgun, rifle - bigger batteries, subsonic and supersonic, armour piercing capabilities, still takes steel balls for slugs, looks like what the guy in front is carrying - 3000 Imperial Credits
[ ] Plasma rifle - This thing scares you and kind of excites you, definitely obvious, takes batteries, definitely armour piercing, still subsonic or at least won't create any loud sonic booms - 5000 Imperial Credits
[ ] Lightning caster - Produces arcs of electricity, probably pretty obvious and loud. Lethal or nonlethal has big batteries, makes you want to take it and cackle - 6500 Imperial Credits
[ ] Portable high powered laser - like a lightsaber, with no range limit. Point and click, in a scarily literal way, has no kick and is silent, is also very lethal, runs on batteries and can only fire continuous beams for five seconds at once. Has beam mode and single shot mode, can't possibly be legal to carry anywhere - 20000 Imperial Credits - you will need to negotiate for this.
[ ] Flamethrower - is a flamethrower, requires fuel, sets things on fire. Also makes you want to cackle. 5000 Imperial Credits
[ ] write in
Armour:
[ ] Stab proof vest - is stab proof but far less unwieldy than you are used to, also bullet resistant. - 150 Imperial Credits
[ ] Bullet resistant, heat resistant jacket, less stab resistant - 300 Imperial Credits
[ ] Bullet resistant, heat resistant, electricity resistant, somewhat stab resistant coat with internal reflectors - makes your inner goth and matrix fan squee, comes in black, grey, brown, red and blue - 1000 Imperial Credits
[ ] Leather? Armor suit - looks like a motorcycle suit, more protective against bullets and knives, just as heat proof as the coat but has no reflectors and the same electricity resistance, probably breathes less - 1500 Imperial Credits
[ ] Somewhat organic looking armour - all around protection and some strength augmentation, is what Vaierja wears, you probably don't need this, but would t be for you? - 6000 Imperial Credits
[ ] Exoskeleton - serious armour, more serious strength modifier, seriously obvious, currently delayed - 20000 Imperial Credits
[ ] write in
Accessories:
[ ] Portable EMP - knocks out electrical devices in the area, including yours, not including all guns of that variety. - 150 Imperial Credits
[ ] Smoke grenade - 50 Imperial Credits
[ ] Tear gas - 100 Imperial Credits
[ ] Incendiary grenade - 50 Imperial Credits
[ ] Fragmentation Grenade - 100 Imperial Credits
[ ] Spy drone - beetle sized drone complete with camera and heat vision, controlled with your favourite electronic device - 800 Imperial Credits
[ ] Small armed drone - about the size of your head, with a built in coilgun, has hands, is sort of cute - 1500 Imperial Credits
[ ] see-through-walls monocle - sees through walls, gives you that great steampunk and cyberpunk feel - 2000 Imperial Credits
[ ] medium armed drone - this looks a bit like a cross between a spider and a monkey, if monkeys had head mounted guns. Has four spider like legs, a long prehensile tail, two hands and is also sort of cute. Like an adorable murderpet. - 5000 Imperial Credits
[ ] Optical redirection cloak - makes you blurry when moving and nearly invisible when you're not, makes you feel like you're playing Skyrim again - 8000 Imperial Credits
[ ] write in
All write ins need to be approved
You were pretty sure there had to be a maniacal grin tugging at your lips. This was completely and utterly insane, but you were already so far out of your comfort zone that it wasn't even funny anymore and feeling way too floaty to care. You may or may not have flipped from being terrified to plain shock and you'd be having a meltdown later, but right now?
You were carrying your loot to the counter. Hopefully, those guys at the needle had some credits you could take, you were absolutely not going to think about the fact that you'd never been in a real fight in your life and now you were going to...
[ ] Find a hotel room, sit down, distribute the weapons and plan.
- [ ] Plan ideas (write in)
[ ] Go out and buy something else
- [ ] What are you getting? Write in.
[ ] Stash your new equipment in a hotel room and have a look at the needle.
Alice Hawkings
Status: Healthy, Dissociated
Currency:
9980 credits Cyvren Imperial
1000 credits Izane
2000 credits Echoton
CP: 0
Current random event chance: 35%
1-11, 12-29,95-100
Edit: writing in all sorts of scifi ish stuff is fine, I might just veto it or change the price.
Last edited:
[X] Electrified Blade - a stabber and a taser all in one! - 250 Imperial Credits
[X] Assault rifle - definitely obvious, still kinetic and supersonic, takes different cartridges, but with your strength might still count as one-handed - 2000 Imperial Credits
[X] Leather? Armor suit - looks like a motorcycle suit, more protective against bullets and knives, just as heat proof as the coat but has no reflectors and the same electricity resistance, probably breathes less - 1500 Imperial Credits
[X] Spy drone - beetle sized drone complete with camera and heat vision, controlled with your favourite electronic device - 800 Imperial Credits
[X] see-through-walls monocle - sees through walls, gives you that great steampunk and cyberpunk feel - 2000 Imperial Credits
[X] Smoke grenade - 50 Imperial Credits
[X] Incendiary grenade - 50 Imperial Credits
[X] Find a hotel room, sit down, distribute the weapons and plan.
[X] Assault rifle - definitely obvious, still kinetic and supersonic, takes different cartridges, but with your strength might still count as one-handed - 2000 Imperial Credits
[X] Leather? Armor suit - looks like a motorcycle suit, more protective against bullets and knives, just as heat proof as the coat but has no reflectors and the same electricity resistance, probably breathes less - 1500 Imperial Credits
[X] Spy drone - beetle sized drone complete with camera and heat vision, controlled with your favourite electronic device - 800 Imperial Credits
[X] see-through-walls monocle - sees through walls, gives you that great steampunk and cyberpunk feel - 2000 Imperial Credits
[X] Smoke grenade - 50 Imperial Credits
[X] Incendiary grenade - 50 Imperial Credits
[X] Find a hotel room, sit down, distribute the weapons and plan.