Vox Vitae: Warhammer AI quest
- Thread starter Neablis
- Start date
- Mature Sci-Fi
meianmaru
The Devourer of Fiction
It must be, considering that we get a discount to demonology research as long as we have Bongo. Which is why I want its cage made extra sturdy, alongside with the warp research lab.
Boarding torpedoes? That's your worry? Boarding torpedoes are rare and easily countered. (Okay, boarding torpedoes aren't rare in our specific mileau, I have to admit. Tyranid use exclusively boarding torpedoes, all space marines and chaos space marines ships (not all chaos ships!) have them, orks don't always but can have them.)
They do have, over regular torpedoes, the limited virtue of being able to maneuver, so they are technically capable of making a long range shot - like boarding shuttles. However, they're less agile than shuttles, so it's possible for a ship to dodge their final approach and let them shoot off into the endless void.
Also like boarding shuttles, they're a mass of vulnerabilities otherwise and some extras too. They can be massacred by fighters and shot down by point defense, and are equally or more vulnerable in that compared to full shuttles. (They are, where present, launched in larger volumes.) They can also be forcibly intercepted by other ships, if you're really worried - torpedoes don't have much target selectivity.
In the games purely outrunning them isn't usually an option, but in real space it might be - our command ships can be anywhere in the system, and torpedoes don't have endless endurance. The only problem with it running away from the main group creates exposure to ambush, so it's a last resort. That said, running to buy more time for fighters to clean up a shoal of boarding torpedoes sure is an option.
If you manage to not stop them before getting boarded despite their vulnerability, well, we're actually pretty strong when it comes to being boarded if we want to be! A stand-off command ship, with no intention of contributing directly to the fighting, would absolutely have our heavy boarding preparations and one or more troop bays full of security. I'd probably fill the spare space after buying boarding defenses and point defense (and maybe a sensor package) with fighter bays, which can provide both standoff fleet support and self defense against standoff attack. Add a nova cannon if you've really got spare room, of course, but that can be left out too.
And for the trouble of dedicating a ship (or two for a major group that needs redundancy) per fleet this way? You get space battles where your attrition is bloodless. Your elite OMC ship operators live to fight another day every day, and you need only BP to replace any losses you suffer.
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*looks over at entire Splinter Fleets getting taken out like that in canon* I think you are underestimating 40K's... 40K-ness. The Hive Fleet has a lot of small craft equivalent bio-forms, the strategy still works. If something sounds like a plan from an schlocky 80s action movie especially if it involves Marines assume that it has an unreasonable chance of working at least until countered by heroes or elites of some kind.
Don't expect our game to reenact all the most nonsense parts of the Black Library. They might be technically possible, maybe, but that doesn't mean they'll happen.
Remember that we absolutely dunked Chaos Space Marines with the very modest point defense on the Spark plus fighter cover. They launched at gunnery ranges from a heavy carrier and only the teleport strike got aboard. And most of those got wiped by our not-good-at-boarding-combat bots before they reached Cia. With us having medium boarding preparations, not heavy.
(Also, that's some ultra nonsense. Boarding Tyranids as a bad, bad day.)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
No, there absolutely were boarding craft that got aboard.
And this was just Chaos Cultist who are rather mid at boarding without Daemons, there's still Tyranids and Orkz out there who are a lot better at it with the former making it their main method of attack. And the Necrons can also be pretty dangerous boarders if they decide to do so.
The Horus Heresy is nonsense from Black Library, so is the Great Crusade. It is a core conceit of the setting and the most rock solid history it has that that the universe really does work like that.
meianmaru
The Devourer of Fiction
...A thought occurs. @Neablis, can we get and use a boon in the plan for the next turn from "Give them the capability for interstellar travel and your knowledge of the local stars"? Because we don't even have to research anything, its just an immediate transfer of information.
Anyway, I was just thinking it could be a good addition to LL's plan, so that we get to upgrade all of our shielding and also have more to spare.
Anyway, I was just thinking it could be a good addition to LL's plan, so that we get to upgrade all of our shielding and also have more to spare.
Don't think so. We could technically crit fail the Abacus and that's part of that we are offering for the boon.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Discussed this with you over Discord, but so everyone else is in the loop: as a Delta and possibly higher, their PPE requirements are likewise higher.
And if he goes with Alectai's prompt, then this delta in particular is an active and ongoing target of scrying from out of system.
IMO I'm taking a risk not buffing up the living quarters as it is.
I am confident that the weapons of a grand cruiser are up to the task of silencing a demon before it can breach the warp lab's shields.
Point of order, we had to direct our lances at the space marine boarding shuttles, and the rest of them were mostly handled by the fighter craft that W had been saving for a rainy day, which the chaos war band hadn't known about.
And some of those boarders still got through anyways. Cia set off explosives inside our own ship to cut them down to size.
Expecting 40k not to 40k at us is... Not likely to work out. By all means, let's not go full narrative logic here, but the staple features of the 40k space opera aesthetic? Expect that to continue to be viable.
It also might let us tread water so to speak on getting them a fleet faster so we can pick up rather than miss that "gave them a defense fleet" boon. I like it!
Victan could smooth that over with a "we get it for you next turn". He's on alliance building, after all, and we CAN trade in promises - they know Vita's good for it.
Failing even that... Benevolent QM interpretation, and it's also an answered question if a ship can be designed to use an abacus without having made the abacus itself yet (yes), even if it's an open question whether or not that ship can be built, and the abacus built and inserted afterwards.
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meianmaru
The Devourer of Fiction
Ah. I somehow momentarily forgot that the Abacus manufacturing research is not done. Nvm.
I am not saying to ignore boarding attacks! I am saying that they are a manageable threat, which is extremely solid 40k canon as many fleets manage with poor to bad boarding play. And I am proposing to use all the best countermeasures that exist.
I am dismissive of the idea that boarding attacks make it impossible for us to protect a load-bearing command ship, not that boarding attacks are something we have to deal with.
We did pick out and specifically target "special" boarding shuttles, which based on the lack of mention of them subsequently seem to have removed any ones with Space Marines in. But good correction.
- Location
- Earth
Shuttles are for the troop transport only, I think.
Should also research boarding tech for that one.
- Location
- Norway
Posted this earlier as a suggestion for one of the hulls we have floating around
Light Cruiser, 75 RP, 200 CP, 8 ship construction slots (1800 BP, 4000x600 meters (light carrier)
Engines: 5 gravities (300)
Shields: Medium (300)
Armor: Medium (200)
Hull equipment:
Warp drive (200)
Void Abacus (200)
Psychic Shielding (400)
Living space (350)
Non-Combat equipment:
Troop compartment (50)
Medical bay x2 (50 BP)
Combat Equipment
High-Maneuverability thrusters (200)
Medium-Boarder preparations (200)
Weapons:
Point defense x2 (100)
Heavy lance x1 (400)
Fighters x9 (900)
Cramming (1800/1800)
Cost 1800 (hull) + 800 (engines, armor, shields) + 1150 (hull equipment) + 400 (Combat equipment) + 1260 (1400*0,9 weapons) + 100 (Non-Combat equipment) = 5510
Engines: 5 gravities (300)
Shields: Medium (300)
Armor: Medium (200)
Hull equipment:
Warp drive (200)
Void Abacus (200)
Psychic Shielding (400)
Living space (350)
Non-Combat equipment:
Troop compartment (50)
Medical bay x2 (50 BP)
Combat Equipment
High-Maneuverability thrusters (200)
Medium-Boarder preparations (200)
Weapons:
Point defense x2 (100)
Heavy lance x1 (400)
Fighters x9 (900)
Cramming (1800/1800)
Cost 1800 (hull) + 800 (engines, armor, shields) + 1150 (hull equipment) + 400 (Combat equipment) + 1260 (1400*0,9 weapons) + 100 (Non-Combat equipment) = 5510
AFAIK "fighters" are just hangar space for a certain CP amount of fighter sized crafts, so their loadout is designed seperately and could be bombers or something else, while shuttles are specifically to ship BP around and don't seem useful for a carrier.
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It's interesting to note that 40k space combat games have flexible hangars, but we don't.
I would probably focus on fighters and bombers on a general carrier, at least with current bot levels, and have a separate rarer design specializing in boarding shuttles and troop bays for when we need that.
Not sure why medical bays on that ship? Also it's strictly defensive with all fighters though that's a valid choice.
Fighters are not fungible strike craft space, I don't think. EDIT: we need to design bombers and research boarding to unlock those as loadouts.
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- Location
- Norway
Low cost on the medical bay and it's designed with a living space so it's there to cater to its crew and its pilots. Fighters are described as
"Fighters 100 BP, 50 CP. Parasite craft with short-ranged guns and some missile capability. Basic stealth automatically applied."
while under small craft you can design:
"25 RP - Bomber (20 BP, 5 CP) Sometimes you want to deliver cargo to your enemies. Can deliver a fair amount of ordinance to a target in atmosphere or out of it. Unlocks a bomber hanger attachment for ships.
25 RP - Fighter (20 BP, 5 CP) These fighters have twin-linked lascannons to attack ground and orbital targets, and can carry a couple of small bombs. Requires a spaceport for rapid launch and rearming."
There is no slot for "bombers" under weapon design, seems like we have to design a bomber first, but I'm presuming that both fighters and bombers will take comperable space in a design.
- Location
- Earth
Cramming only applies to the space inside the hull, you still gotta pay the full non-cramming cost.
Also why the Living Space? Denva now does have Void OMC, so it's unneeded. And not having it saves BP.
Also why the Living Space? Denva now does have Void OMC, so it's unneeded. And not having it saves BP.
There is no slot for bombers because we can design bombers but never did, AIUI.
I agree they will take comparable space.
- Location
- Norway
oh yeah, this is an old version, doesn't seem like my notepad document updated. I had the cramming rules confused with the cost rules, and thought that we got a discount on the cost not the cramming. Two sec and I'll update it.
Light Cruiser, 75 RP, 200 CP, 8 ship construction slots (1800 BP, 4000x600 meters (light carrier)
Engines: 5 gravities (300)
Shields: Medium (300)
Armor: Medium (200)
Hull equipment:
Warp drive (200)
Void Abacus (200)
Psychic Shielding (400)
Non-Combat equipment:
Troop compartment (50)
Combat Equipment
High-Maneuverability thrusters (200)
Medium-Boarder preparations (200)
Weapons:
Point defense x2 (100)
Heavy lance x1 (400)
Fighters x10 (1000)
Cramming (1750/1800) (1500*0,9+400=1750)
Cost 1800 (hull) + 800 (engines, armor, shields) + 800 (hull equipment) + 400 (Combat equipment) + 1500 (weapons) + 50 (Non-Combat equipment) = 5350
Engines: 5 gravities (300)
Shields: Medium (300)
Armor: Medium (200)
Hull equipment:
Warp drive (200)
Void Abacus (200)
Psychic Shielding (400)
Non-Combat equipment:
Troop compartment (50)
Combat Equipment
High-Maneuverability thrusters (200)
Medium-Boarder preparations (200)
Weapons:
Point defense x2 (100)
Heavy lance x1 (400)
Fighters x10 (1000)
Cramming (1750/1800) (1500*0,9+400=1750)
Cost 1800 (hull) + 800 (engines, armor, shields) + 800 (hull equipment) + 400 (Combat equipment) + 1500 (weapons) + 50 (Non-Combat equipment) = 5350
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The Silver Princess - [Canon]
New
avatar11792
Et Sic Incipit
- Location
- Planet Earth, North America
Omake: The Silver Princess, AKA The Quest For Chocolate And Hope
Gwendolyn Kytante could not remember a time when the dark times had not existed. Her parents had described a world to her of promise and wonder, of the world liberated from rigid oppression and sterile conformity, of a civilization ready to take its place in the Stars, ready to rise and claim a position for itself among the cosmic order in the many hostile powers lurking in the void.
Some of the darkness had come home, a warship large enough to see in the sky at points during the morning and sunset, looming above like a sword of doom. Drop pods had rain down, bringing monsters, demons, and people driven to madness. Her parents that described an Age of Terror beginning then when she had been but a child a few years old.
That Age had persisted for years, until their savior, the Explorator Vitae, had returned from their sojourn into the void. The darkness had been broken, a single night of fire and fury making the night sky turn bright as day, the enemy ship shattered into glowing pieces that streaked across the sky with flaming debris. The large armies of the dark ones have been broken by bombardment and legions of steel robots, machines that looked like men but marched with an unthinking, unyielding determination against the horrors of the universe that had come to their home.
Yet... Liberation had not come, not fully. Large portions of the planet had been quarantined from the rest of it, the areas with the worst contamination, the news sources had put out. The people reluctantly accepted said quarantine, recognizing that the horrors they had just witnessed should never be allowed to prosper again, and if a quarantine was the best way to whittle them down and burn them out from their warrens of horror, then so be it.
She had been just a child then, and for the next several years things did not really change. She had marched into the blossoming of adolescence, yet the streets remained dark, patrols marching ever-present, machine eyes looking over her with a cool dispassionate abandon. They looked over her, through her, then marched on, their weapons training on someone else, yet she had felt as if she had seen her death countless times already.
Perhaps it was the ever-present presence of the patrols, or perhaps it was the murders, the disappearances. Her neighborhood had been a bastion of safety, but the situation had decayed further, as otherwise reasonable friendly neighbors changed. Their smiles now hid daggers of the soul, and one could not go to the haven of those they had known for years without wondering if there would be a knife in their back when they turned to close the door. It was a time of ruination, of distrust of kin, friends. There felt no way to be safe.
At times Gwendolyn had wished, in her most depressed desperate hours, that a cultist would find her, slit her throat, and be done with it. Growing up in such a universal atmosphere of dread and fear, looking over one's shoulder constantly, the society around them fraying as all the institutions that were meant to have provided safety and comfort fell apart in the midst of a madness that had taken people at all levels of power, it felt like it was too much. She would wake up in the middle of the night, terror shivering in her frame, her tall lanky body coiling around itself clutching her knees, praying that the things she had heard about just from the past day would go away, that the world would be restored to sanity. This glorious dream that her parents described and never come, one she was not sure if it would ever come back.
That's when the dreams began. She would dream, and then be somewhere else, but it's soon became very clear that these were not normal dreams. She would see places that had too much realness to them to be anything but real, obviously places she had never been to.
She had seen atmospheres on fire over desert worlds.
She had seen icy plains where a battlefield of corpses stirred in eternal torment, only kept immobile by the ice entombing them.
She had seen cities of fear and despair, so similar to hers as yet, but many times worse. Vast metal cities built like mountains, with depths so black and hidden they never saw the sun, where men lived like animals and rats amidst stone and steel that swallowed them whole and left nothing.
She had confided in her sister some of her dreams, and at first her sister Gloria had thought her merely a creative talent, a blooming artist envisioning things as an outlet for what she was seeing. The friendly elderly woman who was the bursar of the bank down the street also thought similar, when she had tea with her and became friends doing errands with her mom to the bank. It was enough to comfort her somewhat.
Then the dreams got worse. She heard whispers, things that should not be in anyone's dreams let alone hers. There was a stench in them, a feeling of something coiling too close. The worst scenes were of quiet landscapes where things stirred that should not, dead things moving when they should be still, and dreams of things yet to be as much as those that had passed.
She saw silver ships led by what seemed like pointy eared angels, the void of flame as they fought green machines, similar to the robots that patrolled her streets, but imbued with a green inner flame that terrified her with the alien feeling from them, the lack of anything left.
She saw green tusk toothed horrors stampeding and growling through alleys, then cities, then continents, then planets, until the Stars themselves were green and roaring with the fury of war.
She saw machines made of dust and rotating Stars coiling around negative zones of reality, where the windswept tides of entropy were reversed and torn as layers of other realms bled through.
She saw men in amazing silver ships fighting back against those reveling horrors, shifting light and golden dust as the machines were ground down at horrible cost, worlds left molten and gaping, life incapable of going where the machines had gone, a desert of life and soul.
Those nights were very rough, no, they were torture. She would wake up with gashes in her arms from clawing at herself, bruises from unseen fists. She began feeling great pains in her body as her anxiety ate away at her mind. Gwendolyn started losing weight, her already tall skinny frame becoming even worse, a tattered shadow of a scarecrow.
At first her parents had been worried, then they grew scared, trying to help her with what meager rations they could find. At the Cults were growing bold, murders rising, and her family all found themselves fighting with others for rights to the tastiest dumpsters, where the refuse was freshest or the spoils the tastiest. The rich ate like gluttons, while everyone else withered away.
One day Gwendolyn went with Gloria to their prime find for the past two weeks, a self-sealing dumpster they had learned how to hack. The contents were surprisingly fresh, the result of good packaging mixed with the self-sealing nature of the device, but they were able to extract almost three days of food, even if some of it was so questionable their guts would churn or rebel during the night. On the way back they had cut through what they thought was a safe shortcut to home, not realizing the two cultists were there until they had raised their stub guns.
It was a funny thing, in her mind. She moved, the rounds fired with thick booming echoes In the tall alleyway, and she felt them hit her and Gloria. Their bodies fell to the pavement, ribs broken and lungs punctured, she died choking on her own blood holding her sister's hand as the hooting lunatics came up to them, knives in hand to peel their flesh off.
Then she was standing again, and she tried desperately to move another way, this time the gunshots crippling her legs, and she managed to live long enough while they skinned her alive.
Then she stood again, fire in her veins is adrenaline rushed through her. Her grip on Glorioa's hand was so tight she was sure she might have broken something, but Gloria looked to her with terror, looking to her older sister for what to do. This time she pulled them back into the tunnel, and the stub gun rounds went wild, ricocheting off the walls and at their feet. They ran back, the darkness enough that the cultists could not get an accurate shot, but as they made it to the other side she saw that Gloria had a bloody arm from shrapnel hitting her.
They made it home via another route, but that had shaken her, and her next dream was different. This time she beheld a giant of a man, sitting at a golden chair suitable for his immense size, clothed in elegant yet vast looms of cloth assembled into a robe of a kind she did not know. Across from him and the table he sat at was an old man, also wearing simple gray robes, a staff leaning against his chair. The two seemed involved in a game of some kind, a square board with carved pieces, but Gwendolyn did not know the game.
This time, unlike other visions, the giant man turned to her, and he smiled. No other dream had anyone notice she was there watching something unfold, yet he gestured to her and said, "It seems we have a guest. Come here, little one."
The Giant waved his hand, and a chair moved on its own, fluttering close to him. Gwendolyn felt something deep in her gut, realizing that he seemed right, like her but different. If she was but a seed, he was an entire Forest to the horizon and beyond.
She numbly sat in the chair, wondering what exactly was going on, and the man chuckled, a glint of golden light in his eyes. The old man that was his companion looked at her and grunted in dismissal, preferring to look at the chess pieces and ponder his next move silently. The Giant looked at her and said, "This is a game from an ancient time, I have played it with many friends. It's called chess, would you like to learn how to play it?"
She nodded, and as he reached for some kind of robotic man to get refreshments the dream ended, and with the start and a jerk she woke back in her bed. Unlike some of her other dreams she did not want to forget this one, it felt completely different. She wrote it down, thinking about it quite intensely. Who was that giant man with the golden eyes? She never heard of a human getting that big.
Two days later she fell asleep that night and, again unlike any other vision she had, went back to the same place. The giant man looked completely unsurprised at her reappearing offering her over as the robot man from before brought a cup filled with a steaming brown liquid. "Drink this, you'll feel better."
In no dream had she been ever able to pick up something physical, yet her trembling hands held this massive cup with no problem. Her first sip was an Awakening of something she did not know she lacked in her life until that very moment. The blooming of a thousand feelings inside of her that she had never felt, quite possibly never would again. She felt a colorful mosaic fill her soul, the skies awash in love, lust, adoration, delight, and much more besides. Yet much of the negative was bound in it as well, anger and rage for having been denied this for so long despite never having been capable of recognizing it until now, grief for said lack until now, a lifetime of seemingly a potential opportunity lost. It wove together into a rainbow, her eyes dilated, her breath hitched, and she took another gulp.
"It's called hot chocolate," the golden giant said, amused. "Yet another wonder that has been lost, yet I've been trying to bring it back in my gardens." His smile flickered. "Seems children are still children, even after all these years."
He turned to the old man, still frozen and thought. "I thought I might give our guest a small tour." The old man grunted, waving his hand in dismissal, and the two of them walked through a room much larger than she had initially seen. Her vision expanded to encompass this giant room, something so large Denva's largest ships could easily be in one and yet there would be still room besides. There were machines in various corners she did not recognize thrumming with power doing something she could not understand, in another corner armor and weaponry mounted on racks ready for use, kept to a gleaming edge. In another far corner a group of men in golden armor stood, yet the Giant waved them back, and they let him walk around.
They made an unlikely pair, her tall skinny self and the Giant. He gestured to the racked weapons. "I prepare for war on a scale rarely ever seen, I got the impression you're not unfamiliar with violence." She nodded mutually. "I thought so. Too many worlds out there have people flailing and begging for peace." The golden spark in his eyes flared, his shoulders stiffening with resolve. "I mean to bring them that piece, if I can. Though I'm not sure my works will last, but any great journey needs to take that first step."
A smaller room jutted off the main room by a series of sliding doors, which opened as they approached. Inside were bookshelves and a vast wooden table, the top of which was covered in what seemed to be a large map of a landscape unfamiliar to her. There was no water, yet the mountains and jutting valleys were simulated by bumps and artistic sculpting of terrain. She could see where water at once flowed, yet the colors on this table were mostly brown and beige, with few spots of green life on it at all.
"Here the game resides." Giant gestured to a series of golden icons, she supposed his army. "It is a game fought with blood and purpose, but one worthy of being fought. If blood is to be spilled, it is best to confirm the validity of your target before ever pulling the trigger or pulling a blade." He looked down at her. "You will be great, you hold power and have the seeds of purpose sewn within you. Yet first you must survive."
He pointed at the icons of the opposing armies near him, forces of green, silver, and blue. "In a way I am trapped now too. These forces stand between me and my ultimate goal. We're both aiming to survive, but first we must recognize where the threat is."
He turned, his immense bulk moving completely silently as he knelt by her side. He put a hand upon her shoulder.
"Knowing there is a trap is the first step in evading it."
She spun away from Him, spiraling off back to familiar territory. Denva's alleys loomed again in the darkness of night, but now she saw the cultists from before, now with more of them backing them up. They had stubbers, knives, even crude saws so long they could kind of be called swords if you were mad, which they were.
And they were coming for her, she was certain of it.
She woke her parents and sister, and they grabbed their running bags, sneaking off into the night.
Now she was seeing while awake, something disorienting and a bit frightening. She went down one alley, and they all died from a traffic collision. This alley, they were caught up to by the cultists, and died again, but...very slowly. This path, a psychopath stalked the darkness, killing Gloria and blinding Gwen before a knife went into her brain. Again and again she lived through her death, and the death of her kin...but she now knew the way.
They made their way out of the city into the rural countryside, and, painfully, inch by inch, they approached the border to the Zone. Daylight rose as they got near the perimeter, but her visions had not stopped, if anything they intensified. Visions of a Festival going mad, robot soldiers murdering tens of thousands, erupted in her mind, but with a hiss and biting her tongue so hard she drew blood, she focused on the pain and kept going. Must be the Festival they had heard of, shutting down the Zone or something? News had never been her strong suit to pay attention to.
The border was a tense place, the landscape bulldozed and sculpted to become a defensive perimeter. Solid plascrete walls and watchtowers had been erected going from horizon to horizon, the most elevated landscape features given prominence in erecting sizeable facilities. Drones and other flying machines flew the air regularly, and Gwendolyn could see that there was no path through without being spotted...so they got spotted, standing in the middle of a roadway with no obstructions, waiting for another flyover to see them.
It wasn't long until a transport drove up with a squad of soldiers. All was as she had seen...until her head spiked in agony, the chanting of ethereal monsters hammering in her ears. She screamed, collapsing to the ground as blood poured from her nose and ears, the ritual performed across an entire planet reaching its apex.
Then...silence. The haunting howls ceased, replaced by...fire and ash? She lay on the ground shaking, unable to stand as the soldiers approached, weapons drawn. Gloria darted in front of her, and a nervous soldier fired, sending her back with an arm blown off. Gloria howled as their father and mother were restrained by now-alert soldiers, but her agonized sounds tapered quickly to mewls, then silence.
Gwendolyn's eyes closed, and she knew no more.
***
Again she stood in the giant's room, yet now he wore the terrible golden raiment that had been on racks the previous times. The chess board was empty, the game long concluded. Lessons learned.
He still smiled at her approach, kneeling down. "I had been hoping you would come back, little one. What is your name, time wanderer?"
"G-Gwendolyn, my lord. Gwendolyn Kytante."
"I am honored. My name...I have had many." He paused. "I fear this is the last time we will see each other again. You are on the path, and terror and blood have been spilled." He sighed, a terrible gust of breeze from one so massive. "I have blood yet to be spilled."
He looked back. "I have a gift for you, if you will take it." She nodded, of course she would! He reached out his armored hand, and a large seed appeared, bigger than her hand, but a seed it obviously was. "This is my latest harvest from my gardens, it will grow into a plant that will recreate that drink you liked so much. It takes processing, but your...allies..." He hesitated. "Well, they will help you figure out what to do with it."
"Where do I plant it?"
"You will know when you arrive there." He stood, his shadow overwhelming hers against the opened door in the far distance, a legion beyond of ranked soldiers. "It is time, little one. Farewell. Do not heed the whispers."
She knew better, always had, but she smiled as he marched away.
***
The aftermath, while terrible, meant life went on. The Festival had been saved by Explorator Vitae and her troops, turns out, but...her sister was dead.
She tried reaching out to her parents, but their haunted looks were burned into her eyes for the rest of her days. What might have been...
It was hard to not hate herself, to view her Sight as a curse. She had done all she could, and even she could not anticipate -
- Could she?
The door opened to her chambers, and a wizened old woman hobbled on a grav walker into her room. She was a tiny woman with light-brown skin who seems aged beyond her years. Decorated in robes, sigils, and vestments, she looked mysterious, her eyes cloudy either from age or something else. "Who are you," Gwendolyn asked.
The old woman sat on the edge of her hospital bed with a thump and a grunt, looking at her intently. "I am an odd messenger," she said finally. "A lifetime ago, I was almost chosen for this opportunity, you know."
Know what?
The old woman chuckled. "You have not seen this moment?" Frozen, she mutely nodded. "Well, its not reliable as machine work, I suppose." The old woman paused. "My name is Kezathi Zenza, from the Uland Estrana conclave. I have your abilities, and know of others like yourself. Psykers, they call us."
Gwendolyn frozen. She had heard of psykers, but in the same ways that little kids are told to behave or the bed monster will get you. People just...vanished, whisked off to places she didn't know. "Why-why are you here?"
Kezathi snorted. "You're a powerful little girl, but you saw how your visions are not always reliable."
- Gloria's bloody arm torn from her corpse, blood on the ground -
Kezathi nodded. "Yes. She will be missed...but many more could be at risk, if you do not learn control of your power."
"You're-you're going to teach me?"
"Somewhat. You've entered into politics, my dear Gwendolyn, a shady area at best. You're a powerful asset to those in power, and you're being waved at our latest savior for more boons for our world."
Suddenly a vision appeared, that of a void in space, above their world. Strangely, despite being in the void, it was shouting very loudly, all the time. "What was that?"
"Explorator Vitae's ship, it has shields to block those with the Sight, unless you know the way." The old woman paused, her long braided white hair twirling in her fingers. "I was almost chosen, you know." She jerked, looking at the frightened little thing in the bed. "You'll do fine."
Kezathi stood up slowly, leaning on her grav
walker. "You're to be shipped off to the Conclave in the morning, we're to get you started on containment basics. Do you have everything you'll need?"
Gwendolyn looked at her "running bag" in the corner. All of the obvious survival elements - food, water bottles, etc - had already been removed, leaving precious by way of her own possessions. And her parents...
She looked back at the old diviner, determination in her gaze. "I'm not afraid, I'll go with you. If I can do good with this Sight I have, I need to learn how to use it better."
Kezanti nodded, leaving the room, and as the hatch closed Gwendolyn sighed, thinking of her broken life, and what might yet be. She laid down on her bed and wept.
Clutching in her hand was the one possession she valued above all else, kept under her pillow...a large seed, glowing with golden light.
***
Name: Gwendolyn Kytante
Age: 17.5 Denvan years
Height: 6 ft
Weight: 124lbs
Mental Status: Semi-Stable, but determined to get better
Possible Traits?:
- Survivor
- Compassionate
- Ambitious
- Diligent
Just brainstorming the traits, obviously the GM can fill them in his he desires. Overall I think this is a pretty good short story I wrote to flesh her out and give her a bit of a background.
Gwendolyn Kytante could not remember a time when the dark times had not existed. Her parents had described a world to her of promise and wonder, of the world liberated from rigid oppression and sterile conformity, of a civilization ready to take its place in the Stars, ready to rise and claim a position for itself among the cosmic order in the many hostile powers lurking in the void.
Some of the darkness had come home, a warship large enough to see in the sky at points during the morning and sunset, looming above like a sword of doom. Drop pods had rain down, bringing monsters, demons, and people driven to madness. Her parents that described an Age of Terror beginning then when she had been but a child a few years old.
That Age had persisted for years, until their savior, the Explorator Vitae, had returned from their sojourn into the void. The darkness had been broken, a single night of fire and fury making the night sky turn bright as day, the enemy ship shattered into glowing pieces that streaked across the sky with flaming debris. The large armies of the dark ones have been broken by bombardment and legions of steel robots, machines that looked like men but marched with an unthinking, unyielding determination against the horrors of the universe that had come to their home.
Yet... Liberation had not come, not fully. Large portions of the planet had been quarantined from the rest of it, the areas with the worst contamination, the news sources had put out. The people reluctantly accepted said quarantine, recognizing that the horrors they had just witnessed should never be allowed to prosper again, and if a quarantine was the best way to whittle them down and burn them out from their warrens of horror, then so be it.
She had been just a child then, and for the next several years things did not really change. She had marched into the blossoming of adolescence, yet the streets remained dark, patrols marching ever-present, machine eyes looking over her with a cool dispassionate abandon. They looked over her, through her, then marched on, their weapons training on someone else, yet she had felt as if she had seen her death countless times already.
Perhaps it was the ever-present presence of the patrols, or perhaps it was the murders, the disappearances. Her neighborhood had been a bastion of safety, but the situation had decayed further, as otherwise reasonable friendly neighbors changed. Their smiles now hid daggers of the soul, and one could not go to the haven of those they had known for years without wondering if there would be a knife in their back when they turned to close the door. It was a time of ruination, of distrust of kin, friends. There felt no way to be safe.
At times Gwendolyn had wished, in her most depressed desperate hours, that a cultist would find her, slit her throat, and be done with it. Growing up in such a universal atmosphere of dread and fear, looking over one's shoulder constantly, the society around them fraying as all the institutions that were meant to have provided safety and comfort fell apart in the midst of a madness that had taken people at all levels of power, it felt like it was too much. She would wake up in the middle of the night, terror shivering in her frame, her tall lanky body coiling around itself clutching her knees, praying that the things she had heard about just from the past day would go away, that the world would be restored to sanity. This glorious dream that her parents described and never come, one she was not sure if it would ever come back.
That's when the dreams began. She would dream, and then be somewhere else, but it's soon became very clear that these were not normal dreams. She would see places that had too much realness to them to be anything but real, obviously places she had never been to.
She had seen atmospheres on fire over desert worlds.
She had seen icy plains where a battlefield of corpses stirred in eternal torment, only kept immobile by the ice entombing them.
She had seen cities of fear and despair, so similar to hers as yet, but many times worse. Vast metal cities built like mountains, with depths so black and hidden they never saw the sun, where men lived like animals and rats amidst stone and steel that swallowed them whole and left nothing.
She had confided in her sister some of her dreams, and at first her sister Gloria had thought her merely a creative talent, a blooming artist envisioning things as an outlet for what she was seeing. The friendly elderly woman who was the bursar of the bank down the street also thought similar, when she had tea with her and became friends doing errands with her mom to the bank. It was enough to comfort her somewhat.
Then the dreams got worse. She heard whispers, things that should not be in anyone's dreams let alone hers. There was a stench in them, a feeling of something coiling too close. The worst scenes were of quiet landscapes where things stirred that should not, dead things moving when they should be still, and dreams of things yet to be as much as those that had passed.
She saw silver ships led by what seemed like pointy eared angels, the void of flame as they fought green machines, similar to the robots that patrolled her streets, but imbued with a green inner flame that terrified her with the alien feeling from them, the lack of anything left.
She saw green tusk toothed horrors stampeding and growling through alleys, then cities, then continents, then planets, until the Stars themselves were green and roaring with the fury of war.
She saw machines made of dust and rotating Stars coiling around negative zones of reality, where the windswept tides of entropy were reversed and torn as layers of other realms bled through.
She saw men in amazing silver ships fighting back against those reveling horrors, shifting light and golden dust as the machines were ground down at horrible cost, worlds left molten and gaping, life incapable of going where the machines had gone, a desert of life and soul.
Those nights were very rough, no, they were torture. She would wake up with gashes in her arms from clawing at herself, bruises from unseen fists. She began feeling great pains in her body as her anxiety ate away at her mind. Gwendolyn started losing weight, her already tall skinny frame becoming even worse, a tattered shadow of a scarecrow.
At first her parents had been worried, then they grew scared, trying to help her with what meager rations they could find. At the Cults were growing bold, murders rising, and her family all found themselves fighting with others for rights to the tastiest dumpsters, where the refuse was freshest or the spoils the tastiest. The rich ate like gluttons, while everyone else withered away.
One day Gwendolyn went with Gloria to their prime find for the past two weeks, a self-sealing dumpster they had learned how to hack. The contents were surprisingly fresh, the result of good packaging mixed with the self-sealing nature of the device, but they were able to extract almost three days of food, even if some of it was so questionable their guts would churn or rebel during the night. On the way back they had cut through what they thought was a safe shortcut to home, not realizing the two cultists were there until they had raised their stub guns.
It was a funny thing, in her mind. She moved, the rounds fired with thick booming echoes In the tall alleyway, and she felt them hit her and Gloria. Their bodies fell to the pavement, ribs broken and lungs punctured, she died choking on her own blood holding her sister's hand as the hooting lunatics came up to them, knives in hand to peel their flesh off.
Then she was standing again, and she tried desperately to move another way, this time the gunshots crippling her legs, and she managed to live long enough while they skinned her alive.
Then she stood again, fire in her veins is adrenaline rushed through her. Her grip on Glorioa's hand was so tight she was sure she might have broken something, but Gloria looked to her with terror, looking to her older sister for what to do. This time she pulled them back into the tunnel, and the stub gun rounds went wild, ricocheting off the walls and at their feet. They ran back, the darkness enough that the cultists could not get an accurate shot, but as they made it to the other side she saw that Gloria had a bloody arm from shrapnel hitting her.
They made it home via another route, but that had shaken her, and her next dream was different. This time she beheld a giant of a man, sitting at a golden chair suitable for his immense size, clothed in elegant yet vast looms of cloth assembled into a robe of a kind she did not know. Across from him and the table he sat at was an old man, also wearing simple gray robes, a staff leaning against his chair. The two seemed involved in a game of some kind, a square board with carved pieces, but Gwendolyn did not know the game.
This time, unlike other visions, the giant man turned to her, and he smiled. No other dream had anyone notice she was there watching something unfold, yet he gestured to her and said, "It seems we have a guest. Come here, little one."
The Giant waved his hand, and a chair moved on its own, fluttering close to him. Gwendolyn felt something deep in her gut, realizing that he seemed right, like her but different. If she was but a seed, he was an entire Forest to the horizon and beyond.
She numbly sat in the chair, wondering what exactly was going on, and the man chuckled, a glint of golden light in his eyes. The old man that was his companion looked at her and grunted in dismissal, preferring to look at the chess pieces and ponder his next move silently. The Giant looked at her and said, "This is a game from an ancient time, I have played it with many friends. It's called chess, would you like to learn how to play it?"
She nodded, and as he reached for some kind of robotic man to get refreshments the dream ended, and with the start and a jerk she woke back in her bed. Unlike some of her other dreams she did not want to forget this one, it felt completely different. She wrote it down, thinking about it quite intensely. Who was that giant man with the golden eyes? She never heard of a human getting that big.
Two days later she fell asleep that night and, again unlike any other vision she had, went back to the same place. The giant man looked completely unsurprised at her reappearing offering her over as the robot man from before brought a cup filled with a steaming brown liquid. "Drink this, you'll feel better."
In no dream had she been ever able to pick up something physical, yet her trembling hands held this massive cup with no problem. Her first sip was an Awakening of something she did not know she lacked in her life until that very moment. The blooming of a thousand feelings inside of her that she had never felt, quite possibly never would again. She felt a colorful mosaic fill her soul, the skies awash in love, lust, adoration, delight, and much more besides. Yet much of the negative was bound in it as well, anger and rage for having been denied this for so long despite never having been capable of recognizing it until now, grief for said lack until now, a lifetime of seemingly a potential opportunity lost. It wove together into a rainbow, her eyes dilated, her breath hitched, and she took another gulp.
"It's called hot chocolate," the golden giant said, amused. "Yet another wonder that has been lost, yet I've been trying to bring it back in my gardens." His smile flickered. "Seems children are still children, even after all these years."
He turned to the old man, still frozen and thought. "I thought I might give our guest a small tour." The old man grunted, waving his hand in dismissal, and the two of them walked through a room much larger than she had initially seen. Her vision expanded to encompass this giant room, something so large Denva's largest ships could easily be in one and yet there would be still room besides. There were machines in various corners she did not recognize thrumming with power doing something she could not understand, in another corner armor and weaponry mounted on racks ready for use, kept to a gleaming edge. In another far corner a group of men in golden armor stood, yet the Giant waved them back, and they let him walk around.
They made an unlikely pair, her tall skinny self and the Giant. He gestured to the racked weapons. "I prepare for war on a scale rarely ever seen, I got the impression you're not unfamiliar with violence." She nodded mutually. "I thought so. Too many worlds out there have people flailing and begging for peace." The golden spark in his eyes flared, his shoulders stiffening with resolve. "I mean to bring them that piece, if I can. Though I'm not sure my works will last, but any great journey needs to take that first step."
A smaller room jutted off the main room by a series of sliding doors, which opened as they approached. Inside were bookshelves and a vast wooden table, the top of which was covered in what seemed to be a large map of a landscape unfamiliar to her. There was no water, yet the mountains and jutting valleys were simulated by bumps and artistic sculpting of terrain. She could see where water at once flowed, yet the colors on this table were mostly brown and beige, with few spots of green life on it at all.
"Here the game resides." Giant gestured to a series of golden icons, she supposed his army. "It is a game fought with blood and purpose, but one worthy of being fought. If blood is to be spilled, it is best to confirm the validity of your target before ever pulling the trigger or pulling a blade." He looked down at her. "You will be great, you hold power and have the seeds of purpose sewn within you. Yet first you must survive."
He pointed at the icons of the opposing armies near him, forces of green, silver, and blue. "In a way I am trapped now too. These forces stand between me and my ultimate goal. We're both aiming to survive, but first we must recognize where the threat is."
He turned, his immense bulk moving completely silently as he knelt by her side. He put a hand upon her shoulder.
"Knowing there is a trap is the first step in evading it."
She spun away from Him, spiraling off back to familiar territory. Denva's alleys loomed again in the darkness of night, but now she saw the cultists from before, now with more of them backing them up. They had stubbers, knives, even crude saws so long they could kind of be called swords if you were mad, which they were.
And they were coming for her, she was certain of it.
She woke her parents and sister, and they grabbed their running bags, sneaking off into the night.
Now she was seeing while awake, something disorienting and a bit frightening. She went down one alley, and they all died from a traffic collision. This alley, they were caught up to by the cultists, and died again, but...very slowly. This path, a psychopath stalked the darkness, killing Gloria and blinding Gwen before a knife went into her brain. Again and again she lived through her death, and the death of her kin...but she now knew the way.
They made their way out of the city into the rural countryside, and, painfully, inch by inch, they approached the border to the Zone. Daylight rose as they got near the perimeter, but her visions had not stopped, if anything they intensified. Visions of a Festival going mad, robot soldiers murdering tens of thousands, erupted in her mind, but with a hiss and biting her tongue so hard she drew blood, she focused on the pain and kept going. Must be the Festival they had heard of, shutting down the Zone or something? News had never been her strong suit to pay attention to.
The border was a tense place, the landscape bulldozed and sculpted to become a defensive perimeter. Solid plascrete walls and watchtowers had been erected going from horizon to horizon, the most elevated landscape features given prominence in erecting sizeable facilities. Drones and other flying machines flew the air regularly, and Gwendolyn could see that there was no path through without being spotted...so they got spotted, standing in the middle of a roadway with no obstructions, waiting for another flyover to see them.
It wasn't long until a transport drove up with a squad of soldiers. All was as she had seen...until her head spiked in agony, the chanting of ethereal monsters hammering in her ears. She screamed, collapsing to the ground as blood poured from her nose and ears, the ritual performed across an entire planet reaching its apex.
Then...silence. The haunting howls ceased, replaced by...fire and ash? She lay on the ground shaking, unable to stand as the soldiers approached, weapons drawn. Gloria darted in front of her, and a nervous soldier fired, sending her back with an arm blown off. Gloria howled as their father and mother were restrained by now-alert soldiers, but her agonized sounds tapered quickly to mewls, then silence.
Gwendolyn's eyes closed, and she knew no more.
***
Again she stood in the giant's room, yet now he wore the terrible golden raiment that had been on racks the previous times. The chess board was empty, the game long concluded. Lessons learned.
He still smiled at her approach, kneeling down. "I had been hoping you would come back, little one. What is your name, time wanderer?"
"G-Gwendolyn, my lord. Gwendolyn Kytante."
"I am honored. My name...I have had many." He paused. "I fear this is the last time we will see each other again. You are on the path, and terror and blood have been spilled." He sighed, a terrible gust of breeze from one so massive. "I have blood yet to be spilled."
He looked back. "I have a gift for you, if you will take it." She nodded, of course she would! He reached out his armored hand, and a large seed appeared, bigger than her hand, but a seed it obviously was. "This is my latest harvest from my gardens, it will grow into a plant that will recreate that drink you liked so much. It takes processing, but your...allies..." He hesitated. "Well, they will help you figure out what to do with it."
"Where do I plant it?"
"You will know when you arrive there." He stood, his shadow overwhelming hers against the opened door in the far distance, a legion beyond of ranked soldiers. "It is time, little one. Farewell. Do not heed the whispers."
She knew better, always had, but she smiled as he marched away.
***
The aftermath, while terrible, meant life went on. The Festival had been saved by Explorator Vitae and her troops, turns out, but...her sister was dead.
She tried reaching out to her parents, but their haunted looks were burned into her eyes for the rest of her days. What might have been...
It was hard to not hate herself, to view her Sight as a curse. She had done all she could, and even she could not anticipate -
- Could she?
The door opened to her chambers, and a wizened old woman hobbled on a grav walker into her room. She was a tiny woman with light-brown skin who seems aged beyond her years. Decorated in robes, sigils, and vestments, she looked mysterious, her eyes cloudy either from age or something else. "Who are you," Gwendolyn asked.
The old woman sat on the edge of her hospital bed with a thump and a grunt, looking at her intently. "I am an odd messenger," she said finally. "A lifetime ago, I was almost chosen for this opportunity, you know."
Know what?
The old woman chuckled. "You have not seen this moment?" Frozen, she mutely nodded. "Well, its not reliable as machine work, I suppose." The old woman paused. "My name is Kezathi Zenza, from the Uland Estrana conclave. I have your abilities, and know of others like yourself. Psykers, they call us."
Gwendolyn frozen. She had heard of psykers, but in the same ways that little kids are told to behave or the bed monster will get you. People just...vanished, whisked off to places she didn't know. "Why-why are you here?"
Kezathi snorted. "You're a powerful little girl, but you saw how your visions are not always reliable."
- Gloria's bloody arm torn from her corpse, blood on the ground -
Kezathi nodded. "Yes. She will be missed...but many more could be at risk, if you do not learn control of your power."
"You're-you're going to teach me?"
"Somewhat. You've entered into politics, my dear Gwendolyn, a shady area at best. You're a powerful asset to those in power, and you're being waved at our latest savior for more boons for our world."
Suddenly a vision appeared, that of a void in space, above their world. Strangely, despite being in the void, it was shouting very loudly, all the time. "What was that?"
"Explorator Vitae's ship, it has shields to block those with the Sight, unless you know the way." The old woman paused, her long braided white hair twirling in her fingers. "I was almost chosen, you know." She jerked, looking at the frightened little thing in the bed. "You'll do fine."
Kezathi stood up slowly, leaning on her grav
walker. "You're to be shipped off to the Conclave in the morning, we're to get you started on containment basics. Do you have everything you'll need?"
Gwendolyn looked at her "running bag" in the corner. All of the obvious survival elements - food, water bottles, etc - had already been removed, leaving precious by way of her own possessions. And her parents...
She looked back at the old diviner, determination in her gaze. "I'm not afraid, I'll go with you. If I can do good with this Sight I have, I need to learn how to use it better."
Kezanti nodded, leaving the room, and as the hatch closed Gwendolyn sighed, thinking of her broken life, and what might yet be. She laid down on her bed and wept.
Clutching in her hand was the one possession she valued above all else, kept under her pillow...a large seed, glowing with golden light.
***
Name: Gwendolyn Kytante
Age: 17.5 Denvan years
Height: 6 ft
Weight: 124lbs
Mental Status: Semi-Stable, but determined to get better
Possible Traits?:
- Survivor
- Compassionate
- Ambitious
- Diligent
Just brainstorming the traits, obviously the GM can fill them in his he desires. Overall I think this is a pretty good short story I wrote to flesh her out and give her a bit of a background.
Last edited:
meianmaru
The Devourer of Fiction
This was a very good omake. Gwendolyn seems like an interesting character if she becomes a part of the Crew, with having learned a sad but true lesson about foresight so early on.
On lighter topics: real chocolate. If Neablis adopts that as canon, I demand that we work out how to grow it on Vita's ship, even if in tiny amounts. Our crew deserves the best, and if we and Denva work out on how to grow it in greater amounts, I think we could conquer most of the Imperium by just by bribing nobility with that stuff.