[center][img]http://i.imgur.com/eWSICLf.png[/img] [sub]End-session oversight[/sub] [color=#ffffff]Ｃ[/color][color=#d8d8d8]ｈ[/color][color=#bdbdbd]ａ[/color][color=#d0d0d0]ｐ[/color][color=#b4b4b4]ｔ[/color][color=#969696]ｅ[/color][color=#b9b9b9]ｒ[/color] [color=#ffffff]Ｆ[/color][color=#cecece]ｏ[/color][color=#bfbfbf]ｕ[/color][color=#b6b6b6]ｒ[/color] [color=#ffffff]Ｅ[/color][color=#f2f2f2]ｘ[/color][color=#e5e5e5]ｐ[/color][color=#d8d8d8]ａ[/color][color=#cfcfcf]ｎ[/color][color=#c6c6c6]ｄ[/color][color=#bdbdbd]ｉ[/color][color=#c3c3c3]ｎ[/color][color=#cacaca]ｇ[/color] [color=#c7c7c7]ｔ[/color][color=#bdbdbd]ｈ[/color][color=#b4b4b4]ｅ[/color] [color=#a0a0a0]ｍ[/color][color=#969696]ｉ[/color][color=#a7a7a7]ｎ[/color][color=#b9b9b9]ｄ[/color] [color=#dbdbdb]ａ[/color][color=#e7e7e7]ｎ[/color][color=#f3f3f3]ｄ[/color] [color=#efefef]ｔ[/color][color=#dedede]ｈ[/color][color=#cecece]ｅ[/color] [color=#c4c4c4]ｍ[/color][color=#bfbfbf]ａ[/color][color=#bcbcbc]ｔ[/color][color=#b9b9b9]ｅ[/color][color=#b6b6b6]ｒ[/color][color=#cecece]ｉ[/color][color=#e7e7e7]ａ[/color][color=#ffffff]ｌ[/color] [sub]Expansion of technology and planetary ownership alike, long live the materialist reign of the UNE.[/sub] ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— —————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————[/center] Things had been calm for some time - the first ten years of mankinds steps into space were truly remarkable and, as expected, filled with new discoveries and realizations alike. They were a busy ten years, that were divided into three logs in my logbook journal. The next fifteen years would not quite bring the same amount of new information worthy of sharing. But all calm must come to an end once. It was quite early in the morning when a military steward rudely awoke me from my sleep, seemingly having broken into my office for some reason. “Sir! We have reports of pirates coming in, sir!” he yelled at me while I was still sleeping on my desk, trying my best to ignore him and continue my sleep. But, he did not relent, and continued to shake my body until I was forced to wake up and address him. “Sir, what should we do?” “Do.. what.. against who?” “The pirates, sir! They call themselves.. [i]Shipjackers.[/i] A menacing name, for a menacing group of good-for-nothing space brigands.” “Shipjackers? ... it's ... creative?” Not really. Did they just think 'what do we do? Jack ships! So what's our name? Shipjackers!' Regardless, brigands were brigands and needed to be dealt with. “Steward, tell me, are they within our territories?” “No sir.” “Then how the hell do we know that they exist, and know their name to boot?” “They uh, well, they kind of sent a message to our comms hub, and declared themselves the sovereign owner of 'our asses' and then continued to yell and scream. It was.. confusing.” “Well, send them a message to go raid the Gorothian supply lines, since they're not in our territory and therefore not our problem.” “.. yes sir!” [sub]The pirates never appeared in my territory and as a result I don't know where they went.[/sub] It was a good thing that they didn't mess with us, because our fleet of corvettes had slowly been growing, to a larger fleet of 12 ships now, armed with Mark Two projectile weapons. No nukes or lasers for us - yet. Regardless, we were quite sure that if the pirates came to mess with our trading routes, they'd pay the price for it. [i]Conform to our standards or die, damnit![/i] [center][img]http://i.imgur.com/gzQJyYk.png[/img][/center] Later that day we received word on the Pot Project - finally! We had been waiting for so long to see what was contained within the pot. Sadly the news was rather sombre. “It's strange, but there's nothing in there, and we are not quite sure how the pot even got there to be honest. In fact, we've started to wonder if it's really there,” the reporting scientist said over the transmission feed. The entire room of scientists and interested officials sighed, disappointed with the outcome. “On the other hand, we have spent our time investigating this pot reflecting on our inner selfs and have compiled a list of interesting philosophical thoughts. Uh.. somehow this has increased our influence over the galaxy. Again.. not quite sure how that happened either.” [center][img]http://i.imgur.com/0hrMy7a.png[/img][/center] Some months later during routine exploration and survey routes, we encountered a strange heavily armed fortress in orbit around a Pulsar star. The fortress didn't shoot, so we presumed it to be friendly, and hailed it on our on-board comm-lines. But sadly, we received no answer. After surveying the star, we left the system and ordered the scientist departments at the London UNE department to begin making contact and translating their language. Luckily for us, the aliens beat us to it and managed to translate our language first. Impressive, but not wholly unexpected once they introduced themselves as the 'Curators.' They posed themselves to be a scared group of scientists and protectors of technology, in order to prevent the galaxy from plunging itself into another mass extinction. Apparently this cycle had been going on for some time - and that would also explain why the fortress looked so strange, unlike anything we had seen before. Furthermore, it would also explain why our radars gave them a rather high military power score. They must have had all the time in the world to invest in defenses. They offered us their services and we immediately bought ten star charts, to avoid having to scout them ourselves. It meant we had to pass up on our chances of detecting anomalies and other interesting things, but it also meant we would be able to detect inhabitable planets without having to go there ourselves. [center][img]http://i.imgur.com/PF87zuR.png[/img][/center] In an effort to appease the curators, to show them we were [i]just[/i] as interested in technology and science as they were, we constructed an observation post to observe the primitives on another planet. There was much to learn from them and their social constructs, which contributed heavily to our sociological research - not wholly unwelcome either. [center][img]http://i.imgur.com/Z8hVceQ.png[/img][/center] Years passed, in which nothing of real importance happened except the continuation of our scouting of those planets we needed to survey to find out how to save Earth from mass extinction. One day however we received a report that spoke of 'a Gaia world' in a world that was uncovered in a new set of star charts bought from the Curators. We started constructing a new colony ship that was to be named the UNS 'Ark of Noah' but sadly, our initial scouts also reported that there was a large amount of crystaline constructs about the planet, and an even larger amount of them in the same sector. The plans for the colony ship were not scrapped however as there were other planets we could inhabit. Sarack I would be liberated later, and hopefully, colonized by human settlers. It was, after all, in a prime position to stop the Gorothians from expanding even further and becoming more hostile to us. While war was initially not among our thoughts when it came to the Gorothians, it seemed like it was becoming more and more inevitable. They had named us their rivals and closed their borders to our ships, preventing us from accessing the final planet we needed to research to save Earth. We did not declare them our rivals just yet, but we did close our borders to their ships as well. If anything, this would slow them down at least a little bit. Things were beginning to look up for us now, and we were continuously exploring. We were held back at every turn, it seemed like, but that didn't stop us from overcoming our challenges. One of these was the encounter of 'space amoeba's' which looked like giant bacteria in space. We decided to satisfy our biologists, and promised to kill one as they appeared to be hostile regardless. Perhaps there were things we could learn yet about how they survived and traveled? And finally, we found what we believe to be the home base of the crystal entities, only one system away from Sarack. There were more powerful looking entities here, as well as a singular large entity. Our biologists and physicists theorized that this was 'the leader' although it wasn't quite clear what capacity of leadership this ... thing had. [center][img]http://i.imgur.com/lLK7Iyf.png[/img] [img]http://i.imgur.com/6bOSTV6.png[/img] [img]http://i.imgur.com/mkwxnzZ.png[/img][/center] A few months later we received reports that were more important to the survival of Humankind. “Sir, Alpha Centauri is now within our reach!” This would turn out to be a great day for Earth and it's colonies after all. “How, though? Didn't the Gorothians own it?” “Well, we developed a technology that allowed us to expand our borders.” “... what.” “How to explain.. we interfaced with the Gorothian border generating interface and algorithm, and then changed it so that it would expand our borders by 20 percent.” “So you just changed a few things and now we own the system?” “That's a simplified version I suppose, and doesn't really do credit to our genius, but I suppose that is what happened.” “.. okay, begin construction of a new colony ship immediately to secure Alpha Centauri for good.” One day these hacking scientists would get us into trouble, but it seemed like the Gorothians had not noticed that they just lost their, perhaps, most important science system. It seemed like something you'd pay attention to, but well, perhaps the sea slugs were less inventive and advanced than we thought. [center][img]http://i.imgur.com/SNtkIB6.png[/img] [img]http://i.imgur.com/t8LAbFb.png[/img][/center] It seemed that our ambitions had not gone unnoticed either. Luckily, the Gorothians were none the wiser, but our comm hub picked up on another transmission from another system, and soon after we were contacted by 'The Panuri Nation' who had apparently managed to translate our language. Hm, it seemed like English was proving to be quite a security liability. They seemed friendly enough however, and seemed to share our materialist ambitions! Furthermore, they were incredibly pacifistic. It seemed like this would be our first ally in the galaxy, perhaps even an ally for when we were forced to fight the Gorothians? Time would tell, but they were happy to sell us star charts in trade for our own star charts. This allowed us to see the borders of yet another empire, whom we quietly translated the language of and then contacted, to see just what they were and what they were like. Once again, we were lucky, as these new aliens who called themselves the 'Provalguvor Republic' seemed similarly interested in being friends, rather than fighting like the Gorothians. [center][img]http://i.imgur.com/mBQuFYZ.png[/img][/center]