An enormous green man, horns sprouting from his head and tusks the size of daggers, was charging through the forest, swinging his axe wildly and shouting obscenities in some unknown language. He resembled, loosely, what the people of Sorvir referred to as an Orc.
Brunhilde looked behind her as she 'ran', a look of complete confusion on her face. "Who the hell are you? Did I do something wrong? Stop following me."
The orc's hands were covered with tree sap, his hair was full of pinecones, and her questioning only enraged him further. He pushed himself as hard as he could to catch up to the human, and aimed his axe at her head.
Thump.
The orc's head hurt like hell, and it took him a few moments to realize he had run head first into a pine tree. His axe was lodged firmly in the wood, sap running down the grip. He shook his head to try to clear out the shock of running into several tons of solid wood, and heard giggling above him.
Brunhilde was hovering several meters above him, looking at the dazed orc, and trying desperately to hold in her laughter. She plucked a pinecone from the tree and tossed it at his head, and burst into even louder laughter. The orc got up and yanked his axe out of the tree, being pelted with pinecones all the while, and tried to pull her out of the air. Brunhilde dashed off into the distance, returning to the ground, and the orc gave chase once again.
A younger woman, apparently exceptionally tall, covered from head to toe in a heavy brown cloak and a masked hood, revealing only her grey eyes, and a few stray strands of auburn hair. The cloak is covered in stains, old and new, in a myriad of shapes. On her back is a truly gigantic rucksack, with various unidentifiable instruments of science hanging off of it and peeking through the pockets. In her hand is a scroll of parchment, upon which she is constantly scribbling notes and diagrams, and when she moves, she appears to be gliding across the ground rather than walking.
Were one to catch a glimpse beneath her cloak, one would find that she is not, in fact, particularly tall. She's actually rather short and slender, and is hovering a foot and a half above the ground. Her clothing is a skin-tight set of leather armor, covered in pockets and pouches, and upon her back is a series of odd-looking knives with feathered wings sprouting from what should have been the grip. Upon her neck is a steel gorget. There are several differently colored inkwells and pens sticking out of her pockets.
She is a royal scientist (specializing in geology, meteorology, magitech engineering, and alchemy) from Sorvir, an island nation far to the north, and has only recently arrived at what her people call The Witchlands, as part of an expedition. Every few minutes she glances at the back of her right hand, which is marked with a tattoo of odd characters and markings. In her native language, it reads "I must check my journals."
The first entry in the most recent journal scroll details the crash of her steam-powered zeppelin and the resulting hydrogen explosion, which started a small forest fire and alerted some very unfriendly natives. Her team was killed before she even realized they were under attack because they, against her advice, left the safety of the airship wreckage to set up a camp outside. The following entries are details of the compositions of soil, the air, and the various types of flora and fauna she's encountered thus far. The right-hand side of the journal scroll features a "To-Do List", written in bold, red lettering. The first entry is marked 'Practice Water Magic'.
The last thing she can truly remember was her home town, Valheim, being attacked by raiders. Specifically, she remembers a large brute of a man swinging a club at her head. This happened fifteen years ago. Every memory after that is foggy and blurred. The basic idea that something happened and the vaguest ghost of emotions past stays with her, but beyond that, she can't recall events. Thankfully, that is the only aspect of her memory lost, as she can remember certain facts and can still successfully learn skills, although she can't remember doing so in the first place.
She is somewhat on the cheerful side, but is easily angered by a few things. Firstly, people who lie while implying that she doesn't know what she's talking about. Secondly, incompetence. Thirdly, anything attempting to harm herself or her friends. Her rage is something one should take care to avoid, due to her poor memory - it takes under a minute for her to forget what happened, but the feeling sticks with her, making it exceedingly difficult to reason with her.
Her favorite things include automatons, golems, comprehensive tool kits, and most furry animals. She dislikes brutes and thugs, hates incomplete tool kits, and absolutely detests hamsters.
There is a strange, writhing mark on her left hand. She can't remember where she got it, or when, and as far as she can tell, it's always been there.
She was a wind magician in training starting from a young age, as her parents were both professors at the local branch of the Sorvir Mages' University. She made startling progress in the areas of wind magics as a young child, growing to be within the top ten of her county before she was ten years old - although she couldn't hold a candle to the dozens of masters in the Capital, as they were all just as exceptional as she, with an additional several decades of experience.
Her education branched out into extremely basic biology and anatomy, mathematics, physics, problem solving... Not many fields were left untouched. The people of Sorvir prided themselves upon their education system, and even the least skilled of people were at least able to repair common machinery after leaving school for the last time, so this was not uncommon. Her parents were strict and held her to a very high standard - which she met.
When she was eleven years old, a group of raiders set up a camp several miles up the coast, and started sending demands for food and money. Brunhilde's parents were out of town on business at the University's main campus, and so the villagers decided to send some of their strongest men to deal with the threat. They never returned, and a day later, the raiders attacked at late night. Brunhilde tried to help, but she wasn't a strong enough magician yet to move grown men, even with her strongest winds, and one of the thugs retaliated with a club to the head. Her skull was shattered, and the injury would have spelled certain death in most places, but Sorvir's University had provided an abundance of trained medical professionals, who saved her life with swift application of alcohol and re-placement of the broken plates.
She faded in and out of consciousness for nearly a month, and it took eight months for her skull to heal properly. She screamed each time she awoke, as the last thing she knew, she was having her head split by an oaken club. This came to pass in a few short months, though, as the knowledge of having been struck down and having successfully have survived worked its way into the last vestiges of her memory, and the doctors were most puzzled.
Some years passed, and her parents left the picture, grief-stricken that their daughter had been 'ruined', though she didn't particularly mind any time someone told her. It seemed like it was inevitable when she was a child anyway. Her doctors began to seem familiar, and the knowledge of their names started to stick as well, eventually, though this was unreliable at best. She seemed to handle new information best when it was provided in an informal manner, as if it were a lesson of some sort. Trivial knowledge that wasn't directly linked to her herself. The doctors eventually identified this as her having seen their name badges and faces so many times that the knowledge had become something of a fact of existence, much like the name and appearance of the Queen.
University lessons continued, and each day, Brunhilde walked into her classes for the first time and excelled in studies she had felt she had never done before. Subconsciously, these feelings began to pool, and her self-esteem skyrocketed, though she couldn't ever identify her own accomplishments. It was just... A good feeling. It felt, tasted, smelt like success.
She discovered she had memory problems when she was fourteen years old. And she didn't give a shit.
A plan for helping her cope with her lack of memory was formed, and she was given a tattoo on her right hand, reminding her to check her journals. It took some time before the style of writing prescribed by the doctors set in, but it worked perfectly. Each new person would be drawn - their face the focus of the drawing - and described in great detail from a neutral voice, impersonal. Their relation to Brunhilde was listed under this information - friend, foe, that-asshole-who-stole-my-lunch, and so on and so forth. Each day's events and thoughts were written out in an impersonal manner, as though they were merely... Things that had happened, that could have happened to anyone, and she was just a character in her own story. Nothing was missed, except in times of great stress, which she never remembered afterwards anyway. The memories in her journal started sticking over time, and she habitually stopped questioning when she was with a new, strange person, because there was often some feeling of familiarity she subconsciously associated with knowledge.
All of her doctors were present for her graduation from the University when she was twenty-two years old. Having had nothing better to do and nothing to distract her, she had managed to work through to a master's level in several fields important to the Crown. The graduation ceremony was recorded via a Time Crystal - an enchanted sphere that could lock in moving images from scenes past - and archived in the University's Hall of Records. It was the first time a student with grievous permanent brain damage had ever passed, and such a momentous occasion demanded recording via the single rarest and most expensive type of journalistic tool in Sorvir.
Brunhilde was hired immediately into the service of the Queen, who recognized her skills as being of value. She was assigned as a research assistant in the National Laboratory of Magickal Technologies, though this position didn't last long. The promotions were handed down almost on a monthly basis as she consistently outperformed each of her colleagues simply by paying attention to and recording the smallest details in her work.
Unfortunately, when she became the Head of the Laboratory, and thus Head Scientist of Sorvir, this put her into contact with the nobility. She wasn't particularly interested in the niceties of formal society, and many important officials didn't appreciate how she seemed to not remember any of them, no matter how much they worked together, and she had the tendency to speak her mind on political matters often. Too often. Politics never sat well with her, and she never sat well with politicians. The Queen, especially, grew to hate her.
She had never stopped with her Wind Magick practice, and had been taking personal lessons from the greatest Wind Master in Sorvir- one of the four Wise Men of the land - and had, thus, grown to become one of the greatest Wind Magicians in the nation, although nowhere near as skilled as the Wise Man of the Winds who had taught her. As such, when knowledge of the Witchlands (known to southerners as The Continent) reached the Queen, Brunhilde was first on the list of people who absolutely had to go on the first expedition. The decision was widely ridiculed by the peasantry, but The Queen justified her decision, stating that Brunhilde was both one of the greatest scientific minds and one of the greatest magicians in the land, and that if anyone had a chance of returning with information vital to the future of Sorvir, it would be Brunhilde. It was a classical political lie, but it worked, and Brunhilde was packed onto a hydrogen zeppelin with several others, who (by order of the Queen) had absolutely no combat experience at all - a petty move to inflict suffering upon one who would not even remember it.
A journal scroll hovers just off to the side, within her line of sight, any time she isn't in a dangerous situation. She constantly writes in the journal scroll, which seemingly has no end. The scroll has several splotches of coffee, wine, and mead stains on it, though they do not obscure the text, drawings, or diagrams.
Her cloak hides her height as she hovers, as she has always been ashamed of being as small as she is.
Her head wrap hides her face, lest she pass a mirror and experience the sudden shock of her age. Deep down, she knows that she's not a child anymore, but the memories of having aged simply are not there.
Whenever for whatever reason she isn't writing, she's fidgeting. Constantly. Not having a pen in her hand makes her nervous.
On foot, she has a tendency to half dance rather than simply walk, as she never truly 'grew up'.
Somewhat cheerful, owing to her high self esteem.
Nervous wreck, as she is constantly doubting her own actions and wondering if she's made the right decisions.
Grows very attached to her friends very quickly, because even though she doesn't always recognize them at first, their presence eventually becomes one of the most comforting feelings of familiarity to her, amidst a void of nothingness.
Inconsistent. Her actions sometimes lack true predictability on account of not following a "normal" chain of psychological causality. Other times, though, she falls into patterns on account of situations inputting the same variables into her constantly restarting mental machine, and repeats the same reactions to similar scenarios.
Analytical. Everything she experiences is run across her mental bank of trivia before she checks her journal for similar phenomena. Facts that she learned in the University and the Laboratory stick especially well.
Mildly inconsiderate. Still somewhat childish - never had the chance to grow up.
Paranoid, and thus overprepared. She keeps powerful wind magicks at the ready for fight and flight at all times, and is constantly feeling the air for disturbances, lest she be ambushed. The attack on her village has been the only thing she could truly remember for the longest time, and every time she wakes up, she finds herself protecting herself from something like that happening to her ever again.
Stoic, as a byproduct of her fear of her lack of memory. She wants to be accepted and loved, and so she fears being an annoyance or a burden. She generally refuses to comment on her own problems, in case she may have repeated it many times over already and thus inconvenienced her companions.
"You ever have deja-vu? That's the feeling I get when I'm around people I know."
"That feeling when you wake up from a dream, but you don't know what it was, and no matter how hard you try, it just keeps slipping away... It's like that for me. All the fucking time."
"You can plant flowers in soil. You can plant them in clay. You can even plant them in some rocks. They're all different kinds of dirt. Seawater and brine are two different things, too. It's the same way with the air. You breathe it all, and there are different kinds everywhere. Wind mages are trained to taste the difference."
"Of course I don't have any money. What do I look like, some kind of famous lab director or something?"
"Who are you?"
"Hm. Looks like Dad's gone. Good riddance - jerk never really cared about anything but his work anyway."
"Who are you?"
"Oh my god. Is that a MAG-LOK service kit? I've wanted one for years! (I think). Thanks!"
"It's missing the fucking pipe wrench. I'm swapping it for a new one."
"Who the FUCK let hamsters into my yard?!"
Claudio
A redshirt. Died of exposure shortly after waking up.
Arnor Kalthun
A squidlike "god" from ages past. Immense regenerative powers. Four feet of terror. Beware, for this immortal seeks to enslave all that live.
"You're sure you saw something unnatural up there, Thomas?", a child asked. He appeared to be around ten years old, but carried himself as though he were forty. He wore a military-esque uniform for Moriga's Primary Academy #12, and had a hawkish, sharp-eyed look to him.
"That's what I told you, isn't it? I don't make things like this up, Jonathan", answered his companion, a man of twenty years or so, with thick, unfashionable glasses and a blue blazer. "What do you think?"
"I think it means we need to take another look. You said those black blobs obstructed your view seconds after you looked through your telescope, right?"
"Yeah, that's right - and they still haven't moved."
A third voice chimed in. "Perhaps we should take a look from a different spot?" The third person was a woman of around 24, perhaps, wearing business attire, and a brass nametag pinned to the left side pocket, reading "M. Balridge"
The three nodded to eachother and looked up at the sky again, from the rooftop, then made their way off of the building to a car below. All three were involved in a group called "The Watchers", which believed that their government wasn't really the highest power on their planet. Cliche name, but at least it caught peoples' interest here and there, and periodically they picked up competent recruits. They were known to the city as a group of conspiracy theorists and madmen, although a harmless one at that.
The car sped off towards the city gates, where they temporarily exchanged it for one of the Morigan exploration buggies - it was designed for street usage, not off-roading, and most items in the city could be used as ransom for government equipment rentals of roughly equal total value.
An hour later, after leaving Moriga, the three came to a stop and unloaded the man's telescope. The landscape off to their west faded from grassy plains to badlands at the edge of the terraformed radius. The oxygen felt significantly thinner here, so far from the algae vats of Moriga that were responsible for replenishing the atmosphere. As such, they kept speech to a minimum - it was dangerous to stay in the area for too long, lest they grow too weak to drive home safely.
Jonathan tested a custom eyepiece with an inbuilt camera function, taking various pictures of the surrounding landscape, while Thomas set up the telescope and aimed it in the general direction of the object that he had seen before. "M. Balridge" stayed in the buggy, periodically scanning the area for any signs of unexpected movement. After a few minutes of fumbling with his notes and adjusting telescope angles to ensure he had a good view of where the object had been seen the previous night, he took the eyepiece from Jonathan and took a look through the telescope. He clicked the snapshot button on the eyepiece several times as he looked for the object, and once again, the dark blobs in the sky flew together in front of it, drawing his attention to it.
He stood and nodded to the others, then grabbed the telescope and threw it in the trunk of the buggy. The three made their way back to the city, and Thomas felt a surge of excitement at the possibility of finding something they knew they weren't supposed to see.
================
A mutilated body lay inside a dumpster in the heart of the city, blood slowly filling the bottom. A figure in a hooded jacket skipped down the street cheerfully, humming a childhood tune as they left the scene of the crime.
March 4th, 6521
The post-humans had been quite busy asteroid mining and producing extra mining equipment. Their mining fleet had grown somewhat, since the start of the project to appease the new object, and after some difficulty with harvesting an extremely high density metallic asteroid cluster, they managed to improve their drilling and rock shattering techniques marginally.
The great forge-ship, Midoria Processing Facility #1, had been processing hundreds of tons of building materials for spacecraft. One of the Midorian favorites, Custer Armor, consisted of cubic boron nitride granules suspended in a steel-aluminum-manganese alloy, to effectively force penetrating objects to shatter and disintegrate under the heat of friction. The other favorite, a non-armored setup, was the same alloy as the armor, minus the boron nitride, as the alloy was quite strong and lightweight on its own.
Their great collective consciousness looked to the stars again, so worried by the existence of new objects in the sky that they completely missed something worrying happening in Moriga, down below. A member of their flock had disappeared unexpectedly, without their knowledge.
They then noticed the Gallium asteroid field.
Midorian network space is more or less a virtual world that exists somewhere between the dreams of human lives that its members have, and sentient code. By virtue of being a biological network, though, it did not follow the standard rules of computing, and was thoroughly alien to all those who did not live in this space themselves. Not even the residents knew how it worked or how to manipulate it. They just knew it was there, and that it was their home. The Midorian post-humans lucky enough to have mechanical bodies existed both in the physical world and in network space simultaneously. Due to the nature of the programming, it was difficult to assign any sort of real time scale to the happenings in netspace, and the laws of causality didn't always apply there.
A Midorian chat room popped into existence, and immediately, all relevant personalities joined in, as their interconnected feelings drew them together when they were needed.
Ohoho~! Gallium? We don't have much of that. Let's grab it!
What? Why?
Because we don't have it. We could use it for so much!
Like?
Bigger asteroid harvesters! More rockets! Maybe we could send little Gallium toys down to the people? The possibilities are ENDLESS~ I'll get the mining rig ready for travel :D
No.
Aww, why not? :(
It hasn't finished its current job yet.
Oh, fine. I'll just get a few drones together, then. That okay with you?
Yeah, whatever. Just don't break any this time. Yeah, whatever. Just don't break any this time. Yeah, whatever. Just don't break any this time.
Oh, by the way, materials manager group here. We're starting construction on a new production facility.
A group of ten of the mining drones finished dumping their materials in Midoria Processing Facility #1, then clung together hand-to-hand in a circle, and set their course to the new asteroid cluster, disappearing in a dull flash as they simultaneously engaged their Flock drives.
A number of small construction drones began pulling Midorian alloy ingots together and melting them down in space with a construction laser array, manipulating the blobs of molten metals with tungsten tipped claws. Midoria Processing Rig #2 was now in progress.
The post-human collective noticed the pulsing object and decided to simply observe it for the time being.
A student studying astronomy in the city of Moriga, Midoria 1, scanned the sky through his telescope, observing the flight paths of various celestial objects in this new, strange galaxy. The movements of objects in the Milky Way had long ago been plotted, and the gravitational wells associated with most large objects' flight patterns had been identified. Andromeda, however, was still a new place, and the Midorians were encountering totally new phenomena here that seemed totally... alien.
The student scribbled on a notepad as he observed, drawing patterns of theorized flight trajectories for objects in a certain portion of space, as a homework assignment from his professor.
An hour into his observations, he noticed a strange object in his telescope - too perfect to be natural - and, as soon as he noticed it, a series of dark blobs in the sky flew together and blocked the view. These blobs had been appearing for some time - usually when a person died. But they never spent more than a few seconds. These, however, were not moving, as if they were intentionally obstructing the view of the strange object. He felt the urge to forget whatever it was that he had seen.
The Midorian post-humans in orbit considered themselves to be the shepherds of humanity. Protecting it, allowing it to live out its existence on the mockup of old Earth they had created. Sometimes this meant they had to protect the humans on the surface from themselves - erasing ideas, replacing them with others. Anything to keep them from venturing into space, which had ruined their previous galaxy, in their eyes. It was a long, thankless job, but the lives of those on the surface had to be maintained. Humanity was not to enter space during its natural lifetime.
Something strange recently came up, though. An object observed by hundreds on the surface, much to the post-humans' annoyance. A large mechanical device, suggesting that travel through the stars is a possibility. Of course, the sight of such a thing must not be permitted, as it risks the humans having an explosion of uncontrollable will to explore space. Their blinder drones had been extremely busy maintaining the view of space being an empty place, full of danger, recently. A small increase in production of blinders had been warranted, with the sighting of this new object, with standing orders to obstruct the view of the object.
Of the billions of minds together in the stars, there was not one dissenting voice, suggesting that this object may be a threat to their lifestyle. But none wished it gone - the thought didn't even cross their minds that it could be removed. So they continued simply hiding the larger world from their flock as they had always done.
In preparation for first contact with outside forces, though, they significantly stepped up production of mining devices and communications devices (operating via radio). They felt that they should have an offer of a trade deal, or a gift for the object, should it come towards them. Keeping their flock in the dark about such an encounter would require hundreds of thousands of blinders, though, so such contact would be a great annoyance until they could convince it to stay far away.
What do they value?: This state places a high priority on the sanctity of life, and preserving consciousness.
What do they despise?: They have difficulty comprehending murder, and when it happens, the committer is "corrected"
What kind of state are they?: The Midorian post-humans live as a partial hivemind, and as a utopian communist state. The Midorian humans live in a socialist society under the watchful eyes of the post-humans.
What is their population?: Their populace is split into two groups. The first is made entirely up of humans, who are permitted to live out their lives in an approximation of 23rd century Earth, after which they are granted the choice of dying naturally or being converted to a post-human, machine state. They achieve this via neuron replacement therapy with nanorobots, and the freshly converted brain is reconfigured to fit society's new standards and uploaded to the mechanical populace's neural network. The mechanical populace never directly interacts with the human populace, as that would be interfering with the sacred lives of those below. The only exceptions are granted for preventing disasters, harvesting minds, and giving advanced medical assistance.
How large is their population?: The on-planet population is approximately five hundred million humans, at this time. The ascended population is currently close to two billion, and grows with every new death on-planet, albeit the vast majority do not have access to a physical body.
How much infrastructure have they set up?: Much of their current infrastructure is dedicated to two things - redundant information storage and networking, to prevent loss of consciousness and sacred life, and on-planet cities with all of the amenities that 23rd century Earth cities had. To date, they have a number of orbital material processing and scientific facilities around their planet, and a number of enormous cities planetside.
How much technology have they already salvaged or developed?: They have salvaged absolutely no technology, preferring not to interfere if necessary. Their technological developments have been mostly limited to medical technologies, data storage, organic matter synthesis, and mining - weapons and propulsion are very low on their list of priorities due to their lack of any notion of time.
Who leads them?: The Midorians have no "leader" at this time, instead preferring direct voting via the neural network. The Midorian human populace is led by the Midorian post-humans indirectly.
What sort of bloke is s/he/it?: N/A
How does s/he/it actually command?: Partial hivemind. Priority decisions are made on the spot by the entire mechanical populace simultaneously, and instructions are sent out immediately after the decision has been made as a species.
What does s/he/it have to deal with to do stuff?: Very little, as humans are "corrected" when being brought into the fold of the many, removing most human instincts.
What was it's name?: The Wayfarer
What type of ship was it (aside from being a colony ship)?: A simple ship - a cubic habitation module mounted on the end of a scaffold separating it from its thrusters (due to safety concerns related to radiation)
What defended it?: Sheer durability and system redundancy.
How advanced was it?: 22nd century technology - unreliable, easy to break, and relatively slow. Its Terraforming kit was made up of a series of genetic samples from all known Earth species, alive and extinct alike, as well as enormous quantities of bacteria.
Do you think it should still have more to salvage from it?: Not at all. This thing was broken when they arrived at their new home, and scrapped immediately for recycling into the planet's infrastructure and the first space station.
How long do you reckon it should theoretically take to get it running again, after acquiring all of the relevant technologies?: Were it still intact, it would be incapable of functioning even as well as a small modern ship.
What type of planet did they land on?: Earthlike planet, similar mass and distance from a similar star. 65% of the planet is covered in water, but the planet is rather humid as well.
Name: Midoria 1, Home of the Domain
Do you think it should have the remnants of any previous inhabitants?: There were no previous inhabitants - a dead planet in the right spot.
Do you think it should've been already inhabited, and your Nation had to waste resources invading it?: Dead planet with no worthwhile resources for other species to mine for. The only resources spent were the terraforming kit in the mothership.
What sort of atmosphere does it have?: Similar composition to Earth's atmosphere, albeit with a slightly higher concentration of oxygen.
How many continents?: Five continents, many of which are interconnected by land bridges or ice.
How big is it?: 5% larger than Earth in terms of mass.
How bountiful do you think it should be, in terms of biomass and materials?: Watery and barren planet at first. Certain areas, where the human population lives, have been successfully covered in Earth flora and fauna, which are slowly spreading through the wasteland as more minerals are processed into artificial soil by the mobile mining rigs up above.
Does it have any unusual materials or minerals in its' surface?: The usual - nothing particularly special that couldn't have been mined on Earth. It's a very baseline planet.
Does it have any other unusual features?: One. There is a single enormous mountain, housing an extremely deep cavern system, and it is suspected to have been, at one time long ago, a volcano. The Midorians have taken to referring to it as Mount Olympus, in reference to an ancient Earth religion.
What sort of vessel is it?: A single, monolithic carrier and mineral processing rig, dedicated to processing mined materials into usable resources.
How big is it?: This mining monstrosity is in the range of four kilometers, albeit very lightly constructed. The vast majority of the space is made up of scaffolding, leading to an overall density more akin to a gas than a ship
What's it look like?: An enormous rigging of scaffolds, with occasional gas bags, docking racks, and warehouses. There are a number of smaller structures on it that appear akin to ancient Earth smelters.
What sort of engines, 'real' and FTL? The ship itself is equipped with one Nuclear Pulse Plate and a hefty stockpile of thrust charges, along with several much weaker ion thrusters. Its FTL system is a rudimentary and weak Flock drive.
The ship itself has no "weapons" to speak of, however, it does carry 30 Mining Drones.
What sort of vessel is it?: A small, remotely controlled mining drone.
How big is it?: Fifty meters in length.
What's it look like?: A blocky drone, carrying a single gas bag beneath its hull and a series of cargo crates in its sides. It features a series of "legs", each mounting thrusters, and two manipulator arms, each mounting a mining laser and a gripping device. It has a vaguely insectoid appearance, and when unladen, is roughly the mass of a 20th century Space Shuttle.
What sort of engines, 'real' and FTL? The mining drone is equipped with a high power ion based thruster, and runs off of either stockpiled fuel or fuel gathered from the interstellar medium. It mounts a rudimentary, miniaturized Flock FTL system.
The mining drone, in line with Midorian beliefs in the sanctity of life and consciousness, comes equipped with a simple automated medical bay for emergency consciousness uploading.
A small drone, 10 meters long.
Extremely industrial, no aesthetics or armoring.
Powered by a fission reactor, equipped with several squidlike manipulator arms, and an array of various construction lasers. No FTL system, very rudimentary ion thrusters.
Here rest the remains of the original Wayfarer, all of its resources used up for the production of basic mining vessels and planetside cities. It serves as a docking point for material canisters intended for transfer to Midoria, and as a basic point of reference for orbital ship construction. It is in geosynchronous orbit around the planet, above the continent in which all of Midoria's cities lie, and acts as a communications satellite - albeit a relatively poor one, given the distance to the planet.
The Midorians originally set out from Earth a few millennia prior to the other drifters, as a group of like-minded Spacers who felt the species would only survive if it spread into the stars. The technology present on the Wayfarer was roughly middle of the road when it originally set out, but it is absolutely pitiful by modern standards. A lack of heavy defenses left it to the whims of the universe, and it was struck by a cosmic radiation burst in transit, damaging a significant portion of its life support system and cutting its population support by half. Humans don't particularly appreciate dying, so the Midorians immediately began researching ways to save all of the crew rather than drawing straws. The oxygen supply slowly dropped over the course of a few years, killing off those who weren't able to adapt to the higher carbon dioxide concentration, and desperation built up until eventually they tried to develop a method of surviving death. The first several waves of experiments resulted in every patient dying, until the first successful brain conversion. Given a taste of success, the trials continued with a 95% mortality rate amongst the volunteers over the years, until the technology behind nanotech based neuron replacement therapy was perfected. Immediately, the surviving population was (against their will) cut down to "manageable" sizes by forced conversion.
Further damage to the colony ship over the several millennia of drifting towards their destination continued cutting down its organic life support potential and spurring further increases in its "ascended" population, until they finally reached their destination - a single Earthlike planet in the Andromeda galaxy. Upon arrival, they were unable to support more than 10% of their original "living" population.
During this period of death, conversion, and waiting, a sort of "religion" sprung up - a longing for life on Earth as humans, originating from the memories of the first few generations of post-humans. A vote was held, with a unanimous decision to bring back the life they once knew on Earth and protect it at all costs, along with a successful vote to bring those who lived a full and happy life into the world of machines, where they would be allowed to continue existing and working with their family and friends.
What do they value?: This state places a high priority on the sanctity of life, and preserving consciousness.
What do they despise?: They have difficulty comprehending murder, and when it happens, the committer is "corrected"
What kind of state are they?: The Midorian post-humans live as a partial hivemind, and as a utopian communist state. The Midorian humans live in a socialist society under the watchful eyes of the post-humans.
What is their population?: Their populace is split into two groups. The first is made entirely up of humans, who are permitted to live out their lives in an approximation of 23rd century Earth, after which they are granted the choice of dying naturally or being converted to a post-human, machine state. They achieve this via neuron replacement therapy with nanorobots, and the freshly converted brain is reconfigured to fit society's new standards and uploaded to the mechanical populace's neural network. The mechanical populace never directly interacts with the human populace, as that would be interfering with the sacred lives of those below. The only exceptions are granted for preventing disasters, harvesting minds, and giving advanced medical assistance.
How large is their population?: The on-planet population is approximately five hundred million humans, at this time. The ascended population is currently close to two billion, and grows with every new death on-planet, albeit the vast majority do not have access to a physical body.
How much infrastructure have they set up?: Much of their current infrastructure is dedicated to two things - redundant information storage and networking, to prevent loss of consciousness and sacred life, and on-planet cities with all of the amenities that 23rd century Earth cities had. To date, they have a number of orbital material processing and scientific facilities around their planet, and a number of enormous cities planetside.
How much technology have they already salvaged or developed?: They have salvaged absolutely no technology, preferring not to interfere if necessary. Their technological developments have been mostly limited to medical technologies, data storage, organic matter synthesis, and mining - weapons and propulsion are very low on their list of priorities due to their lack of any notion of time.
Who leads them?: The Midorians have no "leader" at this time, instead preferring direct voting via the neural network. The Midorian human populace is led by the Midorian post-humans indirectly.
What sort of bloke is s/he/it?: N/A
How does s/he/it actually command?: Partial hivemind. Priority decisions are made on the spot by the entire mechanical populace simultaneously, and instructions are sent out immediately after the decision has been made as a species.
What does s/he/it have to deal with to do stuff?: Very little, as humans are "corrected" when being brought into the fold of the many, removing most human instincts.
What was it's name?: The Wayfarer
What type of ship was it (aside from being a colony ship)?: A simple ship - a cubic habitation module mounted on the end of a scaffold separating it from its thrusters (due to safety concerns related to radiation)
What defended it?: Sheer durability and system redundancy.
How advanced was it?: 22nd century technology - unreliable, easy to break, and relatively slow. Its Terraforming kit was made up of a series of genetic samples from all known Earth species, alive and extinct alike, as well as enormous quantities of bacteria.
Do you think it should still have more to salvage from it?: Not at all. This thing was broken when they arrived at their new home, and scrapped immediately for recycling into the planet's infrastructure and the first space station.
How long do you reckon it should theoretically take to get it running again, after acquiring all of the relevant technologies?: Were it still intact, it would be incapable of functioning even as well as a small modern ship.
What type of planet did they land on?: Earthlike planet, similar mass and distance from a similar star. 65% of the planet is covered in water, but the planet is rather humid as well.
Name: Midoria 1, Home of the Domain
Do you think it should have the remnants of any previous inhabitants?: There were no previous inhabitants - a dead planet in the right spot.
Do you think it should've been already inhabited, and your Nation had to waste resources invading it?: Dead planet with no worthwhile resources for other species to mine for. The only resources spent were the terraforming kit in the mothership.
What sort of atmosphere does it have?: Similar composition to Earth's atmosphere, albeit with a slightly higher concentration of oxygen.
How many continents?: Five continents, many of which are interconnected by land bridges or ice.
How big is it?: 5% larger than Earth in terms of mass.
How bountiful do you think it should be, in terms of biomass and materials?: Watery and barren planet at first. Certain areas, where the human population lives, have been successfully covered in Earth flora and fauna, which are slowly spreading through the wasteland as more minerals are processed into artificial soil by the mobile mining rigs up above.
Does it have any unusual materials or minerals in its' surface?: The usual - nothing particularly special that couldn't have been mined on Earth. It's a very baseline planet.
Does it have any other unusual features?: One. There is a single enormous mountain, housing an extremely deep cavern system, and it is suspected to have been, at one time long ago, a volcano. The Midorians have taken to referring to it as Mount Olympus, in reference to an ancient Earth religion.
What sort of vessel is it?: A single, monolithic carrier and mineral processing rig, dedicated to processing mined materials into usable resources.
How big is it?: This mining monstrosity is in the range of four kilometers, albeit very lightly constructed. The vast majority of the space is made up of scaffolding, leading to an overall density more akin to a gas than a ship
What's it look like?: An enormous rigging of scaffolds, with occasional gas bags, docking racks, and warehouses. There are a number of smaller structures on it that appear akin to ancient Earth smelters.
What sort of engines, 'real' and FTL? The ship itself is equipped with one Nuclear Pulse Plate and a hefty stockpile of thrust charges, along with several much weaker ion thrusters. Its FTL system is a rudimentary and weak Flock drive.
The ship itself has no "weapons" to speak of, however, it does carry 30 Mining Drones.
What sort of vessel is it?: A small, remotely controlled mining drone.
How big is it?: Fifty meters in length.
What's it look like?: A blocky drone, carrying a single gas bag beneath its hull and a series of cargo crates in its sides. It features a series of "legs", each mounting thrusters, and two manipulator arms, each mounting a mining laser and a gripping device. It has a vaguely insectoid appearance, and when unladen, is roughly the mass of a 20th century Space Shuttle.
What sort of engines, 'real' and FTL? The mining drone is equipped with a high power ion based thruster, and runs off of either stockpiled fuel or fuel gathered from the interstellar medium. It mounts a rudimentary, miniaturized Flock FTL system.
The mining drone, in line with Midorian beliefs in the sanctity of life and consciousness, comes equipped with a simple automated medical bay for emergency consciousness uploading.
Here rest the remains of the original Wayfarer, all of its resources used up for the production of basic mining vessels and planetside cities. It serves as a docking point for material canisters intended for transfer to Midoria, and as a basic point of reference for orbital ship construction. It is in geosynchronous orbit around the planet, above the continent in which all of Midoria's cities lie, and acts as a communications satellite - albeit a relatively poor one, given the distance to the planet.
The Midorians originally set out from Earth a few millennia prior to the other drifters, as a group of like-minded Spacers who felt the species would only survive if it spread into the stars. The technology present on the Wayfarer was roughly middle of the road when it originally set out, but it is absolutely pitiful by modern standards. A lack of heavy defenses left it to the whims of the universe, and it was struck by a cosmic radiation burst in transit, damaging a significant portion of its life support system and cutting its population support by half. Humans don't particularly appreciate dying, so the Midorians immediately began researching ways to save all of the crew rather than drawing straws. The oxygen supply slowly dropped over the course of a few years, killing off those who weren't able to adapt to the higher carbon dioxide concentration, and desperation built up until eventually they tried to develop a method of surviving death. The first several waves of experiments resulted in every patient dying, until the first successful brain conversion. Given a taste of success, the trials continued with a 95% mortality rate amongst the volunteers over the years, until the technology behind nanotech based neuron replacement therapy was perfected. Immediately, the surviving population was (against their will) cut down to "manageable" sizes by forced conversion.
Further damage to the colony ship over the several millennia of drifting towards their destination continued cutting down its organic life support potential and spurring further increases in its "ascended" population, until they finally reached their destination - a single Earthlike planet in the Andromeda galaxy. Upon arrival, they were unable to support more than 10% of their original "living" population.
During this period of death, conversion, and waiting, a sort of "religion" sprung up - a longing for life on Earth as humans, originating from the memories of the first few generations of post-humans. A vote was held, with a unanimous decision to bring back the life they once knew on Earth and protect it at all costs, along with a successful vote to bring those who lived a full and happy life into the world of machines, where they would be allowed to continue existing and working with their family and friends.
In short - this group has nothing except for extremely rudimentary spacefaring technologies and no real "weapons", but due to extreme circumstances, has advanced medical and computing technology to the highest extreme possible with the resources that were available during their long drift.
Arimax, who had been leaning against the wall near the door the entire time, checked the time on his PDA. The room had been silent for several uncomfortable minutes. Well, then, he thought. Might as well try to liven it up in here a little bit.
He stood up in front of the group, smiling thinly as he spoke to the jumbled mess of mercenaries and true rebels before him.
"Many of you arrived after me, so I'll just introduce myself again. I am Arimax Lispat, of Coruscant. I have every reason to believe that everyone in here is trustworthy - at least, as long as the money is good and nobody's family gets captured or anything silly like that. I, myself, am here because the Empire is in the way of progress. They need to be removed for the sake of both science and prosperity."
He looked around the room for the others' reactions before continuing in a slightly more serious tone.
"Nobody has left the room, so I assume we're all ready for the next step... What is the first thing we need to do to disrupt the Empire's operations on Coruscant?"
INxx, 6w5/2w1/1w9, here. Being able to lock emotions up when focused or under stress is a huge deal - makes it easier to logically sort out a problem than panicking would allow for.
I tend to make characters who bend the world to their will through via manipulation and confusion - full of intentional contradictions that all come together when their goals are achieved, all through careful remembrance of minor details and detailed dialogue.
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