Dinh AaronMk

Precipice of War - The Big Leagues of NRP (Only generous tippers need apply)

@Jestocost

I don't know about any oil fields out there or any significant economic activity that would strand a bunch of westerners otherwise unaffiliated with the Russian government and probably with passports to other countries. Unless Byrds says otherwise, sounds like something where these people could just appeal to Japanese assistance to withdraw them and get them out.

But the thing too to keep in mind about the area around or near Kamchatka is that part of Russia is basically considerably under populated. Even today the population density on average in the area is less than three people per square mile. There's a few communities there but I don't know if they'd actually be large enough to make a sort of cohesive political organization.



Like when you talk about Siberian monasteries I was expecting something like Omsk. Once you get that far east and that close to the Arctic things become less Russian and more Caribou herders and people related to the Alaskan Inuit, or basically the same people.

Precipice of War - The Big Leagues of NRP (Only generous tippers need apply)

@Jestocost

I'd be generally supportive of it, but I'm not too fond of the provisional government thing for the east. I've written about the area in a briefing post here, I think.

But the general gist is that the Amur Host, headed by Hetman Yuri Mykhalov formed a confederacy among the other Cossack units of the Russian far-east after being thrown out of Primorsky Krai by the Japanese. He and the rest of the Cossack units have been terrorizing the area to keep its security and order, ostensibly in the name of the Czar. They are the order and military force of the region.

I'd be willing to take in the Monastic Order idea under the assumption that it's something that exists "underneath" the Cossacks so to speak. A loose political affiliation of Russian far-eastern monks who are trying to simply organize the efforts of the communities in the far-east, albeit I don't think the situation would be famine-tier, just heavily economically depressed. Unless you're situated in the far north there should be enough agricultural potential to at least keep self sustaining communities.

I don't know if there's any active monastic orders in the Russian East though, but it's difficult to confirm anything with Russia and Siberia.

Dark Matters (Open)

Starship Liberty

Engineering

The device felt familiar. It was certainly comprised of parts that could be identified. A long springy antenna, wires wrapped in a protective coating, a shell that had been shiny, but through untold years of moisture and brine had long lost its luster. A white coat of oxidation had enveloped the part of it that had been found over ground. That which had been buried was dark and rough. Nothing living had made an effort to stick to it, no lichen, algea, or some alien barnacles. Its seemless exterior showed no crease or indication of an access point, except at one point. At the top, or what was presumed to be the top where the antenna protruded was a hatch, a hairline separation between it and the rest of it.

“Hell, it has to be human.” one of the engineers said, leaning into the machine with all his weight. His arms were heavy set and pitted with scabs and scars. Bony growths protruded from under his skin and ran along the length of his arm, meeting at his shoulders to where his back was almost a shell under the dirty cloth of an oily wife beater. His face, afflicted by the same biology was like a hammer head: blunt, flat, unattractive. His beady eyes focused intently down at the machine.

“And why is that?” Marcus said from below. The entire device stood taller than he. By width it was the size of a large minivan and could have been near a story tall. Shaped like a pill it lay on its side, the long antenna probing the far wall and bowing upwards, opposite the floor at the base of the antenna sat the hatch, and leaning up against it a bright yellow ladder where the alien mechanic stood, his short stubby legs leaning against the rungs and knees set against the rungs.

“Because...” the mechanic grunted. There was the sound of metal popping and he threw down his screwdriver, “It's philips headed and I just stripped it out.” he protested, “The screws probably weren't the same metal as the rest. They're fucked to hell.” he grumbled, climbing down.

A human kid came racing around from the other side of the machine, a young girl. She wore a one piece jumper and her long hair was done up in a bun behind her head. She looked to be no older than eleven. Cradled in her arms was a large drill. She handed it up to the mechanic who was down to the last rung, and reaching down with his long arms thanked his assistant. She smiled, and darted off, her rubbed shoes plodding against the steel floor.

Checking the bit the mechanic grumbled under his breath. He didn't have a mouth like a man, it was stiff and hardly as roundly articulate. Each breath and sound he made came out almost as if a grunt or a low rumble. He changed out the bits on the large yellow drill, sliding a new own out from a belt around his hip and dropping the old one into a pocket in his cargo pants and headed back up.

At the top he began assaulting the screws holding the hatch down. The drill rolled and tore at the steel and the room was filled with a harsh, loud whine and roar. During whence Dan came strolling in, his hands in his pockets he looked up at the work in progress. “Guess it's not open yet?” he said, shouting over the noise.

“No, screws stripped open.”

“Damn, if a Gjorn can't open it then it must be in tight.” Dan shouted back.

One by one the mechanic popped out the screws. As the drill came out, so did they at the bidding of the extraction bit at the end. In minutes the plate was removed and he through it down to the side. As it clanged to the side he looked in.

“Ahh- USB type E-class, maybe. Don't know the number.” he said shouting.

“Wait, so this might be human?” Dan said.

“Think so.” Marcus said.

“E-class? How old is this thing then? You think it's still working?”

“It was broadcasting.” Marcus said, and looking up the mechanic shouting, “G-L, what do you think it was doing?”

“Hell if I know. An exploratory probe? A beacon left behind? If anything, it's not working well if you only caught the signally while on top of it.”

Again from around the corner the little assistance came plodding. With a box in her hand she climbed up the ladder and worked herself around the master mechanic until she was seated cross legged next to the hatch. When she opened the box she began taking out chords and drives. From a pocket she took out a small tablet computer.

“No. No. Not this.” G-L muttered as they went through the drive adapters. At each one used it was handed back and replaced. But with every one tried, came on that didn't work.

“Looks like it could be F-series.” the girl said.

“Really? What makes you think that?” G-L asked.

The girl shone a light on something through the screen of her tablet. “There's a little tongue there, next to the plates. Could also be a safety.”

“Ah, perhaps. Can you go get those?”

The girl nodded and closed her box. Leaving the diagnostic tablet behind she disappeared around the side of the machine again.

“I have to give you humans credit. You say universal and I've seen nothing but.” G-L chided, teasing, “Maybe your race means a universe of all kinds.”

“Maybe. I've been baffled about that too.” Dan commented.

The shop assistant came back around with another box, and resumed her seat next to the hatch. Again they went to work finding and matching drives until they found one.

“It's in!” the girl exclaimed. She lifted up the tablet and looked at it, “There's something in there.” she added, and went to work tapping through interfaces.

“What is it?” everyone else in the room asked, whether out loud or to themselves. She placed the tablet on the surface of the pod and it projected up into the air its user interface. She began reaching out to and moving information boxes and technical messages. Something flashed that the connected hardware was out of date and needed a software upgraded. She dismissed that. There was another message that said something about fifty years since last update. But that too was gone before anyone had a chance to read it. Finally coming to the program she wanted she activated something, and it all shut down.

“I reboot it.” she said simply, “I need to boot it on both operating systems. It'll take a while.” she said, sliding to the side and stretching her feet off the side of the rounded hull, and begun drumming the heels of her feet.

The three looked nonplussed. G-L shrugged. “Alright then.” he mumbled, “I'll go wash my hands and go find something to eat.”

Marcus kicked at the floor, and turned to Dan, “So, you up to it?”

“No, I already ate.” he said. “I was going to go catch a show, or head to Deck 15 and play some ball. The system is going to start issuing bulletins to ask where we're headed next. I think some refugee work was on that.”

“What do you think of that?” Marcus asked. The two headed out the door.

“Go ahead and drop myself off at a stockpile. Liberty's going to need some people to try and organize that and I need to get out of this tube. I'm really just hoping to settle down for a year, two, three. A stockpile would be a good place for that.”

Marcus nodded noncommittally as they stepped out of the room.

Compared to the gravity-less aft, Deck 1 was at the least far more open. Much more so than the other decks up to 14. But this much so for the purpose of moving much of the heavy components around. Here the major work that demanded the control of gravity was performed. Whether it was investigating abandoned debris, the repair of vehicles, fixing large or small components there were things best not performed in the weightless of zero gravity, in free fall. An infinitely small screw lost in the anywhere space of the chambers and passages of the hanger, engine bays, or power plant could end up destructive. If it could be removed, it was removed to Deck 1 and worked on. If it needed to be processed, it was in Deck 1. Many hundreds, thousands of automated systems performed the never ending cycle of keeping Liberty in perpetual voyage and sustained its nomadism to the root-most mechanical function. Repairs in the aft were to be large, dealing with large parts and the minimum of free-floating smaller bits. Deck 1 repairs were on those small minuteas.

“What are you thinking?” asked Dan

“What we're going to do now. I'd like to know what it is we found. But, we're going to have to wait until everything's all formatted. G-L said it's probably human. Who do you think it's from?”

“Something built like that? I don't think I've ever seen anything like that for a while. But it must be old. It said it was fifty years out of date, you think that's true?”

“Oh fuck no.” Marcus chortled. It wasn't filled with humor though. He was astonished, bewildered. He didn't know what to think of it. He chortled at the something unexplained, chuckled at the strange circumstance.

“I suppose you'll be hanging around here then.” Dan said, “Maybe?”

“I suppose I will.”

“Tell me if you learn anything then.” Dan smiled, stepping away from Marcus as he headed down the hall. The door to the workshop sat closed between them. Down the hall was a shaft for an elevator. As he reached it he looked back and smiled, waving to him as he called the lift.

Finding what they found there was something strange, Marcus thought to himself as Dan left. Even after the fact, there was a sense of confusion and awestruck mysticism for the beacon that they had stumbled across. Even as they delivered it to the ship there was chatter. Whose was it? Mars? The Ressurectionists? Perhaps some other further flung human polity. It might be a spy satellite. Or a navigation beacon. It was after all the sort of signal it had put out. It could have been a bread crumb. But where was the next crumb?

He had found it by following that beacon, its own bread crumb trail. Flying low he passed it the first several times, skirting over the volcanic island it was on and throwing up sand as he passed. He nearly nicked a giant knife of a rock that protruded from the volcanic ground there. But on his third pass he found it, sitting out in the extreme low tide. Had it been a few yards in one direction, it would have been under water. How long had it been there? For several decades? Was it washed up on high tide or revealed in low tide?

But finding it he had stopped and landed, and called it in. At that time it was embedded in the sand and rocky mud it was resting it. All entirely white from salt water. It must have been made of aluminum, he thought. Aluminum oxidizes white, doesn't it? He didn't know how tall it was then, it was embedded so deep that it was nearly as tall as his craft was tall on its skids, exempting the antenna.

Was it fortune it hadn't buried its antenna? If its signal was meant to be so strong, and it had weakened, then it would've been mute to him or anyone if it was buried wrong-side down.

It was everyone else who had helped him get it out. With some fighting they pulled it out with chains and cables. Packed it aboard a heavy shuttle, and flew it back to the Liberty. They counted their stars they didn't need to deal with anything heavier.

Now here it was, in Deck 1 aboard the Liberty. Probably built by humans, but by who no one knew.

Several hours passed. His pocket buzzed. Reaching in he pulled out a small hand held computer. He had a message. He opened it, it simply read, “It's done.”

Slipping it back in his pocket he made his way back to the workshop. Stepping back inside he swelled the renewed blast of ozone and mechanical chemicals; lubricants, hydraulics, and stored coolants. G-L's assistant, the human girl was still perched atop the beacon with the hatch off, her tablet computer plugged into the beacon. What had changed now though was the lack of user interface. Many of the normal windows, messages, and alerts had been moved aside and now there was a much more clear program being projected from the tablet's screen that the girl was playing with. It appeared to be a map, in rough form.

“Well, I cracked it.” she said, “Only to find out someone had encrypted most of it. But I think Mr. G's right, whoever made it: we did.”

“We did?” Marcus asked, stepping up closer to the beacon as if he could see the map clearer. It was a 2D projection of the galaxy and the girl had it mostly facing her. She idly spun it, watching the static constant of the dots representing the stars orbit as if it were the galaxy.

“Well, not we. But we as in, well, humans.” said she.

“How's that?”

“Our USBs worked.”

“Well I'm sure anyone interacting with us would have picked up that. Why what else?” he asked.

“It works on our computers. Computer things aren't entirely different, it's not written on a whole other language. Same thing we've been speaking for thousands of years!” she said, emphasizing this by spreading out her arms.

“Also, Sol is at the middle of these two lines.” she added, pointing to two crossing axis faintly visible, “So it must be us. Not many other life puts Sol at the middle of their universe like we do.”

“No, no they don't...” Marcus said, and almost distantly muttered, “The Geliuminens actually put the Galactic center at their middle.”

“You say something?” the girl asked.

“No, no. Nothing that's not important. So we have this, what then?”

“Ahhh-” the girl started, looking up at the map, “Well this dot here must be it!” she pointed, picking out a red blip to the north-west of Earth, above the dividing line that would separate the galaxy if one were drawn left-to-right through the galactic center; which on the map was shown as a void filled with a checkerboard pattern. The red dot was just a few fingers north of that line, sort of mid-way across on that left-hand side.

“OK, that's good. But do we know any more?” Marcus asked.

“I want to work on it, but it's pretty hard.” she complained, “I'd like Mr. G to help out, but he's out to lunch. You know, he eats too much. It can't be helpful.”

“Well he has a fast metabolism.” Marcus said, “But, hey... If you learn anything else can you keep me in the loop. I'm kind of curious.”

“Sure thing.” the girl smiled, “I'll see what's going on with this.”

Precipice of War - The Big Leagues of NRP (Only generous tippers need apply)

@Pepperm1nts@Jestocost

I think if you two go anywhere keep a mind to get Pig, Shyri/Feo, and at least Mihndar on it too. They might have input.

But if I can say anything on my impressions of Russia culture: in some ways it's been described to me as antithetical to western culture. Where there's an emphasis on rationalism in the West there's a de-emphasis on and sneering at Enlightenment or Rationalist beliefs. Or even in that sense democracy. Though the later could be explained with my rather juvenile understanding of writers like Hannah Arendt's study of politics, thought I still need to read it I've heard the thesis of her book On Revolution boils down to "have autocratic leadership before revolution? Get a new one after." Tankies will try to correct me on it but the nature of the Soviet Union wasn't entirely different from the Tzarist model.

But politically too, while Moscow or the Imperial cities are the seat of power, they've been in less ways the same the further out you went from Moscow. Metropolitan, European Russia might be more strictly in orbit around Moscow or Saint Petersburg and its customs and nuances but the more you go out the more autonomous you may get. A particularly extreme or autonomous government may be at the fringes in Russia; ex the Siberian Cossack union East of the Urals I'm using as my Russian antagonist. So in the ungoverned territories there'd be a lot of room for wild, unpredictable, or unforeseen activities; not just because it's distant, but because it also contained a lot of overlapping military and ethnic groups in one small area.

Southern Russia is known to be a major place RL for Cossack activity. The cossacks being formerly an independent half-slavic people, originally they could be described anarchistically in that their organization was as highly democratized and they often flaunted imperial whims to the north and the west, but as time went on they were brought under control. By the time of the RP they'd have evolved into a strictly military identity with a emphasis and identity in the structure of the army. Now-a-days IRL they're infamous as being the government's paramilitary goons of Putin and are literally patrolling the world cup with whips looking for the gay. They occupy a large part of the Russian identity.

A Russian friend also says of Southern Russia as being a lot of white trash cosplaying as Cossacks. So we shouldn't skimp on the a e s t h e t i c.

Cossack choir
A swordfight with a cossack in a 1974 movie
The hilarious response of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire

And well, back to the pain-in-the-neck irrationality of the Russians as mentioned, I've heard it as being explained well enough in this Dostoyevsky from Notes of the Underground:

"I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can't explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "pay out" the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well--let it get worse!"

And it's not far off. Russia has a hella wild history of esoteric and wild religious cult if you want to do the doomsday thing. They've cut their balls and tits off for God before.

Precipice of War - The Big Leagues of NRP (Only generous tippers need apply)

@Jestocost

I will have to summon the slav-team to commentate, since I don't know how much they have planned going ahead. Otherwise, Russian history besides what's in the OP would be in the Russia sheets: Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Ukraine, Archangle (since I can't remember the Russian name, get the English name), Chechnya. As far as it boils down:

Since the death of the czar, Russia has broken down politically of course. The current-most head of the Romanov dynasty is sitting in Saint Petersburg, where-as a pretender exists in Moscow and the two are competing with one another. Ukraine also took the time to break away, and is lead by a female Hetman commanding a Cossack nation of sorts. Likewise, a Socialist Republic exists in the far-north. In the intervening years the Chinese took advantage of Russia's non-existence to scoop up and annex Mongolia and Japan invaded and took Primorsky Krai and some of the surrounding areas. In the most latest history, China is in the process of invading Russia but is only in the most earliest steps and not registering on anyone's radar; only the Japanese so far have the vaguest notion something is happening.

Otherwise I got a couple kids doing a road trip through Kazakhstan on a motor bike on their way to Ethiopia of all places and that's all of Chinese things there.

And the map is abhorrently out of date because I'm a cunt and mostly rely on Feo/Moscow Player.

Now I'm sure someone will probably come in and correct me or add onto this.

Diapergate: Reflections on the Movement Twenty Years Later

Many died for diapergate.

MAHZQUEST

>Create a forum and then abandon it to kick balls

How long...

Has Mahz been in Mexico?

Dark Matters (Open)

Unclaimed system

Unnamed Planet

In the space of several days an empty island had taken on a new form. Smoothed out and sculpted to something new. A simple super-structure had been put down, the bare necessities of landing and as easy to dismantle as it was to put down. Standing over the tallest slime-covered rocks at the equator of this alien world, the landing pad was one of many that spread out a decentralized colony of landing pads and associated developments. From the Starship Liberty - from the surface a distant and hazy smudge beyond the atmosphere that slipped from the sky and returned at the speed of the day – tents had been acquired and haphazardly set out. In their cool shade counter tops and tables had been set about and alcohol served in the balmy tropical air.

It was by no means a perfect setting. The first remarks of the adventurers as they rotated on and off and on and off again was that the planet had a smell, like a moldy bathroom and a stale closet, with a tinge of salt. The primitive and primordial status of life on this planet such that nothing was really turned over. No new smells, no new experience was spread in the atmosphere. No flowers or orchids to bathe the senses in their perfume. Nor was there any other life here to give to it a smell of musk. All of it was locked under water. Given another million, billion years the conditions on the planet may develop so that there would be complex surface bound life. But for the time being what was above the tidal line were odd purple and red blossoms of fungal and lichen growth on the sea battered rocks and dotted in the sands. Nothing of which was tested to be harmful to the alien life that plodded about its sandy islands, stretching their legs for another indeterminate voyage through the interstellar void.

“So where are we going next?” a man asked, leaning on the impromptu bar. A large television screen hung over the low shelf of booze and an array of cameras on top of the monitor streamed the present drinker's back to the main ship.

“The persistent war by the Ressurectionists is creating a refugee problem.” one of the figures on the screen said, a woman reclining to the side on a couch, “At least I think so. It might be worth going over that way to relieve the pressure a bit and get civilians and dissident groups out of the way before the fascists can do anything about it.”

“Is that really our problem though?” another asked, “Isn't there someone else who can deal with it?”

“Far as I know no one has.” the same woman said, “So the opportunity's there.”

“They're a lot closer to us than the Zuukind.” Marcus chimed in. He sipped some rum and scratched the side of his nose, “So supposing we owed anything to anyone they'd be the most accessible.”

“It's not entirely out of our scope. We moved people out of the way of their crusade centuries ago.” another figure in the stream said, “Don't see why we can't again.”

“Yes but that was centuries ago. Is it really such an issue now? Let the statists duke it out. If they can't see the future might as well let them kill one another. We'll be the only ones left, the only life after their annihilation.”

“We're not talking about moving planetary government out. Just the sort caught in the middle. Those with the most to lose, at the least.”

Marcus was drawn from the conversation when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see a familiar dark face around him. “Oh hey Dan.” he said, smiling.

“Ey, Marcus. About to do one last ride about the planet. I think we're starting to pack up here. You game?”

“Yeah, I was getting bored here anyways.” he said, putting down his half drunk shot of rum. Excusing himself from the table he followed the tall broad-shouldered black man out over the perpetual beach.

Parked at the frothy verge of land and sea sat a collection of small vehicles, sharp and pointed, their sides bulged out like pregnant whales in the armor shell of white poly shells. The cabins, a black enclosed space, were almost like the head of a grub. They rested on the sand, white fins struck out and burrowed in the white gray ground, the waves lapping up against them, the bodies held up from the ground by them. They sat waiting, fish like in appearance ultimately, and deadly patient.

“We're good to go, chief!” a small man said, a young child hanging out alongside him placing tools into a tool box. There was a small gaggle of people there, human, alien, man, woman, young, old. Those ready to ride out scrambled aboard the waiting hover craft and threw open the hatches and threw themselves inside. Dan did so too, and Marcus took up his own.

Inside the cabin was cool, there was the soft whisper of the air conditioning as the air inside was gently circulated, making the inside colder by fifteen degrees than it was inside. The seat, conforming to Marcus held him gently; it was as if he were floating. All around him he could hear the whine of the engines fire up and reaching to the control panel he flipped his own switches. Responding instantly the lights went on and a holographic display was projected onto the tinted windshield. Readings of power levels, engine performance, and cabin conditions were emblazoned in bright neon blue letters across the dim, dark window. As the engines warmed up, Marcus reached for a holographic dial and with the tips of his fingers turned it. The tinting of the cabin glass lessened, and the alien planet's colors were gently restored.

One by one the white flying fish lifted off from the barren beach and took off in a formation of one leading the other. Dan's lifted off, and Marcus was swift to follow pushing down on the throttle and releasing the pent up energy deep inside the craft's engines. He pulled up, and lifted off right behind Dan and headed into the sky.

They left the ground and went up to twenty meters above it. Moving swift the landmass they were encamped quickly shrunk in the rear-facing stream. The speedometer crept up. 90Kmh, 120kmh, 200kmh, 400,kmh. In the space of a minute they were beginning to geometrically increase their speed, a gentle maneuvering of the vehicles if anything. They went as high as 340m/s before safety mechanisms cut in and stopped the acceleration before they could break the sound barrier. By this point the effects of speed were at hand in the controls and as it sped along Marcus could feel the control stick wobble in his hands. His grip tightened. By this point the encampment was well beyond the horizon and the only indication it was there was a GPS signal to help navigate them back, projected through a compass in the lower-right hand corner.

Far out of sight, the group peeled apart with fliers going which ever way and essentially playing with one another. Racing low close to the waves or engaging in mock dog fights as they soared up and came down low, kissing the crowns of peaking waves.

Marcus chose to stay the course, and soon he was alone. Not truly. The speakers were alive with the chatter of the rest of the group. But it was sparse. As lively as it was, it hardly meshed together. Picking up altitude he climbed higher into the sky and looked out at the alien world below him. Expanses of water marked with interwoven tips of underwater mountain ranges beginning to break the surface. Somewhere far off there was a cloud of great black smoke, a volcano in the midst of a pyroclastic eruption. Below him, sandbars as thin as human hair drew long sweeping lines in the water down below. Here he could see the depth of the water, as its color. Vast regions were light and a misty blue. Others further off were dark and almost black. Here was the bare inundation of an entire world, almost as an atmosphere. Below it would be vast deserts, canyons, forests even of some alien kelp or seaweed. But they played above it, it barely a tenth of the entire planet. Perhaps barely a percent of it, there was so much more below the surface.

Someone spoke up, it was far different than the other chatter Marcus could overlook. “Hey guys, anyone else getting a new navigation signal?” he asked.

Puzzled, Marcus checked the map. Sure enough, a second directional arrow had been added. The former pointed back towards the island behind him. The other, somewhere towards the top and pointing to the right pointed to something else.

“I see it.” Marcus said, as the others reported in the negative. “What is it?”

“I don't know...” said the other pilot, “I don't know at all.”

If...

A fucking spook.

@Keyguyperson