jorcool

Diddly Do

@Hokum
Soun looked at the main viewscreen. It seemed that the cylindrical object had stopped moving. That was good, he thought, at least they would not ram the Genghis. He could see on some of the smaller screens monitoring the rest of the fleet that were spread around the bridge that the other two cylinders had stopped as well. "Keep weapons, shields and thrusters ready in case any of these objects show hostility." Captain Soun ordered the crew in the bridge. They waited for some time. The captain had sent out a message on the frequencies that they had seen to be most used by other alien empires, and the bridge crew was eagerly awaiting a response. Very shortly after, their patience was rewarded. On the terminal of one of the communication's officers, the one that had originally been responsible for sending the message to the cylinders in the first place, a light lit up, indicating a message. The crew listened intently as the response was being broadcasted by the bridge's speakers.

"Unknown vessel. We are the Lanist Khaganate, and we come in peace."

The captain sat perplexed for a few seconds as he heard the exact same message that he sent to the cylinders. While he was thinking about what had just happened, the results of the initial scanning of the rest of the system started to come in, and the science officer responsible for scanning the system stood up. "Sir, the results of the scan you ordered have come in. There appear to be thousands more objects than we could initially see. We don't know if they are cloaked, but we were able to detect them using our EM-based scanning technology." The man paused a bit as results continued to come in on his screen. It took a few seconds due to the vast astronomical distances that the radio, light and other types of electromagnetic waves had to travel, but at last, the data was processed, showing that all of the objects in the system had vanished. "Um.. captain, all of the objects in the system have vanished," the science officer said. "Also, somehow the EM-scan that we sent out was unable to get the absorption spectrum that would indicate the material these cylinders are made out of. I'm not sure why, but the cylinders are either interfering with our sensors, or black bodies, physical bodies that perfectly absorb all types of radiation."

"Try to find the objects with our subspace and gravitic scanners. Use the tachyon sensors if you have to." The captain ordered. The crew stared at the viewscreens for a few minutes, unsure what these cylindrical objects would do. Then, there was a flash of light, but the time it was there was so short that some of the bridge crew didn't even register it. The mighty vessel was shaken, but there was no discernible source for the force. "What do we do, captain?" the Helmsman asked. "We stay, and we will try to find our way around these cylinders without resorting to violence. What is the status of our shields?"

"Shields fully operational, sir."

"Good. The previous orders of attempting to dodge the ships and departing if the cylinders show hostility are still in effect. We do not know who or what these are, and it seems that they have better technology than us."

Fifteen minutes passed as captain Soun was thinking how they could solve this situation. Then, the screeching began. Bridge crewmen covered their ears as a high-pitched screech was played by the speakers for a whole seven seconds for an unknown reason. Then, the people in the bridge were perplexed as the front cylinder released a giant stone ball.

"Alright, this screeching never happened before, so I will assume it's because of those ships. We are getting out of here right now. Navigator, please plot a course away from those cylinders, and start the wormhole drive charging sequence."
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The vice-admiral of the fleet, Jens Knaggs, had been waiting patiently for the shuttle that would bring him back to the fleet's flagship, the KSS Genghis. He looked at his HPC (handheld personal computer), and he could see that he had been standing there for about 10 minutes. Strange, Jens thought, normally the inter-ship traffic would've started by now, but I can't even see anything flying between the other fleet ships. He looked at the HPC again, which was showing a diagram of the fleet and its surroundings. That was when he saw the cylinder. As he looked at the image of the fleet, he could see a giant cylinder tens of miles away from where he was at that moment, but right in front of the flagship. He also saw two other cylinders. They weren't moving, and the rest of the fleet had also stopped. A few more minutes passed while the vice-admiral waited for his transport. The bay doors at the side of the hangar bay he was on began to open slowly, so apparently a ship was on its way. For a very brief moment of time, he could see violet light, and for some strange reason the hangar's floor beneath him began to quake. He fearfully looked at the different spaceships and fighters in the hangar bay, but they had all been properly secured so he had nothing to fear.

Two seconds later, Jens was gone. It took some time for him to process what had just happened. One moment he was waiting for his transport in one of the Atlas' hangar bays, the next he was seated at a dining table somewhere else. He looked around a bit. The vice-admiral could see he had appeared in a civilian vessel, most likely the canteen of a Ger-class, if he looked at the lay-out of the space he was in. Then he noticed a serial number on the wall that the table was next to. As vice-admiral, he knew the serial numbers of nearly every ship in the fleet, so he was able to determine that he was currently on the KSS Yurt, a Ger-class civilian vessel. He continued studying his enviroment, and that was when he noticed Fanny May. My wife is going to kill me if she sees this, Jens thought. He mostly ignored Fanny's words as he was trying to determine exactly where he was and why he was there.

"Um, yeah, sure." He replied. "The Lanist Khaganates goal was to expand, and that's the mission of this fleet: Expansion through both peaceful methods and conquest. We never imagined we would end up in a completely different universe. And I would smile for both the businessman and the street bum, for they are both human, and should all be treated equally.
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James, as well as the rest of the group standing around the pod, was too busy staring at general Katie as she took off her helmet to notice the other individual slowly descending from the capsule's ladder. Katie looked at them slightly amused because of the shocked expressions of the faces of the small crowd, and when they recovered from their confusion they saw that the other person had also taken off their helmet. Their shock became even greater when they saw General Arman Nurzham. "Not quite the Welcome Home party I had imagined, but a nice effort nonetheless. Now, since we've just arrived here, please take us to the Khan. I am sure he'll be very happy to see us," General Anderson said. James immediately snapped out of his shock. He raised his rifle and aimed it at General Anderson's head. How could they be so sure that these people that he was looking at were even real? They could be aliens that were imitating General Nurzham and Anderson. Furthermore, they had just come from an unknown planet where they had been stranded for a long time, so they could be carrying all kinds of nasty alien diseases with them. They had to go to quarantine. "General Anderson, it's been quite some time since we've last met. Now please be so kind to follow the quarantine team standing over there." James replied as he pointed to the men and women dressed in white Hazmat suits protecting them from the possible microbial agents that the two new arrivals could have brought with them.

"What?!" General Anderson said, raising her voice. "I am a general and your superior. I demand to be taken to the Khan right away."

"I am sorry, general, but it's protocol." James replied. "There is nothing we can do about it."

General Anderson seemed to be even more irritated and prepared to reply when the other general intervened, saying: "Katie, we should just comply with what they are saying. We can explain what happened to us and talk to the Khan later." General Anderson calmed down slightly. "All right, Arman," she said, "but only because you're asking me to. Take us to the quarantine facility." Both generals put their helmets back on because they were told by the quarantine team while they were walking to the ship's quarantine facilities. One of the people in white suits opened a door and the two generals walked inside. Katie looked around, and she could see a nearly completely empty white room made out of sterile materials. There was a bench near the door and both of them walked towards it and sat on it. And then they waited.

Diddly Do

@Hokum
In the Primary bridge of the KSS Genghis, the flagship of the Lanist Khaganate's Great Expansion Fleet, dozens of eyes were nervously watching the main viewscreen. It displayed the information coming from several sensor arrays that were located in the Genghis' massive bow. The bridge crew could see a tunnel made of what seemed to be pure light, slowly moving along. The colors were constantly in flux, changing to all different colors of the rainbow. The atmosphere in the room was tense. If the wormhole were to suddenly show any problems, they'd have to cut it and get out immediately. Already, the fleet had lost tons of equipment, thousands of people and several ships to wormhole accidents. The most recent example was the loss of the KSS Tsol and the KSS Mos, which had been lost in the wormhole accident that had brought the Khaganate to the Diddly Do Sector in the first place, after which the two ships crash-landed on a small habitable world. The Khaganate's fleet could not take such a risk again. The fleet still had hundreds of ships to call upon, but the loss of good captains, commanders and other important people was a problem.

The captain of the Genghis, a man whose name was Soth Soun, sat in his chair. He was eagerly observing the situation. Strangely, the wormhole seemed incredibly stable, more stable than the wormhole of many other jumps they had made before. "Navigator," Soth said, "What is the current status of the wormhole?".

"Wormhole is unusually stable, sir," The navigator said while looking at a screen filled with several different graphs and charts. "Exotic matter levels inside the wormhole tunnel are incredibly high. Risk of causality failure is minimal. Temporal distortions are minimal. 5-dimensional spacetime structure is normal. Wormhole collapse risk is minimal. Reactor and drive systems are operating at full capacity. All systems are nominal. The absolute distance would be 500 lightyears if we were not using FTL. We will exit the wormhole in a minute."

"Thank you navigator," Captain Soun replied. The captain opened the ship's intercom system. "Attention all personnel. We are exiting the wormhole in a minute. Please move to your designated area in case anything goes wrong." Meanwhile, several communications officers were busy relaying the same message to the rest of the ships of the fleet. The vice-admiral of the GEF, Jens Knaggs, was still on the Atlas because ship-to-ship travel was prohibited during wormhole jump due to the dangers it had. Both the admiral and the Khan were in a Kurultai meeting again, as they had been before. Captain Soun hadn't heard what it was about, but there were rumors that it was about a state funeral for two important generals and Kurultai members who were reported as missing in action after two ships had been found to be crashlanded on the planet that the fleet first arrived at. Soth did not have the time to worry about this though, as he currently was in command of the entire fleet since his superiors were currently busy doing other things. He, as well as the bridge crew, would have to watch a recording of it later.

The Genghis, and then the rest of the fleet, slowly moved out of the wormhole. As soon as the entire fleet had departed the wormhole tunnel it closed instantly, and dissapeared from view. The captain looked at the viewscreen, and he could see many structures, seemingly from an artificial origin. "Give me a status report," captain Soun demanded.

"We have arrived in a solar system with a small blue star. From my scanners I have gathered there's eleven planets in the system, of which three are habitable. That's odd... the star would be classified as a blue dwarf by Terran stellar classification and theoretical models of star evolution, but blue dwarfs are evolved forms of red dwarfs so the universe is not old enough for blue dwarfs to have actually formed yet, unless this universe is way older than we thought."

"Isn't it just a B-type star?" The captain asked. He knew the stellar classes. Everyone in the bridge did, or at least they were supposed to.

"Negative, sir." The science officer replied. "B-type stars are always heavier than our sun, while the star of this system has the mass and size of an M-type, but it's actually blue rather than red. There also seem to be hundreds of artificial structures in this system, but they give off no energy signatures, so we were not able to see them when we were making the jump."

"Try to find out more about them using the electromagnetic-wave based scanners. They reflect light, so we should still be able to gather information about them. Get an absorption spectrum as well, we need to know what those things are made out of. Check for signs of hostility as well."

After less than a minute, the warning and accompanying alarm that signified that something was approaching went off in the bridge. The captain peered at the viewscreen, trying to discern what was happening, when he saw it. A giant stone cylinder was approaching the Genghis. Some of the other ships in the fleet reported two of the same objects approaching from the left and right.

"Get thrusters and shields ready." The captain ordered. "If the object gets too close we will have to attempt to dodge it. Tell the other ships in the fleet to attack if these cylinders are hostile. We have four hundred ships, and there's 3 cylinders." Dodging the massive cylinder that was approaching them would be no simple task, captain Soun new. The Genghis itself was 8 miles long and 3 miles wide, and several of the other ships in the Khaganate fleet were nearly as large as the flagship. He ordered the bridge crew to be silent and to attempt to send a message on the most general frequencies. "Unknown vessel. We are the Lanist Khaganate, and we come in peace."
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Fanny had completely and suddenly dissapeared from the room she was in. "Command, this is PA-1. The subject is gone. She dissapeared in the blink of an eye." James said upon seeing how Fanny had instantly vanished. "She said something about me being tested telepathically as well."

"We can see that too." Operation Command replied. "We did give her permission to leave. We'll send a recovery team to make sure she doesn't cause too much trouble. You are to report to your team's designated briefing room for a debriefing. We suspect that the subject is a Type-1, seeing how she was so easily able to become invisible to our sensors and telepathically contact you. We've already changed the classification to Delta. It would probably be wise to heed any warnings she may give us, like the one about how we should not invade the medieval world."

"Understood, Operation Command, we will go to the briefing room." James switched the communication device to the task force's frequency. "Phalanx Alpha, we are to report to the briefing room immediately."

James and the rest of Phalanx Alpha went to the briefing room, while the vice-admiral that had been sitting in the containment cell with Fanny moments earlier left to go to the hangar. The fleet was still in the wormhole so space travel was forbidden, but he had nothing better to do anyway.

James and his team entered the designated briefing room. We didn't have to put away our equipment, James thought, maybe we have another mission coming up They sat down in the 12 chairs that had been set up for them. James and their commander started to talk about what exactly the team experienced, with a focus on the strange telepathic messages James had received from Fanny and the fact that they had already encountered a new anomalous entity in the new universe they were in. Afterwards, they had been given the task to go to the hangar bay again, to make sure that the pod that was there wouldn't do anything.
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The small pod stood on the hangar bay's floor. James could see that it was a haphazard construction of different parts of escape pods, thrusters, power cores and more various machines the Khaganate used for spaceflight. A small group had gathered around the capsule. There was James' team, but there were also repairmen with their nanite-based repair tools, firemen, doctors, a quarantine team, and several other groups that had been assembled by Operation Command. Phalanx Alpha, James' task force, had their rifles pointed at the door of the small pod. They had no idea what was inside of the pod.

The door started moving. The sound of metal scraping could be heard as the hatch's primitive magnetic lock, the one that was supposed to make sure that the hatch door was closed during spaceflight, was opened. Two people dressed in old spacesuits climbed down from the ladder that had been welded on the capsule much earlier. The spacesuits were Khaganate spacesuits and the people standing around the pod were slightly shocked. What made them even more shocked was when one of them took of her helmet, showing off her long red hair.

"No fucking way..." James whispered to himself as he was staring at the face of General Katie Anderson.

Diddly Do

@Hokum
Fanny's words sent James into a slight panic. She had said something to him without even opening her mouth! That had to be clear signs that she was anomalous. And she said something about him being her 'beloved?' He did not really understand what that was about, but he didn't care, as he was facing bigger problems. He contacted the rest of his team, carefully making sure his speaker was not turned on. He knew it probably didn't matter. Judging from her words, the entity had somehow sensed his reaction to the small incident earlier, so it was safe to assume that she could hear what he was going to say as well. "Team, I just heard a voice that did not come from the vice-admiral, any of you, or the other humanoid entities currently in containment in this area. It was the same voice as Fanny May. Have any of you also heard such a voice?"

Most team members just said "Negative, PA-1." While others gave a simple 'No' as answer. James continued talking "Operation Command, this is PA-1. I just received a telepathic message from the entity currently in the containment cell I am stationed in. Message was “I know that feeling, my beloved.” Please add 'telepathic abilities' to description."

"PA-1, this is Operation Command," he heard back "we are editing the file at the moment. Class changed from human to Humanoid Anomalous Entity. Classification moved from Alpha to Beta. Threat level remains unchanged at the moment, due to further lack of evidence of additional anomalous abilities."

"PA-1, Subject just dissapeared from the view of our surveillance equipment. Thermal and other sensors are not picking up anything either. Please confirm subject is still there." James heard after Fanny had said something and then leaned back in her seat.

"I can confirm that subject is still here. At the moment, she is talking about something. From its display I can see that the external microphone on my helmet is still registering sound. Are the room's surveillance microphones able to hear anything?"

"Positive, PA-1. Please be notified that we are considering changing subject classification to Gamma due to revealing new abilities. You are allowed to let her out of containment unless she shows hostile behaviour."

"Understood. We will be on the lookout for more anomalous activity." James readied his weapon again in case the subject decided to become hostile.

Jens, meanwhile, had been listening intently at what Fanny was saying. The vice-admiral had been ignorant of all the commotion around Fanny, as he was currently sitting in a room with her talking, rather than watching her through a monitor. After hearing about her talking how there was going to be a problem with the wormhole drives, he knew that he was going to relay this information somehow, if his commander didn't already know it by now. "Alright," Jens said "Thank you for the information. If you have anymore questions, please ask them, otherwise you are free to move around the ship, but please make sure you stay out of trouble. And do not worry, we will try everything in our power to make sure the inhabitants of the planet below do not advance earlier than they should."

In the hangar, several repairmen had been standing around the Jezebel, unsure what to do. They could not repair it because they had received explicit orders not to do so, but they couldn't just leave it standing around either, because it could very well be dangerous. Then, it simply dissapeared. Several of the engineers simply shrugged and walked away, but one of them managed to call whoever was in charge of the operation, informing them that the small ship belonging to Fanny had dissapeared. Whoever he was calling with noted it down. It seemed that the ship had anomalous properties as well.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The Khan and some of the scientists were debating what to do about these ships, when one of the monitors in the primary bridge suddenly turned on. All heads turned towards the screen as a disembodied voice was talking about how a spatial anomaly was messing up subspace. The admiral quietly gave an order to turn on the subspace scanners, and the disembodied voice was proven correct. Then, a person actually appeared where the chair they were watching was, and they saw her turn towards them. She said something about protecting the people of the planet below them from knowledge. The Khan thought about it a bit for a moment, thinking what to do. "Alright, we are leaving. Admiral, give the order to start the wormhole jump. We should listen to warnings of people who can randomly hack our screens."

The fleet lined up for the wormhole jump, and the wormhole generators were charging, getting ready to make a jump.
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Katie Anderson turned around, looking at the man standing near her. She recognized him immediately, as the memories she had built up over the past three years suddenly gave way to ones that were older. Suddenly, she remembered her childhood, military career and her rivalry with the white-haired general, Arman Nurzhan. She also remembered how they ended up on this planet after the Lanist Khaganate's Great Expansion Fleet had tried to jump too far with a fleet that is too big.
"Arman, is that really you?" She spoke softly, as if she was somehow afraid to invoke the general's wrath. She remembered the source of their friction being the fact that they were in the same position, as well as, according to her, that Arman was always an asshole to everything and everyone.

"Yes. It is I, Arman Nurzhan." The stranger said as he removed the hood that was covering his head, revealing his white hair and beard. "And you, Katie Anderson, are a traitor." He got rid of his cloak completely, and it moved a few meters away from him as it glided on the wind. He drew his two-handed sword, placing his other hand on the hilt as well, getting ready to strike. "Now, Katie Anderson, former general of the Lanist Khaganate, former member of the Kurultai. Are you ready to face the Khan's justice and pay for your crimes?"

"Oh shut up you idiot!" She responded "We both know that that's not true. While you were out on the eastern border and I was sitting at home, general Teo screwed us all over by using the landship he was now in command of to punch a hole through the southern border front, allowing the Ubrax army to pour in. But if you are not even going to let me explain it, I guess we will have to do it the hard way." Katie then drew her own sword, a short one-handed one made out of titanium alloyed with steel, and got into a fighting stance.

Unlike his usual, more guarded approach, Arman charged forward, readying his sword, and swinging it fiercely in Katie's direction from the right. Her hair moved wildly in the wind as she dodged his strike. She jumped to his unguarded left, attempting to stab him at weak point with her short sword, but he parried the blow. Katie had no intent of actually killing or harming him. She only wanted to disarm the general, so she could actually prove that she hadn't actually done anything wrong. She would not be able to fight at such a rate much longer though, she knew. Ironically, to win from the general, she had to think like Arman. While dodging Arman's furious strikes, Katie looked at and analyzed her surroundings. They were standing on the thin crater rim, which was 2-3 meters at its widest point, which as she could see was tens of meters away. Arman had driven her away from the wide part so she could not maneuver that easily. They were instead standing on a very narrow part which was 1 meter wide at most, and was mostly made out of small rocks and gravel due to erosion. She knew exactly what she had to do. As Arman charged at her again, ready to put an end to it, she saw a particularly round stone, and kicked it at him. It rolled over the small path, arriving exactly where Katie wanted it, namely right beneath Arman's feet. The general stumbled over the rolling stone, and Katie ran towards him, kicking his right leg, making him losing his balance further. Arman fell, and Katie put the tip of her blade on his throat.

"Yield, and allow me to explain myself." She said to him, calmly. Arman responded by angrily yelling at her, telling her to kill him. "Finish me!" He said. "Do it!. You defeated me when I called you a traitor. Now finish it off!" Katie was slightly shocked by his suicidal stupidity, but chose not to kill him." "Stop it!" she yelled back. "I will tell you why you're wrong. Besides, if I kill you, who else can I constantly compete with?"

"After I accidentally got the only landship of the planet we were on, Leviathan Alpha, stuck and nearly destroyed, I stepped down as general for a time to atone for my mistake. You know this, because I am sure you were present at the Kurultai where the Khan decided to share it with you all. That means you must also know that the man who replaced me was general Teo Escamilla. Meanwhile, I sat at home for a time, trying to figure out the weakest point in the fortresses lining the southern border. Then, I was nearly killed by an assassin that someone had sent to kill me. I then worked together with the Omega Order for a few months to find out who tried to have me killed that night. It turns out it was none other than general Teo. We went to the Kurultai to accuse him of treason, but by then it was already too late. Leviathan Alpha had been repaired, and the general had used it to destroy a part of the southern front, allowing the Ubrax troops to pour in while you were stuck in the east trying to fortify our border against the alien threat that had nearly destroyed the landship several months earlier. So now you know that general Teo was the traitor, and not me. Why else would the Khan allow me to be on the Tsol in the first place?"

Katie removed her sword and put it back in its sheath. For a moment, it seemed as if general Nurzhan was going to get his own weapon back and attack her, but he stood up, and simply said "I am sorry for doubting you, Katie." "Good," she responded "You need me anyway if we're going to try to get off this rock."

The first day that they had arrived at the wreckage, they simply rested. It had been a long journey for Katie and Arman, so they needed all the energy they could muster for the next few days. The following days, they explored the wreckage. Some of the transport elevators were still operational, and they used it to great effect to explore the rest of the wreck. Katie had found the escape pods, while Arman found the cargo hold, filled with useful materials, tools and other equipment they could use to build something. That night, after they had both eaten some of the rations that they had found in one of the ship's kitchens, Katie took Arman to the Tsol's bridge. The ship's reactor was still operational, protected from the forces of the crash by thick walls and blast doors, and miraculously they got the ship's computer systems online. Arman hooked up one of the laptops from the former crew that he found laying around, and they soon were able to access the entire ship's databanks and information logs.

"Alright Katie, here's the plan. It seems that the Khaganate fleet is currently in orbit around this planet. I am not sure why, but I cannot contact them, so there must be something going on. What we need to do is build a ship that can launch us to space and intercept the fleet."

"I have already checked the few hangar bays this ship has, but all ships either fled or got destroyed. It seems that building something out of the escape pods is our only choice. A few pods put together, maybe made more aerodynamic or with some added thrusters, should do the trick."

"Alright then, let's get to work."

And so, the great work began. They worked day and night, gathering supplies, calculating orbits and trajectories, and putting the machine together. They hunted for food, and, in absence of better entertainment, they talked to eachother like normal people instead of their usual bickering. Working together to escape the planet had made them friends, from rivals. In the end, they put together a sturdy vessel capable of reaching the Khaganate's main fleet. Powered by a small fusion generator, and propelled by plasma thrusters, it had room for 2 people. It could even seperate into 2 escape pods with communication, food and water. It had taken weeks to build, but it was surely worth it.

It was the day of the launch. Arman had calculated the trajectory they'd have to take and found out that that particular day was the best one. Both of them had eaten a meal that was reserved for the generals that they were, a lot better than the basic rations the soldiers and civilians got. "Katie, I saw something that may or may not be extremely important. When I was in one of the science labs, I looked at a monitor, and it was clearly displaying some sort of gravitational anomaly around the planet. I think that this ship is somehow causing it. We will have to destroy it, otherwise we cannot get away. When we are ready to launch, I am going to overload the reactor, destroying the ship and the surrounding area"

"But Arman," Katie responded, "That is too dangerous. You could die."

"I know what I am doing and I am fully aware of the risks. If it is needed, I will sacrifice myself so you can get away. If I die, I want you to tell the Khan exactly how I died. Now, let's get ready to go shall we?"

They put on the space-suits that they had reserved for launch day. They were older versions of the more advanced suits of power armour the Khaganate was using now, light enough to cost minimal fuel for the small spacecraft that they had built. The Khaganate fleet neared the location where the ship's trajectory and the fleet's orbit would meet. Katie entered the spacecraft and began doing the pre-flight checks. Arman ran to the ship's bridge, starting the reactor overload sequence. The ship's countdown started. Katie realized Arman was not aboard yet, but there was nothing she could do.
10.
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Arman climbed up the ladder incredibly quickly, opened and closed the door, and quickly sat in his seat.
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1.
"Liftoff," the computer said, and the thrusters ignited. Katie and Arman were pressed into their seats because of the massive g-forces from the spacecraft as it started flying through the atmosphere. When they reached the stratosphere, the massive spacecraft beneath them exploded, just as Arman had planned. The explosion would be seen from several miles away, but when some of the creatures of the planet below came to investigate, they would find nothing that they could use.
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Meanwhile, in space, the Khaganate's Great Expansion Fleet was lined up for a wormhole jump to the system with the habitable planet where they would settle. The wormhole drive began generating a wormhole. In a minute, the wormhole opened. Subspace scanners and advanced navigation systems had plotted a route that would be mostly free of the mess that the spatial anomaly had made in subspace. The fleet slowly started going in.

In the Atlas, the captain was notified of a massive explosion on the planet beneath them, and the subsequent dissapearance of the gravitational anomaly that had covered it. Then, the scanners of the stratocruiser picked up a small signal coming from a tiny spacecraft that was currently flying through the upper atmosphere. It was cut off because the Atlas had entered a wormhole. The captain knew what they had to do. Without saying a word to the rest of the fleet, he gave the order.
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Finally, the small spacecraft reached outer space. Arman started to look out the window, wondering where the fleet was, he heard Katie softly sobbing in the background. The fleet was gone. He checked the small screen they had in the cockpit. It was completely, utterly gone. He realized they must've jumped away while they were launching and had been unable to contact the fleet. The two would die completely alone, cut off from the rest of the Khaganate fleet. It took some time before it hit him, but he did not break under the realization what would happen. He held Katie, trying to calm her down. There was no point to it, really, it would not change their inevitable fate. They looked at eachother. Tears streamed down Katie's face while Arman's face remained stern and unchanged.

Then, in front of the small cockpit, space itself opened. A brilliant display of colours distracted both of them as they looked out the window. The Atlas had arrived. With only the unique wormhole generator that it had at its disposal, it opened another wormhole as it flew towards the small pod. The hangar bay on its side opened as one of the enormous cannons on its hull turned towards the icy northern part of the planet. The captain had planned to heed Fanny's warning. The cannon fired one shot. It curved towards the planet, influenced by its gravity. It tore through the atmosphere, looking like a shooting star to the denizens of the world and landed exactly where it was planned: the other Khaganate shipwreck. The explosion was massive, and the shipwreck was completely vaporized, and only a crater remained. The recoil of the gun steered the ship in the right direction, and the small two-man pod went through the hangar bay's force field and landed on its floor.

The Atlas entered the wormhole it had made and rejoined the rest of the fleet.

Diddly Do

The Khaganate fleet continued their orbit around the medieval planet, lazily passing over it as its ships tried to scan the planet and its surroundings for a slight grain of information. They had already learned that somehow, the two Khaganate ships that had been missing had somehow ended up on the planet below, earlier than the main Khaganate fleet.

The Khagan of the Khaganate, Yuri Lanist, as well as the admiral of the fleet, a rather short man with brown hair named Jay Haward, were sitting in the Genghis' primary bridge. The primary bridge, contrary to the secondary one, was located more into the vessel, having several viewscreens instead of windows to make it safer for the crew inside. It was also located near the conference room where the Kurultai meetings were held, a specialized meeting room equipped with screens and holographic projectors. Both men had just returned from the meeting, exhausted from the many discussions that were held there. Yuri had just given the order to leave if nothing was heard from the wrecks on the planetary surface.

Then, a group of scientists and some science officers came into the bridge at a frantic pace. The leading scientist bowed before Yuri before speaking. "We have discovered some new information that will most likely be very important to you." Yuri nodded, signaling that the scientist should continue. "We have discovered that the lost two Khaganate ships have somehow ended up at opposite ends of the planet. One is in the larger southern continent you can see on the viewscreen right now, while the other is near the arctic wastes of the world. We have also found out that the strange gravitational anomaly that caused many of the dropships that had been sent in to investigate and were completely ripped apart was caused by the wormhole generators of these two ships. I will spare you the scientific details, but the mass compressor required for puncturing a hole through spacetime has gone haywire, causing the anomaly that we have observed earlier. Interestingly enough, this also causes a temporal anomaly, where time is actually accelerated relative to us. If a few hours pass here, several days will have passed."
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@Hokum
As Fanny May rose from her seat, the tension in the room increased to the point where one could cut it with a knife. James and his colleague standing a few meters next to him at the opposite side of the doorway kept a firm grip on their heavy assault rifles. People or humanoids brought to these containment areas weren't really supposed to move, and James' keen eye had seen how she was able to stand against the almost unreasonably high acceleration of the elevator. He could see something was up with her, he had faced far too many anomalous beings and dangers to not quickly notice when something was off. And he knew that Operation Command, who were constantly watching the situation through cameras in the containment cell, elevator, and his team's helmets. By now, PA-3 to PA-12 must've been lining up at the door, ready to bust in if it is needed, James thought. He readied his weapon, covertly switching the safety off. To his surprise though, nothing special happened, and Fanny returned to her seat after giving the vice-admiral a kiss on his nose and forehead. Apparently, there was no danger after all, and James slowly let out his breath, making sure no one could see his disbelief. His face was hidden behind a gas mask anyway, so neither the vice-admiral nor PA-2 had noticed it.

Vice-admiral Jens Knaggs responded to Fanny: "Thank you for warning us of the danger of repairing your ship. You will probably be happy to know that sharing your knowledge saved some lives."

Right at that moment, in the hangar bay, several repairmen immediately backed away from the small ship that had been placed there earlier as soon as they had gotten the order to do so. They had been told to repair it earlier, but upon hearing Fanny's information someone in Operation Command immediately turned on the hangar's intercom speakers, telling the men and women not to do so.

"Secondly," Jens continued, "You are indeed correct that our arrival here has not been... as we had hoped, but thank you for your kind reception." The vice-admiral did not really listen to what she said after that. He was not a superstitious man who believed in bad omens, so he would not believe the way the Khaganate arrived here, however chaotic, was a sign of bad things to come.

He had seen how she considered giving him advice, and found it mildly suspicious, so he decided to ask about it. "Now, I would like to ask you a question, if I may. I do not wish to overstep my bounds, considering you probably know a lot more about this universe than we do, but what is the advice you mentioned that you wanted to give me earlier? We know nothing about this universe, so any information would help us greatly. Do not worry though, we are not the barbarians that some see us as, so we will not try to force this information out of you in any way."
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The fire crackled as one of the duchess' servants threw another chopped wooden log on the campfire. Several lackeys, soldiers, and even some mercenaries were sitting around the fire. The stranger thought back on how he ended up in this position.

When he saw the woman, and especially, heard her name, immediately another one of those strange feelings of recognition, the same one that he had felt when he saw the many lights in the night sky that night in the tavern, overtook him. This time however, it was a lot stronger, and didn't go away so quickly, as if something deep inside him tried to either warn or alert him of something, but he did not know what. He followed her, while she rode on her horse, back towards the campsite, where several wagons had been placed as a defensive makeshift barrier. He listened to how she and her captain of the guard had heard great stories about how a traveller with white hair was travelling through several realms. The stranger knew this was obviously an attempt to flatter him to get him to actually accept their proposal. Then the duchess explained how she was travelling towards the south, and needed capable soldiers to protect her. He only became interested when they started talking about the reward "So," the stranger replied, "I help you, and in return I will get a lot of money? Sounds like a deal."

The duchess had talked to him alone a bit later, telling her about a strange dream she had, after which she felt the compulsion to travel towards the southern part of the continent. The stranger had replied by saying that he also had the same dream, but he did not know what or who caused something like that to happen.

And so, the stranger had joined the group of travellers. He was making his own journey towards the southern part of the world anyway, and if he got money for travelling with a group and doing what he usually did that was nothing less than a win-win situation to him.

The man had been staring into the fire for a while, when he was soon disturbed by a lot of noise, seemingly caused by Katie furiously storming out of her tent, followed by a small crowd of servants, advisors, and other important people. Contrary to her earlier appearance, the duchess was now clad in clothes that were more fit for travelling. They were all bickering about something the stranger could not hear because they were still too far away, but he did know that they were coming closer, and they were coming fast. Soon, they were near him, and duchess Anderson spoke to him.

"Stranger, I will be continuing on this journey with you from this point on, and with you alone."

He heard the captain of the guard reply that she should not associate with a wanderer like him, and that he could be very dangerous, but Katie countered by saying that the stranger had the same dream as she did, and that there had to be something that had to be investigated. Soon, the staff were grudgingly forced to accept her decision, as she was still their duchess, and the stranger and Katie set off to adventure.

It was the first day of their journey together. They had already been able to cover a lot of distance between their original starting point and their end goal. The duchess had been able to hunt for some food with a bow and arrows she had brought along, and they had been cooking the food and eating it. Katie turned to the stranger, and said to him "I wonder what you look like under that hood.", so the stranger removed it, revealing his white hair, grey eyes, beard that had slowly been growing and most prominently the massive wound that ran across his face. She asked him if he was alright, or in pain, but he didn't reply. The wound had not fully healed yet although scar tissue had started to form, but it still hurt slightly. The stranger did not really like to admit such things and soon went to sleep, ignoring her question.

It had been a week, and the warmer and drier climate of the area they were in signified that they were approaching their goal. They had only had one horse for the entire journey, because the duchess' servants and soldiers needed them or some of them were simply too weak to carry them, so they took Katie's brown mare. The stranger was riding it, while Katie sat behind him, holding him as she fell asleep. For some unknown reason, the stranger realized he had been smiling as the small incident happened, but why he did not know. Soon, the wanderer and the duchess had slowly started to trust eachother a lot more, and after a relatively long time travelling together one could say they had started to become friends.

The area had started to get more hilly as they came closer to their destination. Both Katie and the stranger felt that they were getting close, and chose to walk the last part rather than ride a horse. They both felt that whatever lay behind those last few hills would change everything, and they wanted to savor those last moments together. The trek towards their final goal was brutal, and both sometimes nearly fell off a hill or cliff, only to be saved by the other. At one point, Katie nearly died when some wild animals ambushed their camp, but was saved by the stranger as he drove his sword through the bear's head.

It was the final hill. It took several hours to even scale it, so bad was the path upwards. However, with the stranger's unyielding will and the duchess' clever tactics, they prevailed and they both looked out over the area. They could see a massive crater, with a radius of at least several miles, and in it was the strangest metal construction either of them had seen. Unbeknownst to them, they looked upon the broken and twisted form of the wreckage of the KRS Tsol, a Khaganate spaceship that had crash-landed three years earlier after the same disastrous wormhole jump as the rest of the GEF. They gazed upon the strange vessel, wondering what it was.

And they remembered everything.

Diddly Do

Vice-admiral Knaggs had been insistent that the Kurultai's plan of action would be followed to the letter. Both the Khan and the fleet admiral had not returned yet, so he was still in command of the entire fleet. He had ordered all of the ships to start orbiting a nearby planet. He figured it would be one of the safest yet closest places where they could recuperate from their disastrous wormhole jump that had violently thrown them into another universe. Soon, the titanic ships moved, fusion thrusters lighting up as they pushed the ships towards the planet. Khaganate thruster technology was very advanced, so the journey only took a few hours, and soon the fleet was in orbit. Scanners indicated lots of life on the surface, but the entire civilization only lived in a low-tech medieval society, and would be unable to pose any threat to the Khaganate fleet. Knaggs chuckled. Now that he thought about it, it must've seemed like a new constellation appeared in the night sky of the planet below them, so large was the Khaganate fleet, as well as its ships. In addition to the planet being scanned while they were in polar orbit around it, several probes had been set out to discover where the fleet was exactly positioned.

The results were very concerning. Not only were they in a completely different universe, their location results based on pulsar locations and star-maps were completely different than their location before entering the wormhole. They had no idea what the time or date or age of this universe was either, so at least they could use their own standard dating system without having to change anything. A bit of good news was also there though, as an earth-like planet was found a few hundred lightyears away, a distance that could easily be travelled with a wormhole jump.

Then, more news came in. During their polar orbit over the planet, the fleet's scanners had found a communication signal. One that belonged to the Lanist Khaganate. It must have been one of the missing ships, so they tried to send an away team, but their dropships were ripped apart in a strange gravitational anomaly that seemed to cover a thin layer of the atmosphere between the planet's surface and its exosphere, effectively disabling any attempt to get people on the surface of the world, meaning whoever was there could only come up, effectively trapping whoever was left of the Khaganate's crew down there.

As he was pondering this new information, he got a call from the captain of the Atlas. He told Jens that the person they had rescued wished to speak to him. Luckily for the vice-admiral, the Kurultai was over that exact moment and both the Khan and the fleet admiral returned, so he was no longer needed at that moment, and he went to the shuttle bay.
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@Hokum
As the small spacecraft extended its landing gears and its door starts to open, James' task forces raised their rifles and aimed them at the door, ready to shoot anything hostile that might come out. To their surprise however, the only thing that emerges is a young woman, and some of them started to lower their rifles slowly, not seeing any threat the woman could pose. James, as well as several of his colleagues, kept their weapons up however, aiming at the woman's head, and he ordered the rest of the soldiers who had let their guards down to do the same. What confused James most however, was the calmness the women visibly displayed while twelve rifles were pointed at her, and the look of concern on his face was hidden by his Re-Mask helmet (Rebreather gasmask) that covered his entire face.

James turned off the speaker on the outside on his helmet, and talked into his communicator, so that the words would clearly be recorded and saved: "Operation Command, this is PA-1. Subject appears to be a female human who calls herself "Fanny May", as told by herself when she had recorded her distress call. No anomalous activity nor visible hostility has been detected yet of her or of her ship.", telling his commander that Fanny May was probably not very dangerous, and at first glance did not seem to be anomalous to say the least. Subject is apparently pregnant, but you must've heard that already through comms. Fanny May requests to speak to Vice-admiral Jens Knaggs, the man who initially decided to answer her distress call."

"PA-1, request granted. You are to escort her to Containment cell HC-3-2-12. We will try to get Vice-admiral Knaggs there as well. Please make sure to stand guard in the room while Knaggs is in there. Operation command out."

James turned on his speaker again, saying to Fanny May: "Please follow us, and do not try anything stupid. You will be able to the man who decided those things."

The soldier then walked away, expecting her to follow. If Fanny May were to follow, she would be flanked by 6 soldiers at each side, marching in unison. The group reached a small transporting vehicle with a metal rail attached to its floor and another one to its roof. The rails ran through the entire length of the hangar bay. As soon as the group of 13 people had entered the transport, James tapped a few buttons that were next to its door and it moved further into the giant stratocruiser at a breakneck pace. The task force was completely unaffected by the sudden acceleration due to their magnetic boots.

Soon, the vehicle had stopped, before changing direction upwards with the same acceleration that it had earlier. The vehicle stopped again, and a voice came from a speaker in the elevator saying: "Containment bay 3, level 2". After some more walking they had arrived near a containment cell made out of steel. In it, there was a table with two chairs facing eachother. James walked inside, expecting Fanny May to follow, and told her to sit down on the chair while the vice-admiral was coming. James and another member of his task force then stood guard inside the room, flanking the doorway, weapons ready.

Meanwhile, the Atlas had joined the rest of the fleet in orbit, and soon a small shuttle departed from the Genghis and flew towards the Omega Order's stratocruiser. It docked in the hangar, and out stepped vice-admiral Knaggs, he took the same elevator as the group earlier did.

Soon, in containment cell HC-3-2-12, a knock on the door could be heard. A man with gray hair and a friendly face, dressed in a simple T-shirt and jeans, walked in and sat down in the chair opposite to Fanny May. He started speaking: "Hello Fanny May. I am Jens Knaggs. I understood you wanted to speak to me."
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That same night, someone else, in an entirely different region of the world, was having exactly the same dreams as the stranger many kilometres away did, and she too woke up covered in sweat, her red hair reflecting the moonlight. She went outside, standing on the balcony of her sleeping chambers, looking up towards the night sky. Like the stranger before her, she also saw some strange lights slowly moving towards the south. The woman went back to sleep. After waking up and eating breakfast in the castle's great dining hall, she ordered her servants to make preparations for a voyage...

It was the fifth day of the stranger's journey towards the southern lands in an attempt to explain the strange dreams together with the new constellation in the sky. Everywhere he traveled, he encountered vastly different reactions to the appearance of an entirely new group of stars. Some saw it as an omen from their gods, either good or bad, while many others didn't really care about it, seeing as they were asleep during the night anyway. The stranger was awake that night though, and could see fire raining from the sky, great explosions appearing from very far away. He was slightly distracted as he remembered the events that happened that night, not hearing the low growl in the bushes next to the road. Soon it was too late, and the great wolf-like beast ambushed him, slashing him across his face with its paw with three claws. The stranger was slightly dazed and could not see clearly because of the blood running across his face, but still managed to draw his sword, and he plunged it into the beast's heart, killing it. He had to act quickly, grabbing the few medical supplies he had, and cleaned the wound while checking it. It was not too deep, and he would only need some bandages to stop the bleeding until his blood would coagulate inside the wound. He then continued on his journey.

It was four days later. His wound was starting to heal, and the stranger felt like he no longer needed the bandages. He had always been tougher than most people, after all. The stranger had been walking down the road, continuing to the south, when he heard a horse behind him. The stranger turned around, and saw an attractive woman with long flowing, red hair, sitting on a brown mare. The woman started speaking: "I have heard rumors of your travels stranger, and I know you are good at fighting with a sword. I have an offer for you."

The stranger replied: "I will listen to your offer, but I do not know your name."

The woman chuckled, and said: "My name is Duchess Katie Anderson."

Diddly Do

Yuri Lanist has been demoted to NPC of the Lanist khaganate and i've made a new chracter instead

Diddly Do

After some time, repair, and several checkups, the warning lights and sirens finally turned themselves off. In the Genghis' bridge, all systems seemed to be working again. All screens and lights were lit, command interfaces were fully operational and the ship's engineers had finally been able to get the 'all systems nominal' notification back on the screens for the first time since the GEF had entered the wormhole. The moment it popped up, the crew of the bridge let out a collective sigh. They, as well as the other crewmembers of the massive flagship, had been frantically running around, trying to fix everything and making sure everything still worked. Luckily for the crew, the only major damage inside the ship had been an overloaded wormhole generator, something that was easily fixable in mere minutes with the Khaganate's advanced technology and resources. The major structural damage was a massive cut in the left part of the stern of the Khaganate flagship, caused by a collision with the bow of one of the Khaganate's cruisers when the flagship started to turn around during the wormhole jump.

The rest of the fleet, however, seemed to have suffered much worse damage than the flagship had. After everyone got their bearings, reports started to come in from nearly every ship in the fleet, telling of missing people, equipment, fighters, destroyed systems, and the list continued to grow. Most remarkable was that an entire Mori-class landship was missing from its dropping bay in one of the Typhon-class stratocruisers of the fleet. Two entire ships had gone missing as well, simply dissapeared to another place or time when the wormhole tunnel broke apart. The Khan himself was most irritated about the loss of VIPs 45 to 47, they were his friends and well-respected and long-standing Kurultai members, so it was a true waste that he and the Lanist Khaganate had lost them. Yuri also despised the way the news had been brought, as he despised the whole codename system that was commonly in place for the Lanist Khaganate, where some of the most important people of the nation were reduced to mere numbers, but it had been in place long before he became Khan and it would probably endure after his death. It made him sad as he walked towards the Kurultai conference room.

"Members of the Kurultai," Yuri began speaking as he looked around the room. Nearly everyone used screens and hologram projectors rather than meet in person. Of course, it was an emergency Kurultai, so nobody had the time to take a shuttle and fly to the fleet's flagship. To Yuri's shock, there were a lot more people missing than the three he heard about. Of course, many members were probably helping on their own ships, but the Khan could not lose the feeling that a lot more people dissapeared in the wormhole jump than initially thought. "It seems that we have arrived in a completely unknown universe," He continued, "and I would like to request your advice to deal with our current situation. As you might've known, we've suffered great losses, with people, materiel, and even entire ships seemingly dissapearing into the unknown." Immediately, the Kurultai started arguing and offering solutions to the problems that the Khaganate faced, as they usually did. At least that's still the same Yuri thought.

After the Kurultai had been debating for several hours, a plan of action was finally made and approved by Khan Lanist himself. First order of business would be to locate where they were, having to stay in the same position for several days. After that, they would have to find some way to locate much of the missing equipment, and most importantly, the missing people that had dissapeared after the fleet was so violently thrown into the unknown reality. Then, they would figure out where to go then.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________@Hokum
When Fanny May sent her distress call, the Khaganate's Great Expansion Fleet had already flown far away from the asteroid field in its succesful attempt to avoid it, but the call was still heard. The message was relayed to the fleet admiral's second-in-command, as the admiral of the GEF was currently at the Kurultai meeting, and a response was sent: "We will come pick you up. Please stay on your position and wait for our rescue vessel to arrive." The 'rescue vessel' in question was the KSR Atlas, a stratocruiser spaceship belonging to the Omega Order. The dark blue painted hull of the Stratocruiser reflected the dim light of the bleak sun as it headed towards the asteroid field. The choice for a stratocruiser was simple, as they had very large hangar bays that could be opened and then seperated from space using forcefields, making it easy to take the rescued ship in and repair it before sending it on its way.

The Atlas arrived near the asteroid field, and a transport craft equipped with mechanical arms flew towards the Jezebel, nimbly dodging the incoming asteroids the ship grabbed the Jezebel and hauled it towards the Atlas' open hangar bay, carefully placing it on the bay's floor.

James Maleski, proud soldier of the Omega Order, was sitting in his room, eating. The mess hall had to be cleaned due to a containment breach from the disastrous wormhole jump. As usual, right when he was eating, James got the order to report to his designated briefing room with the rest of his team. It turned out he was to assemble a welcoming party for a native lifeform of this universe that was apparently in need of help and had been rescued by the Atlas. Soon, James' task force was gathered in the hangar bay, standing in a line, the people in the center crouching down. They all pointed their weapons at a strange metal object that had just been put down on the hangar's floor by a transport craft that had just come in from the asteroid field.
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That night, the stranger did not sleep well. It was not because of fear of the dark or being assassinated by one of the Wul, he had lost that emotion a long time ago, and he knew that he had not harmed anyone in the Wul empire, already showing his complete difference to the human bandits that raided its farms and villages. Neither was it because he was stressed or was worried about anything, because he had been travelling the land, occasionaly working as a mercenary for the local population.

The stranger was dreaming. They were no pleasant dreams either. The stranger dreamt of a group of massive flying metal vessels flying through an even greater tunnel with walls made of pure light in all colors of the rainbow. Something went horribly wrong, causing untold destruction as the strange objects collided into eachother and the walls of the tunnel that had started to ripple. He woke up, sweating all over, and put on his clothes and went outside, where he looked up at the sky. He did not see the familiar stars, instead, he saw hundreds of strange bright lights, slowly moving to the south, and for some reason, he felt as if he recognized it, but the feeling went away quickly. He tried to sleep until it was day again, and left the inn in the morning, having already paid for the room and the food the night before. For some reason, he had the urge to travel towards the south, leaving the Wul Empire.

It was the second day of his journey to the south when he came across another Wul farm. It was still early in the morning, and fog that had come from the sea was laid over the land like a blanket. In the fog, the stranger heard screaming. It had to be bandits! The man drew his two-handed sword and charged, he vaguely saw someone approaching from the left, and swung his blade, cutting the man's torso. Another bandit charged at him, and he sidestepped, letting the foe stumble as he lost his balance. He cut the man's arm off. This was enough to disperse the other bandits, as the stranger had taken them by complete surprise because of the dense fog. When the farmer and his wife came to look at who rescued them, they found nothing, because the stranger had already continued on his journey.

Diddly Do

Added a new character, has been approved by the GM

Diddly Do

The loud noise of sirens could be heard as red lights flashed all across the bridge of the LKS Genghis, the Khan-class dreadnought that was the flagship of the Lanist Khaganate's Great Expansion Fleet. Yuri sat in the bridge close to the Captain's chair, and he could see the walls of the wormhole tunnel pulsate out of the bridge's windows as the wormhole generator failed to compensate for the strange enviromental conditions of whatever was inside of the wormhole or was outside of the wormhole's walls, whatever that might be. Wormhole travel had presented a solution to the whole "space is extremely large" problem that presented itself to the Lanist Khaganate and other burgeoning space nations, but the Khaganate's scientists had never been able to solve the issue that the enviroment inside the wormhole tunnel as well as outside of it could drastically influence the travelling experience of anyone who wished to use one. Wormholes became dangerous to use with large ships and fleets, so it was not a surprise for Yuri that something like this would happen. The strange enviromental conditions inside the wormholes combined with the fact that they were not completely stablized lead to one interesting thing though: Interdimensional travel. The Khaganate soon became able to travel to alternate realities, albeit it happened accidentally and was not really controllable.

Yuri was soon rudely awoken out of his long drawn-out chain of thoughts by a lightning bolt that streaked across nearly the entire wormhole, followed by the Genghis slowly turning sideways, unleashing a horrible creaking sound as if metal was scraping over metal and parts of the ship were being broken off. Yuri could see lights and screens flickering as entire systems started failing while the men and women ran around the bridge, unable to do anything. The gravity generators failed and people were sent flying while trying to run. Then, the wormhole generator that had to constantly endure the stress of the journey gave away, and the wormhole tunnel collapsed, sending the ships of the Lanist Khaganate's Great Expansion Fleet into the unknown...
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Beep beep beep was the sound both Yuri and many of the crewmembers of the bridge would first hear when they were woken up by it.
The irritating beeping luckily didn't alarm them of any life support system failures or other catastrophic failures, but was merely a proximity alarm warning the captain, Yuri, and the bridge crew of an approaching asteroid field. The captain immediately started barking orders, and people ran around the bridge again, trying to find their designated seats they had fallen our floated out off. Eventually, the danger was averted, and to Yuri's relief, the fleet followed the flagship like baby ducks following their mother.

"Check the damage please Captain." the Khan said, and the captain obeyed immediately, running several damage control programs. The captain answered "structural damage is limited, Sir, although our ship has taken some damage to the stern left main thruster when another ship rammed us during the wormhole jump, but repair robots are on the scene at the moment. Also.." The captain paused for a moment, not quite sure how to tell his Khan the news. "VIPs 45 to 47 have dissapeared." Yuri sighed. They had arrived in a completely unknown universe, again.
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Drops of rain slowly started to fall from the sky on the stone wall the stranger was sitting on. It was a very old wall, not able to properly support the stranger's weight as it had been eroded over the years by the winds and rain that were common in that area of the world. The man heard the slow rustling of leaves as the storm began to pick up. He continued walking, seeing that he had to go inside to seek shelter from the coming storm. He had heard of a village that was supposed to be half an hour away.

After 10 minutes of walking, he came across a crossroads. He ignored the sign, as the stranger knew exactly where he had to go. He pulled the hood of his cloak over his head as the rain began to pick up and kept on walking. The stranger had been a strange sight in the remote villages of the Wul Empire. Humans did exist in the world, but were a rare sight in the most western reaches of the Singular Continent. Humans, as it was well known, came from the south, and had only slowly spread to the rest of the world.

The stranger passed a farm, and the farmer's wife and child that had been working the land ran away the moment they saw him. Unlike humans, the Wul were only small, with an average length of 4 feet. They had four arms, but could not best a human in combat despite having more limbs. The stranger was not there to burn down or loot their home like the bandits that were often humans in this part of the world, and so he continued on, unyielding.

After exactly half an hour after he had left from his break spot, he arrived at his destination, an inn. He entered the large, wooden two-storey building and walked towards the bar. The Wul bartender looked up at the stranger, asking him "What do you want?". The stranger looked back, and under the man's cowl the Wul could see a stern face with hair white as bone and eyes as grey as steel staring back at him.

Diddly Do

Updated char