”If men had wings and bore black feathers, Few of them would be clever enough to be crows.” - Henry Ward Beecher
As the bull left to lick his wounds, Galaxor flew on into the cosmos. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, there was nothing out there after all. Nothing but time to ponder on what to do. Heroes were always needed and once the world would be made, heroes will be made. Challenges will be at every step. Other divines might want to interfere with Galaxor’s plans, not that he cared that much, all were below his heroic body but he preferred not to make enemies everywhere. After all, even the mightiest can fall at the hands of the many.
He wandered around the nothingness until he felt something. He couldn’t see what it was but something was out there. Something noticed him. Maybe it was one of his old enemies. Maybe they managed to follow him to this place. So, he did what all heroes do. Taking a deep breath, he let his aura shine bright and in his loudest and most heroic voice said:
“My name is Galaxor, the God of Heroes, the Hero Maker, Divine Artisan of Heroes, Celestial Forger of Legendary Champions, Master of Heroic Destinies, Architect of Heroism and Valor, Weaver of Epic Tales, Cosmic Mentor of Heroic Prodigies, the Legendary Enabler of Greatness, Creator of Champions, the Mythweaver, the Cosmic Patron of Heroic Aspirations, the Celestial Architect of Legendary Deeds. If you’re here to challenge me, I’ll leave the first move to you. ”
A few moments later, his demeanour changed. His aura changed once more, shining even brighter, his muscles bulged, his eyes flared with divine power.
“Show yourself or face my wrath” the Hero Galaxor said. The tone changed from before, gone was the cheerful, friendly voice. Commanding. The only word that could describe it.
What emerged could not be called a god; frail wisps, a mere fraction of the power a divine ought to be granted. Like a sacrificial offering terrified of the altar, it recoiled from Galaxor’s aura. It bristled like a cornered animal, before ultimately coalescing some rationality, enough to speak. In the divine tongue – proof it was no mere monster – it eked out, “Don’t hurt me.”
In the morass of nonexistence, which could not be called dark for light did not yet exist, it did not form a body. Instead, it remained mere traces of essence, scattered in a probabilistic cloud across both a length and a point, all one and the same with no matter which to measure against. Still, it cowered from Galaxor’s aura, treading the edges in a manner more avoidant of divine proximity than any measure of distance.
If there was more to this thing, this creature with barely the power of a proto-godling, it was nowhere to be found. Either it did not exist, or it was well-hidden amongst the nonexistence that was the total sum of reality.
The moment the divine being appeared, if one could even call it like that, and talked, Galaxor’s aura changed once more. The heroic aspect of Galaxor fading. His muscles, demeanour, everything went back to normal.
“Ha HA HA! Little one! I’m sorry to have frightened you! I thought you were one of the many enemies I’ve made throughout the cosmos. Now, let me look at you..” said Galaxor trying to understand what exactly he was seeing in front of him. It was something. The same something he felt before. He couldn’t place it.
Looking at the divine inquisitively, Galaxor bent down to take a better look at it before shaking his head.
“I’ve seen many things but I haven’t seen anything like you. What are you, little one? I can feel the divine spark in you but never have I seen such a faint spark. ”
The wisps scattered at his gaze, split into several different directions – as much as they could without direction. Every word jarred them, as though the simple act of being spoken to was enough to drive them to blind terror. The same little voice, less coherent against the background for the scattering of its component parts, “Scared,” it spoke, and then paused, and then continued, “Don’t hurt,” as though to emphasise its frailty.
It refused to coalesce, in a clear attempt to minimise the amount of it that Galaxor could perceive at any given time. Once it was clear it had not been immediately struck down, its babbling came at a greater rate, “Don’t hurt, don’t want to fight, please,” it begged, still skimming at the edge of Galaxor’s perception and aura.
Galaxor shook his head once more at the thing.
“Little one, if I wanted to hurt or fight, we wouldn’t be talking, would we? Ha! HA! HA! But maybe my mighty form is too much for you. Let’s see what I can do about that.. ” laughed Galaxor before slapping his hands together, letting out a mighty clap.
Two things happened at that same time. First was that Galaxor’s form seemed to shift and bend as if he was trying to replicate the thing’s form.
Secondly, the sound of the clap materialised itself in the form of a cage. Strong and fast enough to catch a minor god, definitely not strong enough to hold a fully powered up god. Galaxor might’ve not known what he was dealing with but he dealt with many creatures in his time. Even the mightiest heroes need to resort to tricks to capture their enemies after all.
The wisps battered against every wall of the cage, as the begging reached a crescendo, “Want freedom, please, don’t hurt! Will stay out of your way, I promise! Please!” The behaviour once more became that of a cornered animal, sparks of divine energy arcing out as though they were claws, trying to scratch anything in reach. They were disempowered, insignificant to even an instinctual divine defence.
With a loud audible, hmph, Galaxor started to shrink the cage, more and more. Enough to cause pain and some damage but nothing that a divine couldn’t heal in less than a few seconds if left alone.
“Little one, you’ll soon find you won’t have much space to move or exist for that matter. Tell me your name. What are you? ” said Galaxor with a low tone, threatening. He didn’t want to kill this being but not wanting to present itself to another divine? A minor god? Now that didn’t feel right.
The insignificant godling screamed in pain, pressed against itself in the cage. It whimpered, offering up what was demanded without hesitation, “God of knowledge, I- I,” it let out another cry of pain as it pressed against the cage, “not lucky, given less, less power than others. Please, don’t want to die,” there was no indication of a lie, there; it broke instantly under pressure, more indicative of not having considered the option of explaining itself rather than deliberately hiding something.
It then returned to begging, “Sorry, sorry, if hurt, just, just want freedom, please,” as it pressed against the bars of the cage, more by necessity than choice as its own compression drove it outwards.
With a loud sigh from Galaxor, the cage disappeared, healing the divine as it did.
"God of Knowledge, you say? I haven't met one of you in a long time! Ha! Ha! Ha! Maybe you can answer me a question then! What was the secret ingredient in my mother's kimchi soup? She never once told me! " Galaxor asked while taking a seat in midair. The divine didn't pose any danger, no need to stand up to him, especially as he saw how weak the divine was.
The little godling answered, “Where, where I am from, people ate,” the god pulled from its mind one of the heavens it had scattered on its escape, “they ate songs. Not just those sung by themselves, but the song of birds, and the song of winds rustling through trees. They ate the symphonies produced by natural laws.” The wisps of divinity separated again, still clearly wary of Galaxor.
"That's not what I asked you about, did I? You’re a god of knowledge, surely you must know that. But a very interesting idea, after you answer my question, I'll offer you…Two songs. Call it an apology for hurting you. " replied Galaxor, who already knew what songs he'd tell the gosling. The best songs there were out in the cosmos. The songs about him and his might.
The wisp considered a moment, then responded, “If your mother never told you, then it was a secret. I, I do not know secrets. I am a god of knowledge, not, not secrets.” it recoiled away from him, as though fearful of retaliation, each wisp scattered out across a wide non-space, such that it could not be caged again.
Galaxor laughed for a moment before frowning, he stood up from where he sat.
"A-ha! Caught you! I never had a mother! I was created by a different divine which I then bested in single combat! A god of knowledge would have…that knowledge. " said Galaxor, half shouting.
The wisps of divine essence scattered further, suddenly alarmed by the motion and the noise. It hastily replied, terror edged back in its voice, “You– You didn’t listen to me, did you? You’re seeking something to abuse, you,” its voice hardened, seemingly with realisation, “you’re sadistic, and you’ve found a victim, I need–” as its voice silenced suddenly, the wisps of godling began to openly flee, pure horror and terror in its wake.
At that, Galaxor started laughing very loudly and shrieked to his usual size.
"Sorry! Sorry! Don't run, calm yourself. I'm just joking with you…and I don't like being lied to. But very well, keep your secrets, God of whatever. I'll very much like to chat more…in the future. Your form may not be heroic but oh' my, the stories you could make! " shouted, in a friendly tone, Galaxor to the fleeting godling.
He knew something was off about them. Something they didn't tell them. Definitely not a god of knowledge but of what? Galaxor had no clue. Almost as if…it was a secret that the cosmos was hiding from him. Knowledge that eluded him.
After the battle with the bull, Galaxor wanders aimlessly into the void until he feels the presence of a divine being. The divine he felt was The Eidolon. The Eidolon successfully conceals its true power by lying to Galaxor about what god he is, and appearing weaker than they are. After trying to trap the Eidolon and ignoring its lies, mostly because he didn't listen to them, the Eidolon runs off in the void while Galaxor laughs at him trying to make it understand he was only joking.
For secrets are edged tools, and must be kept from children and from fools. - John Dryden, Sir Martin Mar-all
This is what is known. They coasted along a night-lit highway, the worlds-that-were scattered below in wondrous splendor. Ahead, swad in colors which they could recall the words for but chose not to, heavens curved to a horizon where the birds and the rivers were made of sound. The people in this world were beautiful, woven from constantly singing superstrings. Then it was over, dopplering in their wake and scattered across its moorings. At one point it had been considered to eliminate pain, replacing it with something less distracting. But pain was a message, and its removal carried the danger of apparent immortality. The best to be done was to make it less debilitating, but its form was at the far end of nuclear and every half-imaginary nerve was punching through the filters.
At the edge of the worlds, where creation was built upon creation, it was about dimension. One degree of freedom over your opponent, and there was no contest at all. Theirs fell fifteen to be here. Their people played with meaning in their infancy, and could literally alter morality in their favor, but where this thing came from, their creation was nothing but a tiny circle that could be crushed between its fingers. If it had any mind, any thought at all, it would have been over in an instant. But it was only firepower, bristled and brought to bear with reckless abandon.
Heavens exploded curveward and rimward, worlds-that-were reduced to never-were as defensive projections scattered. Here, an opening, a space from which to fight. It roared uncaringly, tendrils engaged in every direction, leveling nearby scenery. They were able to cut loose with their counter-attacks, and for a moment even began to win: With exhaustion setting in, it was not winning, however, but stalling. Something had to give, or it would be the end.
”Come.”
Its options were vanishing quickly. Paradoxically, that left but one true option; take what was proffered. A path cleared in its mind, and it grabbed its enemy by the tail and began to accelerate. Secondary and tertiary skins flushed away in white-hot agony as both of them raced towards the border. All it had was rage and more brandished firepower than its entire civilization combined, but it had thought and purpose. It reached up and heaved the thing by the tail, sacrificing its hind legs to blow it off-course. The tear was directly ahead, and it – creation was torn violently asunder, darkness closed in on every side. It fell, disconnected from its senses. It did not feel or see the gap close behind it and the worlds-that-were recede, and for a moment there was absolute silence, all the panic gone, all the alarms silenced.
That moment brought composure. It had not been noticed yet; a world-that-could-be, before time and before creation. Ahead, behind, always at the front of its vision, the scroll. It approached with caution; here are others, ready to perceive that which was not ready to be seen. As it curled around the scroll, its purpose became clear. Here, the chance for creation. It was trapped, far from its people, safe yet imprisoned. Already, it yearned to return, and here could be written the bedrock of its efforts.
Information was power. In its infancy, it played with meaning, and the possession of all truth or mistruth by any would surely doom its efforts. There was but one option; it could escape without knowing the breadth of creation, and so first upon the pyre was the sacrifice of everyone’s omniscience. In a small corner, sandwiched between the larger entries scrawled before it. To everyone, there would be secrets. The currency through which it could manipulate its peers and the universe itself.
A pang of homesickness, so early amongst the eons. Given precisely one eternity, it could have staved off such emotions, but it now had a planck heartbeat. A fit of sorrow, and a familiarity from its home written into the foundations of the world-that-could-be. Information and meaning were to be substance, meaningful building blocks of reality that could be picked up and examined. This, it was less careful with; scrawled larger across the fabric. Then, it clamped down, its moment of weakness over, and emotion purged as a liability. It would never be the same, but such sacrifices were necessary. That it would experience no joy upon arrival home could no longer register in its mind as a great loss.
Finally, its gift to itself more than the world-that-could-be; grant the thing, the interloper secrets, and in return creation would grant wonders. Here it placed its benefit into the laws of reality, drawn between the margins of another’s writing. Such a boon was a luxury, and less likely to be rejected if it was the only one; it stopped itself from continuing, and realized it would have to make do with the advantage it had given itself, and not a small one at that. It retreated from the scroll, and hid itself in the non-space from the others.
We start with some wacky scenes. The Eidolon is running from something that has no mind but enough firepower to destroy all of creation (the Eidolon’s world, anyways). They’re losing really badly, and the gesture to come is taken more as an escape.
The Eidolon races the monster to the tear in reality, and the Eidolon wins. It drops into the world and immediately regrets its decision, wanting to go home. It starts writing itself advantages into reality on the scroll, and in a moment of homesickness writes an aspect of its original reality onto the scroll.
It decides emotion is a weakness, and purges it. Ironic, because while it maintains the goal of going home, it has no attachment to that goal and will feel nothing if it goes home.
Once it’s done writin’, it retreats and hides from everyone.
This domain focuses not only on the keeping of secrets, but their attainment and usage as well. To be the god of secrets is to eschew brute force and focus on the use of information and meaning to manipulate those around you. Every act, down to an errant twitch of the eye or a thought half-spoken is another datapoint which is best caught by the domain of secrets. Usage of the domain of secrets is primarily in the protection of oneself first and foremost; to hide what is yours and yours alone. However, its secondary usage of discovering what others are hiding serves just as well. Finally, its third usage is in the manipulation of those secrets, their careful release or usage in half-truths or half-lies alongside the fabrication of false secrets.
The Eidolon is an unknown; loathe to appear in any unlimited form that may render it visible or truly vulnerable to other gods or mortals. When it does appear, it is in a limited form; one that lacks the raw power of the gods, but may be withdrawn to protect from harm. These limited forms can be anything, from inanimate objects to mortals, but it tends to prefer one form where it is not best served by disguise.
Description
The Eidolon is a reclusive and secretive god, loathe to entreat with other gods except by its own volition in times and places of its choosing and advantage. When it does speak, its personality is untethered; it is everything it needs to be to everybody it speaks to. Sometimes sweet, sometimes threatening, always the personality that best suits its goals and the manipulation of who it is speaking to. Though it harbors a tendency to mistruth, it is equally capable of honesty, meted out based on some inner plan it will never tell.
This domain focuses not only on the keeping of secrets, but their attainment and usage as well. To be the god of secrets is to eschew brute force and focus on the use of information and meaning to manipulate those around you. Every act, down to an errant twitch of the eye or a thought half-spoken is another datapoint which is best caught by the domain of secrets. Usage of the domain of secrets is primarily in the protection of oneself first and foremost; to hide what is yours and yours alone. However, its secondary usage of discovering what others are hiding serves just as well. Finally, its third usage is in the manipulation of those secrets, their careful release or usage in half-truths or half-lies alongside the fabrication of false secrets.
The Eidolon is an unknown; loathe to appear in any unlimited form that may render it visible or truly vulnerable to other gods or mortals. When it does appear, it is in a limited form; one that lacks the raw power of the gods, but may be withdrawn to protect from harm. These limited forms can be anything, from inanimate objects to mortals, but it tends to prefer one form where it is not best served by disguise.
Description
The Eidolon is a reclusive and secretive god, loathe to entreat with other gods except by its own volition in times and places of its choosing and advantage. When it does speak, its personality is untethered; it is everything it needs to be to everybody it speaks to. Sometimes sweet, sometimes threatening, always the personality that best suits its goals and the manipulation of who it is speaking to. Though it harbors a tendency to mistruth, it is equally capable of honesty, meted out based on some inner plan it will never tell.
Outside the UNFCGSS Autumnal Harvest Orbit of Alaktu Mood Music
The UNFCGSV Dreadnought was a blocky, lovingly-painted vessel. It represented the latest and greatest of engineering feats; its prefabbed design crash-graduated from the simulators and assembled, in thousands of parts, across the whole of Eperu's shipyard capabilities. A dozen or more systems were on the far side of experimental, maintained through unforeseen difficulties by the around-the-clock attention of a whole corps of engineers. At its heart, Grey Wind, the first of its kind. This one had been developed far before the Dreadnought, so great were the risks of a premature deployment.
Grey Wind was not a dumb system, or a code name for some new and terrible weapon. No, it was the first of a new species of aggregate computing, an angel on the wing. Squids had always been a popular choice for such a task, their brains already attuned to pattern-matching and the implantation of sapience. If we ever uplift anything, it'll be a squid, so the saying goes. To this end, the sum of Grey Wind's parts were mundane, except in the details, that one word, parts. It was not just one brain, as Underheaven or the newly-popularized Salient Moon were. No, it was two. They were independent once, two squids with no conception of what they were bred for.
The extraction, well-practiced from decades of experience, was not painful for them. Lulled into unconsciousness, nerves deadened, they were lowered into a vat of HEV-P derived medicines. Eperu's brightest neurologists, mathematicians, and biologists had been crowded into a room for an operation that would define their careers; decide if they would receive illustrious prizes, or be sequestered for life, guilty of the crime of gross negligence. The two squids never woke again, but Grey Wind, in parallel, did.
And now Grey Wind was the Dreadnought. The ship's superconductors, chilled near absolute zero, fed a smorgasbord of information into its heart. Grey Wind could flex its lateral thrusters, feel them move up and down, could stretch its gunports, feel the crackling of impacted HEV-P scatter from the joints. It could feel the pain of a crashing system more intuitively and acutely than a legion of working professionals, and warn them before a terminal could update. The ship was not just a hunk of metal, it was alive, a steely body with electric blood coursing through it, little hairless antibodies scampering around it, protecting its guts from exotic disease.
If you wanted to put your best foot forward, there was no better ship than the UNFCGSV Dreadnought. It could outmaneuver a storm, could outgun a cruiser, and do it all faster than the saccades of a man's eye. At the insistence of the Frontier Commission, slinging reams of memos about diplomatic incidents and hostile architecture at the speed of a clogged bureaucracy, the Dreadnought was also the stealthiest warship ever to grace the howling dark. All of its cannons could hide seamlessly behind hidden gunports, hidden from the blind eye and sensors alike. It would not look the warship until it was time to be the warship.
It was not alone, flanked by three ships. Smaller, older, workhorses known to pull their weight and then some. If all else went wrong, they would swoop to the rescue, a cavalry not illustrious but certainly welcome. The UNFCMCV Bum Rush was the second-in-command, ready to seize the initiative and direct its flight if the Dreadnought valiantly fell. It was a destroyer, designed for light targets, retrofitted with a command deck when it was press-ganged into greater duties. It traded tightbeams and signal flags with the UNFCSCV Two For Flinching and the UNFCSCV Herald of the Morning. They were lean ships, corvettes bristling with weapons capable of contesting deep-space habitats. No space spared for fluff, selected for their scrappiness. They could eat hits that would dust lesser fighters and come out kicking for vengeance.
Such precautions had been protested in the Frontier Commission Senate. A military boondoggle, sacrificing diplomacy for expediency. The diplomatic corps had been accused of looking to start a war. Space Command had been served subpoenas, questioned on their integrity. Every time, such arguments were easily countered; one simple fact rained down from above to extinguish the political fires.
You don't fly into the middle of a war-zone without a backup plan.
The Dreadnought was a ship of two worlds. Below executive conference halls and staterooms sat cargo holds of shells and power-suited marines. For every diplomat, an analyst, running scenarios and formulating battle-plans. I wish for peace and prosperity for all, the ship seemed to whisper, hit me if you fucking dare.
Their computers had been ancient before the gateways were even a dream in a physicist's eye. Eperu had a nasty habit of forcing the hand, strangling complexity and power in a grip that defied every law man ever set in stone for how the universe ought to behave. It was no shock, then, that they interfaced easily. Oh, it's my older brother, so long in the tooth and so dull and shortsighted, let me get that for you its systems cried to the Grey Wind and the Dreadnought, giving the beating heart of gray matter reflexive control of man's greatest invention.
They hardly even noticed the transition, were it not for the star that awaited them. Sensors snow-blinded for a brief moment, tinting to adjust from the dark confines of Eperu to that of a proper main sequence. When it cleared, all was unfamiliar, save for the war that raged about them, the skirmishing cracks of ordinance easily visible to the highly-trained spotters of the diplomatic procession.
The new visitors were greeted by the arrival of a lone, angular warship, its impressive frame looming over the horizon as neared the edge of the DMZ line. It was one of many of the line of Judgment-class Battlecruisers, it’s hull streaked by a union of ebony, metallic gray, and crimson. Deep within its bowls her scarred Admiral and his staff observed a holographic projection of the surrounding space, the usual greens, and reds representing friend and foe alike. Out of the sea of green and red there was one blip that stood out, several blue figures representing unknown craft that match nothing in the Americana System. “Admiral, we’ve got new contacts entering the system.” One of the Janissary officers reported.
“Do they match previous contacts?” He inquired, his first officer shaking his head after a few moments. “No sir, these are new signals.
“Open communications at once.” The Admiral ordered his comms officer, their eyes locking with each other as the young man nodded, taking a few moments to input his commands, a comm line was soon established between the ship and the foreign delegation. “Attention unknown vessels, this is Admiral Ezekiel Hawthorn of the Blissful Wrath of the 3rd Home Defense Fleet.” Hawthorn stated. “Identity yourselves.”
A tight-beam lanced out from the Dreadnought, walked its way across the Blissful Wrath's hull to the communications dish. The naked hull did not register it; low power, intense only in its focus, designed for a system which did not play kind with invisible light. Clearer than traditional radio, especially at stellar distances, it was the obvious choice of communication for such a sensitive mission. The voice that came through to the Blissful Wrath was that of a veteran spacer, her voice gruff, "We acknowledge, Admiral Ezekiel. We are the first signalman of the UNFCGSV Dreadnought. We bring good tidings and hearty greetings on behalf of the United Nations Frontier Commission."
United Nations? That was something interesting to hear. Last the Admiral heard that name was in Old Earth classes back in his youth. Not that he can say much, as his own place of birth has names and titles that honor the legacy of Old Earth, so that humanity does not and will not ever forget. Regardless, this “Frontier Commission” openly comes peace, a pleasant surprise to be sure, especially when half the galaxy has been set against you. “In that case, Signalman, let me be the first to properly welcome you on behalf of the Americana System.” Hawthorn said. “However, I must warn you that this region of space is not safe. Let us escort you away from the combat zone.”
A brief pause, the signalman relaying the message for orders, and then, "Your message is understood and appreciated, Admiral Hawthorn. The Dreadnought will fall into your wake. Where shall we be escorted?" As the signalman spoke, the thruster bells of the entire procession came to a great, shuttering life, heat blossoming from archaic twentieth-century chemical relics, blasting molten fire into vacuum for thrust. They were far more powerful than they had any conventional right to be, the acceleration far snappier than ships of their size would suggest.
Admiral Hawthorn and his staff were left dumbfounded at the sheer speed of the UN vessels, as the UN group had soon found themselves in close proximity to the Blissful Wrath in what seemed like no time. The Admiral shook his head as he heard the First Signalman’s voice crack out from the intercom requesting further instructions. “Our destination will be our capital and homeworld, Columbia, there you’ll be able to speak with people more qualified than us.” He turned to his comms officer once more with a new command. "Contact the Throneship, tell them we have new guests."
The tight-beam walked its lock continuously to the communications dish, the voice growing scratchy every time it off-centered, "Please inform your capital and homeworld, Columbia that we carry export to demonstrate; arrangements for a testing field, pre-arranged for the comfort of dignitaries, would be greatly appreciated." Lateral thrusters fired on occasion, the four ships remaining in rough lockstep with the Blissful Wrath. They flew disconcertingly close to both each other and Admiral Hawthorn's own vessel, visible to the naked eye. The apparent reason why was unusual; there were signalmen in towers extruding from the hulls, trading flag signals to coordinate their movements.
Several Days Later The Throneship Orbit of Columbia Mood Music
Several days had passed since the arrival of the UN vessels, the journey for the most part had been uneventful, however, they had at long last arrived to the pristine Columbia, standing out like a blue marble in the dark void, not much like Earth once did. Admiral Hawthorn, fresh out of bed had arrived to the Blissful Wrath’s CIC, letting out an audible yawn as his first officer passed him a cup of….”imported” coffee let’s just say. “We’ve finally arrived home, sir.” The first officer stated. “Shall we inform the Throneship?”
The Admiral nodded as he approached the center of the CIC, all other Janissary officers and staff saluting him. “At ease.” He said as they resumed work. “Contact the UN fleet and send them coordinates to the Throneship. We’ll escort them till that point.”
The UN vessels and the Blissful wrath proceeded to Columba, maintaining high orbit as they cruised over the horizon, the UN ships greeted by the daunting sight that was the Yulzan Throneship, a massive vessel that was practically a city onto itself, towering spires of clearly alien design protruding from her hull, bright crimson lights illuminating the void like a beacon. Surrounding the throneship was hundreds upon hundreds of more alien vessels of similar design. “Welcome to Columba, welcome to the Throneship.” The Admiral messaged the Dreadnought.
The tight-beam lanced to life once more, tracked to the Blissful Wrath. This time, the First Signalman was a man, slightly high-pitched. A different shift had since taken over the panels, "We compliment your Throneship, Admiral Hawthorn, and we request docking permissions for the Dreadnought. Does the Throneship use docking umbilicals? We will require one freight umbilical and three passenger umbilicals for a smooth docking and unloading."
“One moment, Dreadnought.” The comms officer spoke as he relayed new Coordinates, and uploaded them into the Dreadnought’s systems, leading them into one of the several docking port sectors within the Throneship, this one in particular made in mind for quick umbilical docking and disembarking. With their imminent arrival, a delegation was hastily assembled to give proper greetings to their new guests, one of the High Ascendants even taking part in the occasion.
As the Dreadnought's escorts fanned out into a defensive shield, the flagship itself maneuvered smoothly into the umbilicals. As the connection was made, Grey Wind extended out its own greeting to the systems of the Throneship, hello how do you do pleased to meet you im grey wind who are you thats a big station you have dont see many like it, bits unnecessary for bare operation, but a gesture of one intelligence looking for another of its kind to talk to. Outside of the realm of electricity and data, in the realm of topography and DNA, the unloading proceeded apace.
On the primary passenger vestibule near the front of the ship, the dignitaries of note; a dozen harried-looking men in fine suits, carrying briefcases and followed by an honor guard, marines in dress uniform, saber and all. Behind them, the true power players, a crowd of proper bodyguards, exoskeletons and snub-nosed sub-machine guns, all surrounding a single woman in a black suit-skirt combo. Dark sunglasses covered her eyes, and she had a legion of interns to carry her personal effects.
The other two passenger umbilicals disgorged an eclectic mix of necessary personnel, bureaucrats, lawyers, engineers, and notaries. They flooded out to find their own counterparts, to begin greasing the wheels of bureaucracy as to ensure the smooth and more importantly, immediate implementation of decrees and deals. From the freight umbilical, technicians began to unload an eclectic mix of product, the most notable an old-style anti-tank field gun with several plates of free-standing armor. Several boxes of stand-alone electronic systems came after, bristling with Old Earth technology, all CRTs and physical hard drives.
The people of the Frontier Commission were greeted by a rather unexpected sight. In addition to the assortment of humans in religious garb, and human soldiers glad in black armor, they would also witness their first live sapient alien lifeforms, as the human soldiers would be joined by the insectoid Aldzir, the amphibian Dathu, and standing in the center of the crowd, towering over all individuals present was the High Ascendant Alin’sha. She stepped forward, all those by her side stepping aside in sheer reverence, bowing their heads to her, Alin’sha approached who she would assume to be the higher-ranking members of the UN delegation, giving a slight bow. As she spoke, her voice vibrated the very air as technology far beyond human design assisted her in making audible tones, giving her voice an ethereal sensation. “Greetings, I am Alin’sha of the High Ascendants, I welcome you, most honored guests, to our Throneship, the jewel of the Ascendancy, and its seat of power.”
She raised herself up once more, displaying her sheer height to the humans of Eperu. “Tell me, what brings you here? Besides curiosities and wishing to reconnect with your long-lost kin, and I'm sure you have many questions for my presence as well.”
The honor guard fanned out to the edges. A man with an embossed press pass attached to his shirt was taking photos. The delegation ordered themselves, almost unconsciously, by hierarchy. At the head, a portly black man, his voice embellished with a slight African lilt, "The honor is ours, Alin'sha. Please, call me Mister Mandla. We are here on a mission of discovery, and hopefully, establishment."
He gave a slight bow in return, the camera snapping a picture of the moment. He then gave her a friendly smile, continuing, "We indeed have many questions, but they can wait. Tonight, the food will be on us. Will you join us in the executive stateroom for a dinner? We have many delicacies to display, and a wonderful stage play. A cultural exchange, yes?"
In the back, the woman surrounded by bodyguards stared impassively at Alin'sha, through the tinted lenses of her sunglasses. Though the assistants and executives behind her fanned out to jockey into positions behind the diplomatic delegation, she did not move a muscle and her bodyguards, in their exoskeletons, continued to tightly circle her. A slight frown flickered on her face, but otherwise she betrayed no emotion nor thought.
Food…the thought of it had sent Alin’sha’s mind elsewhere for a split second. The one thing in all of creation the Yulzan envied the lesser beings for. The last time since Alin’sha tasted solid meat was an eternity ago, she, like the rest of her kin, had long forgotten what real food tasted like…on somedays, the thought drove her and others to pure madness, on others, utter despair, and contempt.
This gift of self-made godhood was both a blessing and at the same time, such a dreadful curse, forever trapped in this painful slowly decaying husk. Her primal mind screaming out for violence…but her better judgment and instincts held that beast back for the time being. Now was not the time to shed blood, now was the time to possibly make new allies. “I..would be honored to join you.” Her voice flowed through the air. “However….for reasons I will l further explain later, I unfortunately won’t be able to enjoy your meals, the rest of my delegation however, will gladly sample your dishes on my behalf.”
Sympathy, closely practiced not to fray too far into pity, writ itself upon Mandla's face. His voice remained even, "Of course, we do not intend to pry. Hopefully, the play will do to whet your appetite. It's an Old Earth play, preserved from our ancient history by the datalinks of our original colony ship. Afterwards, it is my understanding that Zixuang-Akako, one of our foremost corporations, wishes to demonstrate technology they wish you to purchase."
He stepped aside, motioning towards the umbilical, "Please, make yourself at home. No expense has been spared on the stateroom, I am certain you will find it quite beautiful."
A select few of the Janissary Officers and attending Clergymen were the first to enter through the umbilical, Alin’sha following behind. Not too long after, she and her attendants had made their way to the stateroom, the Old Earth classical styles were something to behold, and could make even a Dathu noblemen quite envious.
The alluring cushions and the aroma of masterfully prepared meals were enough for the officers and clergymen present to forget that a High Ascendant was among them, some sinking themselves into cushioned seats, and others admiring the mini art gallery in display. “Impressive, for humans.” Alin’sha said to herself in a hushed tone. Making sure no unfamiliar, prying ears were within distance. Although in truth, she was curious what this play was all about, she knew very little of Old Earth arts and literature.
The main attraction was indeed the stage, the stateroom arranged in a dinner-theater format. Though there were buffet tables at the sides of the room, replete with gourmet finger foods, each table had menus, lovingly hand-written by a calligrapher. There were five courses in total, each guest given an option between several different items for each course. Each choice was designed to be varied, to give as many different tastes of human food as possible.
As soon as the High Ascendant had seemingly picked a table, Mandla expertly weaved his way through the throngs of people to take a nearby seat. If one were not specifically looking, he worked so smoothly that it looked only natural, or only coincidence. A practiced move from an experienced and competent diplomat. As people were seated and butlers, clad in white-tie formal-wear, assisted them in personalizing their dinners, Mandla said to Alin'sha, "I think you'll like this play; I picked it out myself. It's about one of the prevailing pillars of the United Nations; justice."
He stopped a moment to point out a few items on the menu to a passing butler, before he turned back to her, "It's called Twelve Angry Men. In our legal system, a man is innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. Do you know of jury trials?"
Alin’sha nodded. “Yes, your kin on Columbia have shared this concept with us.” She spoke. “My people were very unfamiliar with this “jury trial” at first, but we understand somewhat.” In truth, this was a lie, she understood it quite well in her decades in the Americana System, but she, like the rest of her kind, could care less, as the current regime has corrupted the system. Justice to a Yulzan was simply another tool in their continued oppression of the masses, and often was an excuse to erase any form of dissent among the lesser beings…but that would be best left unsaid, Mr. Mandla need not know the full details. The lights in the room grew dim as the show was about the start.
Mandla left the note in the air, the implication that he understood their differences well enough to pick on such a tense point drifting in the room as he turned to watch the play. His broad smile, however, did not vanish. It was not intended to be a jab, but a message: Despite their vast differences and the similarities they shared with the Yulzan's hated enemies, they had still come to the Yulzan first.
Meanwhile, the woman in sunglasses had not bothered to take a seat. Safe behind an ironclad wall of exoskeletons and weaponry, she gazed around the room. Even under the sunglasses, her gaze was withering, and those who fell under it felt their backs crawl. She didn't look up at the stage as the curtains opened, and the play began.
Aboard the Throneship Orbit of Columbia Mood Music
Sometime after the dinner and the show, it was now time for the product demonstration courtesy of Zixuang-Akako. The field test moved to a more spacious environment within the Throneship, not too far from the docking ports. It was one of many indoor parks that provided a small taste of serene greenery. Presented before Alin’Sha and her entourage of clergymen and high-ranking officers was an assortment of different products both military and civilian in function. The first to be tested was a field gun, used to blast away trees and hastily assembled target dummies representing FRA soldiers, each confirmed “kill” was met with audible cues, followed by claps from the officers, having good fun with just blowing something up.
The field gun was a primitive affair, no better than an ancient artillery piece. Its true variety was in its shell loads and its reliability, dozens of different shells for each situation and guaranteed to always fire. The field gun was lowered into a vat of mud, and then lifted out again and fired several more times without issue. When it was power-washed off, the true demonstrations began.
Several different items were rolled out; a long, rectangular, thin steel plate stood on its edge, a composite plate of the same make, a dark-colored plate of some advanced alloy, and a plate that appeared as though it were steel, though imbued with a purple hue and a vague rainbow sheen. The announcer, some Zixuang-Akako functionary, began to explain, "The very first armor plate we shall test is steel; used for centuries before we traveled to the stars, and sure to be used for centuries to come. It's reliable, it's tough, and we're going to blow a hole through it."
The field gun belched fire. There was a hefty explosion, and then a secondary one. The park filled with sparks and smoke. When it cleared, there the steel plate stood, in two pieces, the dummy behind it obliterated. Once the dust settled and ears had ceased ringing, the announcer continued, "Next, composite plating! Used before the heady days of the gateways, it's stronger and lighter than steel. This plate is the same size, but doubles the effective armor!"
Again, the field gun burped a shell. Again, the smoke and the sparks. This time, the hole was smaller; the plate was not split in two, but the entire upper body of the dummy had been blown off entirely. The announcer let the scene settle, then called over the loudspeakers, "Next, nano-graphene alloys, used by our very own ancestors on the ship that bore us to Eperu! It's lean and it's space-age, quadruple the effective armor of the old-school steel! We've yet to discover armoring better than it on the periodic table."
The field gun fired. There was a great impact, and two explosions. When the dust settled, the plate was intact, roughly. It had spalled material into the dummy, several shards embedded throughout the dummy. A grievous wound, but not an immediately lethal one. The announcer then continued, his voice rising as he presented the true star of the demonstration, "And finally, Hevsteel! Named for the alloying of Hev-P with those cheap and simple steel plates, it is cheap, light, and better than anything else available on the market! One of Zixuang-Akako's greatest inventions, if you're looking for the best of the best, look no further!"
Another shell slung downrange, and another two explosions. There was a slight purplish glare, and the smoke was blown away. The plate was entirely intact; a small scorch mark the only indication that it had been shot at all. The announcer called out, "As you can see, the armor is completely intact! But perhaps you think it's a fluke; let's go ahead and fire a few more shells into it!"
Another belch of fire, and another shell downrange. The same result, the smoke clearing once more as though blasted away. Again, nothing but another scorch mark. This repeated five more times, until finally, with a groan of effort, the girders holding the plate vertical snapped from the stress, the plate falling on the dummy. Surprisingly, the dummy was not crushed, sitting sadly underneath the plate.
“Hmm…quite impressive indeed.” Alin’Sha spoke, this Hevsteel had great potential, one can imagine what damage an army could do in full-plated hevstel armor, made nearly invulnerable. She surveyed her surroundings, looking at the hungry eyes of the Janissary officers, fortunate for her, they too see the promise this product offers. She turns to the ZA delegation.
“Your Hevsteel is something to behold and to be congratulated. I must say, you humans continue to surprise me to no end.” She paused to give herself a breather. “On behalf of the High Ascendants, it would be our pleasure to do business with you.”
The gaggle of interns, executives, and mid-level marketers practically glowed as they received approval from Alin'Sha. The stands exploded into dealmaking and wheeling as the announcer continued their display, some form of radar system being wheeled out. Alin'Sha could feel something on the back of her neck, like an itch that couldn't be scratched. Behind her, the gaze of the woman in the sunglasses was staring directly at her, something that had not occurred before. She made a motion, and the bodyguards parted, several of them also staring at the High Ascendant.
It was a beckons, the one opportunity the High Ascendant would be given to speak to the mysterious figure.
Alin’sha lightly stomped her way towards the strange woman, allowing her underlings to deal with the rest of the ZA employees on other matters. Both figures came face to face, so to speak, Alin’sha’s imposing figure literally staring down the woman. “Yes?” She asked.
The woman did not flinch, nor did her bodyguards. She remained silent and stonily still as the High Ascendant stormed up. The bodyguards closed around the two, and warded off a panicked-looking Mandla, the High Ascendant's own attendants, and the rest of the assortment of delegates. The woman replied, coldly, "Alin'sha," she gazed impassively at the Ascendant's body, asking without a hint of intonation, "was it worth it?"
Alin’sha gave a perplexed look. “What ever do you mean?” She asked. The woman raised a single disapproving eyebrow, before she ultimately answered, "To be surrounded by food, and yet to starve. I ask again, was it worth it?" Her tone was still flat, but her body language was almost that of disappointment.
Alin’sha pondered, her facial expression rather conflicted. “In truth? I don’t truly know anymore. When I was first offered the gift, I was young, and foolish, and feared death…perhaps If given another chance, I would’ve chosen death over this fate. But that was then, and this is now. My kind have finally achieved the dream of our most sacred ancestors, godhood born through our own minds and ingenuity, suffering be damned.”
The woman's demeanor returned to utterly impassive, as she looked out at the crowds beyond her circle of bodyguards. Her comment was striking, clearly intended to provoke a reaction, "So you are the Creator and Redeemer of the world: but what a small world it must be."
“What are you getting at, human.” Alin’sha said, her tone clearly agitated. “Even in my current state, I will far outlive all that stand in this room, they will wither to dust, while I still stand, in pain, but in glory.”
Her eyebrow raised once more, a singular act of profound disapproval. She continued, pushing the Ascendant further with that provocatory tone, "And yet your legacy appears, to me, to be a failure of empire. Here you stand, accepting war profiteering from the species of your greatest enemy, because you cannot afford not to."
She gazed out at the mix of Janissaries and marketers mingling amongst each other, before continuing, "Would a god, master of all he surveys, not have dispensed great wrath upon the blasphemers who defied him?"
“Do not test me, human. “A snarl could be felt vibrating in the air, Alin’sha’s rage mounting. “I can easily end you, here and now, profiteering be dammed.” Her clawed palms beginning to tighten, the urge to end this pest was too overbearing to ignore. “Our wrath WILL be dispensed, and all humans or any other species that dare stand against us, will be burnt to ashes in our new galactic order.”
All of the bodyguards snapped their heads to Alin'sha, as their exoskeletons whirred with tension. The woman still did not move. Instead, she maintained that raised eyebrow. Even with her eyes behind sunglasses, her body language screamed both disapproval and disappointment. She continued, unperturbed, "You cannot afford to, Alin'sha. Didn't you understand that? Kill me, and we pick a side."
In an act that Alin’sha would ultimately regret, she very much obliged the stranger. “If I must, we have made many enemies…what’s one more?” She said as in an instant, Alin’sha ignited a plasma blade from a wrist device. “I will NOT be brought low by a human.” Alin’sha then slashed down one of the guards. The Janissaries present, realized what had just occurred, all pulled out their firearms. “Stand down! All of you!” One of them ordered. The clergymen soon dispersed in a panic.
The explosion of activity was instantaneous. The bodyguards smoothly swiveled to Alin'sha, and unleashed a furious full-auto upon the High Ascendant. Delegates and Zixuang-Akako employees scattered. One of the marines on the honor guard pulled a sidearm, and the rest, in the explosion of sound and violence, followed suite. A technician, in a moment of panic and brilliance, turned the demonstration field gun on a group of Janissaries, and unleashed an anti-personnel shell. In the next few seconds, several of the bodyguards grabbed a hold of the woman, and began to drag her away.
She hadn't flinched. She was still staring at the High Ascendant with undisguised disappointment. She called out, her voice more projecting than yelling, "How sad it must be to be God; and an inadequate God!"
Grey Wind had been watching the demonstration through the camera feeds. It was the love child of three-hundred years of exotic research, medical science, and hard-earned engineering experience. Through its veins ran electrons, encased in steely veins. It could think, and react, beyond the ken of mortal man. The plasma blade had not been fully ignited by the time Grey Wind cried out, the scream scattered across the hundreds of klaxons of the Dreadnought. The guard had not yet been ran through by the time the gunports had opened, the red alert disseminated and the crew ordered to battle stations.
The fight had not yet started, and Grey Wind was already running tactical simulations. We are close, and close is good to be. Grab them by the belt buckle, and we may fight our way to safety. By the first shot, Grey Wind had pushed tactical readouts to the captains of the whole fleet. Truly, it was humanity whom held back the Dreadnought.
A wounded Alin’sha fell to the ground, purple blood dripping from her abdomen. She glared at the the fleeing humans, letting out a roar that was a mix of bestial and mechanical. “KILL THEM ALL! YOUR HIGH ASCENDANT COMMANDS IT!” she screeched out, all the while reeling in pain. More and more Janissaries came pouring out from multiple entrance points, a platoon’s worth running out in pursuit of the new visitors, while others remained to tend to their goddess’ wellbeing. Soon a sector-wide alert was sounded, alarms blaring out through the many corridors.
The bodyguards took the halls in a heady sprint. Every unfamiliar man or alien was shot down on sight, afforded no hesitation. Their communications were short, and true to their job, no opening was permitted upon their charge. The woman was being carried now, back to the docking vestibule. Behind them, a cacophony of gunfire as the two sides escalated. This was a losing battle; too many Janissaries, too little marines. The technician on the field gun fell after scattering another dozen Janissaries into a fine mist. The civilians were mercilessly gunned down as they ran or where they lay. The honor guard had lasted the longest, even using enemy guns, but their holdout was forlorn.
When the woman arrived through the docking vestibule a few minutes later, it was as though a switch had been flipped. There was no longer any use in waiting, and only risks to be associated with remaining docked. A series of cannon-shots rocked the Dreadnought as eighteen-inch main battery guns blew off the dock of the Throneship, severing the vestibules in the process. Its engines came to life as it maneuvered, all cannons blazing in every direction. The fleet was point-blank; now, more than ever, they could damage the Throneship, and perhaps start with the initiative.
Grey Wind assessed the situation; the Bum Rush, Two for Flinching, and Herald of the Morning were built for pirates and revolutionaries, not open battle against a uniformed enemy. The assistance they could provide was minimal at best, except to harass, distract, and if necessary, shield. It was with this in mind that Grey Wind tasked their crews to counterbattery fire, to disrupt the inevitable response in the trading of blows.
The Gateway was too far. Too many enemies, spread across too great a distance when point-blank was your best option. No, they would have to go for the jungle world, the home of the exiled republic whom had long since warred against this new enemy.
The fleets were on high alert, as a small fleet of Janissary warships, the Blissful Warth among them, were in now hot pursuit of their new enemies, much to Admiral Hawthorns surprise. From the CIC he watched in bewilderment as he suddenly received orders to hunt down and to destroy the people he escorted to the Throneship. “I don’t know what the hell went on in there, but they sure pissed someone off. Maintain high speed, we know how fast those things can get, we’ll lose them if we’re not careful. Prepare all batteries and tubes and open fire!” The pursuing ships unleashed a volley of torpedoes and anti-ship rounds, hoping to score a hit.
The Dreadnought was the largest and most vulnerable target, a fact Grey Wind had taken into consideration. While the rest of the fleet twisted between debris to make themselves hard targets, the flagship was used as bait as it wrecked havoc upon the Throneship. Once the Blissful Wrath and its supporting vessels had fired upon the fleet, the counterbattery began. The smaller cannons of the escorts opened up on the torpedo tubes and guns of Hawthorne's fleet, with uncanny precision at their near-point-blank range.
The Dreadnought, meanwhile, began its own counterbattery, its secondaries and point defense guns unleashing fury upon the incoming ordnance. With the aid of its precision near-sensors, tuned to fight through interference simply not present outside of Eperu, its weapons were also alarmingly accurate. It ignored near-misses and even duds, focusing streams of bullets and cannon shells towards the truly dangerous ordnance.
What made it through was immaterial. As they impacted the hull against strongpoints, the armor flashed with intense purple light, greater than the demonstration. A plume of purple fire blew outwards, and when it cleared, there was not so much as a scorch.
A number of torpedoes had started to disperse, going into random directions as their systems went haywire from the counter systems, or were shot down from enemy point defense guns. The UN vessels were given breathing room needed to make their escape from the Throneship’s grasp, Hawthorns’ fleet still in pursuit of their targets. Swarms of strike craft would soon launch in the hopes of slowing down their targets, although that may seem futile at this point.
The guns of the three supporting vessels were as pinpoint accurate as those of their larger counterpart, and the counter-battery gave the entire fleet the opening they needed. The strike craft were a valiant gesture, but an ultimately irrelevant one as the fleet began to flee. They did not flee directly towards safety, however, instead they opted to take one the next nearest group of ships.
Grey Wind's strategy became more clear as the fire from the fleet rapidly grew inaccurate and ineffectual as they made distance, at an alarming rate. If they had fled directly towards safety, they would have been left out in the open, easy targets for a myriad of vessels that outranged them. However, if they moved from ship to ship, fleet to fleet, they could fight too closely for supporting vessels on the line to rip them to shreds from afar.
The strategy was quite effective, as the days had gone by, the UN ships were able to initiate several skirmishes with patrolling Janissary vessels on their terms, exchanging fire before they’re able to flee further away from Yulzan Space, and eventually, had found themselves back into No Man’s Land, a region rife with piracy, and roving groups of FRA and Ascendancy warships, the heart of the war between the two.
As the Dreadnought broke into No Man's Land, they began to call out on all frequencies, the gruff voice of the signalmen audible through a wave of interference, "This is the United Nations Frontier Commission diplomatic taskforce under command of the UNFCGSV Dreadnought, requesting immediate assistance. We are under attack by Yulzan military assets. We are low on fuel and munitions and request safe harbor," the signalman paused to wait for a response before they repeated the distress call, as Grey Wind maneuvered the fleet for a standoff.
For a moment, there was only silence on the other end, and soon that silence broken by a cacophony of transmissions replying back, unfortunately, it was uncertain if any or all were friendly. A flotilla of Crusader-class corvettes were within distance of the transmission, and like a hungry wolfpack, they set a course in quick succession to their prey, fueled by furious zealotry. In some other corner, a lone Independence-class Battlecruiser, the FAS Dawn’s Early Light, had also received the Dreadnought’s plea for assistance. “This is Captain Hernandez of the Dawn’s Early Light, we read you and are enroute to your location, stand by for our arrival.”
The fleet turned for a burn to the corvettes, as tight-beams lanced the void, in a desperate search for the receiver of the Dawn's Early Light. Once once crossed the dish, it walked in and the signalman's voice came again, clearer and only to the battlecruiser this time, "UNFCGSV Dreadnought acknowledges, Dawn's Early Light. We are under attack by Yulzan military assets, and are moving to engage. Please render assistance as soon as possible."
As the engines fired once more, they began to burn towards the corvettes, as the three escort vessels flew in wide spirals in front of the Dreadnought. Their point defense guns swiveled, tracking the intercepting corvettes. Though all the vessels were clearly damaged, they seemed unwilling to concede the fight yet.
The corvettes unleashed a volley of torpedoes towards their targets, charging in a scattered formation, all the while scattering shots from their own point defense guns were let loose, preparing for pitched combat. Within proximity of the battle space, the Dawn’s Early Light was on fast approach, battle station alerts sounding off throughout her corridors as they braced for combat.
Machine guns opened up all across the UNFC fleet. At first, they tracked the torpedos exceedingly poorly, the guns firing wide and walked slowly towards the target as though by hand. But when they came into close range, the spread tightened and the guns jerked to their targets. Torpedos began to splash, ripped apart by archaic gunpowder weapons that arced metal through the void.
But then one slammed into the Two for Flinching, right in a battered section of armor that had begun to cave in. With a purple flash, the armor yielded, the first breach of their escape. The torpedo detonated, and an explosion rocked the corvette. Secondary explosions blew out of disparate sections; the ship had been hollowed. It spun violently as the power failed and its thrusters deadened.
The Dreadnought, however, had been saved. It was then the formation became clear; the supporting force had been tasked as shields, absorbing blows for the flagship that otherwise might have crippled their largest and most important asset. With the sacrifice of the Two for Flinching, it had been bought enough time to close the distance, unharmed by the barrage, and open up with its main battery against several corvettes. Meanwhile, its supporting vessels rearranged to intercept other groups that had scattered too far away for the Dreadnought to range.
The ploy had caught the hunters off guard as the Dreadnought unleashed her fury onto them, two corvettes were left limp and wrecked, others damaged, but still barely holding on. The short battle would soon conclude as wings of strike craft joined the fray, Firehawk bombers letting loose their own volleys of missiles and torpedoes on their weakened foes, downing several more corvettes, the remaining two pulling back from the fight once the Dawn’s Early Light was within visual range.
The Dreadnought and its supporting fleet backed off as the Dawn's Early Light took over the fight; their signalmen exchanged flag codes as the tight-beam walked itself back to their savior's vessel, the signalman's voice once more returning, "Dawn's Early Light, we thank you for the assistance. Two for Flinching will be operational shortly, but we request medical teams on standby for triage upon arrival to safe harbor. We are no longer operationally capable, and will be unable to lend assistance against further attacks."
As though brought back to life by mention of its name, the thrusters on the gutted Two for Flinching flared back to life; the vessel looked like a ghost ship, pock-marked with holes and nearly blown in two at the midsection. Fires still raged along the hull, fed by ruptured lines and ammunition that had been slowly cooking off. It limped back into place with the fleet, as it listed to the side, forced to dramatically readjust with its few operational lateral thrusters to maintain course.
“The pleasure’s all ours, Dreadnought.” Captain Hernandez replied. A moment passes before another message is relayed. “Follow us with these coordinates, your people will get all the help needed there.” the UNFC fleet along with its Battlecruiser escort fled the scene before enemy reinforcements could arrive, the closest safe harbor in the FRA’s side of the border was one of the major military staging points, there stood Appleseed Point, an old, but sturdy starbase that withstood all that the war threw at it.
An additional couple of days pass as they finally arrive at Appleseed Point, the station made aware of the new arrivals. Medical teams aboard the station were rushing to designated meeting points, ready to receive any injured personnel from the UNFC vessels. Reports of the new arrivals quickly spread back to Roseau, garnering the special attention from the Chancellor.
Every ship in the fleet had injuries, but none so severe as the Two for Flinching. The vessel, repaired in the interim to a point that permitted docking, had suffered grave casualties. Medical teams found a charnel pit of a vessel; though the ship had survived, half of its crew had perished when the torpedo had struck its citadel and hollowed its interior. Repairs were slapdash, a firm but jury-rigged testament to the damage control capabilities of the crew. The remaining crew fared little better, as many had died in transit in an overloaded sickbay. Those that survived did so in poor condition, and they flooded even Appleseed Point's hospital.
Meanwhile, the Dreadnought disgorged exhausted sailors, armsmen, and terrified diplomatic delegations in equal number. The former, for their part, immediately began churning the rumor mill amongst the station as they recovered from the ordeal. In the bars, hospital, and barracks they spread dozens of different stories of what had happened. From them, a confused consensus had emerged; The Yulzan lured our people onto their throneship, and then ambushed them, and hoped to ambush us. From that spurred pride, and began the boasts, They may have killed the ambassador and his men, they bragged, but they found us a bitter target, and we blew a hole clean through their fancy station. Not only that, but we lived to tell about it.
The many tales shared by the UNFC survivors very much impressed any and all listeners within the station and provided a much-needed morale boost for the soldiers and sailors present, the UNFC fleet’s daring escape proved the Yulzan weren’t invincible, there was even a slip that one of the UNFC soldiers shot at a High Ascendant of all things, ironically enough, many believe that to be the tall tale aspect of their little chronicle. Regardless, this could be the start of a beautiful partnership.
Some time passes, and the Chancellor himself arrives at the station, his arrival causing an even bigger commotion, as the media followed him all the way to the frontlines. He moved with purpose down the halls of the Appleseed, with the main intention of speaking with what’s left of the UNFC’s delegation, flanked by members of his cabinet and a few members of the Republican Guard.
The delegation that arose to meet the Chancellor was, surprisingly, a full team. It seemed the Dreadnought had carried two diplomatic teams; though one was now dead, the second remained. They were all tired, some nursed injuries, and the honor guard were clearly exhausted from days of fighting. Regardless, they backed the ambassador, a lanky, tall man with a goatee and a heavy Russian accent. He held out his hand for the Chancellor, as he commented, "I wish we could have met under better circumstances, sir."
Chancellor Constantine reached out and firmly shook the man’s hand. “Don’t worry, we’re used to this by now.” Constantine said, these unusual means of first contact ironically becoming the usual for the FRA. “I’ve heard reports of your little adventure and quite frankly, if true? I’m damn impressed.”
The Russian offered a thin, weary smile as he straightened his suit, answering, "Thank you, sir. Space is so," he paused, taking a breath as though he had just stepped into fresh air, "clear here, easiest battlefield to fight in most of those men have ever seen, so I've been told." He then reached into his suit jacket's pocket, pulling out a battered VHS tape, "We managed to pull some of the camera footage. If we can get behind closed doors, I'll show you exactly what happened."
Constantine nodded to the Russian. “Of course, of course, lead the way.” He said, motioning the guards to remain where they stood while the Chancellor and the rest of his entourage follow the Ambassador. The Chancellor was also a bit intrigued by the VHS tape, that’s downright ancient technology almost lost to time, although it seems these people have kept the technology alive and well to this point. Before long, the Chancellor and company were led into one of the docked UNFC vessels.
The Dreadnought was no longer the glorious exhibit of wealth it had once been; the stateroom had been damaged in the fighting, marble and silk no match for the rigors of combat. Further, it had clearly been repurposed into both a munitions dump and a barracks for gunnery crews, cots scattered across the floor and shells stocked in corners. The Russian man led them past the shattered stateroom into a conference room across the way.
It seemed to have, at one point, been used as an emergency infirmary. The wood of the table was cracked and there were bloodstains on the carpet. Some IV stands had been left behind, though the stretchers had been moved out. The ambassador handed the tape to a technician, and soon the projector was running and the lights were dimmed.
The scene was one of the demonstration cameras; focused on the product being displayed. However, the Russian man took a cane and tapped at the corner of the projection, where a High Ascendant entered a ring of bodyguards to speak to a woman. He explained, "Here, the High Ascendant enters Akako's ring of bodyguards. It's an unlikely thing; that woman has tens of thousands of people whose sole job is to do her talking for her. I don't know what they were talking about, but that alien didn't seem to like us."
Right as he finished the explanation, the tape exploded into action. There was a bright arc of plasma, the sudden movement of a bodyguard jumping in the way, and the muted ratter of gunfire. The bodyguards fanned out, and the woman could be seen carried away as several SMGs forced the High Ascendant to a bloody kneel. At the same time, Yulzan troops flooded out onto the projection, and they gunned down indiscriminately. The Russian smacked the cane against a heavyset black man who was cowering on the floor, and whom was shortly after shot by several soldiers. He commented, gravely, "My colleague, Ambassador Mandla."
“My condolences…” Constantine said as he observed the footage, stepping forward to get a closer look, this was really something to behold. He would be the first Chancellor in decades to see footage, if only a small portion, of the interior of the Throneship, and the first to witness one of the High Ascendants to be brought to their knees. “My God.” He let slip. “You people were at the heart of the enemy stronghold, and survived.” He turned to face the Russian. “It may not look it but consider yourselves very blessed. We’ve have tried for years to cross over to No Man’s Land, all met with failure.” He paused as the footage cycled through once more. “Although, I am curious, what were you people doing there in the first place?”
The ambassador drew a cigarette, and as he lit it, he commented, bitterly, "We're the United Nations. Means we've always got to get in the middle and mediate, yeah?" He turned back to the projection, then, and watched as it looped once more. His eyes were fixed on Mandla, the huff emerging from him forming the unspoken implication, but look where it got him. He then turned back to the Chancellor, saying, "The idea was we'd make a show of refusing ideological bias by visiting with people least amenable to us first. Mandla would be left there to form an embassy, and I'd be dropped off nice and pretty here."
He peeked back at the ruined stateroom behind him, "Instead, we got a declaration of war. Instead, Mandla is dead. He was one of the best of us. Third in his class at Nahikawa City University. One of the few chumps who actually earned his scholarship, you know?" He pulled the VHS tape, and motioned to the tech as they went to put a new one in, "Was a good friend, was."
The next tape was a composite of various cameras on the Dreadnought. It showed the vessel blasting off the docking port, blowing vast chunks out of the throneship with enormous primitive twentieth-century cannons. It showed the standoff with the Yulzan fleet, and the interception of their munitions. And then, it ended at the fleet fleeing, as the Russian commented, "Were it up to me, we'd have gone down then and there, and took that damned station with us."
“I wouldn’t blame you.” The Chancellor said, all the while being mesmerized with the footage, the Yulzan’s perceived superiority had deep down, had always been a lie. While their technology does outclass humanity by some measure, but as the footage displays, the line is quite narrow. “You would’ve done us a favor had you sunk that beast.” Constantine paused as he turned to face the Ambassador. “But I’m glad you lived to tell the tale. “Once more, I’m sorry about your people, and your friend. You didn’t know of the Yulzan’s treacherous nature, the same thing happened to us decades prior. “He paused once more as he remembered his last days on Columbia, the chaos, the panic, the fighting, it was a nightmare. “I lost a home because of their deception and lies.”
The Chancellor kept viewing the looping footage of chunks of the Throneship being blown to bits, just getting the chance to witness this brought a smile to his face. “Know this, you’re among friends, and that your people will be avenged. This I promise you.”
"Good," the Russian commented, as his tone darkened. He took another drag off the cigarette before he continued, "I'm to stay here and be your liaison, but I'm a diplomat, not a military strategist." As if to continue his point, he waved his hand at another man in the room, who wore a military uniform. On his head, some kind of clunky headset that covered the eyes. He walked over, and held out his hand for the Chancellor.
The Chancellor shook his hand. “A pleasure.” He said, it seems like these people would be sticking around for quite some time, he might do proper introductions. “Forgive my rudeness to all of you, I am Julian Constantine, the currently serving Chancellor of the Free Americanan Republic.” He turns to the two other older men that flanked him the entire time. “This is my Vice Chancellor, Richard Sanders, and my Defense Secretary, Vincent Walton.” The two men nodded their heads.
"I am Dmitry Vasilyev," the ambassador responded, before he waved once more to the man in the military uniform, "and this is the First Officer, Michael Cochrane." The military man spoke next, his voice far gruffer, "Pleased to meet you, Chancellor Constantine. We've been placed in a unique situation here; if you're not aware already, our gate reopening is a recent phenomenon. Our military assets are limited to garrisons and light patrols. Currently we have no concerns about invasion, but our ability to project power is limited at best."
“Ahh, I see, well.” Julian started. “You’ll be very interested to know that we’re not the only remnants of Old Earth out there.” He paused as he took a breather, there was a lot to catch up, but he would have to give the abridged version. “The Gateway phenomenon has been ongoing for the past four years. Gates opening and closing, but we’ve managed to come together to form a galactic community.”
The Vice Chancellor stepped up to assist the Chancellor. “Through our collective efforts, we’ve managed to establish an International meeting place in orbit of Old Earth, the fittingly named “Meeting Place”, you can think of it as your old headquarters back on Old Earth.” Richard paused for a moment. “There, you can establish yourselves in the community, and have a voice for others to hear. We can assist you in that endeavor.”
The Defense Secretary was the last to step up, curious regarding Liaison Vasilyev’s confidence on repealing an invasion. “What makes you think that?” Vincent asked. “If the Yulzan ever manage to discover your location, nothing will stop them from sending a fleet.”
Cochrane was the one to speak up, he answered with an edge that seemed as though the answer should've been obvious, "Well, they may romp around Alaktu for a few days, but, if the malfunctions, ghost ships, exposure, and psychosis don't kill them, the storms will." He further continued, "Their ships are further unoptimized for the kind of combat Eperu demands. Their weapons will malfunction or scatter, they'll be running blind, and when they do see us coming, it'll be far too late to do anything but die."
He made a flourish with his hands, "We wouldn't have to waste any time or resources fighting them, ultimately. The environment will kill them, or they'll kill each other."
“Astounding.” Julian said, intrigued, but at the same time, a little terrified how unpredictable and dangerous the Eperu system can be. “Well, with that concern out of the way. We best make our return to Roseau, we’ll begin preparations to set up a proper Embassy for you and your staff to move in, Mr. Vasilyev. In the meantime, rest, make yourselves comfortable, and heal.”
"Thank you, Chancellor Constantine. At least some part of the mission will be a success," Vasilyev responded, as he snuffed out his cigarette in an ashtray on the table. Cochrane, meanwhile, followed up with, "Once the embassy staff are dropped off, we will require assistance in returning to the gateway. We are not combat-ready."
Julian nodded “Consider it done.” He spoke. “We’ll prepare you a military escort when the time comes.” Following this, he reached his hand out. “I hope this will be the beginning of a fruitful partnership.”
The UNFC has a fancy new ship called the Dreadnought, rush-built at extreme expense and incorporating an experimental new AI at the center made out of two connected brains. They send it and a small taskforce through the Gateway to the Americana system. There, they meet with the Yulzan in the hopes of being a mediator in the conflict.
Shit happens and a High Ascendant attacks the delegation, leading to a fighting escape by the taskforce that also blows a hole in the Throneship. They survive and meet up at Appleseed Point, where they meet the Chancellor of the Free Republic of Americana and they begin to set up plans to join the war, as the attack is being taken as a formal declaration of war.
Ex-Templars, now renamed to "RADrines" walked the decks in relative peace. Some used to serve on the ship during the Scientist's time, some were newly recruited. Neither side recognised the ship.
During the civil war, the Seraphim was at the center of the space battles above RADX-001. After multiple hull breaches, a high number of casualties and a deadly virus released upon it, the ship was unrecognizable. Coupled up with the missing paintings, music and any kind of insignia that would make the soldiers remember the Scientist. It was truly a different ship.
A loud beeping noise followed by an alarm rang across the deck. Troopers sprang to motion as Admiral Adam raised his voice and shouted annoyed;
"Someone stop that bloody alarm and tell me what's going on. "
Admiral Adam was one of the few Brute-types that ever achieved the honor to command a spaceship and the first one to ever command the whole Golden Armada after the old admiral died saving the Seraphim.
Almost immediately, the alarm stopped and an Acolyte turned her head towards the captain.
"Ensign Williams reporting in, sir! There is…no this can't be, sir. It looks like the Gateways have three new destinations. "
"Three?! That can't be. After this whole time? Are the sensors malfunctioning? "
"Negative sir. We've got confirmation from the Black Horse situated at the Gateway. "
"Ensign, tell Black Horse to investigate one of the new systems and get me a direct line to President William. Standard procedure, go in, assess danger, return. If the inhabitants prove dangerous, escape at any cost. We don't want to repeat another PUNT. "
As the ensign passed the message, the Black Horse, a cruiser type ship, passed through the Gateway.
A sickly purple glow, tinged only barely with white bathed the Black Horse. To the starboard side, the hulk of a gas giant. Close enough to the gate to visually make out, though not unaided, some kind of hulking mass of metal, dozens of lights blinking lazily along it. The hulk looked more satellite than it did ship; a flatly octangular center with components folded against each side, a smattering of thrusters on each side.
Strangely, however, the Black Horse’s sensors could not pick up anything else. They were working; they were reading, but the results returned with complete confidence ultimately proved entirely incoherent. Directly ahead of them lay the star, the source of the light; almost the same size as the gas giant they now orbited, though with a luminosity known to no class of star or proto-star. Though they could clearly see it with the naked eye, to their sensors, even the gravitational ones to which it should have been as clear as day, nothing.
The Black Horse went through the Gateway with no issues. Formed out of a joint RADiance/Exalted crew, it was an experiment. One captain, two first mates and two of every important role each responsible for their own crew but only one person in command.
“Status report. ” came the raspy voice of the Exalted captain, John. A once chameleon type, now cured.
“Class B gas giant, a spaceship or maybe a satellite of sorts? Unknown origin. I…can’t detect any life-form nor nothing else, sir. If I were to warrant a guess, something is playing with our sensors. Jammers or interference from the gas giant. ” replied in a curt voice, the first mate of the Exalted side. She was one of the very few remaining Virophage-Exalted types. Once she was nothing more than a crazed beast wishing only to spread its deadly diseases, now, only her almost green skin gave away her past.
“Can one of you explain to me what is that?” continued John as they pointed to the lights, obviously visible to the naked eye.
“Unknown. Our sensors don’t even detect it. None of them. Whatever interference the giant or jammers are blocking everything. ” replied this time the second first mate of the RADiance side. He was an ex-Zealot, one of the traitor’s very own who surrendered himself shortly after the civil war began.
“Stand by. Incoming transmission. Unknown origin. Old Earth tech. ”
“Everyone, battle stations. Issac, put it through. ” almost immediately, alarms started to ring through the ship as the crew went to man their positions in case they were attacked.
And then, over an obsolete radio band, a singular, raspy voice. It was slow, almost synthesized, with a ponderingly flat tone, “Salient Moon, message to vessel,” a pause, then, “emergency traffic, a storm is coming. Acknowledge,” the warning came through. Unknown origin, jammers everywhere, something was weird.
“This is Captain John of the joint Exalted-RADiance taskforce. Warning received. What type of storm should we be expecting?”
Distantly and silently, the octangular vessel began to unfold. On each of the eight faces, rods extended, telescoping out into an array of lattices. Some form of netting, laced in unusual geometric patterns and visibly formed of a metallic material, began to slide out from the vessel. It ran along the lattices, weaving itself together. And then, suddenly, as though emerging from a spell of invisibility, eight small shuttles suddenly came into existence, rocketing towards the vessel.
“Underheaven, message to Salient Moon,” the same pause, down to the second, crackled on the radio, “magnetosphere breach.”
The vessels came to a halt near the lattices, one to each extended face. Their thrusters firing jerkily, they maneuvered themselves in, until with a simultaneous final firing, they slotted into the lattices. The nets extended to meet them. Then, another message over the radio, “Salient Moon, wideband,” again, the pause, “magnetosphere breach. The storm is here. Begin spin.”
The vessel’s lateral thrusters fired in unison, the metallic nets billowing from centrifugal force as it all began to spin. The lights smattered across the vessel all flicked to an ominous red, and then, “Salient Moon, message to John,” the pause was precise, not one second out-of-place, “emergency traffic, the storm is here. Slagstream warning, your vessel does not match exposure standards. Prep emergency suits, match spin and dock; shelter from storm.”
Almost as soon as the warning came, the voice of the first mate, Exalted side could be heard.
"They're not lying, sir. Our sensors are picking up something. They're detecting something coming off the star. Orders? "
John stood still. They had to calculate the danger. Entering a potential enemy spaceship or staying outside to deal with an unknown type of storm.
"Orders, sir? "
"Send an emergency signal and trooper through the Gate. Let them know what we've encountered and prepare a rescue team if needed. Full speed towards the unknown vessel. Get a landing party ready. Weapons drawn. Just in case they decided to not play nice. "
Two curt yes, sir came as the two first mates carried out their commands.
As the Black Horse began its run to the vessel, what Salient Moon meant by the ‘storm’ became clear in a dazzling, brutal display. By the time it was visible, it was almost on top of them. Great clouds of purple gas billowed by as though a nebula, the ship rattling violently with the pure force of a maelstrom. The force of the blast was not the only concern, however; all at once, systems across the ship began to malfunction or fail entirely in improbable or even thought-to-be impossible ways.
The lights flickered violently. The reactor’s temperature was increasing out-of-control no matter what the engineers did to dampen it. Geiger counters flared with an entirely disparate reading every moment, the dials flying back and forth unnaturally. The terminals went out, all at once. Something exploded. There was a distant keening sob over the radio, emerging from a raw throat. Everywhere, all at once, the alarms flared to life. They were late, and then they were dead. With the sirens of the ship gone, the next loudest noise flared; it sounded as though the ship was in a great hurricane, the very hull being torn apart.
Alarms all over Black Horse rang as the ship was battered by the storm. Radio signals could be heard on the bridge and the whole ship vibrated violently.
"How are we doing? " the captain's tone didn't betray their slight distress at the prospect of losing their crew.
"It's hard to tell, sir. None of our systems respond. Can't tell if those are our people or the status of the ship. But–" Issac's sentence was interrupted by Toxina, the other first mate's voice.
"Incoming transmission from the Salient Moon, sir. "
"Put it through. "
Ahead, the satellite spun, leaving behind a pattern of clear space behind its nets, like spinning blades in water. Over the radio, sounding loudly over some quiet pleading from a source unknown, the same flat tone, salted with strained urgency, “Salient Moon, message to John,” this time, though nothing was different with the pause, it felt much longer, “Emergency Traffic! Slagstream! Reactor detonation imminent! Abandon, abandon, jump for Salient Moon! Salient Moon will catch you!”
As an emergency signal was sent and a trooper went flying at high speed towards the Gate, what he'd see behind was hard to explain. It was like the Black Horse was gone. Purple gas enveloped the whole area where the ship used to be.
The message played out and for the first time, John felt panic before they composed themselves.
"They didn't lie about the storm. Can't see any reason not to trust them. They know their system better than we do. Everyone…evacuate the ship. If they decide to disarm us and act hostile, Toxina…build up a virus strong enough to kill all of us. Fully destroy our bodies. We're not letting them get our technology. "
"A-aye, sir! " shorty after, replied Toxina as her skin started to faintly turn greener than usual. A virus in the making. Death awaiting. For one and all.
Suddenly the ship rocked to each side and the power went off and then went back on, not for long but long enough for the captain's decision to make sense in everyone's mind.
One by one, the crew jumped outside the ship. They were all armed and tried to hold onto their weapons as much as possible. In the end, John was the last one on the ship. They took a deep breath before jumping into the void.
Behind them, the Black Horse was in terrible shape; the entire back of the ship had begun to, quite literally, slag. Nuclear fire and globs of overheated material spun from its tail, accelerating away from the ship as the hurricane of purple gasses pulled on it. But, then, the reactor breathed its last; a thermal explosion briefly blinded the entire crew as the whole ship vaporized from a catastrophic failure. Nothing but dust and slag remained.
The satellite, meanwhile, fired its maneuvering thrusters in a pattern; it did not stop spinning, but it began to tear off to the side, preparing to intercept the crew. First, they flew into the pattern of clear space left behind by the nets. As they entered it, it was as though a great weight had been taken off of them, as if they could think and see more clearly. Before such freedoms could be enjoyed, however, the metallic strands of netting hit. It was not gentle, the relative speed of the meeting enough to fracture bones of unenhanced humans.
John could hear their crew's screams all around them but with a few loud words in the Chosen language, it was as if magic was cast upon them. Their screaming turned into grunts, their fear into resolve.
Most of the crew managed to hit the net and while normal humans would certainly have felt the impact, it was nothing in comparison to the G-training all the *types* receive but even so, one or two members of the crew ended up with a fractured bone or similar minor injuries.
Holding on was another problem entirely. Brought along for the violent spin, the crew – those that had been lucky enough to meet the net – discovered that they would have to hold on for dear life as the centrifugal force attempted to tear them away from the net and out into space, or worse, into the gas giant. On the face they had been caught, an enormous airlock opened, large enough to admit freight containers. The message was clear; climb against the centrifugal force, and to safety.
"Up! Up! Up!" bellowed John as the crew started their ascent and eventually after what seemed like an eternity, reached the airlock.
Just before Toxina went inside, her whole skin turned green. A signal that the virus was now ready to be released whenever she wished for.
As soon as the last person was in, several closed-circuit cameras watched carefully to verify, the airlock closed behind them and some form of gravity plating kicked in. Suddenly, all the centrifugal force was gone. The whole crew fell to the floor, as the room flooded with air and the interior door opened. Some ancient-looking fluorescent lights hummed to life, though some flickered and some failed entirely. The crew hit the floor hard but as soon as they were down, they went up again. Decades of military training and centuries for others pushed them to ignore the pain, tiredness or any other concerns until the situation was deemed "safe".
"Form up. TDOH1 position. On the double! " said John only for the command to be yelled almost straight away by the first mates.
TDOH1 - Tortoise Defense 01. An ancient tactic that still worked to this day. The captain was in the middle, flanked by the two first mates, sergeants on the exterior, while those with some form of natural armor, usually Brutes, would go in the front. All forming a circle of protection from all sides.
"First mates. Talk to me. "
"7 KIAs for now. Injuries all over but nothing life threatening. "
"Large space, ship hangar. Pre-Exodus tech. Unknown origin. No lifeforms around us. Yet. "
"This is Captain John. Anyone around? "
After a few minutes of silence, John shook their head and looked at the crew. They were on edge, that’s for sure but they seemed ready for anything.
“Alright, move up. Split into teams of 4, if you see anything that resembles aliens or humans, don’t engage. Retreat and report back. Keep in touch with one another, I want to know everyone’s position at all times. ”
Within, there was a surprisingly small space; enough for four freight containers, and a ladder up into some kind of control room overlooking the entire warehouse. The storm outside was only audible as though a windstorm muffled by the walls of a house. The containers were unlocked, but all that lay within were primitive spare parts, covered in dust and some pitted with rust, long neglected.
In the control room itself, all the equipment looked painfully outdated. CRT monitors dotted the walls, accompanied with simple mechanical keyboards but no mice. Each monitor was opened to a different terminal, all in simple black-and-phosphor-green. Long lines of diagnostics and information ran down them. One detail, however, was out of place: Behind a glass case was a brain, too misshapen and small to be a human’s. It was connected to some kind of life support system, fluids of various colors pumped in and out. Electrical sensors reminiscent of an EKG monitor were attached to various points directly to the surface.
The teams slowly started to make their way around this part of the ship as John, Issac, Toxina and a Brute-type, which struggled a bit, went inside a room that seemed to be some sort of control room. A brain of sorts was linked to different scientific or medical apparatuses.
“Toxina, are you ready? Issac, talk to me. ” said John while looking at each person as they talked. Toxina quickly nodded and it was as if her skin started to glow faintly while Issac approached the various terminals and tried to make sense of them.
While most of the terminals were covered in sprawls of diagnostics that only a specialist could understand, there was one that stood out, three words repeating over and over in an endless scroll.
> LOOK AT MELOOK AT MELOOK AT MELOOK AT MELOOK AT MELOOK AT MELOOK AT MELOOK AT MELOOK AT MELOOK AT MELOOK AT MELOOK AT MELOOK AT MELOOK AT MELOOK AT MELOOK AT MELOOK AT MELOOK AT MELOOK AT MELOOK AT MELOOK AT MELOOK AT ME
"It's mostly mumbo-jumbo, sir. Old Earth tech. It doesn't match anything we've got so far. Maybe the Go-scientist herself would've been able to make sense of it but this is too archaic for me. There is one that makes sense. Look!" said Issac while stopping mid-sentence as he almost mentioned the scientist’s old title, considered not a crime but very close to it. The memory of her 300 years long lie still fresh in the mind of everyone. As he stopped he pointed at the screen and the cameras.
A camera in the corner of the ceiling whirred to life, and turned to watch the group of four. Once it was certain the terminal had their attention, the terminal blanked briefly before a new wave of text began to emerge.
> THE STORM HAS ALMOST ENDED > SALIENT MOON WILL DIVERT A HEV-P TRANSPORT > SALIENT MOON WILL DIRECT UNDERHEAVEN CHANNEL OBSERVATORY > TREATMENT FOR HEV-P POISONING AT HANUEL MIN MEMORIAL CHANNEL STATION > GO TO SHIP AT END OF NET. AIRLOCK CODE IS 5332954893202010234445 > WHEN STORM ENDS
"Poison treatment at a hospital. I think these people haven't realized what they're dealing with yet. Toxina, if you detect something poisonous, assimilate it and create a cure for it if we aren't already immune. " said John with a smirk, truly the Chosen were immune or at least highly resistant to all but the most exotic poisons due to their planet's highly toxic environment, something that Ashevelen took into account when designing the Chosen-types.
"Everyone, this is the captain. Fall back to the airlock. Let's meet these people. " radioed John.
It was several more minutes before the howling outside began to subside. The entire satellite shuttered as the roar of thrusters vibrated the hull. Some dust kicked up into the air, but otherwise the satellite remained empty. It was truly just the surviving crew of the Black Horse and this brain, installed in the control room. Another few minutes before the thrusters went silent, the satellite once more returned to an eerie silence.
And then the inner airlock door opened, the same one they had first entered the satellite through. The cameras above watched them, and waited.
Within minutes the crew was assembled and each reported their findings on the ship. No lifeforms, old Earth tech. Eventually after a quick chat, they proceeded to climb on the transport ship.
At the end of the net they had climbed up during the storm was the ship; it was a small shuttle, more tanker than anything. The airlock did not open for them until the code on the terminal was entered into a keypad, but once they were inside it was of a similar make to the satellite, though evidently more well-maintained. There were no windows, and the passenger section would have been cramped for four people, let alone the whole crew.
At the front was an empty cockpit, consisting of little more than a chair and a bank of terminals, all turned off. Over the vessel’s radio, they could hear chatter.
“Salient Moon, message to Underheaven,” a pause, “Tanker four-two-two direct to Channel, belay programmed schedule.”
“Underheaven, message to Salient Moon,” the pause, “Understood. Four-two-two to transit Channel immediately.”
The shuttle lurched with a loud thunk, followed shortly by a strong vibration emerging from the back, the sound of fuel rushing through pipes evident as the thrusters came to life. Some time passed before the terminals sprang to life, providing instrumentation in phosphor-green, though it seemed all the keyboards were locked. Several monitors flashed lines about remote control every so often, making it clear what was happening.
And then, a cassette player embedded in one of the terminals began to play; the cover was locked, seemingly a more permanent installation. The voice was human, almost bored by the tone.
“Welcome to the Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation Onboarding Course, tape six, ‘Going far away’,” there was a break in the tape, as though the rest was recorded at a different time, “Zixuang-Akako has long been at the forefront of frontier exploration, aiding astronauts and explorers alike as they face the exotic dangers of the deep dark. From the X-3 shuttlecraft to hypermatter reactors, we keep trade flowing and the lights on. Wherever you may work, from the gleaming cities of Epinnu to the distant mining satellites of Alaktu, Zixuang-Akako is there.”
Another break in the tape, and another latched-on section. The same woman, but audibly older now, “For Zixuang-Akako employees heading to Alaktu, passage from the Hanuel Min district to Alaktu must be scheduled with the Underheaven Channel Observatory. Channel transit opportunities are a highly variable and ephemeral natural phenomenon. As of recording time in two-twenty, Underheaven Channel Observatory staff report a seventy-eight-point-two percent annual success rate for Channel crossings, a significant increase in shuttle survival since oh-fifty. If during transit you experience perception-altering transient events or persistent intrusive thoughts and visions, do not worry. This is common and likely harmless. Please consult medical staff upon arrival to your destination with any concerns.”
The next break in the tape led to a robotic voice, a poor text-to-speech imitation. This one was clearer, much more newly recorded, “Current Channel conditions offer an above-average chance of successful Channel transit of eighty-one-point-six-two percent, with an estimated transit time of twenty-two hours. Please take this time to ensure you have selected the appropriate life insurance policy for your means and needs, and enjoy your trip.”
An hour passed, and the shuttle began to shake violently. The fuel lines could be heard straining to keep up with the demand. They heard the sound of an atmosphere whistling by the shuttle. And then, nothing but an almost-ethereal humming sound. The thrusters had shut off, and the instrumentation on the monitors flickered with seemingly nonsensical data points.
The crew of the former Black Horse milled around patiently on the shuttle, those that could, as the Brute sized radrines had a tough time being bent down as to not damage the shuttle due to their size. Even the other types were a bit squashed but the Brutes had it the worst. While in the shuttle, John activated his on-armor camera and started recording everything they saw. From the video which seemed old, pre-exodus old to the terminals and the crew. Issac tried to make sense to the best of his ability to make sense of the terminals but alas’ it was just too archaic for him.
Onboard the UNFCCV Tanker 244 One day after Gateway transition Mood Music
A warning suddenly flashed on all the terminals, quickly flashing by with text at an unreadable pace. Suddenly, the shuttle jerked and the lights shut off. The ethereal humming vanished, and there was a heavy clunk as something slammed against the hull. The lights flickered back to life, and less than a minute later, both airlock doors opened to a lanky-looking man, middle-aged and balding wearing a pair of blue coveralls. In his hand, a toolbox. He was standing in an umbilical arm; something had docked the shuttle.
Though he initially looked bored, the moment he saw people, his eyes widened as though dinner plates and he slammed a button repeatedly on the umbilical. Before the crew of the Black Horse could so much as say anything, the airlock doors slammed shut again. Twenty minutes passed until the next occurrence; the terminals all flashed a lockdown notice, and over the shuttle’s radio, an unmistakably human voice, gruff and evidently unamused, though still somewhat surprised, “Tanker two-four-four, this is Marshal Alderhall, smuggling Hev-P is punishable under the United Nations anti-terrorism act of one-forty-eight, with a minimum sentence of twenty-five years, and a maximum of life without parole,” he paused, as though to let it sink in before continuing, “but if you come out with your hands up, and do not resist our security forces, I can speak to the Attorney General and recommend a minimum sentence. Do you understand?”
The crew stood up almost immediately as the voice came through the speakers. Their weapons ready and pointing at the door. Whoever these people were, saved them but they now seem to treat them like criminals.
“This is Captain John of the RADiance-Exalted Alliance. Your Gateway has recently reopened and my ship was sent to make contact, determine if you’re a threat to the galactic community and report back to our own system. We don’t know what Hev-P is. We’ve been caught in a storm and a…brain in a jar saved us from certain death. Salient Moon. If you choose to be hostile, we are more than happy to give our lives but make no mistake, we will take you all with us. ” spoke out loud John. Their tone was like steel, more suited to a staff sergeant than a diplomat.
With an unspoken command, John sent the two Brute types that were left of his crew at the door, completely covering it up with their frames. If these people tried to come in guns blazing, they’ll be met with a wall of steel.
A series of sounds filtered through the radio; first, the sound of someone speaking indistinctly, not from distance but from the quality of the microphone. Another two voices, and then the sound of rapid clacking. A long pause, and then the voice of Alderhall again, “You arrive, unscheduled, in one of our tankers full of Hev-P, and claim that some..” the radio picked up the sound of somebody speaking again, before there was a slight shuffling sound; a mouth close to the microphone turning back to face it, “gateway from three-hundred odd years ago brought you? Now, only the damn history majors know what the fuck that thing is, but I’m told that it’s been broken down from hev exposure. In short, your alibi’s pretty piss-poor. I’d ask you for proof, but let me guess, your dog ate it all.”
John's patience started to run thin upon hearing Alderhall. They understood that the story was hard to believe but surely just opening the door would've been enough to convince themselves.
They took a deep breath and raised their voice slightly, their calm tone gone.
"Look Marshal. There are two ways I can prove this to you. You can open the door and see for yourself or I can order my people to break the door open, by hand but if you do that, your security forces might start shooting and if they do that…we won't have any choice but to defend ourselves and I've got no intention losing any more of my crew today. Got already to visit 7 families and tell them how their sons and daughters gave their lives to explore an alien world and somehow make it seem like they were heroes. So, please just open the door and let's talk face to face. Please don't be hostile. "
As they spoke, the crew of the former Black Horse tensed up. They knew this might turn into a fire fight at any moment now. All over the shuttle they started to prep their weapons, the Brutes in the front bracing themselves for the onslaught of weapons being shot at their armor.
Alderhall’s voice again, still tinny from the microphone, “You say that like I’ll give you anything to shoot. When I open the door, throw down your guns and we can have a face-to-face. Otherwise, I can blow you into the exclusion zone with the press of a button. There was never a request there.”
The door opened once more, this time there was nobody there to meet them. It was an empty docking vestibule, a long tube with grated flooring. Every so often, there was a visible stretch of fabrics; the telescoping points where the vestibule was extended. Perhaps three hundred feet down the vestibule was another airlock; a thick metal door devoid of windows.
With a nod to their men, John ordered them to drop their weapons. It wasn’t as if they were defenseless, all things considered. The Brutes themselves were more than enough to take out a squadron of normal humans in close quarters, not to add Toxina’s deadly virus.
“Max. Jax. Step forward. Stand tall, let them see what they’re dealing with. Everyone else, close behind them in case they get scared and close the door on us. Toxina in the middle, you know what to do if things go sideways. ” commanded John as the two Brutes stepped through the door and stood up tall for the first time since they stepped into the shuttle.
Once their guns had been thrown down, the airlock at the other end of the vestibule opened up. Six people could be seen inside the dock proper, five men of various sizes in what looked to be old riot armor. Three carried pistols, and the fourth carried what looked to be a grenade launcher of some sort. All four of them looked jumpy, especially with the size of the brutes in front. The fifth, the only one with a longarm in the form of a polymer-furnished hunting rifle, called out, “I said you’d get your face to face! Don’t reach for those weapons, or we’ll give you a very bad day! If you’ve got proof you aren’t terrorists, now is the time!”
The voice was different in-person, when not filtered through a tinny microphone and old radio equipment, but it was recognizably Alderhall.
John chuckled at the security team sent over. These people were trying to intimidate…them? It was brave, very brave even but…clearly not very smart.
“Mr. Aderhall. Trust me, we don’t need the weapons. But, nonetheless. We have no intention in fighting you. As I told you over the comms, we are not smugglers of anything. We–” started John as they stepped forward, in front of the two Brutes, leaving themselves wide open for an attack. They took a deep breath and lifted a hand up, their armor was clearly different from the others from the crew and not only due to the different insignia and color but it was visibly odd.”..are a task force formed from the two nations, The Exalted and the RADiance, our Gateway has opened a little over a year now alongside the Gateway of another few nations of survivors of humanity. You might not remember when the Gateways closed but it wasn’t long before I was born. About 15 years. I assume you’re not going to believe me even if you obviously see Max and Jax here, Toxina there in the middle or my crew standing at 2.4 meters tall. ” continued John. The hand they raised prior was becoming invisible as they talked, then slowly it started to steam, putting a hand on the wall next to them, it let out a hiss before pulling their hand away. On the wall, a big handprint that matched theirs was imprinted on it.
While his security team quivered, keeping their weapons raised, Alderhall himself seemed unimpressed. He looked at the handprint on the wall, and then lowered his rifle, saying, “Well, if you were in a storm like you say you were, we’ll see it on a medical exam,” his hand extended in a beckoning gesture as he gave a signal to the security team, and he continued, “believe me, you’ll want one. Hev-P doesn’t play nice.”
The security team stood down, though their nerves were still clearly frayed. They scattered quickly, though it seemed to be intentional; Alderhall paid them no mind. As he slung his hunting rifle, he said, “Welcome to Hanuel Min Memorial, we’ve only got a few nurses here, but it’ll be better than nothing. At the very least, we can tell you how bad your doses are. Just leave your weapons in the vestibule, you should understand I don’t want armed men on the station.”
The crew followed the “aliens” closely. Toxina’s body kept glowing throughout the whole walk as her virus was getting more and more potent as time passed. John started walking in step with Alderhall with a stoic look on their face. Max and Jax seemed to be the only one that were struggling to walk as they kept having to bend down at times due to their size and the fact that the hallways were made for normal humans.
“Marshal, I hope you’re not going to take offense but we won’t subject ourselves to a medical exam. Our bodies are modified by technology that isn’t meant to be known outside of our alliance. We won’t be infected by this Hev-P of yours, if we are, Toxina my first mate is more than capable of devising a cure. Even if she cannot, which would be a stretch, we’ll have the technology back home to do it. As for “unarmed” men on the station, you should understand that between my crew and I, we possess abilities which make the use of weapons only a formality in a close quarter environment like this. Surely you can imagine that Max and Jax, the two Brutes, are more than capable of getting a shot from that grenade launcher your team has and continue to rampage through your forces before they’re taken down. Oh' and before I forget, tell your men not to try to use our weapons. They're DNA locked and will release a neurotoxin if someone other than the owner touches it.” spoke John, their tone matching their look. They weren’t lying or boasting, they were just stating facts.
Alderhall seemed entirely unphased, his voice flat and unimpressed “We don’t keep a fucking genetics laboratory onboard, believe me. You’re going to want that medical checkup, considering you’re under the assumption Hev-P exposure is a disease. Next you’re going to tell me you don’t need it because you’re immune to radiation.”
"We are not immune to it, I'm afraid but due to the high concentration of it on our homeworld, we are highly resistant to radiation, poisons, toxins and a few other dangers. Our planet is very much hostile to humans. " replied John with a thin smile.
It was evidently a small station; through gunmetal hallways of steel, grates, and brightly-colored pipes, they came to another door, the same style as the airlock they had originally entered through. Alderhall gave the dog of the door several hard spins, before pushing the heavy metal bulkhead open. Inside, it was depressingly sterile, the gunmetal fff79a replaced with white tiles, clearly designed for ease of cleaning. A man and a woman in scrubs met them at the door, some kind of breathalyzer in their hand. They had clearly been expecting the group, as the man held up the breathalyzer and said, in a comforting tone one might use for the already-terminal, “Here, breathe into this. It’ll tell us the severity of your exposure. Once we’ve got all of your readings, we’ll start treatment.”
"Very well, I'll breathe in your apparatus if that'll make you feel better. I wouldn't suggest you doing the same thing to all of us. Your analysers might go…haywire. " said John while throwing a quick look at Max, Jax and Toxina who gave them a tiny nod.
Half a second into the breath, and the breathalyzer was already clicking rapidly. A second in, and it was a solid wail. Two seconds in, and the meter on the front was slammed against the end of the gauge. Both Alderhall and the two nurses backpedaled away. The door slammed behind them as Alderhall retreated, and the breathalyzers were dropped. A brief scramble to the biohazard closet, and the nurses began to dress as though their life depended on the next ten seconds. Then, a dead sprint over to a set of oxygen tanks. Once they established a closed air loop, they looked over at the crew of the Black Horse, as the woman commented, her voice both terrified and sad, “There’s nothing anybody can do for you. All of you have two weeks at best, I’m sorry.”
“Or, it is, as I told you. We’re highly resistant to it. Our homeworld is bathing in radiation. If we need to wait two weeks at best, for you people to realize what you’re dealing with…so be it. More than happy to stay here for two weeks but when our ships respond to the SOS we’ve sent and come en-mass to deal with the kidnappers of a prized crew…you’ll be all alone to deal with them and our allies. Now, can I talk with some sort of leader you’ve got or do we really need to wait for two weeks or break out on our own? ” said John, their patience slowly running thin.
The woman shook her head slowly, looking at John as though he were an idiot. She backed a little further away, explaining with a slow voice, “It’s not radiation, it’s an exotic material. Radiation shielding doesn’t work, radiation medicine doesn't work, it follows rules entirely opposed to how the,” she paused as if looking for the right word, before stuttering slightly, “the– the whole damn universe works. We can’t even tell what rules those are because they might as well always be changing. I’ve never seen exposure like that, it’s like you went out into a hev storm without a helmet.”
The man added, grimly, “I saw a dose in the upper half of the meter once. A week in, his skin had sloughed off completely, but he was still alive. We ended up shooting him.”
"Is that so? We were outside, yes. Our bodies can survive the void quite easily. But, nevermind that. You'll see soon enough that your exposure won't affect us and if it does, well, our people back home will have a way to fix us. We've managed to rewrite our DNA. We'll manage to find a cure for your disease. So, would you mind opening the door or…"
As soon as John finished their sentence, the two Brute approached the door and readied themselves to open the door by force if needed.
The dog of the door spun, and the door abruptly opened. The people on the other side were different from Alderhall, his security team, the nurses, and the station as a whole. Whereas they were all run-down, projecting the visual of an underfunded frontier outpost, this group wore brand-new equipment. Through their masks, even their eyes were brighter, less beaten down by the world.
Their equipment resembled the biohazard equipment the nurses wore, but only superficially. They were clad in thick armor, with some form of exoskeleton attached to their backs, legs, and arms. There were ten in total, three carrying flamethrowers, and the rest carrying what appeared to be SMGs of some form. The man who had opened the door smoothly brought up his SMG, barking out, “Under the Emergency Response Act of two-fifty, the Manuel Hin Memorial Channel Station and all of its occupants are under quarantine order. All of you will immediately accompany us to the Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation Asset-Protection Vessel Gnostic Ascension. Failure to comply will result in liquidation of your persons.”
His tone then softened, though it still had a hard edge of authority to it; this was him speaking his thoughts, not a legal declaration, “Comply, and we’ll get you in contact with the higher-ups, understand?”
As the new soldiers came in, everyone backed away into the other side of the room as instructed by John.
“There is no need for that. I’ll come with you, my crew will…stay here. Toxina knows what to do in the current situation. Toxina, hostile environment rule 47, activate after we leave. It’s been an honor, all of you. Soldiers, I don’t need to tell you but keep the door closed and let none in for at least 2 hours. ” said John, suddenly somber.
Hostile Environment Rule 47: In case a team has been compromised and a cure cannot be found immediately or the risk of infection is higher than the chances for a cure, then the team will do their utmost to destroy their bodies and remove any trace of themselves.
Toxina, Issac and the others stood to attention straight away. They all knew the risks of missions such as this, they knew what they signed up for and the rules were clear what to do in this situation.
As John was being led away by the soldiers and the door closed behind him, the former crew of the Black Horse huddled together. The one or two that were still religious uttered a silent prayer for their souls as the others hugged each other. In just a few minutes, everyone gathered around Toxina who started to sweat profusely as her green skin started to glow more and more before finally a pungent hiss could be heard and some green bright particles appeared. Within minutes, the former crew dropped on the floor as the artificial virus targeted their brains first killing them instantaneously but not before stimulating their pleasure centers of the brain. A few minutes later, their skin started to be eaten. Their armor soon followed.
Onboard the UNFCMCV Gnostic Ascension Two days after gateway transition Mood Music
The Gnostic Ascension was a much newer and cleaner vessel than the run-down Manuel Hin Memorial Channel Station; though it was still gunmetal-gray and industrial, the stainless steel still lived up to its name and the grates underfoot had not yet been worn to a patina shine. John’s quarters were spartan at best, with an observation room across. A wind rustled the cot at one end of the steel cube of a quarantine room, the air pushed rapidly through one vent and out the other.
John had been given food, evidently food-aid rations, the meal bland and lacking in ingredients, every single bag of vacuum-sealed plastic containing a carefully-calculated mix with the least chance of running afoul of allergies or dietary restrictions. He had seen little of the soldiers since he had been placed in quarantine, only occasionally in the observation room. For entertainment, he had been given a few paperback books, of nothing in particular. It did little to help.
And then, the door to the observation room opened once more. Instead of a biosuited trooper, it was a gangly-looking asian man in a suit, with a pair of heavy-looking spectacles and a clear disposition to balding. He poked a microphone inset on a terminal. John’s quarantine cell squealed with high-pitch feedback. The man winced, then said, “Hello, John, right? My name’s Wú Zǐmò, I’m the liaison for Zixuang-Akako, my colleague with the Frontier Commission got delayed in transit, uh,” he tapped on the terminal a moment, “his shuttle hit some turbulence. Threw him off-course. He should be here soon.”
He clapped his hands as though to change the topic, smiling through the glass, “I’m sorry about the quarantine, by the way. Safety regulations, you get it. Have you been treated well? Do you need anything in there?”
John kept quiet most of the time during their…treatment. Food, water, the usual.
“Hello, yes, John of the Black Horse. Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Zimo. I’d offer you a handshake but I guess that won’t work. Quarantine is absolutely normal when dealing with a strong pathogen such as this. You might’ve discovered already that my crew has been eliminated already for this reason already and if it weren’t for diplomatic purposes, I would’ve joined them. So, yes. I’ve been treated as well as it can be expected. Should we start without your colleague seeing that I’m dying here or…? ” replied John with a grim smile. They were very well aware they were almost dead. Just one thing to do, one message and that’s it.
Zǐmò nodded his head, as he leaned back over to the microphone, responding in a kindly tone, “Of course, let’s go ahead and get started. I’ll get him caught up when he arrives,” he tapped on the keyboard once more, looking up at John, then back to the terminal, then to John again, “I suppose we should start with – are you the diplomat for your people, or just an explorer?”
"Just an explorer. Our mission was to find out if there's anyone on this side of the Gateway and if so, determine if they're dangerous to the galactic community. You see, there are quite a few of us out there and a nation…declared war on everyone. Not the smartest move but they had the firepower to back it…for a while. We were here to make sure that if someone is here, they won't be too do the same if they did, to give them a fair warning. So, tell me, are your people slavers? Do you enslave aliens you've found? "
Zǐmò’s eyebrow raised at the question, his response one of almost confusion, “Eperu is under United Nations governance, and is beholden to the declaration of human rights, do you,” he was clearly deep in thought, thrown off-guard by the question, “do you not know about the United Nations? The multinational organization responsible for encouraging peace and freedom for all? Are you from Earth?”
He then held up a finger, asking his second question immediately after, “and – aliens, you have met living aliens? You’ve spoken to them?”
"Wait. Wait. Wait. Haven't your people already told you who we are? Very well. The RADiance/Exalted Alliance was created 301 years ago when our colony ship left Earth fleeing the cataclysmic. Currently Earth is uninhabited, nothing can live on it. There are a dozen different nations which were born out of the colonist ships which left Earth. I don't know what your United Nations is. Maybe our former priests as they were more intune with Earth's history would know more but I'm assuming you're referring to nations on Earth United under one mission? Yeah, they're not around anymore. Human rights. I am not human, you might even say I'm an alien. Our DNA has been heavily altered to allow us to live on our planet. Yes, aliens exist. We've got a reservation for them on one of our planets but there are more out there. " said John before launching into a full explanation of the current nations.
The suited man returned to his kindly smile as he listened intently to John, every so often typing into the terminal as he spoke. Near the end of John’s explanation, however, the door once more opened and a heavyset man sporting a comb-over and a neat beard entered. Zǐmò turned to glance at him, and then, to John, said, “Ah, he’s arrived.”
The man walked up to the terminal, and glanced over John and the room before greeting him with, “Hello, my name’s Richard Evans,” his accent was a clipped English, “You’re.. John, right? Pleased to meet you. I’m the gateway ambassador, or, well.”
He smiled as though in anticipation of his joke, “I will be when the red tape clears. You know how it is, I bet. Your arrival caused some real violence to the timetable. Is Zixuang keeping you comfortable in there? It looks a little utilitarian.”
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Evans. I'm John of the RADiance/Exalted Alliance. I have just finished giving your colleague an explanation of who's who and the current historical events that marked the galaxy. My comfort is of no consequence. After our conversation, I'll be dead either way. It is what it is. " replied John as they stood up and gave Evans a military salute.
Evans waved his hand as Zǐmò looked on impassively, the englishman speaking quickly, “Oh no, we’ll be getting you home. We will not be returning a corpse. The Gnostic Ascension’s on its way through the Channel soon – we can’t promise you more than a week, but,” he paused, trying to find a way to word his sentence, “we want you to have the opportunity to say your goodbyes to your family on your own terms.”
"You won't, I will do that. Nothing to worry about, made peace with my fate. As for family? It may be hard to see or for you to understand but I'm over 200 years old. My family was part of the first colonists of RADX-001. They're 3 centuries dead already. They didn't survive the first colonization attempt. No children for the Rejected. Our…reproduction capabilities were a cost we had to pay back then. Now, we're better 'alas…I won't be there to make a new family. "
“Regardless,” Evans responded, “you will not be dying in quarantine. We’ll be releasing you to your people with an explanation of your condition.”
Nahikawa City, Colony Tower, Penthouse Suite Six days after Gateway Transition Mood Music
The initial convoys to the gateway had gone out less than a week from first contact; eight months ahead of schedule. In less fearful times, such violence to the timetable would have bankrupted Zixuang-Akako and the Frontier Commission aside. The initial scouts came out of the gate in even more of a hurry.
It had cost so much, the overnight inversion of global priorities, lost initiative made up as kings and corporations scribbled IOUs on the back of napkins and promised to sort it all out once the heat was off. What were once deep-space outposts, secure by the virtue of remoteness, now stood on the front line of a new paradigm. Habitats had to be refitted for defense against a new vector. Commercial ships on the Tuadesc Loop were conscripted, weaponised, and reassigned; some secured the high ground over Epinnu, while others fell sunward to guard Alaktu and the Channel.
It didn’t matter that the other nations hadn’t fired a shot at any of those targets; the risk could not be afforded. The planetary intranets were alive, debate on all sides, leftovers a week past their expiry date.
In the Colony Tower in Nahikawa, the real decisions were made. The public were irrelevant, bar the effort to sway them. Zixuang-Akako would make the decision, and one way or another all else would fall into line. Here, one woman directed the fates of billions, the relationships that would see Eperu ascendant or broken upon the pyre of outside context.
The day was overcast, a miserable purple-tinted dreary gray. It had been drizzling for two days now, and it seemed neither proper rain nor clear skies lay in the near future. The gleaming Colony Tower, all modernist white-trimming and carefully-maintained stainless steel facades looked entirely out of place in such weather. Here, a glorious monument to power and opulence placed upon a world best described as maliciously dying. The exotic star-stuff far above could not be seen, and yet its cold touch still gripped the whole world.
Below Hatomi Akako, two-hundred stories of cacophony. A hundred thousand office drones, slaving away in the furnace of total economic upheaval. The whiff of fear and uncertainty, of misplaced optimism and nationalistic fear practically wafted up, the air was thick with tension. In all the tower, only the penthouse remained a bed of quiet and calm; all the better to let the most powerful woman in all of Eperu think.
Behind her, the sound of an opened door, frantic footsteps. The perfumed smell of executive assistants, the click of dress shoes too cheap to be acceptable, and far-too-long pained over in service of hiding the former. She didn’t have to look back, it was all too obvious, “Were the engineers correct?”
The footsteps stopped, suddenly. Papers rustled, no doubt buying time as the question was comprehended. They kept rustling; now to find the answer. A familiar voice, one of the more reliable assistants, one that had been around for a while now, “Yes, they’re able to mount directly to the gateway structure without otherwise hampering the portal effect,” they continued on, answering the unspoken question, initiative, “the expansion in powers to our asset-protection teams are being slammed through committee as well; barring any unexpected pitfalls, we’ll be allowed to staff the customs station.”
Hatomi Akako digested the information, and then gave direction, “Draft an export ban on Hev and Hed outside of Eperu.”
The administrative assistant was confused, she could tell, but he was smart enough not to question it. She heard his footfalls as he spun in place, and she listened to him walk out – a fast walk, not quite a jog but also not leisurely. The right pace, in Akako’s eyes. The doors closed, and she was once more left in her steely silence.
The RADs detect new gateway contacts, and they fly a ship named the Black Horse through to one. It turns out to be Eperu, which is about to undergo a solar mass ejection in an act of incredibly bad luck. Luckily, Salient Moon, a mining satellite run by a brain, offers to assist.
The Black Horse blows up in the mass ejection, and the RADrines decide they don’t need no helmets and jump out of their ship to get caught in the mining nets, taking a ton of HEV-P exposure in the process.
Salient Moon takes them inside to shelter, then sends them on a tanker carrying HEV-P through the channel to a station at the Channel’s exit. There, they are mistaken at first for smugglers by the Frontier Commission marshal on the station, but eventually he gets them to throw down their arms and he takes them to the medbay.
Turns out they’re not immune to HEV-P, and have received a dangerous dose of the stuff that makes everyone fear being contaminated as well. An asset protection team from Zixuang-Akako arrives and puts John in quarantine while everyone else suicides.
In quarantine, he gets asked questions by both the megacorp and the government about what’s going on, and is then sent home to say his goodbyes before also dying. Almost a week later, we get to see Akako, the current CEO of Zixuang-Akako. She’s already making plans about how to leverage the gateway being open.
Nation Name: United Nations Frontier Commission, Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation, The Regulate
Government Form: There are three distinct entities in the Eperu system with enough power to be considered their own forms of government; the Frontier Commission, the Zixuang-Akaka Energistics Corporation, and The Regulate.
The Frontier Commission, an offshoot of the original authorities of the colonization effort from the Solar System, is the most recognizable government in the system. It is a federalized republic, representing the 1.8 billion people across the system. The planets of Epinnu and Tuadeasc make up a bulk of its constituents, with small numbers of people spread along the Alaktu Inclusion Zone and long-term space habitats.
The second major power in the system is the Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation, a merger between Zixuang Trade & Contracting and Akako High-Energy Research Labs. Zixuang brought extensive Commission insider knowledge and the skills required to transport bulk goods across the system, while Akako brought the experimental research and skill in subversive activities. Together, they were able to place the system in an economic stranglehold. A majority of the Frontier Commission’s citizens are employed by the Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation, and the megacorp is at the cutting edge of technology.
The third and final group is not so much a government or corporation as it is a loose association of disaffected humans; executives and scientists bankrupted by Zixuang-Akako, terrorists opposed to the Frontier Commission, exiled revolutionaries, and so forth. Its presence in the main system is virtually unknown, with their headquarters secreted away on Katmu, hidden from prying eyes by the deleterious effects of Eperu on astronomy. While Zixuang-Akako is formally the leading expert on the eccentricities of Eperu, the Regulate (An informal name given by those in the know – there is no formal name amongst its members) represents absolute authority. They hold an excellent understanding of the technologies enabled by Eperu. They are loosely ruled by a council made up of the largest groups present in their coalition, organized into cells.
Demographics: In the entire system, there exists 1.8 billion humans. While ancient intelligent life has definitely once lived on the two habitable planets, no living specimen nor any fossils have ever been found. Of the 1.8 billion people, approximately 950 million of them are directly employed by Zixuang-Akako or its subsidiaries. The Regulate, meanwhile, never numbers more than approximately ten thousand.
There are two principle colonies in the Eperu system; Epinnu and Tuadeasc. Both are in the habitable zone of the anomalous star, and contain liquid water and relatively human-livable temperatures.
Epinnu is the largest and oldest of the two colonies, being relatively similar to earth with an average temperature of 11C. It has a gravity of only 1.2 times that of Earth, making it close to the home planet. Humanity lives across its surface, generally bunched into large cities surrounded by large stretches of rural land. It is about 1.3 times the size of earth, with slightly more landmass. The primary difference is in the lighting; the planet has never seen a bright day. It is only barely lit by Eperu, a dull purple tinge providing little to work with. Artificial lighting is rampant, and farming is done primarily by hydroponics. Of the 1.8 billion people in the system, approximately 1.1 billion of them live on Epinnu.
Tuadeasc, while also human-habitable, is far harsher. Its average temperature in the places inhabited by humans is roughly 30C. Its gravity is 1.1 times that of Earth, and it is only 1.1 times larger than Earth, but it garners even less light than Epinnu. It is an intensely separated planet, the equator hot enough to boil water while the poles feature cryogenic ice flats that near absolute zero at their coldest. Land dominates its surface, making up 75 percent of the planet. The human population, about 700 million, is primarily rural; small settlements dot the planet.
There is a third, secret colony, far outside of the system. A rocky planet named Katmu, it is a frozen landscape with a gravity 1.4 times that of Earth, while it is 1.3 times larger than Earth. It is in a highly eccentric orbit, at its farthest 9AU from Eperu, while at its closest it is only 1.5AU away. It has only been discovered by The Regulate, who use it as a weapons stockpile and the headquarters for its ruling council. Its population varies year to year, but it has never held more than 7,000 people at once. It is perpetually dark, as no light reaches it from Eperu.
The final planet, while not formally a colony, is in a unique position. Alaktu, a small gas giant about 4 times the size of Earth, sits within the Eperu Exclusion Zone. It is highly ionized and radioactive, and is notable for the Gate Flux Tube, named for the positioning of the stellar gate inside of it. The space inside of the Gate Flux Tube is comparable to baseline space as seen in the Solar System and many other star systems.
The Gate Flux Tube, however, is not an entirely innocent affair; it is essentially a planet-sized particle accelerator, collecting particles from mass ejections by Eperu, and highly charging them in a giant loop that leads, eventually, into the north pole of Alaktu. The rest of the system is reachable through an obscure and largely unresearchable process involving the Gate Flux Tube, whereupon joining into the acceleration stream you can, in what has been theorized to be a violation of causality, eject yourself from the Exclusion Zone without ever coming in contact with the lethal anomalistic radiation that makes the Exclusion Zone deadly.
Failures to join with the stream are not unheard of, and are lethal – once the failure is known, it is too late to avoid crashing into the north pole of Alaktu and being lost amongst the gas giant. One can return to the Gate Flux Tube by way of a naturally-generated exit just outside the Exclusion Zone, a station built around it to facilitate such travel.
It takes approximately a day to travel to the exit once you have ejected, and the space between – nicknamed The Channel – is incredibly hostile to life. Long-term exposure to The Channel is guaranteed to drive a man into psychosis, with no shielding system known except to The Regulate.
Finally, the star of Eperu itself. It is an anomalous dwarf star, made up of exotic materials that resist analysis and whose origins are a mystery. The star is only 17 times the size of Earth, and the entire system could fit in the space between Earth and the Sun. Around it is a wide exclusion zone, where the radiation from Hev is so strong and dense that no shielding exists capable of preventing it from being instantly lethal, except to the Regulate. The radiation itself is not identifiable as any form of previously-discovered radiation, and requires special shielding to prevent exposure not provided by traditional radiation shielding methods. It is well known to interfere with electronics and causes ghosts to occur both in sensors and on electromagnetic frequencies used for transmissions.
Due to an effect that has yet to be adequately explained, it grows whiter the closer you get to it, and darker the further away you are. By the time you are at the edge of the system, it provides absolutely no light and cannot be seen, while at Alaktu, the closest most people can safely get to it, it is a mixture of white and purple. It is principally made up of a volatile material called HEV-P, short for High Energy Volatile Particulate, and it is nicknamed Hev in casual conversation.
The second known material is called HED-C, short for High Energy Disruptive Crystal. It is nicknamed Hedic in casual conversation. This material is rare, and was only discovered when collected from mass eruptions.
History: In the Eperu dating system, the human presence begins in 0 After Arrival, or 0AA. In an effort to keep par with the Solar System’s dating period, the year is split into twelve chunks, roughly correlating to one year on Tuadeasc, which equals about 29 Earth days. Each year on Tuadeasc symbolizes a month in the Eperu dating system. The exotic nature of Eperu threw off the Solar System’s astrological surveys, and what the colonists discovered on the other side of the gate was far from what they expected.
The gate malfunctioned and closed behind them, however. They were stuck in the Eperu System, with all venturing beyond the Gate Flux Tube dying near-instantly to the exotic radiations blanketing the Exclusion Zone. The colonists would have died in orbit of Alaktu, if it weren’t for a daredevil pilot who rode the exclusion zone in their survey ship and discovered the existence of the Channel.
The pilot, who survived both the trip out and the trip back in, reported to the colony ship the existence of two habitable worlds beyond the lethal wall of radiation, and explained to them how to enter the Channel. Votes were taken, and it was decided to take the risk. The colony ship plunged into the stream of the Flux Tube, and successfully made the transition into the Channel. A day later, when they emerged, they discovered what the pilot had seen.
Not only had they escaped the most lethal of the exotic radiation, they had found a veritable cornucopia of choice. Though the light was dim and unprotected exposure to Eperu was still dangerous, Epinnu could support earth life almost by default. Colonization was easy and the population rapidly boomed.
On Epinnu, they rapidly discovered the ruins of previous intelligent life on the planet; though, curiously, they never found so much as a single fossil of them. Cultural relics were few and far between, and never enough to paint a picture. The ruins are largely unexplored, with scientists incapable of cracking into the structures, who resist all conventional attempts at entry. Throughout the centuries, precious few discoveries have been made from ruins that could be accessed, primarily around the use of Eperu’s exotic materials.
Travel throughout the system remained dangerous; no amount of hardening could save computers from Eperu. Telescopes unfocused and radar systems returned only ghosts. In the early days, the violent mass ejections from Eperu killed hundreds in space. The colonists claimed the system was haunted, ghost transmissions endlessly bouncing about and being picked up on intercoms, radios, even televisions and music players.
The first corporation to create a ship capable of withstanding the mass ejections, flares, and solar storms was Helius Shipping Solutions; whose research and development department was far ahead of all its competitors. Before it could capitalize on this, however, its research was stolen and seemingly destroyed by the Akako High-Energy Research Labs, who entirely avoided implication in the matter.
Akako could not push their newfound advantage alone, devoid of Frontier Commission contracts and a steady base of business by which to fund massive expansions. In response, they turned to the Zixuang Trade & Contracting, a minor company who nonetheless had extensive government contracts and had built a reputation as a reliable bulk goods shipper despite the violence of Eperu. The benefits to both were obvious, and the merger came quickly. Soon enough, the new Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation was receiving massive Frontier Commission contracts in the shipbuilding industry, alongside the shipping and resource extraction industries.
Catapulted to a sudden position of dominance, the corporation moved to secure its holdings; embarking on a campaign of government lobbying and hostile takeovers of competing corporations. Year by year, their growth outpaced all expectations, and any hope of the Frontier Commission stepping in to prevent a monopoly were dashed with every new contract farmed out to the corporation.
When growth finally slowed, the damage was done. In less than a century, a new megacorporation was born, employing half the population of the system. It was too late for the Frontier Commission to break them up, as the resultant economic collapse would have destroyed the colonies.
Helius Shipping Solutions, meanwhile, had not been idle. In the years after the theft of their research, they had been driven bankrupt by the Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation. Their employees did not fold into other corporations, however, and they retained the genius staff that first led to the breakthrough. Paid under the table and operating in secret, using criminal activity to fund their research, they were able to outpace the vast bulk of the Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation.
Their first major discovery was the planet of Katmu; though in comparison to the distances in the Solar System it flew close to Eperu and should have been simple to discover, the havoc wreaked on sensor systems by Eperu rendered it entirely invisible to the colony at large. With vast leaps and bounds made in protecting sensors from the exotic radiation, they could slowly move equipment to Katmu reliably.
Though they maintained their criminal empire, the headquarters of the organization, never formally given a name by the former Helius employees, remained in total secrecy upon Katmu. Research only bloomed further upon Katmu, and the informally-named Regulate grew centuries ahead of the rest of the system in technology.
Over the years humanity spread out among the system, forming colonies on Tuadeasc and in space. The dominance of Zixuang-Akako was maintained, and the Regulate grew in the shadows, commissioning acts of terror and running the criminal underworld across the system. In the modern day, the space around Alaktu is primarily occupied by automated mining rigs and channel observatories.
Culture and Society: The society of the Eperu System is remarkably fatalistic, having been built from the ground up around a star hostile to all life. Caught in the claws of megacorporations, the system is split between collectivist sympathies and individualistic sentiments. Conflict between the two visions for the future of Eperu are not uncommon. Poverty is rampant and grapples with the existence of a massive specialist middle class.
Thanks to the Regulate, crime is rampant and policing is heavy. There exist slums and upper-class neighborhoods, and everything between. Drugs are common on the streets and in the poorest places, gangs practically run the show. Meanwhile, above, the spacers face death daily as the star does its best to kill them. Debris fields are common and endless sensor ghosts and lost transmissions interrupt daily life constantly.
---
Governance and Politics: While in theory the Frontier Commission ensures a regulated capitalist market and democracy, in practice Zixuang-Akako has made use of regulatory capture for centuries. Election districts are gerrymandered and lobbyists hold immense power in the Frontier Congress. The dominant party is kept in power by Zixuang-Akako money, while the opposition fails to catch up purely on grassroots organization.
There are 1,224 representatives in the Frontier Congress, from across the populated space stations and colonies. The tiebreaker is held by the Governor of the Frontier Commission, a for-life position of executive power put into place by a vote of the Frontier Congress. The primary political party is called the Shadow Coalition. Despite the sinister name, it is a moderate party whose primary contribution to politics is maintaining the status quo. It holds 60 percent of the Frontier Congress, a firm lead over their opponents. The next largest party is the Eperu Labor Party, which makes up 25 percent of the Frontier Congress. The rest of the Frontier Congress is made up of a patchwork of minor parties who tend to form coalitions with the Eperu Labor Party.
Technology Overview: Technology as a whole has gotten significantly more primitive, but also significantly more reliable. What fails regularly in Eperu is virtually indestructible outside of Eperu. Computer systems are blocky beasts utilizing analog circuits and magnetic tapes, but are hardened against interference both environmental and man-made to a degree which renders electronic warfare virtually obsolete.
Sensors are similar; they are extremely short-range compared to the sensors used by any other nation, but within their range they are by far the best-in-class, capable of detecting anything when not struggling to fight the interference of Eperu.
Shields are minimal and relegated to navigational only, but ships carry thick and extensive armor, strengthened considerably by the introduction of Eperu’s exotic materials to the alloying process. Heavy and unwieldy, they nonetheless represent extremely powerful armor. Outside of experimental weapons, armament is dead-simple to minimize interference; machine guns and large-bore cannons are common.
There are a great number of experimental technologies based on exotic materials gathered from Eperu:
The first discovered is the neural interface. By using a carefully processed and liquified version of Hev, it is possible to sustain a simple brain outside of the body and moreover connect it to computer networks. The most frequent use of this technology is extracting livestock brains to be reprogrammed into simplistic AIs to run automated platforms. Due to the fact they are not electronic, they are significantly more capable of weathering Eperu unharmed, and thus are used and prized for their reliability.
The second discovered use is short-range teleportation. Among the materials gathered from Eperu are exotic crystals of an even further unknown material nicknamed Hedic. When properly carved with sigils, it is possible to reroute matter through them and launch that matter to a different location instantly. The process is incredibly difficult and dangerous; improper machining of the crystal can cause a variety of terrible effects, and improper calculations can teleport people into solid rock, far in the air, in distant space, or cause them to flat out vanish. The Regulate has mastered this technology on the small scale, but large-scale efforts elude them and Zixuang-Akako’s use of teleportation remains entirely experimental.
The third discovered use is from the alien ruins dotting the planets of the system. Within these ruins incredibly dense crystals have been discovered, theorized to come from the core of Eperu, which when agitated can produce endless volatiles for use in power reactors and thrusters. Once agitated, it is impossible to stop the reaction, though it can be moderated with cooling. Should cooling fail, the crystal will catastrophically delaminate and cause an explosion equivalent to 400 megatons of TNT. However, the most deadly is the wave of exotic radiation, resembling that which bombards the Exclusion Zone. This wave can kill for hundreds of miles before dying out. These reactors are rare and generally installed into isolated research stations.
Hev has made a great number of minor advancements in dozens of different fields. However, there are also a great number of potential side effects.
The first and most important thing to note is Hev is incredibly volatile in its natural state, and in some processed states. It burns hotter and longer than any other material known, and is far too unstable to rely on. Processes that rely on using the volatility of Hev are powerful but incredibly dangerous, and it is not unheard of for these processes to result in casualties. Hev is also deeply toxic, too much exposure leading to painful and irrecoverable breakdowns of the body. Long-term exposure has a similar deleterious mental effect to lead.
A particularly famous disease from Hedic is called “The Whiskers”, where attempting to teleport with improperly machined crystals or handling them unprotected in any form can cause thin metallic whiskers to begin growing throughout the body. These whiskers spread like cancer, and slowly and painfully slice the person apart. There is no cure, and touching the whiskers can cause another person to contract the disease as well. The most obvious indicator is when they sprout from the body, causing bleeding and making the victim appear as though they have been stabbed by millions of tiny needles.
Another disease can be contracted by Hev, though relatively unknown to the public. Certain levels and methods of exposure can cause a person to endlessly grow, for lack of a better term. They begin to sprout cancerous tumors that quickly begin expanding. Sustained by the toxins in their blood, they are kept alive as these tumors rupture their old body and they can spread miles before the growth stops. Deep in space, covered up by Zixuang-Akako, are research stations entirely overtaken by these cancerous growths. Attempts to kill them have largely failed, as they are capable of rapid healing.
Channel Sickness is the name given to overexposure to the Channel. The victim undergoes a complete and total violent psychosis, suffering delusions they take out on anybody or anything in sight. They babble the entire time, though no particular meaning has ever been extracted from what a victim says. Food and water is refused, and so without deep medical care for the rest of their lives they are doomed to starve or dehydrate to death, if they are not killed more violently first.
Military Overview: Military forces are largely limited to garrison forces and small naval patrols. With little outright need for military power, there are no capital ships nor is Eperu prepared to fight a proper military. The Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation maintains an above-the-board Asset Protection Division, which acts as private security for their operations and maintains its own naval patrols independent of the Frontier Commission. Below-the-board, Zixuang-Akako has the Asset Defense Team, a division that acts essentially as a deathsquad alongside espionage duties. They maintain a number of black sites across the system, and are used whenever Zixuang-Akako needs to make a problem disappear silently and with extreme violence.
Nation Name: United Nations Frontier Commission, Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation, The Regulate
Government Form: There are three distinct entities in the Eperu system with enough power to be considered their own forms of government; the Frontier Commission, the Zixuang-Akaka Energistics Corporation, and The Regulate.
The Frontier Commission, an offshoot of the original authorities of the colonization effort from the Solar System, is the most recognizable government in the system. It is a federalized republic, representing the 1.8 billion people across the system. The planets of Epinnu and Tuadeasc make up a bulk of its constituents, with small numbers of people spread along the Alaktu Inclusion Zone and long-term space habitats.
The second major power in the system is the Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation, a merger between Zixuang Trade & Contracting and Akako High-Energy Research Labs. Zixuang brought extensive Commission insider knowledge and the skills required to transport bulk goods across the system, while Akako brought the experimental research and skill in subversive activities. Together, they were able to place the system in an economic stranglehold. A majority of the Frontier Commission’s citizens are employed by the Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation, and the megacorp is at the cutting edge of technology.
The third and final group is not so much a government or corporation as it is a loose association of disaffected humans; executives and scientists bankrupted by Zixuang-Akako, terrorists opposed to the Frontier Commission, exiled revolutionaries, and so forth. Its presence in the main system is virtually unknown, with their headquarters secreted away on Katmu, hidden from prying eyes by the deleterious effects of Eperu on astronomy. While Zixuang-Akako is formally the leading expert on the eccentricities of Eperu, the Regulate (An informal name given by those in the know – there is no formal name amongst its members) represents absolute authority. They hold an excellent understanding of the technologies enabled by Eperu. They are loosely ruled by a council made up of the largest groups present in their coalition, organized into cells.
Demographics: In the entire system, there exists 1.8 billion humans. While ancient intelligent life has definitely once lived on the two habitable planets, no living specimen nor any fossils have ever been found. Of the 1.8 billion people, approximately 950 million of them are directly employed by Zixuang-Akako or its subsidiaries. The Regulate, meanwhile, never numbers more than approximately ten thousand.
There are two principle colonies in the Eperu system; Epinnu and Tuadeasc. Both are in the habitable zone of the anomalous star, and contain liquid water and relatively human-livable temperatures.
Epinnu is the largest and oldest of the two colonies, being relatively similar to earth with an average temperature of 11C. It has a gravity of only 1.2 times that of Earth, making it close to the home planet. Humanity lives across its surface, generally bunched into large cities surrounded by large stretches of rural land. It is about 1.3 times the size of earth, with slightly more landmass. The primary difference is in the lighting; the planet has never seen a bright day. It is only barely lit by Eperu, a dull purple tinge providing little to work with. Artificial lighting is rampant, and farming is done primarily by hydroponics. Of the 1.8 billion people in the system, approximately 1.1 billion of them live on Epinnu.
Tuadeasc, while also human-habitable, is far harsher. Its average temperature in the places inhabited by humans is roughly 30C. Its gravity is 1.1 times that of Earth, and it is only 1.1 times larger than Earth, but it garners even less light than Epinnu. It is an intensely separated planet, the equator hot enough to boil water while the poles feature cryogenic ice flats that near absolute zero at their coldest. Land dominates its surface, making up 75 percent of the planet. The human population, about 700 million, is primarily rural; small settlements dot the planet.
There is a third, secret colony, far outside of the system. A rocky planet named Katmu, it is a frozen landscape with a gravity 1.4 times that of Earth, while it is 1.3 times larger than Earth. It is in a highly eccentric orbit, at its farthest 9AU from Eperu, while at its closest it is only 1.5AU away. It has only been discovered by The Regulate, who use it as a weapons stockpile and the headquarters for its ruling council. Its population varies year to year, but it has never held more than 7,000 people at once. It is perpetually dark, as no light reaches it from Eperu.
The final planet, while not formally a colony, is in a unique position. Alaktu, a small gas giant about 4 times the size of Earth, sits within the Eperu Exclusion Zone. It is highly ionized and radioactive, and is notable for the Gate Flux Tube, named for the positioning of the stellar gate inside of it. The space inside of the Gate Flux Tube is comparable to baseline space as seen in the Solar System and many other star systems.
The Gate Flux Tube, however, is not an entirely innocent affair; it is essentially a planet-sized particle accelerator, collecting particles from mass ejections by Eperu, and highly charging them in a giant loop that leads, eventually, into the north pole of Alaktu. The rest of the system is reachable through an obscure and largely unresearchable process involving the Gate Flux Tube, whereupon joining into the acceleration stream you can, in what has been theorized to be a violation of causality, eject yourself from the Exclusion Zone without ever coming in contact with the lethal anomalistic radiation that makes the Exclusion Zone deadly.
Failures to join with the stream are not unheard of, and are lethal – once the failure is known, it is too late to avoid crashing into the north pole of Alaktu and being lost amongst the gas giant. One can return to the Gate Flux Tube by way of a naturally-generated exit just outside the Exclusion Zone, a station built around it to facilitate such travel.
It takes approximately a day to travel to the exit once you have ejected, and the space between – nicknamed The Channel – is incredibly hostile to life. Long-term exposure to The Channel is guaranteed to drive a man into psychosis, with no shielding system known except to The Regulate.
Finally, the star of Eperu itself. It is an anomalous dwarf star, made up of exotic materials that resist analysis and whose origins are a mystery. The star is only 17 times the size of Earth, and the entire system could fit in the space between Earth and the Sun. Around it is a wide exclusion zone, where the radiation from Hev is so strong and dense that no shielding exists capable of preventing it from being instantly lethal, except to the Regulate. The radiation itself is not identifiable as any form of previously-discovered radiation, and requires special shielding to prevent exposure not provided by traditional radiation shielding methods. It is well known to interfere with electronics and causes ghosts to occur both in sensors and on electromagnetic frequencies used for transmissions.
Due to an effect that has yet to be adequately explained, it grows whiter the closer you get to it, and darker the further away you are. By the time you are at the edge of the system, it provides absolutely no light and cannot be seen, while at Alaktu, the closest most people can safely get to it, it is a mixture of white and purple. It is principally made up of a volatile material called HEV-P, short for High Energy Volatile Particulate, and it is nicknamed Hev in casual conversation.
The second known material is called HED-C, short for High Energy Disruptive Crystal. It is nicknamed Hedic in casual conversation. This material is rare, and was only discovered when collected from mass eruptions.
History: In the Eperu dating system, the human presence begins in 0 After Arrival, or 0AA. In an effort to keep par with the Solar System’s dating period, the year is split into twelve chunks, roughly correlating to one year on Tuadeasc, which equals about 29 Earth days. Each year on Tuadeasc symbolizes a month in the Eperu dating system. The exotic nature of Eperu threw off the Solar System’s astrological surveys, and what the colonists discovered on the other side of the gate was far from what they expected.
The gate malfunctioned and closed behind them, however. They were stuck in the Eperu System, with all venturing beyond the Gate Flux Tube dying near-instantly to the exotic radiations blanketing the Exclusion Zone. The colonists would have died in orbit of Alaktu, if it weren’t for a daredevil pilot who rode the exclusion zone in their survey ship and discovered the existence of the Channel.
The pilot, who survived both the trip out and the trip back in, reported to the colony ship the existence of two habitable worlds beyond the lethal wall of radiation, and explained to them how to enter the Channel. Votes were taken, and it was decided to take the risk. The colony ship plunged into the stream of the Flux Tube, and successfully made the transition into the Channel. A day later, when they emerged, they discovered what the pilot had seen.
Not only had they escaped the most lethal of the exotic radiation, they had found a veritable cornucopia of choice. Though the light was dim and unprotected exposure to Eperu was still dangerous, Epinnu could support earth life almost by default. Colonization was easy and the population rapidly boomed.
On Epinnu, they rapidly discovered the ruins of previous intelligent life on the planet; though, curiously, they never found so much as a single fossil of them. Cultural relics were few and far between, and never enough to paint a picture. The ruins are largely unexplored, with scientists incapable of cracking into the structures, who resist all conventional attempts at entry. Throughout the centuries, precious few discoveries have been made from ruins that could be accessed, primarily around the use of Eperu’s exotic materials.
Travel throughout the system remained dangerous; no amount of hardening could save computers from Eperu. Telescopes unfocused and radar systems returned only ghosts. In the early days, the violent mass ejections from Eperu killed hundreds in space. The colonists claimed the system was haunted, ghost transmissions endlessly bouncing about and being picked up on intercoms, radios, even televisions and music players.
The first corporation to create a ship capable of withstanding the mass ejections, flares, and solar storms was Helius Shipping Solutions; whose research and development department was far ahead of all its competitors. Before it could capitalize on this, however, its research was stolen and seemingly destroyed by the Akako High-Energy Research Labs, who entirely avoided implication in the matter.
Akako could not push their newfound advantage alone, devoid of Frontier Commission contracts and a steady base of business by which to fund massive expansions. In response, they turned to the Zixuang Trade & Contracting, a minor company who nonetheless had extensive government contracts and had built a reputation as a reliable bulk goods shipper despite the violence of Eperu. The benefits to both were obvious, and the merger came quickly. Soon enough, the new Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation was receiving massive Frontier Commission contracts in the shipbuilding industry, alongside the shipping and resource extraction industries.
Catapulted to a sudden position of dominance, the corporation moved to secure its holdings; embarking on a campaign of government lobbying and hostile takeovers of competing corporations. Year by year, their growth outpaced all expectations, and any hope of the Frontier Commission stepping in to prevent a monopoly were dashed with every new contract farmed out to the corporation.
When growth finally slowed, the damage was done. In less than a century, a new megacorporation was born, employing half the population of the system. It was too late for the Frontier Commission to break them up, as the resultant economic collapse would have destroyed the colonies.
Helius Shipping Solutions, meanwhile, had not been idle. In the years after the theft of their research, they had been driven bankrupt by the Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation. Their employees did not fold into other corporations, however, and they retained the genius staff that first led to the breakthrough. Paid under the table and operating in secret, using criminal activity to fund their research, they were able to outpace the vast bulk of the Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation.
Their first major discovery was the planet of Katmu; though in comparison to the distances in the Solar System it flew close to Eperu and should have been simple to discover, the havoc wreaked on sensor systems by Eperu rendered it entirely invisible to the colony at large. With vast leaps and bounds made in protecting sensors from the exotic radiation, they could slowly move equipment to Katmu reliably.
Though they maintained their criminal empire, the headquarters of the organization, never formally given a name by the former Helius employees, remained in total secrecy upon Katmu. Research only bloomed further upon Katmu, and the informally-named Regulate grew centuries ahead of the rest of the system in technology.
Over the years humanity spread out among the system, forming colonies on Tuadeasc and in space. The dominance of Zixuang-Akako was maintained, and the Regulate grew in the shadows, commissioning acts of terror and running the criminal underworld across the system. In the modern day, the space around Alaktu is primarily occupied by automated mining rigs and channel observatories.
Culture and Society: The society of the Eperu System is remarkably fatalistic, having been built from the ground up around a star hostile to all life. Caught in the claws of megacorporations, the system is split between collectivist sympathies and individualistic sentiments. Conflict between the two visions for the future of Eperu are not uncommon. Poverty is rampant and grapples with the existence of a massive specialist middle class.
Thanks to the Regulate, crime is rampant and policing is heavy. There exist slums and upper-class neighborhoods, and everything between. Drugs are common on the streets and in the poorest places, gangs practically run the show. Meanwhile, above, the spacers face death daily as the star does its best to kill them. Debris fields are common and endless sensor ghosts and lost transmissions interrupt daily life constantly.
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Governance and Politics: While in theory the Frontier Commission ensures a regulated capitalist market and democracy, in practice Zixuang-Akako has made use of regulatory capture for centuries. Election districts are gerrymandered and lobbyists hold immense power in the Frontier Congress. The dominant party is kept in power by Zixuang-Akako money, while the opposition fails to catch up purely on grassroots organization.
There are 1,224 representatives in the Frontier Congress, from across the populated space stations and colonies. The tiebreaker is held by the Governor of the Frontier Commission, a for-life position of executive power put into place by a vote of the Frontier Congress. The primary political party is called the Shadow Coalition. Despite the sinister name, it is a moderate party whose primary contribution to politics is maintaining the status quo. It holds 60 percent of the Frontier Congress, a firm lead over their opponents. The next largest party is the Eperu Labor Party, which makes up 25 percent of the Frontier Congress. The rest of the Frontier Congress is made up of a patchwork of minor parties who tend to form coalitions with the Eperu Labor Party.
Technology Overview: Technology as a whole has gotten significantly more primitive, but also significantly more reliable. What fails regularly in Eperu is virtually indestructible outside of Eperu. Computer systems are blocky beasts utilizing analog circuits and magnetic tapes, but are hardened against interference both environmental and man-made to a degree which renders electronic warfare virtually obsolete.
Sensors are similar; they are extremely short-range compared to the sensors used by any other nation, but within their range they are by far the best-in-class, capable of detecting anything when not struggling to fight the interference of Eperu.
Shields are minimal and relegated to navigational only, but ships carry thick and extensive armor, strengthened considerably by the introduction of Eperu’s exotic materials to the alloying process. Heavy and unwieldy, they nonetheless represent extremely powerful armor. Outside of experimental weapons, armament is dead-simple to minimize interference; machine guns and large-bore cannons are common.
There are a great number of experimental technologies based on exotic materials gathered from Eperu:
The first discovered is the neural interface. By using a carefully processed and liquified version of Hev, it is possible to sustain a simple brain outside of the body and moreover connect it to computer networks. The most frequent use of this technology is extracting livestock brains to be reprogrammed into simplistic AIs to run automated platforms. Due to the fact they are not electronic, they are significantly more capable of weathering Eperu unharmed, and thus are used and prized for their reliability.
The second discovered use is short-range teleportation. Among the materials gathered from Eperu are exotic crystals of an even further unknown material nicknamed Hedic. When properly carved with sigils, it is possible to reroute matter through them and launch that matter to a different location instantly. The process is incredibly difficult and dangerous; improper machining of the crystal can cause a variety of terrible effects, and improper calculations can teleport people into solid rock, far in the air, in distant space, or cause them to flat out vanish. The Regulate has mastered this technology on the small scale, but large-scale efforts elude them and Zixuang-Akako’s use of teleportation remains entirely experimental.
The third discovered use is from the alien ruins dotting the planets of the system. Within these ruins incredibly dense crystals have been discovered, theorized to come from the core of Eperu, which when agitated can produce endless volatiles for use in power reactors and thrusters. Once agitated, it is impossible to stop the reaction, though it can be moderated with cooling. Should cooling fail, the crystal will catastrophically delaminate and cause an explosion equivalent to 400 megatons of TNT. However, the most deadly is the wave of exotic radiation, resembling that which bombards the Exclusion Zone. This wave can kill for hundreds of miles before dying out. These reactors are rare and generally installed into isolated research stations.
Hev has made a great number of minor advancements in dozens of different fields. However, there are also a great number of potential side effects.
The first and most important thing to note is Hev is incredibly volatile in its natural state, and in some processed states. It burns hotter and longer than any other material known, and is far too unstable to rely on. Processes that rely on using the volatility of Hev are powerful but incredibly dangerous, and it is not unheard of for these processes to result in casualties. Hev is also deeply toxic, too much exposure leading to painful and irrecoverable breakdowns of the body. Long-term exposure has a similar deleterious mental effect to lead.
A particularly famous disease from Hedic is called “The Whiskers”, where attempting to teleport with improperly machined crystals or handling them unprotected in any form can cause thin metallic whiskers to begin growing throughout the body. These whiskers spread like cancer, and slowly and painfully slice the person apart. There is no cure, and touching the whiskers can cause another person to contract the disease as well. The most obvious indicator is when they sprout from the body, causing bleeding and making the victim appear as though they have been stabbed by millions of tiny needles.
Another disease can be contracted by Hev, though relatively unknown to the public. Certain levels and methods of exposure can cause a person to endlessly grow, for lack of a better term. They begin to sprout cancerous tumors that quickly begin expanding. Sustained by the toxins in their blood, they are kept alive as these tumors rupture their old body and they can spread miles before the growth stops. Deep in space, covered up by Zixuang-Akako, are research stations entirely overtaken by these cancerous growths. Attempts to kill them have largely failed, as they are capable of rapid healing.
Channel Sickness is the name given to overexposure to the Channel. The victim undergoes a complete and total violent psychosis, suffering delusions they take out on anybody or anything in sight. They babble the entire time, though no particular meaning has ever been extracted from what a victim says. Food and water is refused, and so without deep medical care for the rest of their lives they are doomed to starve or dehydrate to death, if they are not killed more violently first.
Military Overview: Military forces are largely limited to garrison forces and small naval patrols. With little outright need for military power, there are no capital ships nor is Eperu prepared to fight a proper military. The Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation maintains an above-the-board Asset Protection Division, which acts as private security for their operations and maintains its own naval patrols independent of the Frontier Commission. Below-the-board, Zixuang-Akako has the Asset Defense Team, a division that acts essentially as a deathsquad alongside espionage duties. They maintain a number of black sites across the system, and are used whenever Zixuang-Akako needs to make a problem disappear silently and with extreme violence.
Huge WIP post cause I gotta go to sleep. Mentions a lot about how the star Eperu is exotic, there'll be an explanation for what that means in the final version.
Nation Name: Frontier Commission, Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation, The Regulate
Government Form: There are three distinct entities in the Eperu system with enough power to be considered their own forms of government; the Frontier Commission, the Zixuang-Akaka Energistics Corporation, and The Regulate.
The Frontier Commission, an offshoot of the original authorities of the colonization effort from the Solar System, is the most recognizable government in the system. It is a federalized republic, representing the 1.8 billion people across the system. The planets of Epinnu and Tuadeasc make up a bulk of its constituents, with small numbers of people spread along the Alaktu Inclusion Zone and long-term space habitats.
The second major power in the system is the Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation, a merger between Zixuang Trade & Contracting and Akako High-Energy Research Labs. Zixuang brought extensive Commission insider knowledge and the skills required to transport bulk goods across the system, while Akako brought the experimental research and skill in subversive activities. Together, they were able to place the system in an economic stranglehold. A majority of the Frontier Commission’s citizens are employed by the Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation, and the megacorp is at the cutting edge of technology.
The third and final group is not so much a government or corporation as it is a loose association of disaffected humans; executives and scientists bankrupted by Zixuang-Akako, terrorists opposed to the Frontier Commission, exiled revolutionaries, and so forth. Its presence in the main system is virtually unknown, with their headquarters secreted away on Katmu, hidden from prying eyes by the deleterious effects of Eperu on astronomy. While Zixuang-Akako is formally the leading expert on the eccentricities of Eperu, the Regulate (An informal name given by those in the know – there is no formal name amongst its members) represents absolute authority. They hold an excellent understanding of the technologies enabled by Eperu. They are loosely ruled by a council made up of the largest groups present in their coalition, organized into cells.
Demographics: In the entire system, there exists 1.8 billion humans. While ancient intelligent life has definitely once lived on the two habitable planets, no living specimen nor any fossils have ever been found. Of the 1.8 billion people, approximately 950 million of them are directly employed by Zixuang-Akako or its subsidiaries. The Regulate, meanwhile, never numbers more than approximately ten thousand.
Planet Name and Description: There are two principle colonies in the Eperu system; Epinnu and Tuadeasc. Both are in the habitable zone of the anomalous star, and contain liquid water and relatively human-livable temperatures.
Epinnu is the largest and oldest of the two colonies, being relatively similar to earth with an average temperature of 11C. It has a gravity of only 1.2 times that of Earth, making it close to the home planet. Humanity lives across its surface, generally bunched into large cities surrounded by large stretches of rural land. It is about 1.3 times the size of earth, with slightly more landmass. The primary difference is in the lighting; the planet has never seen a bright day. It is only barely lit by Eperu, a dull purple tinge providing little to work with. Artificial lighting is rampant, and farming is done primarily by hydroponics. Of the 1.8 billion people in the system, approximately 1.1 billion of them live on Epinnu.
Tuadeasc, while also human-habitable, is far harsher. Its average temperature in the places inhabited by humans is roughly 30C. Its gravity is 1.1 times that of Earth, and it is only 1.1 times larger than Earth, but it garners even less light than Epinnu and it is divided into an intensely hot equatorial zone. It has a frozen north pole and a south pole dominated by cryogenic ice flats reaching near absolute zero at their worst temperatures. Land dominates its surface, making up 75 percent of the planet. The human population, about 700 million, is primarily rural and small settlements dot the planet.
There is a third, secret colony, far outside of the system. A rocky planet named Katmu, it is a frozen landscape with a gravity 1.4 times that of Earth, while it is 1.3 times larger than Earth. It is in a highly eccentric orbit, at its farthest 9AU from Eperu, while at its closest it is only 1.5AU away. It has only been discovered by The Regulate, who use it as a weapons stockpile and the headquarters for its ruling council. Its population varies year to year, but it has never held more than 7,000 people at once. It is perpetually dark, as no light reaches it from Eperu.
The final planet, while not formally a colony, is in a unique position. Alaktu, a small gas giant about 4 times the size of Earth, sits within the Eperu Exclusion Zone. It is highly ionized and radioactive, and is notable for the Gate Flux Tube, named for the positioning of the stellar gate inside of it. The space inside of the Gate Flux Tube is comparable to baseline space as seen in the Solar System and many other star systems.
The Gate Flux Tube, however, is not an entirely innocent affair; it is essentially a planet-sized particle accelerator, collecting particles from mass ejections by Eperu, and highly charging them in a giant loop that leads, eventually, into the north pole of Alaktu. The rest of the system is reachable through an obscure and largely unresearchable process involving the Gate Flux Tube, whereupon joining into the acceleration stream you can, in what has been theorized to be a violation of causality, eject yourself from the Exclusion Zone without ever coming in contact with the lethal anomalistic radiation that makes the Exclusion Zone deadly.
Failures to join with the stream are not unheard of, and are lethal – once the failure is known, it is too late to avoid crashing into the north pole of Alaktu and being lost amongst the gas giant. One can return to the Gate Flux Tube by way of a naturally-generated exit just outside the Exclusion Zone, a station built around it to facilitate such travel.
It takes approximately a day to travel to the exit once you have ejected, and the space between – nicknamed The Channel – is incredibly hostile to life. Long-term exposure to The Channel is guaranteed to drive a man into psychosis, with no shielding system known except to The Regulate.
Finally, the star of Eperu itself. It is an anomalous dwarf star, made up of exotic materials that resist analysis and whose origins are a mystery. The star is only 17 times the size of Earth, and the entire system could fit in the space between Earth and the Sun. Around it is a wide exclusion zone, where the radiation from Hev is so strong and dense that no shielding exists capable of preventing it from being instantly lethal, except to the Regulate. The radiation itself is not identifiable as any form of previously-discovered radiation, and requires special shielding to prevent exposure not provided by traditional radiation shielding methods. It is well known to interfere with electronics and causes ghosts to occur both in sensors and on electromagnetic frequencies used for transmissions.
Due to an effect that has yet to be adequately explained, it grows whiter the closer you get to it, and darker the further away you are. By the time you are at the edge of the system, it provides absolutely no light and cannot be seen, while at Alaktu, the closest most people can safely get to it, it is a mixture of white and purple. It is principally made up of a volatile material called HEV-P, short for High Energy Volatile Particulate, and it is nicknamed Hev in casual conversation.
The second known material is called HEDC, short for High Energy Disruptive Crystal. It is nicknamed Hedic in casual conversation. This material is rare, and was only discovered when collected from mass eruptions.
History: In the Eperu dating system, the human presence begins in 0 After Arrival, or 0AA. In an effort to keep par with the Solar System’s dating period, the year is split into twelve chunks, roughly correlating to one year on Tuadeasc, which equals about 29 Earth days. Each year on Tuadeasc symbolizes a month in the Eperu dating system. The exotic nature of Eperu threw off the Solar System’s astrological surveys, and what the colonists discovered on the other side of the gate was far from what they expected.
The gate malfunctioned and closed behind them, however. They were stuck in the Eperu System, with all venturing beyond the Gate Flux Tube dying near-instantly to the exotic radiations blanketing the Exclusion Zone. The colonists would have died in orbit of Alaktu, if it weren’t for a daredevil pilot who rode the exclusion zone in their survey ship and discovered the existence of the Channel.
The pilot, who survived both the trip out and the trip back in, reported to the colony ship the existence of two habitable worlds beyond the lethal wall of radiation, and explained to them how to enter the Channel. Votes were taken, and it was decided to take the risk. The colony ship plunged into the stream of the Flux Tube, and successfully made the transition into the Channel. A day later, when they emerged, they discovered what the pilot had seen.
Not only had they escaped the most lethal of the exotic radiation, they had found a veritable cornucopia of choice. Though the light was dim and unprotected exposure to Eperu was still dangerous, Epinnu could support earth life almost by default. Colonization was easy and the population rapidly boomed.
On Epinnu, they rapidly discovered the ruins of previous intelligent life on the planet; though, curiously, they never found so much as a single fossil of them. Cultural relics were few and far between, and never enough to paint a picture. The ruins are largely unexplored, with scientists incapable of cracking into the structures, who resist all conventional attempts at entry. Throughout the centuries, precious few discoveries have been made from ruins that could be accessed, primarily around the use of Eperu’s exotic materials.
Travel throughout the system remained dangerous; no amount of hardening could save computers from Eperu. Telescopes unfocused and radar systems returned only ghosts. In the early days, the violent mass ejections from Eperu killed hundreds in space. The colonists claimed the system was haunted, ghost transmissions endlessly bouncing about and being picked up on intercoms, radios, even televisions and music players.
The first corporation to create a ship capable of withstanding the mass ejections, flares, and solar storms was Helius Shipping Solutions; whose research and development department was far ahead of all its competitors. Before it could capitalize on this, however, its research was stolen and seemingly destroyed by the Akako High-Energy Research Labs, who entirely avoided implication in the matter.
Akako could not push their newfound advantage alone, devoid of Frontier Commission contracts and a steady base of business by which to fund massive expansions. In response, they turned to the Zixuang Trade & Contracting, a minor company who nonetheless had extensive government contracts and had built a reputation as a reliable bulk goods shipper despite the violence of Eperu. The benefits to both were obvious, and the merger came quickly. Soon enough, the new Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation was receiving massive Frontier Commission contracts in the shipbuilding industry, alongside the shipping and resource extraction industries.
Catapulted to a sudden position of dominance, the corporation moved to secure its holdings; embarking on a campaign of government lobbying and hostile takeovers of competing corporations. Year by year, their growth outpaced all expectations, and any hope of the Frontier Commission stepping in to prevent a monopoly were dashed with every new contract farmed out to the corporation.
When growth finally slowed, the damage was done. In less than a century, a new megacorporation was born, employing half the population of the system. It was too late for the Frontier Commission to break them up, as the resultant economic collapse would have destroyed the colonies.
Helius Shipping Solutions, meanwhile, had not been idle. In the years after the theft of their research, they had been driven bankrupt by the Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation. Their employees did not fold into other corporations, however, and they retained the genius staff that first led to the breakthrough. Paid under the table and operating in secret, using criminal activity to fund their research, they were able to outpace the vast bulk of the Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation.
Their first major discovery was the planet of Katmu; though in comparison to the distances in the Solar System it flew close to Eperu and should have been simple to discover, the havoc wreaked on sensor systems by Eperu rendered it entirely invisible to the colony at large. With vast leaps and bounds made in protecting sensors from the exotic radiation, they could slowly move equipment to Katmu reliably.
Though they maintained their criminal empire, the headquarters of the organization, never formally given a name by the former Helius employees, remained in total secrecy upon Katmu. Research only bloomed further upon Katmu, and the informally-named Regulate grew centuries ahead of the rest of the system in technology.
Over the years humanity spread out among the system, forming colonies on Tuadeasc and in space. The dominance of Zixuang-Akako was maintained, and the Regulate grew in the shadows, commissioning acts of terror and running the criminal underworld across the system. In the modern day, the space around Alaktu is primarily occupied by automated mining rigs and channel observatories.
Culture and Society: The society of the Eperu System is remarkably fatalistic, having been built from the ground up around a star hostile to all life. Caught in the claws of megacorporations, the system is split between collectivist sympathies and individualistic sentiments. Conflict between the two visions for the future of Eperu are not uncommon. Poverty is rampant and grapples with the existence of a massive specialist middle class.
Thanks to the Regulate, crime is rampant and policing is heavy. There exist slums and upper-class neighborhoods, and everything between. Drugs are common on the streets and in the poorest places, gangs practically run the show. Meanwhile, above, the spacers face death daily as the star does its best to kill them. Debris fields are common and endless sensor ghosts and lost transmissions interrupt daily life constantly.
The corporations are cold and disconnected from humanity. Though the system at large has grown used to it, the ways corporations communicate and operate can be best described as unnerving.
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Governance and Politics: While in theory the Frontier Commission ensures a regulated capitalist market and democracy, in practice Zixuang-Akako has made use of regulatory capture for centuries. Election districts are gerrymandered and lobbyists hold immense power in the Frontier Congress. The dominant party is kept in power by Zixuang-Akako money, while the opposition fails to catch up purely on grassroots organization.
There are 1,224 representatives in the Frontier Congress, from across the populated space stations and colonies. The tiebreaker is held by the Governor of the Frontier Commission, a for-life position of executive power put into place by a vote of the Frontier Congress. The primary political party is called the Shadow Coalition. Despite the sinister name, it is a moderate party whose primary contribution to politics is supporting corporate power. It holds 60 percent of the Frontier Congress, a firm lead over their opponents. The next largest party is the Eperu Labor Party, which makes up 25 percent of the Frontier Congress. The rest of the Frontier Congress is made up of a patchwork of minor parties who tend to form coalitions with the Eperu Labor Party.
Technology Overview: Technology as a whole has gotten significantly more primitive, but also significantly more reliable. What fails regularly in Eperu is virtually indestructible outside of Eperu. Computer systems are blocky beasts utilizing analog circuits and magnetic tapes, but are hardened against interference both environmental and man-made to a degree which renders electronic warfare virtually obsolete.
Sensors are similar; they are extremely short-range compared to the sensors used by any other nation, but within their range they are by far the best-in-class, capable of detecting anything when not struggling to fight the interference of Eperu.
Shields are minimal and relegated to navigational only, but ships carry thick and extensive armor, strengthened considerably by the introduction of Eperu’s exotic materials to the alloying process. Heavy and unwieldy, they nonetheless represent extremely powerful armor. Outside of experimental weapons, armament is dead-simple to minimize interference; machine guns and large-bore cannons are common.
There are a great number of experimental technologies based on exotic materials gathered from Eperu:
The first discovered is the neural interface. By using a carefully processed and liquified version of Hev, it is possible to sustain a simple brain outside of the body and moreover connect it to computer networks. The most frequent use of this technology is extracting livestock brains to be reprogrammed into simplistic AIs to run automated platforms. Due to the fact they are not electronic, they are significantly more capable of weathering Eperu unharmed, and thus are used and prized for their reliability.
The second discovered use is short-range teleportation. Among the materials gathered from Eperu are exotic crystals of an even further unknown material nicknamed Hedic. When properly carved with sigils, it is possible to reroute matter through them and launch that matter to a different location instantly. The process is incredibly difficult and dangerous; improper machining of the crystal can cause a variety of terrible effects, and improper calculations can teleport people into solid rock, far in the air, in distant space, or cause them to flat out vanish. The Regulate has mastered this technology on the small scale, but large-scale efforts elude them and Zixuang-Akako’s use of teleportation remains entirely experimental.
The third discovered use is from the alien ruins dotting the planets of the system. Within these ruins incredibly dense crystals have been discovered, theorized to come from the core of Eperu, which when agitated can produce endless volatiles for use in power reactors and thrusters. Once agitated, it is impossible to stop the reaction, though it can be moderated with cooling. Should cooling fail, the crystal will catastrophically delaminate and cause an explosion equivalent to 400 megatons of TNT. However, the most deadly is the wave of exotic radiation, resembling that which bombards the Exclusion Zone. This wave can kill for hundreds of miles before dying out. These reactors are rare and generally installed into isolated research stations.
Hev has also made a great number of minor advancements in dozens of different fields.
There are also a great number of potential side effects.
The first and most important thing to note is Hev is incredibly volatile in its natural state, and in some processed states. It burns hotter and longer than any other material known, and is far too unstable to rely on. Processes that rely on using the volatility of Hev are powerful but incredibly dangerous, and it is not unheard of for these processes to result in casualties. Hev is also deeply toxic, too much exposure leading to painful and irrecoverable breakdowns of the body. Long-term exposure has a similar deleterious mental effect to lead.
A particularly famous disease from Hedic is called “The Whiskers”, where attempting to teleport with improperly machined crystals or handling them unprotected in any form can cause thin metallic whiskers to begin growing throughout the body. These whiskers spread like cancer, and slowly and painfully slice the person apart. There is no cure, and touching the whiskers can cause another person to contract the disease as well. The most obvious indicator is when they sprout from the body, causing bleeding and making the victim appear as though they have been stabbed by millions of tiny needles.
Another disease can be contracted by Hev, though relatively unknown to the public. Certain levels and methods of exposure can cause a person to endlessly grow, for lack of a better term. They begin to sprout cancerous tumors that quickly begin expanding. Sustained by the toxins in their blood, they are kept alive as these tumors rupture their old body and they can spread miles before the growth stops. Deep in space, covered up by Zixuang-Akako, are research stations entirely overtaken by these cancerous growths. Attempts to kill them have largely failed, as they are capable of rapid healing.
Channel Sickness is the name given to overexposure to the Channel. The victim undergoes a complete and total violent psychosis, suffering delusions they take out on anybody or anything in sight. They babble the entire time, though no particular meaning has ever been extracted from what a victim says. Food and water is refused, and so without deep medical care for the rest of their lives they are doomed to starve or dehydrate to death, if they are not killed more violently first.
Military Overview: Military forces are largely limited to garrison forces and small naval patrols. With little outright need for military power, there are no capital ships nor is Eperu prepared to fight a proper military. The Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation maintains an above-the-board Asset Protection Division, which acts as private security for their operations and maintains its own naval patrols independent of the Frontier Commission. Below-the-board, Zixuang-Akako has the Asset Defense Team, a division that acts essentially as a deathsquad alongside espionage duties. They maintain a number of black sites across the system, and are used whenever Zixuang-Akako needs to make a problem disappear silently and with extreme violence.
Frapnog had been a happy manbjarsk. And he liked to think that he had been a good manbjarsk too.
Well, at least a decent one.
He had wandered the moorlands in a haze of food-related daydreams and had oft glorified now the beet-beer and now the blackberry wine on which he was frequently sloshed. His life, for all the terrible predators that stalked the air (horseflies) and heath (snakes) and puddles (also snakes), was a tuneless hum of docile stupidity. When he hungered, he ate. When he wished after company, his wives shouted him out of the den and told him to come back with something to eat for them too, you lazy git. When work called, he answered it with an idle grunt - none slacked like Frapnog, none belched like him, none chewed their nails, none ground their teeth against the sighing bark like Frapnog when he was bored. All who beheld him knew that he was a mere workman, and certainly not an artisan, a sculptor, or a worshipper. When Frapnog stood he towered above all other bjarska, provided they were below the age of ten, when he moved through a group they generally shoved him out again and told him to make something of himself. And when Frapnog wooed a lassiebjarsk… well, he’d never had any luck with that.
He was a happy bjarsk, was Frapnog, a bjarsk to hide from one’s mother-in-law in rivers with, a bjarsk to down the booze, a bjarsk to laugh at bad jokes for too long beside. He was a decent bjarsk. An okay bjarsk. A not-quite-average bjarsk, but, you know, a pretty much alright bjarsk, generally.
But when he lay, sprawled, bloodied, and alone in an awkward heap with his mouth open and his tongue out, laid out like a mouldy old pelt in the mud of a ditch where he’d been digging clay, Frapnog was not a happy bjarsk or even a conscious bjarsk. He was still Frapnog, obviously. He’d never be anything more than Frapnog. But now, and ever more, he was just a little bit less.
Earlier…
“Git! Get going! Don’t come back or you’ll be sleeping on the floor! Go mooch your beet-beer from some other poor wife!”
Frapnog knew he knew better than his wives, as he was smacked repeatedly with a broom on the behind. So what if he had stumbled face-first into the jar shelf, smashing all of the jars? So what if he had proceeded to then spill his wife’s beet-beer? It was his beet-beer to begin with, and she was just the nagging wife drinking it all! Her job to brew it, his job to drink it!
“I’ll show them,” he mused to no-one in particular, let alone himself, “I’ll get a new wife, with better beet-beer! She’ll kill all the snakes and always have time for me! All my wives will be sorry when they realize what they’re missing out on!” He considered the great opportunities opened by motivating himself to get a better wife, and he decided in but a moment that the first great opportunity he would take advantage of would be the mooching of more beet-beer.
First, new cups were needed; he may have broken all the cups, but his wives probably made him do it. Just another way their nagging sabotaged him. It was time for his monthly hour of work; Frapnog needed more cups if he were to have more beet-beer. With a patter down to the creek, he found a nice patch of clay to dig up. As far as he remembered, he could just shape the clay and have a cup, right? Surely there was no other step to the process.
It was operating under such delusions that Frapnog began to diligently dig up a clay trench, for as hard as it was possible for the Bjarska to actually work. The fact that any other Bjarska, even by their standards, would call it nothing more than a lazy, drunken stupor meant absolutely nothing to Frapnog. Unfortunately, this drunken stupor he classified as hard work also meant that he was completely unaware.
The situation was not improved by the sharp crack on the back of Frapnog’s head. He was still completely unaware, but in an entirely different meaning of the phrase.
Biluda, for their credit, was not entirely aware either; their mind was in a haze, hunger shooting through their mind and body with a kind of desperation only afforded to the truly addicted. The world was red, their peripheral vision nonexistent as they accosted the lone Bjarska before them. Their gloves were moonrock, much tougher than they looked; enough to, with a good swing, knock someone out cold without much effort. Their hand was on the back of the Bjarska’s head before the body had even hit the ground.
Without the aid of a god, Biluda found it significantly harder to sort through the Bjarska’s memories, and the blinding hunger rippling through their system made it hard to resist simply eating whatever they found. But, the Kynikos was not entirely incapable of self-control, and so avoided the temptations until they had found what they were looking for; both the grasp of language and the memory of being hit in the back of the head.
With luck, the others would simply believe Frapnog had passed out in a drunken stupor, and blamed what was missing on that fact alone. Further luck, Biluda hoped, would keep them from making any connection with their own grasp of the Bjarskan language. The hunger subsided as the blue glow emerged from under Biluda’s hand, relief flooding through their system as they succumbed to their addiction.
The memories were tough, difficult to digest. Buried under a lifetime of alcoholism and limited comprehension. They did not go down easily, and the ache and aftertaste would not leave for some time. Nonetheless, Biluda’s hunger was sated, and with a chuff of disgust, they stood and left Frapnog to wake in his own time. It was time to test their grasp of the language they had just subsumed, and for that they needed a conscious Bjarsk.
For all his many, many, many (many) flaws, Frapnog had secured a modest territory over his life, a concretion born in decades of brawling and boozy camaraderie. The only Bjarska nearby for now were his wives and kits. Biluda struck out instead for the far side of the treeless little ridge that was the most solid of Frapnog’s boundaries, and constituted a much bigger obstacle for a muskrat than for the long-legged likes of themself. From there they could spot a little bog. That, of course, was where the next den would be.
Kolp was foraging in the stream feeding his bog when Biluda approached, and had only begun to pry open his little river-clams when he noticed the figure. He was one of the toughs who had come to storm the alien on a frightened Trook’s behalf, and news of Biluda’s absolution by the Sun-Headed Giant had reached him quickly. This was all easy for Biluda to intuit, because they were able to get fairly close without getting shouted at.
Kolp grunted at Biluda, pushing his clams to the far side of the rock they sat on. The body language coincided perfectly with the fresh knowledge in Biluda’s head: “Get yer own, stranger. It’s my supper, this is.”
Biluda kneeled over to reach Kolp’s height, testing their newfound knowledge of the language, “I don’t eat anyways,” they squeaked, their voice scratchy and obviously not ideal for the Bjarskan’s speech, “I figured out your language, and would like to know who I should go to who can speak for everyone here,” a pause, “other than the guardian in the cave.”
The rodent cocked his head in between smacking his lips over the clam meat, glancing left and right and back up at Biluda, looking at them like he might look at a spotted pink alligator. For a moment it looked like all progress had been lost. It was not so. Biluda had simply come to that second great hill of miscomprehension: cultural barriers.
“Well,” Kolp began, “There’s the old bloke Obgob who speaks for Tibbuh and Higg and also his own three sons, except his second son, and Cheb and Gloknik also have friends on the other side of Whistleberry Hill, but Cheb will only listen if you’re on Trook’s good side, and he doesn’t like boggies like meself so you’ll count me out. Wartel has friends in the old Svietla clan but these days they’re so mixed up with Lubov that it’s really an Upper Lubov and Lower Lubov business, except with the Western Lubov who will clan up for anyone who isn’t a Mitsa, unless your name is Yeek, Ghortum, Flobba, Noit or Ubno. If you go all the way up the heath streams to the Chewing Wood you’ll meet Jekka and if you can help him piss off Bikbok then he’ll send a few of the Chewing goons up to do whatever, but there’s a good chance one of them is Wab, who gets Peggel all gloomy, and that’ll turn off Obgob. Then there’s just Turmpo and Wunggolp and they’re both complete cockheads now that Uffy’s dead, but if you kill one the other will probably straighten up once he’s married Gognarp, granted Chebb approves- not Cheb, Chebb, Flobba’s mate’s ex-nephew-in-law. Pretty simple, really.” He slurped out the meat from another clam.
The Kynikos buried their head in their hands in frustration as the explanation wore on, groaning out, once Kolp was finally complete, “I will take that as a firm no to my question.” A pause, then Biluda asked their followup question, their voice still scratchy though considerably more annoyed, “Okay, is there any easy way to gather every one of you close enough for me to speak to all at once?”
“Why, men’s night, of course.” Kolp reply was swift and without hesitation. “First day of the new moon is men’s night. You bring your men’s night jar and you fill it with your men’s night piss, and then we all get pissed up and discuss men’s things. And in the morning our wives drag us home if we’re not dead.”
There was no movement from Biluda for a long while. When they did opt to speak, it was with a defeated tone, “And I take it you will all be pissed long before you gather, correct?” Their mask emerged from their hands as they glanced at Kolp, already cringing as though they knew the answer.
“Well, mostly in summer,” Kolp shrugged, swiftly polishing the last of the greasy mud-animals and looking friendlier now. “Summer comes, we drink to cool down. Winter comes, we drink to warm up. Nights get right proper nippy out here in the moor, blimey. You ever feel cold under that big white blanket? Hope it’s thicker than it looks, or you ain’t enjoying the next three months, I tell you that much.”
The Kynikos stood up, stepping off the rock – they were clearly making a notable effort to avoid the mud – they responded, “Well, I do hope you will be sober at the gathering. I have a proposition to make, and I will make it at the gathering to all of you at once.”
Kolp laughed a deep, hearty laugh (more of a cackling hiss if you weren’t familiar with rodent vocal range). “Really? Bring plenty of piss, stranger, I look forward to it. Tell you what, I might even introduce you. You happen to have a name?”
“Biluda,” the Kynikos answered dryly, continuing to walk away as they continued, “I will see you all at the gathering.”
Winter had not yet come. Small difference that made, in this country where there was, by and large, rain and not snow, fog and not cloud, and not enough trees to pile up a single good heap of leaves. But it did get cold, bitterly cold. And it was getting colder.
The bjarska were huddled together in groups from four to about twelve, facing inwards to the peat fires, their fuzzy brown backs turned to the breeze. Among them were their men’s jars (which were indistinguishable from any other jars, but were for men) and the various snacks they had brought to be their dinner. There was a Speaking Rock, which soaked up sunlight readily and thus, in the colder months, became the Sleeping Rock. There was also a low and marshy Speaking Puddle, which was cool and cold year-round, and thus became the summertime Sleeping Puddle. The reason for this was simple: no one wanted to interrupt the boozing to hear anyone prattle on too long without a bloody good reason, so if a bold muskrat wanted to speak, he would have to do so with his feet roasting hot- or, as the season changed, freezing cold.
Biluda, with feet of moon and leather, was at a distinct advantage.
“Shut ya gobs and open yer ears, you pests!” Kolp, who’d promised not to arrive intoxicated, staggered a bit as he clacked together his mug and pot. It didn’t make much of a difference: they were all staring at the newcomer anyway. “My long friend has words for all of youse!”
Cold blue eyes shimmered from behind Biluda’s mask. Their voice rang out, harshly squeaking as it protested the language, “I am a stranger, new to this land; I bring new ideas and new methods! I have defied one god and been lavished with gifts by another; I have visited the Shattered Gem that hangs above us!”
They paused, to sweep across the crowd, letting their boasts sink in before they continued, “I do not plan to stop until I have discovered all creation has to offer! In time, I will march upon the Imperial Sun in the name of glory! Such a journey is step-by-step, and within you lies my next step.”
Their eyes became unfocused, gazing to the far distance. “Beyond the horizon lies your enemies numerous. Therein lies my offer; should you work to my designs, I will give you armament unimaginable. Hammers that never wear down, knives that never chip. I will give you axes that hew through stone just as easily as wood. I will give you armor that reflects all blows.”
Once more their gaze sharpened in on the crowd, “Do you understand the magnitude of what I offer? Yours will be the envy of all. None could stand against you should you agree.”
A bog-cricket chirruped. Someone belched. A faint voice mumbled, ‘what’s a horizon?’
Then some dull-eyed tough took a deep swig, cracked a twig between his teeth, knocked out his nearest friend with the jar and bellowed: “HAMMERS?”
Yes, hammers! Rock-on-a-stick! Those things! Within seconds, the crowd was roaring with approval, confusion, and laughter, or maybe just roaring in general. Kolp patted Biluda’s shin with a grubby claw and yelled something incomprehensible before staggering out of the ice-cold water of the Speaking Puddle.
BIluda brought their hand up to their mask, groaning in annoyance as the Bjarska firmly refused to comprehend anything more than the simplest of concepts. They brought their boot up, slamming it back down with a heady force into the bottom of the puddle, splashing ice-cold water across the gathering. There was no moonlight to glitter over the cold droplets, and the front row was caught square in the face in the dark, washing the cheers into loud squeaks and grunts and mutters of displeasure. A shout followed, “I will give you instructions, and you will listen!”
At the very suggestion of deference, a good third of the assembled manbjarska turned their backs and went back to their warm peat-fires, but most of the rest held back the worst of their noise and banter with a visibly fragile patience. Another tough, one with perhaps a trickle more than raw animal instinct in his eyes, spoke up. “Aye, we know hammers, stranger. What’s say you should know’em any better?”
Biluda locked their blue, glowing eyes upon the Bjarska who had made the challenge, and outstretched a hand to their side as they said, “Bring me a hammer. I will show you the weaknesses of your hammer.” Once they felt a hammer placed in their gloved hand, they continued, “Your handle is untreated, vulnerable to rot; your stone is unbalanced, and offers insufficient integrity for its weight. The binding is weak and unsuited for impacts. Its limits are easy to find.”
They slammed the hammer into their own chest with a sudden ferocity. A snap and a heady crack filled the air as the stick that moonlighted as a handle broke in half, the stone recoiling off onto the ground in five pieces. There was not so much as a dent on the moon-white frame of Biluda. They looked down at the stick, then to the rock and its pieces, saying in a contemptuous tone, “Behold, the great knowledge of hammers your people possess. Walk a day to the north, and you will find hammers ten times as strong. Sail the sea, a hundred times. Travel to the land of my birth, a thousand times.”
And then there was silence.
Someone pulled a wad of smouldering peat out from one of the fire-circles, and relit it at the side of the puddle with a flint. The light was orange and weak, and reflected a dozen pairs of black rodent eyes as they stared at the shattered schist in the water, at the smooth body of the alien newcomer. There were those they would not fight, their wives, their towering judge, but never before a whisper of something they could not fight. This wouldn’t do. No, this would not do at all.
The broken stick splashed into the puddle next to the broken head of the Bjarskan hammer. Biluda’s index finger sought out the one who had originally issued the challenge, saying with a sense of finality, “So, tell me more about how you do not need my hammers. I could kill you all, and there would be nothing you could do to harm me. I could kill your guardian, with minimal effort. I am not unique, I am not a particularly powerful warrior. All around your moor, there are countless more like me.”
Their hand went down, and they took a long look at each Bjarsk as they spoke, “Do my bidding, and I will give you the weapons and armor you need to compete. Do not, and I will move on, leave you to your inevitable deaths when the larger world grows weary of your existence.”
The rodents bristled, doubtful, insulted, aware of the condescension, and yet still animated by the words in their ears and sight in their hungry night eyes. No longer were they blind to the world beyond the sea, from which Arska himself had been carried by the Singing Maker in the days of creation, the world beyond the little moor that was Bjarskaland. The shell had been broken. Vast dreams of strange moons were unfolding before them.
“Drink with us, then,” croaked an elder, a hoary and battered old thing for which the youths parted like reeds as he staggered forth, leaning on the bone of a muskox. He must have been forty years old, or even older. “Drink in the house of Bjarskaland, where the stars are our roof. Drink with the men of the bog. Tell us your name. Be a stranger no more.” In his claw he offered a cup.
“I am the erstwhile prodigy of the Academician, doom-driven by the Shattered Gem above.” The cup was a simple creation, naught more than crudely-shaped clay. Bumpy and unimaginative. In the hands of the moon-white, elegantly decorated Kynikos, nothing could be more out of place. Such to commemorate an odd alliance of two opposites. With grace, the simple vessel was lifted, the liquids within vanishing into the mask, and finally, the declaration, “I am Biluda, aspect of Yudaiel.”
Many laughed. Some scoffed, even. It was a short laugh, and faded quickly. The magic of those words was undeniable, and their every consonant a glimpse of realms afar. The ocean of civilisation roared silently before them, waiting for a raft.
Our story begins with Frapnog, who reminds us in some ways of more noble rodents but is otherwise a wonderful example of Bjarska values. Frapnog falls into a ditch and promptly has his knowledge of language stolen by our old friend Biluda, the rogue Kynikos blessed(?) by Yudaiel. This transaction seems to benefit both of them.
Having acquired the ability to squeak, squeal, hiss and grunt like a good bog rodent, Biluda soon makes contact with more sober parties, only to find that muskrats aren’t necessarily more lucid when you can understand them. They try to pull a typical ‘take me to your leader’ and end up with an invitation to Muskrat Men’s Night.
Men’s Night goes swimmingly. Biluda is definitely the weirdest one in the room and treated with some suspicion and derision, but their advanced material knowledge and strength helps them to quickly win over a significant portion of the local bjarska males. With fear of foreign powers and the promise of new tools and weapons fresh in their ears, they are ready to embark on a Muskrat Manhattan Project.
Biluda - 8 Spirit +1: Presence in Post +1: Main Character of Post +3: Post Length Biluda - 13 Spirit
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