Bay 12 Games Forum

By the stars above and below, I am very much interested in this, though I'm a tad short on the Character /fantasy writing as I am in other suites, PTW.

Post 025: The Spark.

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To say that the Chief Engineer was surprised when his ears went deaf from a loud “pop”, the captain's head just straight up disappearing, and the console in front of him along with one of his hands following the captain's “footsteps” would probably be the understatement of all time. Not only soiling his pants and falling unconscious from shock at the same time, many other bridge staff members exclaimed with the same level of surprise. Pandamonium and six whole hours of damage control later, it was concluded that the ship was functional enough to drop the colonial supply off, which was remarkably unharmed from the entire ordeal and send a warp capable vessel to tell earth of the situation. The Chief Engineer himself would later be officially be crowned as acting captain, although he was third in line, the second in line was gibbering madly to himself after being splashed with a necks worth of blood from the dead captain. The entire ship was in full damage control mode, every single part checked, rechecked and double checked again for any flaws or problem, and it was to be noted that the warp drive was practically smoking with how much damage it had. It took two whole days of frantic repair to the support structure of the colonial ship before the actual colonial part of the ship could be dropped off, which was to be exact, essentially a starbase. A Starbase filled to the brim with space-atmospheric vehicles, hydroponic farms, and rows upon rows of cryo-pods, which thankfully, were not as affected by the strange de-warp effect as the rest of the ship, mostly by luck it appears. It would be months before they would all be unfrozen, but they couldn’t all unfreeze or they’d starve in just a month's time, the first harvests had to be collected and the base had to be unfurled wholly before every colonial could be woken up.

Humanity would prevail just as they always had.

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Fleet Lords log, First Explorator Fleet of the Unitarian Empire
2128 AD, GS 25 September 28

We lost another corvette today. A fuel line failure caused a cascading explosion in its reactor, a one in a million chance. All hands lost. The Empress damned fleet command won’t let us return back for repairs, and already a third of my fleet is running ragged for this journey. For whatever reason, I feel as if we are being watched, and it is not a pleasant feeling. I will write another fleet log, as something important has just interrupted my musings, It better not be disappointing or heads will roll.

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Yaerian Exploratory Vessel “Stardew Vast”
2128 AD, GS 25 September 28

Captain, Sir.

Yes?

The scanner array just detected a warp arrival.

Are you sure?

Yes, scans indicate ti is artificial in nature, ship size is roughly the same size as our standard faster than light probe.

Where?

Right up to our hull, sir. One tenth of a light year out, it’s closing.

Power up the shields, have the Navigators ready in case we have to jump the stars out of here.

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The Probes internal workings were deceptively simple from a big picture.

If it detected anything that was not normal, with its vast arrays of sensors and databases, it would put a signal to the fleet that deployed it to come over.

When it had jumped practically on top of the Stardew vast, its vast sensors detecting the heat radiating off the engines, the reactor, and other parts, along with several other signals, it knew it had discovered an alien life of some form, and its beacon was activated.

Its weapons banks didn’t have to be used either.

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Who fired first? The Yaerians, or the Unitarians?


Edit: Grammer

C. They called themselves "Freedom Fighters", but they were nothing more than bandits.

Of the four interstellar ships built in the shipyards of Colony, three were war vessels, and only one was bigger than a frigate. these ships were the pride and joy of Humanities last colony, and all three military vessels were destroyed in a protracted combat between the Freedomfighters. they demanded our resources like rats to a corpse, and we denied them. We destroyed their first force, but the two frigates were completely shattered, the cruiser committed to Space-Hulk status, and the dreadnaughts shields rendered down to 80% by the end of the battle. It became a battle of cat and mouse, as the dreadnaught desperately had to loose the following war fleet that was committed shortly, and not to reveal the location of the colony. It took two years for the Dreadnaught to return home, it's hull scorched and warn. They were still out there, however.

A. Isolation was the name of the game, we did not let anyone in or out of the system, even the Alien ship, and their friends.
B. A great migration of the aliens who had given us the gift of the warp drive had come, and virtually overnight our population tripled, they believed we would rule and do better then anyone else could.
C. They found us, and we fought a desperate guerilla war, Man versus man. our warriors were truly honed during that time, both on ground, in the orbital defense installations and in the Dreadnaught.

the Chaos of Random.Org chooses
C

We spoke long and hard with the aliens holding a human ship. they gave us much in tactical information, posbilities for the future and salvage potential.

And then another came. in one, signle warship which had half the size of the Human derelict, and they spoke.

we couldn't trust the other. they held motives we couldn't trust for, and wanted things from the future we could not give.. they sounded disappointed before their ships left.

It took three months for the first exploration ship of our own to be created. It took just two weeks for the first unknowable object to be found.

click link for approximate picture. ((massive!))

It was a massive warship, later in design than the previous ship that was found. the death of its crew by atmospheric loss had reactor failure had caused the ship to be forgotten, until now. with a township by the friendly ones, the ship was moved to the Colony, and in just a couple weeks, it was active once again, it's new crew learning its functions through the basic AI it held onboard.

A. The Other held hate and soon struck back.
B. The purists found us.
C. A faction of Humanity, deadened and piratical fought us. They were no match for us.
D. We prepared. we waited.

They landed, and you met face to face. They were strange, strange creatures. the closest you would call them was cephalopods turned anthropomorphic. You couldn't really handle how strange they were, but the leader and diplomats persevered anyways. You idly note how some Earthborn would probably have found them mysterious and would've probably considered Xenophilia.

They spoke of massive factories, even bigger ships. all of them automated, all of them dormant, waiting for a human touch. an aliens couldn't do as Mans tools were meant for man alone at the time. These would be a start, as such tools would most likely allow the colony to survive whatever minor fleets it would come by to exterminate them again. Mankind on the colony had experienced a population boom, having reached a full two million. Synthetic workers were rapidly becoming commonplace. Your workforce was rapidly divided between highly trained soldiers, trained from birth, or scientists, engineers, and men of the mind. Manual labor was done by criminals, the forgotten and the synthetics, mainly synthetics. It was easier to build a machine then to raise a person for the duty, most of the time.

A. The first skirmishes were done with humanities finest in front, each killing a horde before falling.
B. Massive synthetic war machines dominated the battlefield, before their ravenous barrels destroying entire regiments before falling.
C. Mankind's legacy was realized. a Massive dreadnaught had been awoken, and its assistance had resulted in several successes in the battles among the stars.
D. Another empire, with a agenda of its own, saw humanity and offered its assistance in return for help in cracking the artifacts of Humanities legacy.

((I googled it, nice.))

Post 024: Nuclear

When the Empress of the very empire itself went limp, discharge of psionic power going off and convulsing, the palace guards, Guardians and Guardians only, moved to action immediately. The Warlord that was immediately close to the Empress had been put down almost immediately with three plasma bolts. The Empress was carried to a medical area of the palace, and the doctors did the best they could before assistance arrived.

Elsewhere, a massive, unknowingly powerful blast of energy had originated from the Great Black. The Great Black was a space hundred of light years in the area near the borders of the Unitarian Empire, where any ship that entered had simply vanished. There was a standing Unitarian blockade present at nearly all times to prevent any tomfoolery directed at the black, which was the reason why the Unitarian knew so quickly that something “transdimensional” had happened. The FTL sensors of each and every ship in every single patrol near the Great Black that caused overloads and in some cases caused the warp drives present on their ships to detonate and wipe the vessel's existence completely.

The palace Guardians of the Unitarian Empire take their honorable position seriously, to the point where many have been killed on the mere suspicion of being an assassin.  When the Empress herself falls off the Psion throne unconscious and convulsing,  they would most definitely react by killing the Brug who was bowing down to her and then rushing her to the royal hospital. The most advanced treatment available was put to her and the best doctors could only describe it as some sort of energetic overload. Elsewhere, technicians galaxy wide would report that communications were briefly scrambled for two whole minutes, and in some cases, people could look up to the sky and see a section of it glow as bright as the sun they were orbiting. Unbeknownst to anyone at all, an entire section of the galaxy had just appeared where the biggest curiosity of the millennia had been, the Great Black. Light years of space where any ship that came in simply vanished.  There was a standing Unitarian blockade present at nearly all times to prevent any tomfoolery directed at the Black.  The FTL sensors of each and every ship in every single patrol around the Great Black simultaneously received such a massive signal that every single sensor bulb burned out, and even a few broke apart as their warp drives exploded from the intensity of the feedback from the massive FTL energy waves.

It took three days for a response and exploratory fleet to be organized.

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On this day, we remember the fallen. On this day, we remember those who sacrificed their lives, everything they ever lived for. They sacrificed their lives for their brothers, as well as their fellow Yaerian. However we cannot do good with just one ceremony, so we will remember the final, forbearing strike that had ultimately won the war, today.  Terrigil Nahtilius and his squadron of the Quaestix’Pruskium-Kaluchian Division. Among their missions of deploying counter-bio weapons and mass defense against the Gravemind, they among the crew of the Bayleems voyages had all died to deploy the anti-matter ordinance that destroyed the Graveminds… mind.

((I regret not explicitly stating who Nahtilius was, but it gave me some damn good ideas for further division names.))

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Colonial Vessel Theia
Command and Control Center,
2128 AD, GS 25 September 18th

Orlando stared in thought at the intercom. The ship ran relatively poorly during the trip through the warp.  Far too many accidents then what should’ve happened then what should’ve been, and six men and women lost their lives because of it. All he hoped was that the trip would be worth it. He’d seen pictures of the supposed “new earth” and was surprised. A perfect world for human habitation, even down to gravity and atmospheric pressure. Even the whole “basic” xenological life existed, and from the science vessels reports, completely compatible with human life for habitation and apparently eating. At some point, he began to think that something else was at play here and there, and then decided to look into why the hell this vessel was so close to failing this entire month. He chalked it up to the theory about a too big of a vessel in the warp, the engineer who told him that sounded like he actually put research into the damn thing unlike the rest of the chief staff aboard this damn vessel, but now it’s all past that. In just thirty seconds, he will talk into that intercom, and then order the chief engineer to get the ship out of warp, right smack dab in front of Nexus, “the perfect new world.” Pulling out a Personal Data Assistant, he began to play a little game to pass the time, as he really didn’t have much to do, he already had the words that he was going to say in mind. Just as he put the PDA away, the console dinged, and he ordered the crew for the third time that a de-warp was going to occur, all hands on deck, etcetera etcetera, and turned to the Chief engineer.

“Disengage the warp drive and then let us get the drinks out.”

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The Grand Unitarian Fleet Academy, Fleet knowledge 101
Standardized lecture 024

“One of the most fascinating and perilous parts of using Jump drives is the “Sphere-null” effect.  If a leap is made and a big enough ship goes too fast for its motivator to handle, the ship will be affected by the Sphere-Null. When it stops, some of the matter inside the ship either doesn't stop all the way or stops a little bit later. The most obvious sign that your ship has been affected by the Sphere-Null effect is that there are perfectly spherical holes where hull and people should’ve been, or the ship is entirely wrecked. The Sphere-null effect has been the death of many captains who pushed their drive over the limit over the time of the Empire and has almost dissuaded the use of Jumping entirely since it only particularly affected ships larger than a frigate. However, a modern, well-built motivator designed for the tonnage and speed the vessel is expected to travel will never be affected by Sphere-Null, unless any single part among the thousands in the warp drive gets damaged, either by combat, sabotage or the lack of maintenance. This is why the boots are always tasked to guard the room where the drive is stationed. This is why you cannot push the drive past it’s well tested and hardcoded limits, without inviting the ruinous powers of Sphere-Null. Now, is there any questions?

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HYPERWAVE TRANSMISSION DETECTED
RETICULATING
…
…
…
OPERATION PARAMETERS UPDATED.

ACTIVATING JUMP DRIVES
 DESTINATION “GREAT BLACK”

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Did the probe find the Yaerian Republic, or did the Yaerian Republic find the Probe?

Edited for clarification.

AC

It was a terrible, terrifying few minutes when the first signals of foreign origin came to be. The colonists were put in bunkers while the Marines armed up. The glorious leader was one of the first to hear it's message.

A. "Help us."
B. "Join us."
C. "Be quiet."
D. "Where are the others?"
E. Something else?

Bump.

There was once a man named steve. He had two firearms. When the invaders came and killed his family, he manages to kill two of them before dying to a plasma bolt to his abdomen. It was not a pleasant death.