NationStates Jolt Archive

On top of one of the more desolate mountains in the land of (formerly) Harmonia was an odd sight...
A fully equipped galleon, yes, a Tall Ship, complete with rigging and sails, sat atop the peak as if this was perfectly normal. The flag of Harmonia Mortus flew slightly proudly, due to a lack of wind.
Around and on the ship a number of warlocks chanted. The area was surrounded by an octirion glow (A sort of purplish-green only visible to those with magical talent) and the ship...took off.
After a while it breached the atmosphere and took up a lazy, low orbit. After a while it moved off a little, and bit by bit made its way to space.

Inside the ship the warlocks sagged and the small crystals inside cages took over, glowing brightly and generaly showing off how pretty they were. That was one thing the designers of the ship had really hated, but there was nothing else for it. They had made up for it elsewhere.
Most of the ship was black, and what wasnt black was red. Anything that wasnt red had been burned. Various spikes and protrubarences made it clear that this was not a nice ship. It was a ship made to kill stuff. Since this was a diplomatic mission though the crew had tried to make it look better, however the rabbit head nailed to the prow really didnt help.
However there was a white flag or two about, the denizens of The Newly Liberated Sunlit Kingdom had heard of white flags, at first they thought they were bandages, then they thought they were food, and finnaly they had discovered that the reason all those wounded people were waving them was that they wanted to surrender.
Too bad the war was over by then.
A motley crew of various Orcs and Goblins scurried about their duties while a few impromptu marines (knights in full plate armour) skulked about looking bored.
Beneath the decks a number of more powerful mages were crowded around a crystal ball, trying varied ways to contact things, so far two metal boxes and a large rock had ignored them, but they kept on shooting out random bursts of the same message, trying to contact SOMETHING.

"Declaration of the Emperor Charnel:
Hello? out there?"

Back on the ground in what had been dubbed 'Missin Cuntrol' by the Goblins and 'Grahrghurgrrawrg' by the Trolls and a number of things by the Keeper the group of 'technicians' consisting of two Goblins, a Troll and a selection of local magery, as well as the Keeper himself, watched the ships progress with interest.

OOC:
After some consideration I decided that modern nations really wouldnt like to deal with magic, and since I havent really done anything so far I figure Ill move out.
I would prefer this to stay peaceful...thanks.

...
*poke*

Mook. Welcome to the magick-wielding space-tech era.

A lot of things moved through The Tower at Wye. This is not to imply that even a fraction of them actually got attention. Most went into great, slow-moving cylinders called Cyclers, located in the basement of the gargantuan spire that was The Tower. The floor of that room was covered in a fine layer of what looked like dust, but was actually a heavy cover of dead nanites.

Something caught the interest of the thousands upon thousands of magi'i and alchemists of The Tower. In general, most of them never really cared, but a message still went out to one of the Journeyman starships that were idling on the outskirts of the Sol system, having nothing better to do.

Black turned to white, white turned to black, and the universe unraveled for a moment that took an eternity.

In the beginning, there was nothing. Afterwards, there was something big hurtling towards a planet. Thoughts shunted back and forth across the bridge of the ship.

"Time dilation is zero-point-one-one hours,"
[i]"Recieving message,"
"Do we have to?["
"Yes. Now go greet our guests,"
"Fine. Why do they bother with rigging anyway....."

As with most contacts, the first message was not the sort someone would want to record for posterity.

"Who the frig am I talking to?" the alchemist Cornel Fuzz asked on the waveband.

OOC: Do I smell Pratchett-dom?

OOC: Sorry Im late :)

IC:
"Ah, this is the shi...starship Mort, first expeditionary force of the Great Empire of Harmonia Mortus and the Sunlit Kingdom, we are here to er....establish...pe-p...peaceful contact with other nations. We great you in the name of- Oh damn its gone all fuzzy...YOU!" A passing Imp froze in place, then stared.
"Eep?"
"Yes, go get a new crystal, this ones going out."
"Eep! Eep epp eeeep."
"I dont care, GO GET IT!"
"EEP!"
"Thats it! Shalvarsh calida dincta!"
There was a puff of feathers and an a chicken had taken the place of the Imp.
"Once you change back get the new crystal."
"Bock! Bockbockbock."
"Indeed. Anyway, sorry abou that. You dont mind the connection, do you? Yes, umm...were here to establish contact with other nations, we great you in the name of the Empire of Harmonia Mortus. Who is it we are speaking to?"

Journeyman V (http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-8/819608/12.jpg)
A magus-alchemist (http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-8/819608/art_kar_rac-03.jpg)

"Harmonia mortus," a chuckle accompanied the thought, "Harmonious death, I assume.

Don't make me hurt you, Cornel shot back through the thought network of the starship. "This is Alchemist-Magus Cornel of the Kingdom of Weyr. Does your crystal accept visual...nevermind....we'll come alongside in a few."

You can't hurt me, little man," the pilot of the vessel laughed. "Still, let's see what we have."

The mage hit the crystal a few times, it went back into focus breifly.
"Yes, we can get visual. By the way, I am the Mage Astrfgl. Dont try to pronounce it. Just call me Az. If you plan to dock, you should know that nobody in Harmonia has ever heard of an airlock, and the ship doesnt have one. Youll need to come over on a shuttle or something."

"Bugger the shuttle," Cornel replied into the comm crystal onboard the ship.

"If no-one in Harmonia has heard of an airlock, how does -he- know about it?" the captain asked, still laughing about something.

"You gotta lay off the weed," the alchemist muttered. "Anyway," he turned back to the crystal, look to your right." He shut off the transmission, making the crystal flare azure.

The Weyrean ship was maybe three times the size of the vessel it was pulling up against. It matched speed with the tall ship. A hatchway opened in the side, and a black figure literally walked across empty void space to step into the deck of the Harmonian 'starship'.

"Which one of you is Az?" A slight puff of what appeared to be steam escaped from the pipe in the top of the black helm. The voice seemed to come from far away; some would say it came from the grave.

"Hr? Juwanna mage? I tink'n you wanna check 'nderdecks, dats where all da mages hang out...lazy bastr'ds." A goblin wearing a particularly large hat stared up at the figure, then turned to the crew, "Joo lazy arse'ols slack off an'all 'ave you trown overboard, gettawork!" Then, turning back to the mage he waved, "Joo follow me, I showin' you da way. Watch da trolls, dey ain't 'sactly careful 'bout where dey step."
Once beneath decks and in the room the mages stood to greet their first contact, as it were.
"Greetings Alchemist-Magus Cornel, and welcome to our humble abode." Astrfgl waved about the cabin.
It was dark. The walls glowed with an eldritch light, and there were four foot tall dribbly candles. There was also a magic circle.
"We try. Anyway, welcome to the Mort, were happy to have you."
Astrfgl was wearing enough fabric to clothe four or five major cities for a few years, mostly in glittery purple, sequins, gold frogging, and shiney stuff.
Mages are a bit like Magpies.
His face was if the 'Vizer' type, thin, hard, and with a little goatee curled at the front. His hair was oiled down as well.

"It's an honor to be here," the alchemist replied, bowing stiffly. More puffs of smoke and steam came from atop his helm, and drifted towards the overhead (ceiling). "Any reason you're looking for other races?"

"Mostly curiousity, and to see that it was possible to GET into space, a number of people seem to think that there planet is surrounded by some sort of super-dense material that cant be breached no matter what you throw at it, we havent hit anything so far." The mage put a pipe in his mouth, it lit itself.
"So...how long have YOU people been in space?"

OOC:
Ok, this is what may possibly be happening:
I was recently contacted with an offer to RP by another nation, the plan is that one of my 'spaceships' crashes into their nation, I was planning on it being this one, which would bring you (Weyr) into this.
Is that OK with you?

Sure. I'm not going to be on as much due to RL issues, though.

"A hundred years, give or take," the Cernel stated.

OOC:
Ill reply once once word comes of whether the ship is going to explode or not :)

Astrfgl was about to respond when the ship suddenly rocked to the side, jolted once or twice, then began to fall.
"DAMN. The crystals have gone out. I told them we should have stabilized the fracture mat-"
BOOOM!!!
"Nevermind. I suggest you brace for impact, sir. Its going to be a rough landing but we should walk out. You three, get to work on a shield, the rest, follow me."
The ship picked itself up shortly, its descent slowing a bit and taking a shallower angle of dive.
Astrfgl returned shortly, looking grim.
"I figured as much, one of the Imps fell into the mana recycler. Imps are basicaly pure magic, and the burst overcharged the crystals. Tell me...does your...clothing have any sort of thaumic protection?"

"Probably," Cornel shrugged.

"Well, check your shape once we crash."
The ship was now over a large desert of some sort, a few ruined cities were visible on the horizon.
A while later the ship sort of crashed.
It was now at a decent angle, but still hit pretty hard. First to go was the forcastle, ripped off and thrown away, then the bridge went, a number of the ships cannons left as well.
The keel was shredded as well, but most remained.

The ship slewed to a halt, then fell over. After some groaning and cursing the crew began to emerge and dust themselves off.

"Alright, time to head back. There's nothing out here, Fardinians must have got them all," said Gren, the lead scout the small military colonies. "No point staying out in the wastes any longer than we need to."
"Yeah, sure, sir," said one of the men under his command, eager to get out of the desert that took up almost all of Fardinia. "Say, uh, sir. What's that?"
The man pointed to the sky, where something was falling towards the ground, getting larger by the second.
"Hmm, looks wood ... what the hell?"
"What the hell what sir?"
"It has sails! It's a ship!"
"Um, sir?" The scout sounded worried. "That's not possible..."
"I think you'll see it is when we get over to whereever it hits. The faster we do so the better, I say!" Gren grabbed the lightly stocked supplies back, and yelled at the few others to do the same. "Right, we'd best see what this is about! We're heading for that dustcloud over there, got it? Good! It's not so far, shouldn't put us out of our way too far, we'll still be home soon. Now let's see who's making it rain ships on our barren wasteland!"

[ooc: Short on time, so short, dodgy posts are the best you get)

"Ihas a full thaumaturgic shield," Cornel nodded as the airshi came to a halt, releasing a puff of steam with each word. The alchemist lightly lept from a hole in the hull, landing otnto the barren ground with only the faintest thud. The black faceplate of his helm glinted in the blazing sun.

Need some help, the Capatain of the Journeyman inquired.

Nah, the alchemist sent back.

It was a short and painful treck to where the object had fallen from the sky, over several hills twisted with tangled and for the most part dead vegetation, though a few of the creepers still managed to survive in the desert conditions.

They found the first pieces of wreckage, planks of wood, generally nailed to other planks of wood. Without bothering to study them overmuch, the group continued, until at the top of the next small hill they could see before them the ruin of what looked like an old sailing ship, which should not have been out in the middle of a ruined, desert nation. And if it had to be there, it shouldn't have fallen out of the sky to do so.

But, well, there it was. Lying kind of to the side, and mostly in ruins, it sat nestled in between two hills, which rose up into mountains several kilometres away. Looking carefully, the scouts could see people outside the ship, though couldn't make out any details as to what they were doing or what they looked like. Well, except that some of the were noticably not human or elven.

"Well sir, should we go say hello?" asked one of the soldiers after a pause.
"I'm not sure they would understand the language, but surely anyone who's standed in a desert with a broken ship isn't going to spit us because they can't understand us."
"The Fardinians do it all the time, sir."
Gren gave that some thought. "Well, yes. But it's an entirely different situation."

With that he and two others started down the slope, towards the wreck, yelling out variation of 'Hello, who are you?' as they went, without expecting much in the way of answer.

(ooc: Arani language is a cross between Quenya and Drowish)

There were a few high-pitched shouts from the wreck, a crash, then some loud swearing (You can generaly tell if somebody is swearing, no matter what language its in), then a few Goblin heads poked over the side of the wreck.
Somebody shouted "Who're jo?"

"Hmm," said Gren, hastilly grabbing out his mental feather duster and knocked the metaphorical dust away from his English skills.
"We're, err ... friends?" He cursed his lack of attention when he'd been in language class, some two hundred years ago now. Or maybe his memory was just going bad, but he was quite sure that his vocabulary wouldn't hold out for long against someone who actually knew the language.
Ah well, try for the best...
"What you do here with ... thingy?" he tried.

(ooc: Just assuming they speak English. Feel free to correct)

OOC: Sorry, again. I had no time...then I forgot. Blame school :P

IC:

"You two! Get back to work! If you dont find my wardrobe there WILL be trouble."
The Goblins scurried off, presumably in search of the lost article of carpentry, and Astrfgl crested the wreck, advancing on the Aranians with quite a large smile.
"Greetings from the United Kingoms of Harmonia Mortus, and the Keeper Charnel. Hold on a second..." He pulled a small, red crystal out of his pocket, "Is there some other language you would prefer?"

"Er ... yes," said Gren, not entirely sure what he'd just agreed to. 'Greetings something the something Kingdoms of Harmonia Mortus (which he assumed was the name of a place he'd never heard of), and the something something. Something on a second. Is there some something something you would something?'
Gren gave up, his skills is this language being abysmal. He aimed for something that may be better known, and spoke in Quenya. "Do you speak Quenya? Because I don't speak English, at all."

Beneath the Surface, some time later (horrah for fluid time!):

"Alright, you know the deal? Get up there, look around, and come back. Have a chat to anyone you find."
"Yes, I know," Cánil said irritably, for the fourth time. "Look, we'd better get going, or the sun'll be upon us before we can make any distance."
"Yeah, right," said the supervisor, who was a friend of Cánil's. "Well, good luck then. See that you find some people to talk with. Fardinia must still be intact somehow..."
"Sure, whatever. Now, for the last time, goodbye," Cánil mounted the giant lizard, and her companions did likewise. One of them took the reins of the three pack-lizards that carried their supplies, and thus they rode their mounts from the cave mouth, and out into the wasteland of Fardinia.

OOC: While the player behind Weyr -can- speak a limited amount of Quenya, he absolutely refuses to do so. Quenya, when spoken by Cornel, will be represented by Gray

The person in black leaned against the wreck, listening to the conversation. There were benifits to wearing armor -- sharpened hearing was one. The fact that it was bulletproof was another. Cornel sighed, releasing from a tube on the top of his helm a slight puff of what looked like whitish steam but wasn't, and pushed himself off the side of the ship.

"Your English is abysmal, stranger, but I greet you under moon and star none-the-less." the alchemist bowed, each word releasing a puff of steam-like stuff from the top of his helm. "I am Alchemist Cornel of the Kingdom of Weyr, which is another world far from here, on the other edge of the Star Ocean. If you could tell us where we are, and who you are...

"Overdoing it a bit, aren't we?" the pilot of the Journeyman, now floating high above the planet, inquired. Their link was one of the greatest achievements of Weyrean thaumaturgic science -- it could not be detected without some very specialized and expensive equipment, and was impossible to crack.

"They're an undeveloped people...." Cornel shrugged mentally.

"Quenya...I think we have that one. Hold on." He fiddled with the stone, muttered something under his breath, then set the stone down about halfway between the group.
"Speak loud and clearly toward the stone please. Everything will be translated." The words were a bit distorted, flat and mechanical sounding, but understandable Quenya.
"Again, I give you greetings from the United Kingoms of Harmonia Mortus, and the Keeper Charnel, how are you? Lets see...I think our armoured friend here is from...Wear? Wer? Something like that. Im afraid we were just discussing the topic when SOMEBODY let one of the imps get into our powersource, you can see the result."

OOC:
The stone basicaly translates everything after a few seconds pause, a bit like those little minitranslators you see at the UN. It does two langauges at once.

The dark elven soldiers looked to each other and smirked at the overly-flowery speech given by the stranger in armour. Most of the moon and star kind of waffle had been cut out by the underground dwelling drow when they'd picked up the language.
"This is Fardinian ground, though Fardinia no longer exists. We are scouts from an Arani refugee base, though Arani is also essentially non-existent," said Grim loudly, unsure of how effective any magic crystals used by a bunch of people who just fell out of the sky were going to be. "Will you be able to repair this object, or would you rather return with us to our colony? We may be able to rig up something to contact whoever it is you need to talk to to get out of this shithole."

[ooc: I speak highly limited amounts of Quenya too, but I doubt I'd be able to say anything relevant to what's going on, so English is good too.
http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=357323 -- may be relevant]

"Fardinia, eh? Never heard of it. Nice place though." He commented, looking around at the wasteland, "Very ethnic. Anyway, give us about an hour to clear the important bits out of the wreckage, then we can set off to your...colony. Its important, these crystals, if we left them long enough, would contaminate this area with so much magic that you never know WHAT might show up. But we can contain them and stash them somewhere safe."
Two or three Goblins emerged hauling a number of larger crystals, about a foot in height and five inches wide. These were hexagonal, three sides on the top half, three on the bottom, most of them had a blueish glow though one or two were dull and one was cracked.
"Ah, see? Thats the problem. When the main crystal blew a fragment hit our main support crystal, the one that keeps us UP, then that one started sucking all the nearby magic in, draining the rest of the crystals...I will be talking to our designers about this, no mistake."

"Mmm," said Gren. "Well, you do that. Though I'm sure some magic wouldn't go astray here, this place needs a miracle..."

[ooc: How the hell did 'Gren' mutate into 'Grim'...]

"Ah...in that case, could we trade some magical assistance in exchange for your moving our ship and ourselves back to Harmonia?"

[ooc: Yeah, my rate of post sucks. Shoot me]


"Well, I can't really make that decision ... but what the hell, we can try. And if we can't, well, let's just try and not think about that. Maybe we have some favours with some random superpower we can cash in..."

Sorry, we had some problems with our ISP, they didnt seem to think we had a connection anymore...
Ill post tommorow :)

"Ah, excellent." A crash and some screaming from the ship brought there attention back to the large pile of wood, where three Goblins had managed to drop the last intact box of wine. One of the mages was crying and another had turned one of the Goblins into a chicken.
"Oh dear, hold on gentlemen, I will have to deal with this...umm, please make yourselfs at home, if you can find a chair pull it up, there are a number of quite warm fires."

Gren and the soldiers sat down in the dust and talked between themselves, wincing at the occasional bang from the shipwreck.

[ooc: Hmm, maybe we should get to the getting to wherever we're going stage?]