NationStates Jolt Archive

"Captain! Captain! We've got something on the CB!" The young thaumaturgist practically tripped over his robes as he vaulted the steps to the maindeck where Captain Curio stood, staring into the generaly empty void of space.
"Really? Is it a ship? If this is another bloody 'spacial anomoly' your dragging me below for I promise you that there will be trouble."
"Nossir! Its a ship, odd looking though. No sails, it ain't made of wood either, the back end is on fire, too. It looks like its made of metal."
"Metal? Its got to be valuable then, any ship made of metal has a nob on board, Ill bet. How far?"
"About two jumps, if we stretch it. Easy to do, we have a big charge built up from those last two anomolies."
Curio considered this, for a very, very short period of time. This was possibly the first ship encountered by Harmonian forces, too bad it had encountered the wrong Harmonians. It was said that the Keeper was keen on establishing relations with other void-faring nations. Maybe they could sell a few of the survivors.
"Do it."

---

Below the deck, the team of Goblin engineers received the orders from above, whereupon they swarmed the controlls leading to the large sphereical crystal securely locked into the engineering deck. Since Harmonia had not heard of such a thing as 'electricity' this consisted of lots of levers, toggles and dials, all mechanical, since using magic in the engineering deck was sort of like wielding a flamethrower in an oil refinery.
Switches were switched, levers levered and so forth. The end result was a steady, pulsing glow from the crystal ending in a bright flash.

Outside, space twisted briefly and the three ships of Curio's fleet vanished. They spent the next six hours (of their time, only five minute passed back in 'realspace') looking at the pretty colours as they moved through the Jumpspace, an interesting plane where, apprently, one could travel at roughly fourty times the speed of light.
There were risks of course, Things, and the faster you went, the more likely they were to find you. Sometimes ships simply dropped out of Jumpspace into...elsewhere, none ever came back.

---

The second jump ended with the target ships just visible to the naked eye, they looked like little stars at this range, but the engine exhaust was clearly visible, a long streak across the stellar night.
"Broadcast on whatever channels you think they might get, tell them to switch their drives off and surrender. Full sail, I want a good charge. Turn the Thaum Cannons on and load the main guns."
The Imperial's main thaum cannon was a 20t model, concentrating the force of a small sun into a beam about a foot across. The other guns were muzzeloading blackpowder affairs, quite powerful in their own right and, in space, very accurate and long ranged.

Attention unidentified ship, by authority of Ciaus Curio you are to stop now and surrender, failure to do so will result in your being fired upon. If you surrender now, we will take what we want and leave you to go on your way, resistance will be met with extreme force.
You have five minutes, that is all.

(OOC: BYOP = Bring Your Own Parrot

Note on Harmonian ships, theyre wooden sailing ships. They do, however, have some pretty tough shields and some strong weapons (those T-guns are VERY powerful, although they tend to have odd side effects, since raw magical leakage messess with reality :P

Anyway, somebody to RP the ships?)

Im wondering, are my threads invisible or something?
Zero responses, zero views.
C'mon! IM not THAT bad a writer.

OOC: Interesting... <TAG> while I consider possible groups and nations to respond with.

(OOC:
Thanks for the response, at least :P)

The 1.3 km USS phoenix, floated along the dark lifeless space, as the other ship jumped in its engines were rumbling in a low tone moving along its grey sleek hull glazing with light.


The con officer was looking around the rather large busy bridge, computers and holographic consoles, filled the bridge as the communications from the other ship was received. He looked over to the Capitan who was sitting on his leather chair looking around the bridge he stated “ sir message incoming from some odd ship if you can call it a ship by our means”

The captain looked up play it tactical give me a scan, with that the con officer taped a blinking play back button on his glass panel, as the tactical officer proceeded to conduct tactical scans of the ship, after the message had finally stopped playing, the captain sighed and said “open a frequency” he ordered in a frustrated tired voice.


A message was played

“this is the USS phoenix, you are entering federal space please identify your self and state your intentions”


http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/25035820/

[TAG]

IC:

"Senior one, I am detecting something odd on the extreme edge of long range scanners."

The Commander, one Kia'l Twi's, turned towards his sensor officer. "And what would that be?" he asked, rubbing his snout. It had been awhile since they had encountered anything of interest. The cruiser, the Resistor, was out on a long-range exploration mission, shooting message probes back to Republic space every so often to update their status.

The ship itself was a 800 meter long, oval shaped vessel with a smooth hull and odd potrubences at arranged either in what would have been a very effecient weapons pattern, if there were any weapons to be seen. The Resistor was accompanied by a 100 meter escort frigate, the Raptor.

"It appears to be a wooden vessel...with sails."

Kia'l glared at his sensor officer. "In space? Impossible."

The sensor officer shrugged, "That's what the scanners show. THey're also detecting a larger, more conventional ship nearby. They appear to have exchanged messages."

Kia'l pondered for a moment, then nodded to his communications officer, "Order the Raptor to go into stealth mode and investigate. We'll wait here for their report."

"Yes, Senior One."

The Commander of the Raptor, a Lieutenant by the name of Rill'i Calr looked over his orders and nodded to his tactical officer, "Stealth mode."

The small frigate broke away from it's larger sister. As it did, matte black armor deployed over it's surface and it's active sensors shut down. The engine emissions dropped to a minimum and Electronic Counter Measures online. The Raptor was now very hard to spot on sensors. A few seconds later it arced into transwarp, closing on the two ships.

"Captain! We're getting a message, something about this being somebodies space and identifying ourselves." The Thaumaturgist was frantic, trying to keep the message steady on the large ball of crystal in the center of the ships control room.
"Maintain present course, do not respond. Inform our...customers that they have three minutes left to respond."

The Cassiopeian Super Star Destroyer Barbarian was cruiseing along in Space on Patrol in the Milky Way Galaxy. "Sir, we are detecting a odd ship." one of the officers told Morgukai Knight Tuy'ia Kan'ji. "why is it odd?" he said. "It is a ship made of wood, sir." The Officer said.

The Barbarian had been in The galaxy ever since the Start of The war with Coredia, and nothing was surpriseing to Tuy'ia, but a Wooden Ship, with sails, in the middle of Space was odd. "Set a coruse of that ship." The Morgukai Knight said.

The Ship soon Jumped into Hyperspace.

OOC: Interesting... <TAG> while I consider possible groups and nations to respond with.
OOC: Right, I’ve made my decision, if it's not too late. Tempting as it is to spring a cloaked Broell Zapar Superfortress on you, I think using Valdren will be more fun. Not to say that you won’t encounter the SPACE Invaders in one form or another at some later date, of course.

Captain Telen Firth was having a very bad day. To start with, something had gone wrong with the main drive. This problem had evidenced itself in the form of an explosion, which had knocked the rest of the engines out of commission. The ship’s technician had managed to put enough of the drive back together to get them moving again, but only slowly, and burning fuel at several times the craft’s normal rate. They would have to head for the nearest port, where, if he was lucky, Captain Firth would be able make enough money from the sale of his cargo to pay for the parts necessary to complete the repairs. Just when it seemed the situation could hardly get worse, the pirates showed up.

Attention unidentified ship, by authority of Ciaus Curio you are to stop now and surrender, failure to do so will result in your being fired upon. If you surrender now, we will take what we want and leave you to go on your way, resistance will be met with extreme force.
You have five minutes, that is all.

“Tukal take them, why now? Bring ‘em up on my screen.”

Glowing blue eyes flared brighter in surprise at the sight of Curio’s fleet.

“Are those sails? What kind of spacecraft are these!?”

“Be that as it may, sir, those cannons look effective enough…”

“Aye. The ships look rather flimsy, but we certainly can’t fight three of them. I suppose we have no choice but to surrender, and hope for the best.”

Firth’s finger-bones clicked against several buttons, a few levers were adjusted, and the power flow to the jury-rigged engines dwindled gradually to nothing.

The Captain then sent out his reply. His voice would sound fairly normal, aside from an odd hollow quality.

So be it, we surrender. All engines are being powered down.

He added a second message, sent over the ship’s intercom.
“Attention, all crew members: we are about to be boarded by pirates. Do not resist, and with luck they’ll leave soon. We certainly haven’t got much that’s worth taking at the moment.”

Throughout the freighter, skeletal figures paused in their work, many moving knives and blasters to less visible locations. A few bony hands tapped sword-hilts regretfully, but none argued with the Captain’s decision… yet.

Didn't you join before unde a similar name? Or were you resurrected? iether way, TAG.

Message received, thank you for your cooperation. Be ready to receive a boarding party.

The Harmonian ships accelerated, drawing level with the Valdrenian ship at which point a small boat (for lack of a better word) detached itself from the flagship, a number of what might be fighteres followed it, moving towards the Valdren ship.

(OOC:
Yeah, I was Harmonia Mortus, but it died and I didnt feel like getting it revived since I cant remember the password :P

Anyway, sorry for the short post, but I gotta go :P)

Well...the post went up, but nothing else happened....wheee.

The Pre-Universal swam through the streams of raw energy that course through space, observing the odd little happenings of this plane. One thing hes tudied with great interest. A sailing ship, by all appearances, but floating through space, with an aura of power clearly visible to his ascended 'eyes'. He approached, floating just next to it, a ball of visible energy.

He spoke.

"Greetings, life forms. I am Tau-547. I come in the name of the Ankhmeti Pre-Universal Imperium. How are you?"

The voice went through the minds of every being within 1,000 kilometres, a booming sound.

"Sir, it looks like a Keeper..."
"Its quite large, ummm...how exactly do we talk to it?"
"Wave a flag?"
"Maybe not..."

The tactical officer looked over to the captain and said “sir they haven’t responded shall we hail them again?”

The captain growled a bit and said” yes and if they do not respond fire a warning shot”


The phoenix rumbled slowly in between the ships sending out a general broadcast

This is the star ship USS phoenix, all of you have entered federal space, for those who are willing to communicate identify your selves and your Intentions other wise we will remove you.”


The ships shields came up at that same instant the ships weapons went online.

On the bridge people were rushing around to stations as condition yellow alarms blared.

The SSD Barbarian Soon Dropped out of Hyperspace. "Sir," the capitan, Giual'jia Mih'lia said to Tuy'ia, "We have Spotted a TFU Ship near the alien fleet." Tuy'ia knew what was going to happen. "Power up Shields and Weapons and have the Fighters on Stand by. The Morgukai Knight ordered.

The two Harmonian ships not engaged in boarding actions executed two sudden turns in opposite directions, bringing them on a parallel course with the three enemy fleets and letting them keep an eye on the giant energy cloud.
As the other ships powered up their weapons, the Harmonian ships quickly activated their remaining T-Guns. As a result of this, a passing asteroid turned into a large chicken.
Magical leakage from the Thaum-Guns was usualy simply vented into space, this resulted in some odd effects, but since the average Thaum radiated itself in about half a second outside of a controlled environment, this was not considered a problem. It did have a tendancy to affect the electronics of any nearby 'modern' spacecraft, but since Harmonia didnt have any of these, this had not yet been discovered.

The Pre-Universal inwardly laughed. Moving through the relatively delicate shieling of this 'galleon', he appeared in a roughly humanoid form.

"Greetings. Your ship is intruiging."

(OOC:
I wouldnt call a five decithaums of pureified magical energy 'delicate', even to a giant energy-thing. I mean...its like a magical black hole :P)

IC:
A few crew members jumped back, startled, but most of them remained in place, having met various Keepers at one point or another.
A petty officer stepped forward and threw a salulte.
"Greetings O powerful one...errr...is there anything we can do for you?"

[But fromt he point of view of the totally neutral yet utterly powerful Pre-Universals, yes it is delicate :P. They're pretty much a way of getting Ankhmet into contact with other races, or to scare people :D]

The being glowed slightly when the somewhat harassed loking crew of the ship spoke.

"You beings... You think I am... A... Keeper... A fascinating concept. I am here to gather information on the races of this plane. Yours is almost enirely unique amongst them... Do no let me interrupt your.. Business."

"Well, you are a giant cloud of energy, errr...Tau-547. If you ain't a Keeper, then your close 'nough for us to call you one. Umm...would you like a drink?"

The Harmonian rowboat brought itself alongside their intended victim, then vanished inside one of the ships docking bays *assuming you have them here*.

OOC: Huh. I wondered why one of my merchant ships disappeared off the radars...(;) )

IC:

It has taken a little while, but a response to the merchant ship Endor's distress call has a small percentage of a sector fleet enter the area to root out the pirates.

That is, a Victory-class Star Destroyer and its cohort Wolfpack. One named Thunderball.

Inside the ship.

"Wooden? A wooden ship?" The captain asked. "Are they Juraian?"

"No sir, the signatures are weird and definitely not Juraian. Hell, there's even sails!" The sensor officer reported. "There's even some anomalies we can't figure out."

"Another new nation. Send to Jurai for a diplomatic envoy then hail them." The captain ordered his comms officer.

"Excuse us, but you seem to have found our missing merchant ship Endor. Thank you for that, but we must retrieve it and take it back home."

"By the way, there's a Cassiopeian Super Star Destroyer and a Fedral Union ship -not a saucerhead this time, more like a lobster- in the area, among other random nation-states."

"Ahh. Very well. Keep an eye on both hostile craft. If the Cassiopeian attacks, we'll need to get help." The captain said calmly.

The black vessel glided through the void; as the Captain stood at the bridge; Alexus, Lord of the Black Corsairs; a feared and respected warrior amongst the Imperium. Behind him, his brother Marius lounged, yawnign lightly as they surveyed the vast void of space. They were pirates, smugglers, rogue traders and warriors, operating on Imperium's edge. Their vessel; the mighty battleship Hammer of Vaul hovered in the star-pocked abyss; and slowed, silently to a stop.

Alexus turned; the twin-headed psyber-eagle perched upon his shoulder screeching as they both surveyed the current location. "Well; what have we here..." He chuckled; reaching out to cup the assembled vessels in the clawed gauntlet of his fist.

"Seems interesting" came the voice from behind. "Perhaps we should take a closer look? Maybe even send some of the boys in?"

"Well, you are a giant cloud of energy, errr...Tau-547. If you ain't a Keeper, then your close 'nough for us to call you one. Umm...would you like a drink?"

The Harmonian rowboat brought itself alongside their intended victim, then vanished inside one of the ships docking bays *assuming you have them here*.

"A drink? Ahh, yes. It's thirsty work, surfing the currents of energy in the universe. In fact, I haven't had a good drink in years. You can get anything good in Ankhmet. Only Tennant's extra."

CoreWorlds ship, we're afraid your ship has something of ours, several somethings we think. We'll just retrieve it and head on out. That is, of course, if we can avoid running into these other ships. Just out of curiosity...where exactly are we? We have three differnt messages saying that this is a particular states territory and their own ship.

---

"Right, any particular prefrence? We have Jynin Tynx, if you like."

(OOC: Sorry :P)

CoreWorlds ship, we're afraid your ship has something of ours, several somethings we think. We'll just retrieve it and head on out. That is, of course, if we can avoid running into these other ships. Just out of curiosity...where exactly are we? We have three differnt messages saying that this is a particular states territory and their own ship.
"Ah. That always seems to be a troublesome little staple of interstellar travel. We do appear to be at the edge of several trigger-happy nations' borders. We must take care here. By the way, you have permission to search the ship for your goods. If they were stolen from you, that little merchant ship is in big trouble." The captain replied.

OOC: Sorry about the delay, there. On a related note, my apologies in advance for the fact that I won't be able to post over Thanksgiving, starting the day after tommorow. Usually there won't be anywhere near this long between my posts.

The Harmonian rowboat brought itself alongside their intended victim, then vanished inside one of the ships docking bays *assuming you have them here*.
The boarding party passed through a thin seal-shield (intended to keep air in, and not much good for anything else) and found themselves facing a varied assortment of docking arrangements, ranging from landing pads to a small pier. The Valdrenian docking bay was designed to accomodate any vessel it was likely to encounter. Waiting on the platform that connected these various structures was a small party of skeletons - Captain Firth, and several of his crew. Most of them were visibly armed, but no weapons were drawn. Clothing ranged from Firth's fine garb (much like this, except with a pair of single-edged short swords instead of the rapier, no hat, and, of course, worn by a skeleton with glowing blue eyes (http://www.museumreplicas.com/imagelib/0100040_L_000.jpg)) to practically nothing, with most wearing rags and tatters.

Static briefly disrupted the craft's screens as the Thaum cannons charged, but it went largely unnoticed.

OOC: So as to minimize delays to the storyline, I here grant Hamonia Mortis limited permission to control my characters. No fighting, for now - they won't resist anything short of an actual attack or enslavement. The ship contains a selection of ordinary trade goods: food, clothing, and so forth.

IC:
"Welcome to my ship." Firth snarled, unbuckling his sword belt and tossing the twin blades to the deck at his feet. "Bür and Greth will show you around the place. Now, I must be getting back to the control room... I understand there are other visitors in the area."

"Excellent commander, very good. Yes, there are a few ships, apparently your vessel is signed on with no less than four nations who claim that you belong to them. Its most amusing." The captain waved to the others who descended into the cargo bay and began retreiving items.