NationStates Jolt Archive

Behold, the motly assembly known as a 'space hulk', a huge mass of smashed ships assembled through the random chances of fate, and hurled across the galaxy on an unknown course, its living cargo trusting it to take them...somewhere.
Until its arrival, it was more or less a huge party.
"Smashin' bugs, smashin' bugs, smashin' bugs, ow! Dat one bit me! Get it wif da blasta!"
"Gur? Whassa' whassa' bug? S'it tha'?"
"Dats Grot."
"Whasse doin' over dere?"
"Onna dose' bigga' bugs got 'im."
"Oh. Whassat?"
"S' a spleen."
"Whassa spleen?"
"I saw it onna chart fing. It look'd kinda like dat."
"Diddit squirt green when'ya poked it?"
"Dunno...it was a pik'chur."
"Oh...do joo here dat?"
After a brief moment of breathless waiting, the space hulk blew through the planets atmosphere, glanced off a mountain and smashed its way through a forest. As it slowly ground to a halt, along with the small mountain of debries it had kicked up.
Its dazed cargo, after some grumbling, stirred.
There was some yelling inside, and then a few hatches popped open. One or two green heads peeped out of each one, taking a deep sniff of the air, then vanishing again.
"I'se happy ta' report dat mi 'ead did not as'plode."
"Me niever! Our headz'z full in-tact!"
Another arguement followed, which was, in turn, followed by a vast wave of green bursting from the ship.
Ork colonisation was very effecient, provided you were willing to risk riding an object of questionable structural integrity down to the surface, where, without the assistance of anything like a system for slowing the ship down, your landing method was to crash into whatever looked softest.
In a matter of two hours, five million Orks offloaded and began to argue about who got to put their hut where.
The indigenous trees proved difficult to chop up properly, so the massive spacecraft the Orks arrived on was soon stripped to its ribs, exposing two of the 'big bugs' who were promptly killed and eaten. A few humans surfaced as well, and were eaten to. A few complained of stomachaches afterwards, but it was their own loss, and they had to build in the knee-deep water at the bottom of the trench dug by the impact of the spacecraft.
Of course, nobody had bothered to ask the planets present inhabitants if they wanted an Ork colony on their world, but they could be dealt with in due time.

Behold, the motly assembly known as a 'space hulk', a huge mass of smashed ships assembled through the random chances of fate, and hurled across the galaxy on an unknown course, its living cargo trusting it to take them...somewhere.
Until its arrival, it was more or less a huge party.
"Smashin' bugs, smashin' bugs, smashin' bugs, ow! Dat one bit me! Get it wif da blasta!"
"Gur? Whassa' whassa' bug? S'it tha'?"
"Dats Grot."
"Whasse doin' over dere?"
"Onna dose' bigga' bugs got 'im."
"Oh. Whassat?"
"S' a spleen."
"Whassa spleen?"
"I saw it onna chart fing. It look'd kinda like dat."
"Diddit squirt green when'ya poked it?"
"Dunno...it was a pik'chur."
"Oh...do joo here dat?"
After a brief moment of breathless waiting, the space hulk blew through the planets atmosphere, glanced off a mountain and smashed its way through a forest. As it slowly ground to a halt, along with the small mountain of debries it had kicked up.
Its dazed cargo, after some grumbling, stirred.
There was some yelling inside, and then a few hatches popped open. One or two green heads peeped out of each one, taking a deep sniff of the air, then vanishing again.
"I'se happy ta' report dat mi 'ead did not as'plode."
"Me niever! Our headz'z full in-tact!"
Another arguement followed, which was, in turn, followed by a vast wave of green bursting from the ship.
Ork colonisation was very effecient, provided you were willing to risk riding an object of questionable structural integrity down to the surface, where, without the assistance of anything like a system for slowing the ship down, your landing method was to crash into whatever looked softest.
In a matter of two hours, five million Orks offloaded and began to argue about who got to put their hut where.
The indigenous trees proved difficult to chop up properly, so the massive spacecraft the Orks arrived on was soon stripped to its ribs, exposing two of the 'big bugs' who were promptly killed and eaten. A few humans surfaced as well, and were eaten to. A few complained of stomachaches afterwards, but it was their own loss, and they had to build in the knee-deep water at the bottom of the trench dug by the impact of the spacecraft.
Of course, nobody had bothered to ask the planets present inhabitants if they wanted an Ork colony on their world, but they could be dealt with in due time.

OCC: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGH!

After the initial spree of violence in regards to territorial concerns, a few Orks set out to explore, mostly in order to look for a fight. A pub had been set up back at their new home, but it was pretty full already, full to the point where it was virtually impossible to throw a punch.
It was one such group of explorers who came upon the city.
It was quite a nice city, with thin gleaming spires of metal and glass which rose majestically to the sky. Gossmer strands connected the buildings, and on these rode little cars, taking passengers and cargo from one structure to another, although the lable 'structure' was perhaps a bit of an insult to these gleaming monoliths of architecture.
The race which inhabited them was also tall and willowy, possessing six arms and five eyes. A small party of them met the Orks at the outskirts of the city.
"Greetings o' travelers from the stars! We welcome you most graciously to our planet, please, partake of our food and women!"
"Wot's 'e sayin'?"
"Sounds like 'e wants us ta kill 'im."
"Dat's what I wants ta do."
"What is that you are pointing at me? I could not possible accept payment for our services o' most gracious st-"
The others in the group of aliens backed away hurriedly, then stared at the Orks with widening eyes.
The Orks stared back.
"Boo?" Said one.
The aliens continued to stare.
"DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA! FWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" The next Ork unleasehed a hail of bullets into the crowd of aliens while screaming like a maniac.
At this point the aliens ran.
The Orks, deciding that it would take all day to kill the whole lot of aliens by themselves, returned to the camp to get some friends.

Warboss Grok'magrok glowered at the city. Well, he glowered in the DIRECTION of the city. He was glowering because something in the various electrical bits attached to his body had shorted out on the march here and his smashin' arm wasnt working, which was, to the Ork, deeply distressing. He could still shoot stuff though. A Tek Boy was tinkering with the distressed electronics, well aware that he would be dragged into combat and not be allowed to participate until he had fixed the arm.
"Soooo, deze'r da guyz ya found us ta fight, Morg?" Grok'magrok gestured with his functioning arm at the city, now surrounded by aliens wielding some sort of weapon. They were casting nervous glances at the warboss and his entourage.
"Yup, da ones we met was'nt dat gooda fightaz, but dey lookin' like dey'ze ready fer us now. Mebe dey giv'zus a good fight, eh?" Morg, in his heart, was somewhat unsure about that. He doubted most of them had ever held a weapon. Not that he had any MORAL objection to killing people too stupid to know how to work a weapon, they just werent as much fun.
"'ey, lookit dat, dey'ze sending out somebody!"
Indeed, a trucklike vehicle, apparently unarmed, was approaching the Orks.
"Dat fing on top means dey wants ta talk. I'ze seen it a'fore." An intellectual amoung the Orks indicated the white flag atop the vehicle.
Grok'magrok rolled his eyes. More talking. Oh well, why not? Maybe they even had something worthwhile to say.
Two of the planets residents climbed out of the vehicle when it was near and approached, carrying a small box with a speaker on it.
One of them spoke into the box, which produced a passable Orkish.
"No attack! We bring many weapons! We pay tribute much if leave us alone!" The alien was obviously distressed, flapping two sets of its hands constantly.
The other one, being of a cooler disposition, retrieved a long device from the truck and offered it to the warboss, who, growling at being forced to do so, jerked his head to one side, indicating another Ork should take the weapon.
This Ork fiddled with it, and, under the instructions of the alien, blew up a moderatly sized boulder nearby.
Even the warboss smiled. This was way better than anything a flash git could get his hands on!
He turned and addressed the vast sea of Orks behind him.
"Da skinniez is all rights! Dey'ze got biggunz! An' dey gonna supply us wif' flash teknoleege! Watch dis!"
The warboss kicked the Ork with the gun, who, obligingly, vaporzed a crowd of Gretchins.
The entire Ork army went 'Ooooooooooooo', then broke into a huge cheer.
The Warboss slammed the nervous alien on the back with his gun hand, "You'ze guyz is alll rights, I fink weze goanna 'ave a booti-ful partnership."

OOC: Ahhh, the Green Tide! An interesting opportunity for the Legios Astartes Chaotica! :D

Rain drummed down on the corrugated iron roof of the dugout. The sound of shells blasting waves of men and equipment and mud and wire apart was almost the same pace as the rain, so great were the enemy’s artillery. A man dressed in a dull green uniform that provided no camouflage in the trenches sat on an inverted and empty tea-chest in the dugout, listening and watching.

Another, dressed in the same uniform but with a crested officer’s cap, ambled along the duckboards outside, quite blissfully ignorant of the danger he was in, or so it appeared. Rain fell and splashed off roof and eaves and mud concealment, into the trenches in rivulets that matched the roof’s sine-wave profile, and the officer’s footfalls made other splashing noises as duckboards slid on sodden mud.

He stepped over a board that had been hastily nailed in place to – for the most part unsuccessfully – keep water from the dugout, and clambered down the stairs, eroded into more mud by the use the building had received. The accompaniment of the shelling crashed like cymbals and drum rolls as he did so.

None of it was real, of course, but rather, an ‘artificial reality’ simulation. This area was the planning section for the star ships of the necrontyr, where, when they wanted somewhere to interact with outsiders in ‘avatar’ form, they customarily met. They changed it into something new every few days or so.

Monitoring Krork – the necrontyr word for orks, technically their original name – movement was a thankless task, very boring, in itself. Often nothing of interest happened. However, the ‘man’ who sat on the tea chest did it because ‘he’ found it rather interesting, and because such things were what he was made to do.

The officer, the representative of a scout ship, of a ‘Shroud’ class light cruisr, whose name translated into English as ‘Dead Air’ took up some notes – symbolic, really – from the dugout’s small table, and nodded. “I’ll be going to take a look at these krorks…” ‘he’ said at last.

With the help of the newly dubbed 'skinniez' (who had also been adopted by the tek boyz and the Kult of Speed), it was only a few days before the Orks were back in space, now with a modest fleet of cobbled together ships which, unlike traditional Orky ships, were both heavily armed AND usually didnt fall apart if kicked too hard.
The Orks learned some new words to, like 'Trey-ti' and the phrase 'Do not smash'. A series of banners had been erected around the Skinny cities which had sworn allegiance to Gork'magork. These generally worked, mostly because this planet was so full of things to smash which werent Skinny cities.
Like the shorties. On first sight, it was thought that they were Gretchins with enourmous swelling of the head. When a few were brought back and a Dok tried to releave the swelling by slicing open ones head, they learned otherwise. Of course, the Doks had a good dinner that night.
Somehow, word got back to the Shorty camp, and they were not at all pleased. When they showed up at the Ork camp in tanks, the Orks were very, very happy.
The battle which followed contained two days of pent-up Ork hostility, and lasted for at least a day after the Shorty's were completly beaten, mostly in the form of following their retreating forces and smashing anything that got too far behind.
The Shorty's equipment was pretty good, good enough to take down a few Orks even. Of course, in a horde of millions it was rather difficult to do serious damage. The Orks, on the other hand, crushed all resistance, usually by simply running over anything which got in their way.
The Shorties had dug a trench around their city, thinking that they could cause at least a few casualties. They didnt count on the fact that Orks were more then willing to chuck Gretchins into the trench ahead of them, filling the trench and providing a handy portable bridge.

(OOC:
Looks like that last bump was at exactly the wrong time >_>)

(And nobody has any reaction to this random Orky invasion of a planet.
*sigh*
And theres no open future threads on the front page.
This is rather depressing >_>)

OOC: You might take a look at this (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=503379) thread; I believe it's intended to be very open.

And if you wish, I suppose I could bring in my Evil Alternate. Demonic Gophers aren't much for space travel, so I'd be highly unlikely to notice your arrival with this nation, but I have others...

(OOC:
I'd rather not get crusaded to death by some guy with seven billion people to my measly six million >_>
Feel free to bring in your alt though.)

The Dead Air cruised through space. It was one of the upgraded shroud class ships, as well as being composed of the ubiquitous living metal, liable to be difficult to detect at the best of times, and in this particular ship class, even better optimised for silent running, the ship was equipped with Dark Eldar ‘shadow fields’ and several dark-fields of its own design.

Many of its systems were totally silent, dark, cold and dead, and others running at only fractional power as it slowed from hyperspeed at the fringe of the system designated on the maps as the latest krork infested world.

It stopped like a man listening at a corner for bandits, letting the metaphorical gaze of its passive sensors flitter from place to place, analysing everything in the right mass range, everything moving, everything changing course, listening for radio signals and their cousins-of-purpose.

Then it decided.

And reported back.


The dagger lying on the teak table was dangerous looking, in its way. Longer than most, it bordered on a sword, its blade – sheathed in a brass scabbard with a whirling pattern of leaves and vines – almost three hand spans – more for a woman – in length. Its guard ornate, made of the same brass, was wide, and housed several hundred micro-missiles of varying sizes, with typically with las-pistol-level punch, well concealed within its thick structure.

Its pommel contained an energy store, its handle, propulsion and computation mechanisms, and a secondary reactor. Its tapering living-metal blade immensely sharp, capable of projecting cutting fields that could make short work of even thick armour plates,

The dagger drone was one of the more common patterns, used with small variations depending on individual taste, by the Venturers. Its owner, aboard the ship Élmbar, inconceivably far from the krork-infested world, was one Rasa Fines.

She was a short woman, with chestnut – well, actually, closer to walnut really – hair and a fairly heavy build. Not ugly, per se – no one was who didn’t wish to be, with the prevalence and social acceptance of cheap, convenient and painless cosmetic-alteration techniques – but certainly unexceptional in looks.

She was listening to the Dead Air explain…


…long range displacement sucked, Rasa had to say. Mainly because it tended to consist of being teleported about fifteen meters into the air above the target to avoid appearing inside the floor.

She fell at a reduced rate thanks to several suspensors, but it was still far from comfortable.

“Where to now?” she murmured, checking her – concealed within ochre robes – pistol briefly, and patting the dagger drone. A calm voice replied from the amulet that was her communications device, and also contained a conversion field generator. “There should be a settlement to your north…”

“North?”

“Twenty six degrees to your right. You’re quite a way from the Krorks, so you should find a relatively unaffected group. There are two races, I’m not sure which this is…”

It was, at that moment, that a distant rumbling began somewhere on the horizon. Gradually growing louder, it soon became apparent that it was not, in fact, a thunderstorm.
The Kroozer Smasha crested a mountain range some miles away, moving like an enraged bull with several habenero peppers stuffed into various orifices. It was, of course, on a direct course for the city.
Had anybody been listening to the local com channels, they would have discovered that all communication was virtually impossible due to a veritable chorus of Orks using every avalible channel to repeat, "'Ere we go, 'ere we go, 'ere we go, smashin' some shorties, smashin' some shorties, smashin' some shorties, ORKS ORKS ORKS!"
After passing the city, there was apparently an arguement on the bridge, followed by the ship performing a 180 degree verticle twist and approaching the city upside down, although it righted itself shortly afterwards.
After a short while hovering, nothing happened.
Then somebody kicked a hatch open on the bottom of the ship and about a million Orks (or so it seemed) poured out wearing rokkit pakz.
Somebody in the Shorty city apparently got ahold of a weapon of some kind, because something exploded against the underside of the Kroozer, sending several of the rokkit-wearing Orks spinning. The Kroozer's retort was brief, but spectacular, involving a city block being leveled by various guns and missiles. It was, of course, the wrong city block, but the gun emplacement was taken out by a piece of building which ricocheted off the side of the Smasha.

(OOC: Hilarious! Nothing like seeing an Ork nation RPed by a good writer with a good sense of humor. I may join this as my FT Skaven nation which is still kinda in the works. For now, TAG.)

Most Angelic Gophers rarely go far from their own territory, preferring to scheme for power amongst themselves. Their slaves and playthings don’t tend to last very long, however, largely because of their habit of viewing the two categories as one and the same thing, and life gets boring without anything to torment. Thus, it is far from unusual for one member or another of the nobility to gather together a small battle fleet and go forth in search of entertainment. Sometimes they brought back prisoners and sometimes they didn’t, but these expeditions were always good fun.

It was one such fleet that happened to wander into the vicinity of Gork’magork’s new home a few hours after the space hulk landed. As it happened, they were at just the right distance to see the landing itself. The officer in charge of monitoring the command ship’s sensors noticed it at once.

“We’re picking up readings from some sort of ship, Lord. It’s too far away to see it clearly, but it looks like an interesting one. Big, certainly.”

Lord Gemren K’vell sat up in his command chair.
“Finally! Deploy scouts and get an array up so we can find out what we’re dealing with. How far is it?”

“About four hours, light speed.” the officer replied, claws clattering on a keyboard. “We should be getting a clear reading right about… now.”

With this, he brought up the image of the space hulk on a large view screen, just in time for everyone to see bounce off a mountain and plow into the forest.

“Well, that looks like about that. Shall we head in and lend a hand to any survivors?” asked one of the viewers cheerfully.

“Wait!” Gemren commanded. “It’s not that badly damaged. Watch it a moment.”

The command crew waited.

“Hey, there’s movement!”

Gemren nodded, with a touch of triumph.
“Anyone recognize those things?”

“Nope.”
“Not me.”
“Odd looking beasts.”
“Never seen one before.”
“No.”
“Sorry, Lord.”

“Very well. Ärel, check the files.”

The gopher named, a young and fairly recent recruit, fed a few images of the emerging creatures into the ship’s computer.

“Let’s see here… there on record. It says they’re probably Orks. We’ve never had any significant contact with them, but we know a bit about the creatures. It says they’re wild, destructive, warlike, bloodthirsty, barbaric, and some half a dozen other adjectives. They don’t tend to be very bright, but they can be useful, and certainly amusing.”

Lord Gemren sprang from his chair, scurried over to the technician’s view screen, and examined the file.

“Well, well, well… This could prove much more entertaining than stumbling across a band of foolish humans or some such. If Orks have never met Angelic Gophers, it’s high time we made their acquaintance. Lady Lethryn, take the Light of Hope with an escort of five other vessels and go investigate. Keep wings furled and spikes bared. All scouts are to stay here and keep monitoring the situation; the rest of us will find a convenient place nearby to set up a temporary base of operations.”

The others exchanged a gleaming grin, and hurried to do their leader’s bidding.


Although there are civilizations better at deception than Angelic Gophers, there are few that enjoy it more. They approach it with enthusiasm, and their ships reflect this interest. The six ships that had been selected for this expedition now looked drastically different than they had less than ten minutes before. Adaptable cells had changed their armor from gleaming white and gold to ebony and crimson. Their many weapons, usually kept out of sight in concealed gun ports, were out, and a set of vicious-looking steel blades had joined them. Even the basic shapes of the vessels had been changed, altered by motors and pistons beneath the complex layer of armor plates. Seeing one of them beside one of the other Angelic Gopher crafts, few indeed would guess that they had been built by the same craftsmen and served the same master.

Gliding now on waves of controlled gravity, five smallish warships and one medium-sized vessel swept towards the newly colonized (or, as some would put it, invaded) world…


OOC: Yes, my evil alternate is called Angelic Gophers. It’s a long story. Well, not so much long as complicated, with a little details from a number of different sources.

I assume Lethryn and her companions are going to encounter your new navy, or part of it, before anything else. It’d probably be best not to occupy everything you’ve got in space with them yet, because I’ll be able to post rarely if at all over the weekend.

Be warned that Angelic Gophers do use magic. If you have any objection to this, let me know and I’ll be happy to keep it far enough in the background that it won’t come up.

(OOC:
As long as you dont mind some Wyrdboyz popping up to counter your magic ;))

IC:
The Angelic Gopher ships were, of course, noticed soon after entering the system. Massive sensor dishes, built of whatever was avalible and polished repeatedly by the massive Gretchin population.
An equally massive comms dish was rotated (by Gretchins) to face the Gopher ship.

Is dis fing on? 'Allo?
If dis 's gettin' froo, 'erez dis Skinny fellow ta talk ta ya. 'E says we gotz ta 'nego-she-ate' a'fore we smash fings."
A skinny blue figure was shoved into the viewing area.
Greetings, I am called J'ngh8, if you will forgive such presumption, our mighty Ork masters wish to know what you have come to this system for. They would, of course, be more pleased if it were to conqour them, but we would appreciate it if you could avoid destroying our cities in the process."

(OOC: Not in the slightest. 'Tis only fair, after all.)

Interesting... Lethryn thought. It seems that perhaps these blue things feel that a show of submission is the best way to gain some degree of control over their new neighbors. Or maybe they're just weaklings, or these orks are more formidable than our records indicate, or a number of other possibilities. No point in speculating further until we know more, but the situation definitely merits some careful attention.

The face visible in the view screen was covered in pale brown fur, and lit by a faint golden glow from above. Several large, chisel-like teeth were visible.

-"Lethryn, Commander of this little expedition, speaking. We happened to be passing through the area, and picked up a crash landing on our scanners. My companions and I were sent to investigate, and see if we could help with cleaning up the wreckage, if you know what I mean. As for our current intentions toward you, that is yet to be determined. Alliance or conquest - I care not, as long as there's some fun to be had."-