NationStates Jolt Archive

with an interest in making contact with another race a small group of schwullunde intersteller craft begin making a routine maping expodition to one of the stars in the Schwullunde sector. there is 5 ships. 1 mining 1 science and 3 warships acting as cover just in case.

schwullunde science ship making scans of 4th planet.

on board the science ship.
well sir this is an appearently empty planet. it has an atmosphere that is capible of supporting life. there apears to be no intelligent life. should i send down a team to officially claim this planet

sounds good. if we don't someone else will and there might be several usefull things that can be found. at least this mission isn't going to be a total bust.

An automated Von Neumann probe entered the system. It began to make systematic scans of everything in the system. It was a long tube with a variety of instrumentation sticking out of it. Various antennae, tubes, and scanners stuck out of odd places.

It simply scanned the area. When it approached a planet, it released a probe which entered the atmosphere of the planet and began sending data back to the probe.

It made no attempt to communicate with the ships, it only recorded. It even passed close to one of the ships passively recording it.

The information was fed back by by a quantum tunneling ansible to a station in deep space, where it was noted and recorded on one of the view screens.

A man sat slightly bored drinking a cup of coffee watching the various probes. He was talking to the station AI, which had nicknamed itself 007.

He noted a possible contact in a far off sector. A simple message was sent, Scout Expeditionary Vehicle, we may have a contact in Sector 1117. Prepare a contact party. The self replicating probes had been sending out signals for the last 200 years.

on board the science ship.
sir it seems that an alien probe has just scanned our craft.
really thats interesting see if you cannot bring it aboard so that we can study it. possibly we can learn where it is from.
yes sir.

As you bring it aboard, a contact pulse is sent through the ansible to the deep space station.

When you open it, there are no identifying marks, most of the internal communications and electronics have fused together. You can make out some of the tecnology.

There is what looks like construction robots and nanotechnology, some kind of communication ansible which is no longer working, and various scanning devices.

A large metal tube jumps out of hyperspace near the edge of the system. It is broadcasting on a variety of frequencies. A binary language translation program is being sent.

sir we have just studied the object. it appears to be a long range probe.
hmmmm i wonder where it came from.
that could be difficult to figure out. it has no markings and it looks like it fried its own systems as we brought it aboard. though it appears that there are some robots and nanotech that are still working
interesting.

<warning claxons sound>
now what is this all about
<from comm sys>
Sir an unidentified object has just droped out of Hyperspace. It is attempting to upload some kind of program to our systems.

<comm from enginering>

sir this program is automatically overwriting a part of our systems. it is already causing minor problems with the environmental sub-systems in most of the crew quarters.

awww Bloody **** can you fix the problem.
well sir it may take care of itself. but we have no idea what the purpose of this probe is it could give us directions or it could blow up the ship.
!@#!@$#!@$^%&$@#!
yes sir my sentaments exactally
well what is your oppinion as to what we should do.
well sir if I were you i would destroy the **** thing
well do as you think best.

<comm from Science Officer>
well i think that will be unnecessary. the upload has finished.
hmm
it seems to be some kind of translation program though i am not entirely sure.
<comm from engineering>
the environmental systems have returned to normal sir

good. oh would someone turn off that *#%^& Claxon

<warning claxon stops>
good. now i can think. i want you all to begin attempting to figure out where these things are from. try to see i you can get a path trace as to the objects flight path.
yes sir

You try and find a trajectory for the ship, first you scan the ship, it is a cylinder. At the back is a very strange looking engine, it looks like a cross between a hyperspace engine and a warp engine, it is a big ring which is giving off a very strong gravity field with what looks like four warp nacelles sticking out of it. The ship is not very large, it is about a hundred meters long. The outer hull is some kind of very dense bioceramic.

There are a variety of sensor pods sticking out of the ship. It stops moving.

The trajectory of the incoming ship leads to a place in deep space without planets, it is a good twenty light years away.

The probe came from a nearby system about six light years away.

The ship is not doing anything right now.

You examine the probe a bit more, it looks like it could make a copy of itself, a lot of the equipment is for mining and manufacturing something similar. The other equipment is mostly sensors, magnetic, optical, xray, laser scanning, charge couple detection devices, atmospheric scanners, orbital GIS mapping equipment, and an array of things which look like detection devices of some kind, but you are not sure what they are supposed to detect. The central processing unit is fried, so is the communication equipment.

we have a flight path for the object. about 20 ly away no planets we can be there in less then 4 hrs.
hmmm is their any danger from the probe we have.
none that i can see, but we should be cautious anyway scans of both objects suggest that they have the ability to replicate themselves.
hmm any suggestions as to how to neutralize that effect.
well sir if we keep both of them in transport stasis they should be safe also an additional precaution of locking them in a phase shielded cargo bay as well whould do it.
good well clear out cargo 3 set up the shields and then transport both there and hold them in stasis.
yes sir.
after that set course for the objects start point.
yes sir.


moving within transport range the science craft. the object is transported to cargo 3.

a large rip in space forms about 50 m from the front of the craft glowing with blue light with a swirling vortex of pure white light spinning withen the heart of the rip. the science moves foward toward the rip as it gets closer it appears to stretch due to its foward sect moving at a slightly faster speed then the rear. the whole ship ripples with light as the stress from the rip interacts with the field of energy being generated by the craft to keep the craft from ripping apart like a trailer in a tornado. as the last of the ship passes through the rip the rip folds back onto itself and disappears as if it or the ship was ever there.


OOC due to travel time i am going to post another post later today.
check out [schwullunde ship recognition chart] in international incidents to see what the science craft looks like. the ship is in an astroid field about 5LY outside the schwule system if you look you will see sol in the upper right corner.

You close with the 100 meter long object and prepare to transport it aboard your ship and you get a hail as you are preparing to transport it aboard.

"Please identify yourself, alien vessel, you are in our exploratory sphere. This is an Commonalitarianism" Exploratory Scout Vessel."

sir i think that object hailed us as we took it aboard.
but due to the quantum displacement and our computers difficulty in translation from the alien program to our own system we just got it.
hmmm thats not good. we might have just started an intersteller incident.
thats possible i suppose,but unlikely according to the message we were in an area being explored by an alien culture calling itself "Commonalitarianism".
the message was quite clear about it being in their exploritory sphere. the interesting part is that, that system happens to be in our sector. i wonder how long it would have taken them to discover that the region they are exploring was inhabited by us. due to the fact that we are on the fringe of the galactic hub we assumed that all worlds in the region were to young to be populated or even notaced by other possible races. it seems that when we were dropped off by the (name unpronouncable to humans,genetically modified or otherwise) 50 years ago. it was beleaved that they placed us here specifically due to the fact that it was uninhabited.
i know all of that, but they haven't come back sense. i doubt that they were even from this galaxy.
true .
well no help for it. send out a message too the general region we are headed toward informing the Commonalitarianism that we are most sorry for "taking their probe" it will be returned as soon as we exit hyperspace.
also inform them that it was in the proximity of SM-00002-SR which is within our claimed region of the galaxy. in fact its the first steller mass in our region. we do not wish to go to war but this region is rich hunting grounds for salvaging alien tech due to what we think was a large scale war that decimated the region approximately 1000 yrs ago. exploration is fine but unfortunately we have the rights to all salvage withen the region due to the un accords of 2109 giving us sole claim to the region. this is backed up by the terran/alpha/proxima treaty as well which declared this region to be the sole terratory of the schwullunde colony to insure that neither group could unbalance the precarious balance in this region by moving into the area.
yes sir
good lad


(<schwullunde os>..translation..<Commonalitarianism os>)
<message transmited on as close a frequancy as possible to the probes >

There is a rather loud crash in the area where the stasis field is supposed to be. The Commonalitarianism ship is surrounded by a fairly powerful gravity field in combination with polarized electromagnetic hull plating. It distorts the stasis field enough that the ship ends up crashing into the deck below it.

You hear some cursing, "Hello, where are we, please explain this. What just happened? Rufus could you turn on the shields and check the scanners. Click-Hiss-Click-Tick-Tick turn on the quantum tunneling ansible." A man in a blue uniform with a tricorn hat appears on the com screen, there is what looks like a bipedal dog with big bandolier sitting at some controls, and a big red worm with tentacles is making funny noises behind them, clicking and hissing away.

OOC: The Commonii exploratory sphere is huge, they have been sending out self-replicating probes for two hundred years, the probe jumps into the system using a hyperspace drive, explores it, then makes two more probes, which do the same thing with the next system. So there are literary thousands of probes everywhere going from system to system. They cannot possibly claim the number of systems they have explored with the probes. You search around and find probes in most of the systems you have been in, many of them look like big rocks with equipment sticking out of them. You might have missed them completely if you weren't looking.

ooc you know the sad thing is i might have "salvaged" several :rolleyes:

uhhh captain we have a problem. a really big problem.
what is it.
well sir it seems that the "object" is hmmm how to put this
well spit it out boy
its well its not in stasus.......
and
well .... its ocupied sir.
do what. i know that i didn't hear you say what i think you said.
sorry sir but it is. it appears to be occupied by at least three different alien races. though one of them appears to be human......
what did you say. please tell me your joking right... we didn't just "kidnap" three aliens and their ship... please tell me that.
uuuuuuh....urrrrrrr well...............yes sir it looks like we did.
#&*@%&%&(*&)@$%^^%**&)$%^*I
ulp
$%^*&$^%$#^%(&^($#%@$%^*&
..................................
!%#! well there is nothing to do for it. why me why oh why me

ok i am sending a security detachment......in fact i am coming to see this personally.you stand there and wait for me.....then you can explain exactilly how it is that you "missed" telling me it was "occupied".
(twitching nerviously) yes sir



<outside the ship>
a group of 9 schwullunde troopers stand looking back and forth between the captain and the craft not exactilly sure which is the more dangerious at this moment.

the captain is standing and berating the poor tech in charge of the "objects".
in fact the captain appears to be screeming himself into a right frinzy.most of what he is screaming is in about 5 distinct languages and most of it is defenately not for the ears of children.
the poor tech has gone 4 shades of pale sense the captain arived about 15 min ago.

the science officer and several techs are trying very hard to figure out what should be the first order of buisness considering the alien ocupants of the "object" which is currently laying on its side.

(and the alien occupents are looking a little confused)

The Schwullunde troops here a whirring sound as several scanners turn on. Then what looks like a couple of cameras start moving back and forth scanning the inside of the cargo hold.

The Captain, piers at the com screen, "Just where am I, hello, hello, can somebody explain this? This is the Captain speaking. How did I get here?"

Rufus, looking at the view screens, "I think we're in a cargo hold. Those are crates. Look humans in uniforms no less. Yep, those look like guns."

Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick, through his translator, "You humans are always so illogical, so, Rufus, are you going to greet the angry two leggeds we have no treaty with."

Rufus switches on a panel, it opens, it has a speaker to the outside, "Hello, this is contact specialist, Rufus, I will be coming outside shortly. I will be coming out unarmed. Feel free to inspect me. I am a bipedal canid, do not be alarmed. We wish to speak to you. I will be carrying a data pad and some basic translation equipment."

Everyone stops doing whatever they were doing, and procedes to look at the object/scout vehicle.
the poor tech can only look releaved to have the captains attention diverted.
the science officer and the techs all look a bit releaved to have the discision made for them.
and the troops can only glare out their visors and feel as if this might be just a big waste of time that they could be spending playing cards and drinking.(you know how soldiers are:rolleyes:)

science team officer speaking
hmm well you are currently in cargo 3. you got here cause we teleported your "craft" here as we went into hyberspace.
in fact the "craft" was supposed to be held in stasis till we got to the location from which you came.

captain:
in fact we had no idea your craft was occupied due to the fact that this (reather rude expression for the obviously illecit ofspring of a donkey and a fish) person (points at tech) couldn't figure out how to scan for life.

tech:
(wails) But I did sir

captain:
no you did not .....

now yes you can come out anytime you like.seeing as how you are here and i cannot release your craft in hyperspace. and quite frankly you look a bit uncomfortable in there.

science officer:
we really had no intention of kidnaping you....Canid you say....well well splendid.

The Captain smiles, "We understand the risks that come with the job." "Rufus will be coming out now."

A tall canid comes out, he is about six feet tall with gold colored fur. There are various instruments hanging from a bandolier and he is wearing shorts with pouches on them. There is a patch with a rocket ship flying around a planet at the top of his bandolier.

Rufus smiles and says, "It is very nice to meet you all. I am Contact Specialist Rufus from the Commonalitarianism Expeditionary Scout Service. This is Captain Marcus Cruon, and Negotiator Hiss-Hiss-Click-Click-Tick-Tick" He bows slightly.

Following him is the Captain, Marcus Cruon, who is wearing a blue uniform with a similar patch on his shoulder.

The worm which comes out is striking. It is good 2.5 meters tall and 1.5 meters wide, and is bright red with yellow markings. It has numerous tentacles on its underside, four long antennae on its head, a mouth with numerous needle like teeth and a big box on its chest along with various tools hanging off belts around its middle.

the captain walks up to the captain of the alien craft.
As i am not sure of your protocol i will address you as you seem to be the ranking member of your crew. I am Captain Joachim Hoffmann the Schwullunde science vessel CSS Novae. We welcome you aboard. We are quite frankly supprised to see anyone out this far in the Galactic Spiral Rim. you are lucky this is a science vessel if this had been one of the mining consortiums privateers you would have ended up stranded on an astroid somewhere. that said we really are quite sorry that we have taken your craft without your permission. that said we should be arriving at your origional coordinates shortly. I will gladly give you a tour of this vessel or as far as it has anything worth seeing. Sorry about the troops the Military insists that we take them along on these missions as a precaution against any lifeforms that may be on the planets in this region. not that we ever see any lifeforms worth mentioning. there was life in this region over a thousand years ago. this we know due to the numerious artifacts we salvage and study. that and there was a war in this area that has left many a dead craft just floating about waiting to be claimed.

the science officer

If things go well with this meeting we might move one of the stations from the interior out to this area to act as a trade and communications station. perhaps we can even set up a joint scientific mission or two.

(OOC you might want to read the Schwullunde Region factbook on nsg. that way you may understand some small details of our regions people)

about now an odd scent should be permiating cargo 3. the obvious scent of female but also the overpowering scent of male humans. the fact that there isn't a single Female in cargo 3 makes this even more odd.


about this time there is a slight shift in the movement and the vibration of the ship.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

a rip appears in the fabric of space out of it streaks the science craft. the speed of it makes it appear to be nothing but streaks. as it comes back into proper movement with the universe the rip folds back into itself and vanishes

Captain Marcus Cruon is quite happy to take a tour of the ship, so is Rufus,

Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick passes on the tour goes back into the ship and comes out with a large clear box on a float plate. It is labeled trade goods. There are little boxes with a single item or a description of an item in them in a large clear box.

The goods are numerous and varied, a variety of ornamental botanicals from six different worlds, numerous seed crops from ten different worlds, bioplastics, bioceramics, clear solar powered glass as hard as steel, carbon nanotubes, nanobatteries, nanobattery ultracapacitors, solar power satellites, salvage ships for hauling dead ships back to base, space garbage cleanup ships, advanced recycling technology, recycling regenerative life support systems, paraterraforming equipment for asteroids and planetoids, pyramid arcology designs, and other goods.

captain smiles as says excellent. we will start at the back which is where we are at the moment and travel towards the bridge.

science officer :
thank you Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick but we are not really able to begin trade you see. this is a science vessel. that will be taken up by the minister of trade back home.

captain: speaking of which we would love to invite you back to schwullunde. that way you can see the sites and the people. lets begin the tour

we have 3 cargo bays as you can see the captain says showing you all three cargo bays most of which seem to be taken up by pieces of spacecraft crates of various and sundry alien technoligy. in cargo 1 seems to be a whole unknown craft. going along you travel through the troop quarters. the captain showes you the rec room where various soldiers seem to be drinking and playing cards. this is the troop rec room as you can see its got entertainment and exercise equipment so that the troops can keep in shape and blow off steam. going along you pass through the actual crew quarters which are only barely larger then the troop quarters then you go through the engeneering and science sections. most of the crew seems to be studying various salvaged parts and equipment. then on to the bridge where as you can see we are back in normal space.

Captain Marcus, "You have a very fine ship." He takes note of all the salvage lying around and the alien ship."

Rufus is looking around a bit as well. He seems a bit worried. He is looking for safety protocols on the alien equipment.

Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick, "As you can see this is a free sample box, study it pry it apart, feel free to take it with you if you like for the Ministry of Trade later. Science it is, hmm... You will get a surprise at the end of your trip."

When you enter normal space you see something rather striking. There is a central 10 kilometer wide asteroid which has been paraterraformed into a worldhouse asteroid. At the poles and at four points around the equator are pyramid arcologies, crisscrossing between the cities are rail line networks and sections. It looks like the small worldlet is broken up into separate biodomes, representing the ecologies of many different planets. You can see green, purple, phosphorescent red, grey, and many different colors of vegetation from many worlds through the clear upper skins.

http://www.orionsarm.com/civ/Worldhouses.html

Surrounding the worldhouse asteroid are four domed asteroids, two of them look to be factory ships producing a wide variety of products. Two of them look like they could be what is a legend, flying mobile cities with massive hyperspace ring drives around them.

Next to them is a massive ancient space station, it looks like parts of it might have been built during the late 21st century all the way up to the present. There are various salvage ship yards, used space ship yards, recycling yards, a scout base with science ships, scout ships, and a dozenl heavy destroyers. You can see what looks like ships from a variety of species attached to the station. Some might even be privateers or mercenaries with their markings and registrations. It is not so much built but glommed together over a couple centuries. Outside of the station there are old ships, and cargo containers many of them converted into temporary homes for their different inhabitants.

the science officer acceots the gift from Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick. thank you this is a wonderful gesture.noticing Rufas he grins and says not to worry we got smart after a reather unpleasant incident involving an old transporter gate. the crew lost half its men as they were transported 3ly away 1 by 1. we generally remove any power source from the artifacts as a precaution. that ship is in a stasis field as well just in case. though if you happen to know anything about that craft we would welcome your expertise. one of the techs retreaves a small handheld holo device. this is a map of the area of our known space. you will also find pics of several known artifacts that we have come across. including this one on SM-00005.9 http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/803/unidentifiedalienobjectsm1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OOC kool thats a cool pic .thanks i will have to look at that site again.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
well well would you look at that says the captain in obvious awe. I have never seen anthing like this.one of the science techs speaks up, sir this looks like it has been here for a couple of hundred years. it looks like the wars that have plagued this region up until 2109 extended well beyond our region. the science officer in obvious delight recognises one of the smaller craft. wow so thats what that craft looked like,we have only found wreckage of that type. If it wasn't for the fact that this sits well away from our primary route to the terran sector we would have had this meeting a whole lot sooner.says the captain. to the techs the captain says transport the probe back into space.send a greeting to the station informing them that we have one of their
Exploritory craft on board , the crew of said craft are here and haven't been harmed. Captain Marcus you are free to go at any time or you can stay as you like, we are defenately sorry for the inconveniance we have caused you and your crew

Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick, "When the great old ones, the Ouroboros, left to fight their wars and never returned, we don't even remember what they were fighting, it was so long ago, they left us behind to maintain their cities, you know keep the garbage collectors running, make sure that the tunnels are built properly, things like that, they left behind some basic species programming, we remember things, but don't know how they work. That artifact looks like an interdimensional mobius strip, it allows you to travel between very similar parallel realities. By travelling along the strips, you enter a new reality, only very slightly changed from the old one." He lets out a worm sigh, and rubs a clear egg shaped object. Then turns away.

Rufus would like to stay with the crew, he is interested in learning about the Schwullunde. You learn he is kind of like an anthropologist, a contact specialist. He goes and stays with a new alien culture for a while living on their worlds.

Captain Marcus would like to get back to his ship and return home. Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick of course offers to Negotiate trade items or science.

You contact the station, a human in a blue uniform answers the call. He is rather surprised you are here. He tells you normally, they do an exchange of gifts then head home.

OOC: This is an article that might explain some aspects of the image.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://im-possible.info/images/articles/farkas/fig07.jpg&imgrefurl=http://im-possible.info/english/articles/farkas/farkas.html&h=160&w=138&sz=8&hl=en&start=105&sig2=bOwvu0crJTieNOIYWT1MIA&um=1&tbnid=IwiPZiDynigRtM:&tbnh=98&tbnw=85&ei=zNx1Ro6oGJeoeJu8zfoJ&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmoebius%2Bstrip%2Binterlocking%26start%3D100%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3De n%26sa%3DN

well we will gladly take anyone along who is interested says the captain. to Rufas he says, If you have a mate we will of course extend the invitation.

to Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick he says we are just a science vessel, we will leave that up to the big-wigs back home. I am sure that you and they can figure out something. probibly "Fire Pearls" if i know them, after all we have tons of the things.Though they are pretty (a fire pearl really isn't a pearl, Its a small round orb that looks like red hot metal. it gives of no discernable heat or radiation of any sort. the "fire Pearl cannot be damaged in any way. the most common use is jewelry in which they are usually mounted with a 4 leg pendant mount. they can be found only on 3 planets in the schwullunde sector"

to the man in the blue uniform
well you see we traced the flight path of your craft. we decided to come here and see what was in this area. we transported the craft aboard thinking it was a probe of some sort. unknown to us till after we had jumped to hyperspace was that the probe was occupied. as we couldn't just drop them off we figured that we would return them here. if we had found nothing we would have then dropped them and the craft off and went on back to our sector. though it looks like it has been the most interesting "mistake" we have ever made. when we arive back home we will ask the government to immeadiately dispatch a space station to the area of Sm-0002-Sr to act as a link between our two peoples.

Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick, "That must have been from the enemy, I know the Ouroboros, the Great Old Ones had an enemy, we have pondered just what it might have been but do not know, at the time we were slaves and less than slaves, undercreatures and servants."

Rufus, certainly, I can bring a mate if you would like. "Our kind usually mates when the female is uh, ahem, in estrus."

The person at central looks at you, "As long as they are doing well, being part of scout service has its risk. We would welcome a science ship to come visit our base. By the way it is called "Travelling Station" because pieces of it were once orbiting mars, the moon, and other places in sol system."

ooc yeah i guess that object does look a bit like one of those. though i think maybe a bit more like a hypercube. anyway i am working on a sector map. not really finished yet. just wondering is your region just outside the area i picked your characters up at. i just wanna add an arrow pointing that way if it is. also just a interesting tidbit we were "transplanted" here by an alien race. kinda a cross between some of the 50's scifi aliens and the grays in pop coulture. also the moon we live on was inhabited centuries ago though it looks like they destroyed themselves or were destroyed not sure yet. if you have read any of the "gateway" series then you recognize the "Fire Pearls" i will admit i will "borrow" almost anything from any of the books i have read. Just to let you know though the alien race that lived on our moon isn't the heeche or ((Shudder)) Ewoks.:p

also i take alot of my cue's from what the other person is doing thats why when you added a bit of humor i ran with it,when you got a little more serious so did i. though i can do serious i like humor a bit better though its all up to the other guy. i do want to continue this at least another chapter, i do have a few ideas. but for now lets call this post a "prologue" to the real story hopefully we can get a couple of others to join as well that one will specify humor if you like. as you have read "Spellsinger",or have read "the Myth Series","the Landover Series", or :eek:any of the "Diskworld" series.;) you know what i mean. but i am easy i can do "tolkin" just as easily.:D

ooc: I think the main goal is to tell a story. Humor, seriousness, should change to fit the situation. I do like humor, though. Most good science fiction has a little bit of the ridiculous in it. ;)

I steal from all over too. I try to take some time to read the different things going on in nation states. A lot of this place is about war toys, and using different war toys. If it is not war toys, it is often humor about war toys. There is also a streak of mercantilism and engineering. People really like mega-engineering, big ships, railroad networks, giant space stations, and gee wow structures in nationstates if they are not into the war side. There is also a lot of political commentary. :eek:

One of the nice things about nationstates is that they can't pin you on your grammar. Sometimes, I wish I could get published. It is a little fantasy to write something for a fanzine or something. This is a nice chance to get in some writing practice in a free for all setting. I tried once to get a short story published and got an honest to gosh rejection slip...

I've read the Gateway book by Frederik Pohl. If you want some good free science fiction books, there is also the Baen free library. http://www.baen.com/library/ . Baen is mostly military science fiction, but I like military science fiction. Rats, Bats, and Vats is an interesting story if you like humor.

no problem rufas, the captain says. the main reason i asked is because humans tend to form manogamistic relationships, as we have no other referance to go by we assumed yours did as well. that and well our coulture can be a little unique. it would be easier for you if you had your "wife" with you so that you have someone to allow you to stay grounded. that and of course its a diplimatic gesture, bringing the family of a diplomat gives a certain amount of security due to the fact that no deceant species would harm a "civilian" though i use that term figuritivly.

to the man in the blue uniform we would enjoy a visit to travelling station. it would be a good chance to see how another civilization lives. we have only minor contact with terra due to our distance, though occasionally some of our heavier craft make the trip as well as look for other races to make contact with along the way.also my science officer would never let me hear the end of it if i refused to take the chance to allow him to see the "sites":rolleyes:

They gladly offer you a tour of the station. The main hub is a trade station with goods coming in from a variety of worlds, you can buy everything from an orango fruit to a suit of medium power armor. Many different species mix in the market. You even see a brain bugger float by on an antigrav float plate with his attending workers. The translator cut through multiple varieties of noises, stinks, and radio transmissions. Most of it is trade related. There are restaurants and bars serving a variety of species.

You are shown to a habitat section for many different environments, heavy worlders, methane breathers, dark tunnels, and other environments are present. A heavy world underground methane breather could specify the environmet they wanted if they needed to spend a night here.

Then you are taken to the scout section, they show you rooms with hundreds of different views coming from various probes throughout the galaxy. Different worlds are being monitored and recorded into a central computer complex. There is a central holomap of the galaxy with large chunks in red showing where the probes have gone. Some of the chunks are yellow, marked quarantine hostile species.

Then they take you below to the scout service where science labs and rooms are laid out. There is a probe launching system, and several small scout vessels, some medium sized science vessels, and even a diplomatic command carrier warship for negotiating with war like cultures.

Up top are areas for various corporate offices. There are Jawa garbage companies, Bugger biological supplies companies, the Cruon Commercial House-- Energy Syndicate, Mercenary syndicates, a recruiting office for the Asteroid Legions, registered privateering companies from several countries, and many other companies.

There is even a museum which had been transported from Old Earth, The Museum of Found Objects, it has battleships from old earth, Scandinvan longships, Commonii motorboats, old spacesuits from mars, early space salvage ships and other ancient objects.

we are most impressed by everything that you have accomplished here.says the science officer. we had no idea there was so many different species in this galaxy, much less that so many of them were in our area. we will defenately be recominding imeadiate relocation of one of our space stations to the area of SM-00002.5 SR to act as a way station for contact with your people. i will also request that our government designate SM-00002.4 as a resort planet so that any of your people who are interested may visit with us and experiance our hospitality whenever they would like. we have already added a notation to our star chart to designate your region so that relations with your people can be started as soon as possible. though of course all of those details will be worked out by our respective governments. its nice to see that in the 2 centuries sense we fled terra, not all of humankind have remained in a perpetual state of near barbarism. we would of course like to present your government with a gift. A small box 1'x2' immeadiately appears in the science officers hands. opening it you see that it contains approx. 200 Fire Pearls cushoned by a velvet lining. These Pearls can only be found in Schwullunde though they seem to be quite common in our area due to their beauty they are a favorite stone in much of our jewelry. we are of course not really sure of their value if any in the rest of the universe.they are quite cool to the touch even though it appears as if they are red hot. industructable to any means we can assertain, though they have absolutely no use that we can find other then as jewelry. we hope that you enjoy them as much as we do.




ooc just as a funny thought what if they were nothing but ball barrings to the old ones. its not like that kind of thing has never happend in real life just look at the value of broken pots and other things that were never intended to have any real value to the people who made them. can't you just imagine the people of the future considering a roll of tp a piece of ancient art((if of course any survives)):rolleyes: though i really don't think that was the use of the "pearls"

We welcome the presence of a station in this part of space. You notice that everything here is artificial or imported here, it would be a crossroads between many different solar systems. This is neutral ground, not inside a specific solar system.

We welcome the chance to visit a resort world. It would be a welcome respite for many of our citizens.

The Commonii shows you a map of a few systems marked quarantine, these are Posleen-- a giant centauroid lizard, Berserker-- killing machines, Flood-- rage plague zombie infested, these systems need to be contained. Be careful when exploring.

He further states, that you should be careful, once a system is discovered, one of the many human variants, or alien species will attempt to buy it from you, or take it by force. There are dozens of humanoid species and if they have an excuse to take your territory, they will. Most will see your real estate as being more valuable than you are.

The Commonii are delighted with the new "jewelry". They test it out as ammunition in a high powered rail rifle.

ooc you know i never thought of that use lol i suppose they could make good projectiles. especially with them being industructable and giving off no radiation,and so on and so on. of course not exactilly the first thing a sf nation would think of but hey thats kool. of course i can just see a whole plt of troops using these things


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also i am about to make a correction to something i said at the begining of this post. it is to do with the location of SM-00002-SR i said it was the near schwullunde. i didn't generate a map till later when i did i placed it at the edge. that is as of my listing it on the map its official location. i am going back and fixing that small error. also if you are interested the designation # system i use is as follows (Steller Mass-designator-Schwullunde Region). the SM changes depending on the class of the feature SM indicates its a star, there are others but as i haven't placed any as of yet i haven't used them (or even created them). your stations designator # is C/TS-90045-CR though it really isn't on our map. about to add a referance on the map though

thank you we defenately will be carefull. though most of our explorations are confined to our sector. we are more interested in the archiology of our sector, as well as the scientific and economic benifits of what we find if anything near the stars in the sector. contacting another race was defenately a plus. the good thing about our sector is that its just a mini arm, more like a "finger" on the orion arm. this means of course that we are pretty much just a frontier. i am pretty sure that the only reason the terrans,alphans,proximans agreed to that part of the treaty was just to keep the other guy from having it. because of the fact that is isolated like it is means that its pretty much safe from invasion unless some group decided to risk traveling outside the galactic system. which is from what i can gather just to much of a danger for all but the most advanced civilizations. that and who in their right minds would go to the trouble of attacking un and incurring the wrath if terran/alphan/proximan empires as well as those who wouldn't want another war between those 3 groups to start up. anyway none of that really matters at this momentus occasion, the meeting of two races for the first time. as well as the mutual cooperation that will possibly occur bwcause of this meeting.

We would like to set up a scientific and trade exchange to exchange technologies. We currently do not possess transporter technology of any kind. We are more than willing to provide basic paraterraforming technology in exchange. This is older technology. With graviphotonic generators, or even the simple choice of spinning an object very fasst, it allows one the freedom to live in many locations.

OOC: This is my nutty website. I will be updating the history section soon.
http://www.freewebs.com/commonalitarianism

we have transmitted your offer to the ministry of science. we received conformation that such a trade will be allowed to take place. this will fix one of our ecological problems. because of the historical disaster we mentioned our moon is largely desert. with your technoligy we can begin to fix that. we are immeadiately transportating the technical crew to install a fully functioning transporter system in travelling station. along with this we are providing you with the information to build them for yourselves. the good thing about this system is that it makes moving large amount of cargo without all the hassles of manual transport.

ooc:
the transporter system we use is largely based on the asgaard technoligy used on sg1. i prefer it to the same tech mentioned in Star Trek. the basic idea is the same but i have added some other elements of my own design.
it works off of a similar principal as spatial folding. basically a holding field is activated around an object. the color i use for this field is blue. then the area withen this field is folded. if you have read a wrinkle in time by Madeleine L'Engle you know the idea well sorta. in this case point a and point b are folded to meet each other at nearly the same point. then a small field is added to "push" the object from one point to the other. the effect i use for this is several beams of greenish light. while this may not exactily right it solves a scientific problem that star trek had to come up with an explination for. its also a little more in keeping with science as that nasty little rule about same material not being able to exist simultainiously in 2 points is no longer a problem as all it does is shift said material over a distance of microscopic levels. be forwarned though. if you were to contact a and b at exactily the same point in space time you will probibly create something like a closed loop with a black hole inside. in other words both a and b will cease to exist and the resulting gravity wave would decimate 2 locations simultainiously. along the lines of a whole sector being destroyed. i wouldn't even attempt to use this effect to make a weapon because i would be willing to bet the mods would consider that a godmod and you can guess the result:eek:
oh as an additional bit of info attempting this at greator distance then orbital distance would of course make the math almost impossible. as such keeping those points seperated would take more power then the entire universe contains.:p so it is written, oh bla bla bla:D

OOC: That is kind of interesting. The orions arm description of paraterraforming earlier would give you an idea on how paraterraforming works. This would expand your growth capacity to small moons, planetoids, and asteroids. I like the idea of using space for manufacturing, keeping planets with life on them as wilderness preserves and biological laboratories, and living on paraterraformed objects in space mostly. This effectively creates a free space society without as much need for planets. So it is a beam transporter that operates by folding space. It wouldn't be like the ring transporter used by the go'uld. A green beam shoots out scans the object, folds space, then unfolds space. I am wondering how anything survives folding... but that is another story.

ooc i kinda feel the same way. thats why most of my sector is uninhabited.i prefer to just explore, look for artifacts or interesting baubles, and then leave the planets the way they were. i kinda like to think of my sector as an old junk/salvage yard. i will probibly use the terraforming tech on moons and small planetoids. besides you never know when some nasty space bug might be on one of the planets.:rolleyes:

The Commonalitarianism scientists and tradesmen are very interested in looking at your trade goods, they sort through the obvious trade goods, putting aside things like greeble fur, peaches, and other common items for the every day markets. They are looking for those unique things which are thought up once in a blue moon, or are surprises that appears in those aha moments. Things like skyfarms, balloon plants, giant tensegrity balloons, solar glassteel, bioceramics, bose einstein condensate storage, biological wiring, and similar unique discoveries that could have only been thought up by an original mind.

They ask to do a biological survey of your world for unique animals, plants, and organisms which they can clone or create a seed bank for. They are looking for original biologicals, pharmaceuticals, and original biomaterials. Things which might make good pets, or have a nice ornamental function like a flowering jelly tree.

the techs put the finishing touches on the transporter system. one of the techs informs you that the transporter system has its own power supply so it will not draw any power from the main station. the trans-sys-core has been effectivily tied into the stations systems. you now have a fully opperational trans-system.

they do find one boolian field generator. you are informed that for anything else you will have to enter schwullunde sector. we will gladly take you to a planet rich with organics and biological life of all sorts.we are also planing to show you some of the greator sites in the sector. we will be passing reather close to HN-097061-SR which is a reather interesting nebula. its not even out of the way. in fact you can see it quite well from the star we just came from.

Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick and Rufus wish the captain goodbye and pack some things to bring on the Schwullunde ship for their trip to Schwullunde space. Zuleika, a canid with a thick black coat will come as his pack mate. Rufus belongs to cinder pack, which is a combination of business, social group, and family.

A science survey ship will follow the Schwullunde ship to the place rich in life and organics. They intend to survey, take genetic samples, and catalog all the different life forms they find on the world.

The techs try and figure out how the Boolian Field Generator works and what it is for. They are interested in having a new toy to play with on the station.

Narration- And so kiddies so ends chapter 1 The Meeting. stay tuned for the next exciting chapter in our story..
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Chapter 2 The Expidition.

the Schwullunde Science Vessel quickly preps for the first leg of the trip.all of the crew moves in a hurried but completely professional manner. Quarters have been assigned to the Commonalitarianism Guests. Located in the Officers Area not far from the Captains Quarters. Not knowing the exact specifications needed by each Guest the captain puts the ships matter replicators at the disposel of Rufus,Zuleika,and Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick so that they may replicate the necessary furnishings. he also assignes a team of soldiers who were not doing anything important to act as manpower in setting up the guest quarters to the exact specifications. the Soldiers have been informed that for this they are to wear their non combat uniforms,which are basicly just black form fitting jump suits and a basic black utility web belt with the Space Corps-Special Services emblem as the buckle. the guest quarters consist of a suite of three rooms conected to a medium sized common area. one of the rooms can be accessed by a set of stairs leading from the common room. the soldiers inform the guests that normally this suite is used as office space due to the fact that science vessels almost never get any visiting dignitaries whatsoever.Sanitary units have been installed in each of the secondary rooms. the guests are informed that due to space requirements abourd the vessel their are two common shower bays one for crew and one for officers, they are available for use at any time that they prefer. the captain also grants that if the guests would prefer the shower facilities can be made available for private use if they would prefer some semblance of privacy. they are also informed that due to the solitary and often extended duration of most voyages they might see most of the crew and officers in various forms of undress during each persons off hours . he informs you that he of course can order that this be "temporarily" disallowed if you would feel more comfortable. the guests are also given a basic history and cultural dosier on crystal storage devices (looks a bit like a flat pad computer made of a bluish crystalin substance). all functions on these pads are voice activated, though a voiceprint must be taken so that they function properly. each can store up to 5 gigaquads of storage so that they can also be used to take notes or any other purpose that can be thought of. special authorization is required to access the computer core from these devices, this is of course to keep clevor soldiers from damaging the systems by downloading or uploading anything "extra" onto the ships comps. grinning the science officer informs you that before the safties were installed one clevor trooper uploaded an entire library of "videos" into the system. unfortunately this caused the A.I. system to go haywire because it couldn't discern between the "videos" and reality. took forever to clean that mess up. the first officer looks hurt,"how was i to know the stupid A.I was going to activate the whole thing at once thinking it was some kind of new entertainment protocol.

Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick tells them he really doesn't need anything except some dirt for the floors, he doesn't need them to give him furniture or anything like that. What he does in the room is mildly frightening. First he vomits up some seeds on the dirt which start growing into a kind of soft velvety sweet smelling grass. Then he takes out two small wireframe collapsible cages from his storage trunk and opens his jaw glowing insects like very large fireflies fly into cages lighting the room. He spits against the wall a piece of gunk gets stuck there. He uses his tentacles to pull more gunk out of his stomach until he has woven a large very strong hammock, which he lays down in testing. Then he sprays the walls with an internal cleaning agent followed by kind of lichen which turns the walls a brilliant orange. He sighs, "Just like home."

It is much more conventional for Rufus and Zuleika. They pull out auto inflating furniture, chairs, a big round bed, dressers, and put up thin electronic ink posters of various members of the Cinder pack, and an electronic ink entertainment center display. It looks like a typical room almost.

Zuleika and Rufus have no problem using the public showers.

Click Click Hiss Hiss Tick Tick asks for a large cargo container. He needs to soak sometimes for several hours in a briny solution.

Zuleika and Rufus spend some time reading the general pattern of the cultural matrix. They are more interested in talking with the crew, playing cards, board games, and telling and hearing stories initially about Schwullunde and the Commonalitarianism.

Click Click Hiss Hiss Tick Tick scrolls through the computer fairly quickly using the translation program, he is hissing, puffing, clacking, and clicking away.

OOC-- sorry not much for tonight.thought i would just post this so you can see the space corps symbol/uniform patch. the space corps is a unified military branch. primarily used for defensive/offensive missions. the average trooper isn't really like a marine, more like Army Spec Ops. in fact the fleet is closer related to the Army Air Corp(Air Force) then to the navy, so you probley will never see me use usn rank;). not that i could ever figure it out anyway.


http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/7860/schwullundemilitarypatctg1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

just as a point about the design. the star represents the star Schwule,the large circle is Schwule Prime and the small circle is Schwullunde. though in reality Schwullunde is always closer to the sun(don't ask me to explain that little imposability):p

OOC: Nice insignia, what is the background color it is on. Is it black, or a contrasting uniform color. I can see it with a man in a gray uniform with a wide brimmed cap, or even a classic khaki round cap. Sounds like SAS-- Special Air Service troops from Britain who you drop behind enemy lines or paratroopers.

ooc that color is actually intended to be black the other colors are as follows. border=maroon, star=yellow-orange(sorta a mix),large circle=Maroon,small circle=Dark green. as to the SAS nahhh more like Special Forces, i know more about them and they do it all for the most part. the uniform the same as mentioned in play, a gloss black/drab black form fitting uniform made of a light/breathable synthetic polimer that mimics human skin and enhances muscles/reflexs. the battle add ons seen in the other pic (the other post i mentioned earlier) is a helmet which has thermal/night vision,targeting sensors,battlefield information display, and 2 way FTL Radio built in. Gloves have touch sensors which send info to the B.I.D in the helmet. a web utility belt(see standered us army issue) Body Armor which basicly helps refract allot of the energy from conventional small arms energy systems,and a medical information sensor which is used in conjunction with basic med repair nanobots( about all they can do is keep a soldier who has been wounded from dying as long as its not terrably serrious "head blown off,heart exploded,etc", leg protectors same as body armor, and boots calf high.
this is actually similer to the actual "future warrior system which was proposed by us military r&d" also its similer to a class a uniform i designed for the army as a lark"never submited" though i had the idea for the barret change in 99 "they stole my idea:p" oh that one was more like the usmc dress uniform though it was black as well."black and gold are the army colors;)" if i was going for MT i would use the army digicamo BDU "with actual buttons, velcro sux" pre MT would be various uniform designs depending on exact era. i could add personal cloaking to the uniform but then you have the prob of hitting your own troops:rolleyes:

warning claxons sound and the captain says over the ships intercoms, prepair for hyperspace entry on my mark 3..2..1..mark.
as the ship moves into hyperspace there is a slight uncomfortable shift in the molacules of the ship and everything else aboard caused by the sudden accelleration past light speed. as everything settles down most of the crew go on about their duties as if nothing occured

in space

the Schwullunde Science Vessel closely followed by the Commonalitarianism Science Vessel enter hyperspace with a course heading into Schwullunde Sector.
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OOC this first leg will take us back to the origional meeting place. from here we will head deeper into the sector. the main reason for this is so that i can reintroduce the other ships that i left behind there as well as show off the work and the newly settled space station orbiting the planet. feel free to add anything that you think will enhance our story anytime. i will admit most of the course has been plotted on one of my maps but i can always edit that to make it more interesting. as this first leg is just a retracing of the origional path its going to be quick so that we can begin the real fun though if you have anything to add for the interum please do, the lovely thing is i am easy either way. i think you will like the plotted ending of this story, then we can decide on doing another post to continue the story onwards that could be fun especially considering where we are heading with this one. i will not give any hints though............................because thats not in the dm's handbook:D
in fact we may want that post to be primarily run by you so that you get the chance to set the primary theme with me acting as backup. though that one should probibly be non combat as well unless we can get another person to rp an enemy. though anything that will not involve other ns'ers can be rp'ed easily through good storytelling. once we get to the end i will post the sector map though i would just prefer to send it to you in e-mail so that is doesn't get out till its really complete, or used to launch an invasion by some of the other people on ns. though if that happend i would just ship myself as well as your outpost into a distant galaxy and set up a gate system for easier travel between galaxys (a huge trans-hyperspace gateway):eek::rolleyes: until i am ready for that kind of thing if ever(don't mind joining in necessarily but i happen to like my little sector very much:D) though that all depends on if i start acting all big and bad and invading other smaller systems for conquest if that happens i will just have to take my medicine like a good boy;)

Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick, grumbled slightly, he would never quite get used to going into hyperspace.

The science ship notices something odd, apparently there is a kind of warp bubble around the Commonii ship in hyperspace, something unexpected.

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OOC: There is another option when we begin trading technology. It is something a bit more useful in some ways than the giant hyperspace gate. The idea is that you can run several wormholes together forming a network. After the wormhole is formed, you run a big tube through it with a forcefield and build a set of trains to run through the different tubes. The trains are inside space stations, or even ground stations so they can be loaded and unloaded easily. Each station might have several different trains kind of like a galactic subway network... If you read a bit on wormholes it is supposed to be possible to interconnect them. This is not the mega gateway project, in fact it can be very subtle, if you have sideways gates, wormholes are also supposedly able to cross barriers into other universes, you can even build train stations in alternate realities or histories. It is more the secret galactic explorer type thing where you can have doors into other worlds. Sneak them into places like the London undergound...

after about 4 days journey.
again warning claxons sound as both craft exit hyperspace. this is the first leg of our trip, says the captain. we are planing on picking up the rest of our group here as well as taking on necessary provisions. we are also transfering out several of the crew and officers who's time onboard is up. all together we should be stopped until this time tommorow. we are sending a messace to our new traveling companions informing them that they are welcome to make trips planetside to collect any samples they decide is interesting, though from our scans this planet has little except climate and water to make it interesting at all. we would also invite them to check out the ruins in the vecinity of 38°lan x 24° lat. this was one of the ancient races in the dark wars, extenct now.

in space: in orbit of SM-00002.4-SR
several large vessels mostly independant contracting are hauling a space station into orbit. as well as performing necessary construction of the new resort planetside. activity is hectic due to large shipments of personel and cargo.

http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/9872/jovianwaystationni2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

The Commonalitarianism ship sends out a standard system mapping probe to give a map of the outer system. Then they orbit a GPS mapping satellite to provide a complete planetary map. After this they send down an atmospheric sampling probe. Once the atmosphere is determined to be breathable, they do an overscan for large structures using an advanced system of ground penetrating radar that goes nearly a kilometer under the surface looking for unusual formations. A particularly large deep structure reaching down from what looks like a step pyramid is located. This is where the Commonalitarianism will land.

They find an eight foot tall almost perfectly proportioned green humanoid statue that has no rust over it on top of the step pyramid. The shades of green seem to change continuously. A single inscription is at the base of the statue, a stylized sun in a coppery metal harder than steel. There is no apparent way in. The silence is thick in the air of the pyramid.

They also send a few crew in environmental suits to collect small extremophile bacteria, algae, stuff which lives in the frozen tundra of the planet, and which lives in volcanic vents deep in the ocean.

Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick, has some containers brought over from the Commonii ship, they contain live chickens, and some fast breeding five inch long beetles which he claims are very delicious.

the science officer thinks Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick,but informs him that our dietary needs are different. that said he also informs you that there is a five inch long fruit on shwullunde thats a favorite snack, unfortunately it seems most other races find the delicate oder of this fruit nausiating.(ooc not the durian)ic.

several of the crew and officers gather in the mess. here they plan to give a small going away party to those who are leaving the ship for another vessel. everyone is invited to the party which will be held at 1600.

the captain of the CSS Hadrian one of the battleships in the main battlegroup has brought over several new systems to be used in the outchance that a new planet is discovered. these probes have an AI system and they can be used for recon and gathering of samples in an atmospheric environment. these have just been released for use in general service.

a message from the captain goes out over the intercomm.
oriantation for new crew members will be held at 1800. after which new members will be assimilated into the crew.
several of the cpls in the troup contingant get an evil grin at this making a few of the new guys a little nervious.

to rufas
the captain informes you that if you are interested there is usually a bit of "hazing" that goes on in the troups. this is a chance to make observations of how people act. he also informs you that while this is distastful, as long as no one is really hurt he usually just ignores this little practice as no one has ever really complained. as long as you just observe the troups will more than likely totaly ignore your being there. he has informed the commander of the troups one cpt. black that if you or one of the others in your party attends his little after hours "party" to ignore you and let you observe. he has given his word that your group will be left alone.


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OOC if you have never been in the military some of this might be a shock. hazing has been disallowed for the most part. i have heard of alot of interesting things happening some of it true,most just made up. the reason this was really stopped in the mil was a few guys took it to far. i have heard of guys getting hurt. but for good story i will use it because it can bond a group of guys together though from what i have heard most of this will be tame by collage frat standards:rolleyes: i may use a few things that actually occured when i was in the army it will be up to you to figure out whats true and whats made up:D

Rufus and Zuleika will attend the event. They even tell the captain, they don't mind a bit of fun, so long as they are not injured, no broken bones. They bring silly little three inch blue commonii felt tri-corner hats for the party. They also sing the national anthem of Schwullunde as well as the anthem of the Commonalitarianism:

Based on Columbia, The Gem of the Ocean

O Commonalitarianism, the gem of the ocean,
The home of the brave and the free,
The shrine of each patriot's devotion,
A world offers homage to thee.
Thy mandate makes heroes assemble
When Liberty's form stands in view;
Thy Banner Makes Tyranny Tremble

When born by the tortoise
When born by the tortoise
Thy banners make tyranny tremble
When born by the tortoise

The wine cup, the wine cup bring hither,
And fill you it true to the brim!
May the wreaths they have won never wither,
Nor the star of their glory grow dim!
May the civil assembly united never sever,
Their honor prove true,
The militia and navy forever.

Three cheers for the tortoise
Three cheers for the tortoise
Freedom and truth forever.

Commonalitarianism, the pride of the ocean,
And so of a truth shall she be.
While true in her loyal devotion,
To all that is noble and free:
The fire that glows in her story,
Still burns in the hearts of her sons,
And her flag shall still lead her to glory,
When duty shall march with her guns.

Three cheers for the tortoise
Three cheers for the tortoise
Freedom and truth forever.

Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick has greens for his dinner at the party, being an omnivore, he takes the live meat portion in private.

OOC: I am not really a military person, it just is an interesting thing to do to pretend a bit. I do like reading books on strategy and tactics however, because they tend to be useful in life.

after the party everything runs smoothly. 1800 roles around and all of the new soldiers pile into the cargo 1: elevin men in all.
the oriantation consists of a brief welcome to the troops by the captain as well as the rest of the main officers.
then comes the basic "boring" speech by capt black on how they are the best troops in the service. this drones on for an hour.
after this comes the lecture part of oriantation, this is led by the four Lt's who discuss various topics from basic equipment to what to do in the case of contracting a nasty space bug. having borrowed several really intersting holopics from rufas containing as many fairly discusting images of the hapless victoms of many known "bugs". after the conclusion of which all of the officers procede to leave, the last of whom one Lt. Knott has Rufas & Zuleika into a corner behind a one way screen which has been set up for this purpose. he informs them to be as quit as possible and not to interfear in any way. also in passing he says that you shouldn't be "shocked" by anything you see. then he leaves muttering to himself and shaking his head.
this leaves only the elevin men as well as four fairly bulky Sgts in charge. Each of them promptly introduces himself and then gets down to buiseness. they have the entire group of men stand in formation and barate them over various things, calling them every possible name imagionable. then they procede to pick individuals out and barate them for several minutes. during which time the ones not yelling are pacing around and occasionally having the men do various exercises. after one starts an exercise he walks off and another will come by and have the men knock it off. after a few minutes the one who started the exercise will notice the men standing around and barate them for stoping without his bloody permission and then he will go into a rant and this whole thing then rotates through each of the sgts for an hr. at least.
then suddenly the sgts throw their hands up and walk out and leave the men standing at attention yelling things about how they just cannot take this anymore and that they have to get away from these loosers for a few.
fifteen mins pass by without the sgts returning and the soldiers start getting a little antsy. whispered mutterings begin to be uttered, when suddenly from outside the room weapons fire suddenly breaks out. after what sounds like a pitched battle six men in various outfits burst into the room noticing the men they imeadiately force them to lie on the ground as they seal the cargo hold. after having accomplished this the men turn on the captives holding them at gunpoint they force the men to strip and tie them up in a row. forcing them to kneel on the ground the men point various weapons at them. then the obvious leader gets on the intercomm and broadcasts his demands throughout the ship. not long after someone gets on the intercomm and replies that under no circumstances will they deal with pirates and brigands. the leader then locks the intercomm on and procedes to drag one of the soldiers out of the line. he then yells out that sense they won't deal he will just have to give them a reason. he then grabs his weapon and blows the soldiers head off. bits of blood, flesh, and brain matter pepper the remaining troops. screaming that he will kill the lot of them if they don't give in to his demands. one of the troops immeadiately retches all over the ground in front of himself. the other pirates point and laugh at him and the leader informes the ship that if they don't give in he will just have to kill two of the men next time, then four, then the rest. he then pulls a chair over to the wall and sits down to wait. one of the others quickly walks over and sets the intercomm tto receave as well as transmit. the rest procede to laugh and mock the remaining troops. after thirty mins the smell of dead flesh and waste matter is fairly strong. this ads to the obvious discomfort of the troops another of which retches and falls helplessly to the ground into his own puke. one of the pirates walks laughingly over and rubs the prostrate soldiers face into the mess calling him a wuss and jokingly saying that it looks like they have found the next "volunteers" to die if they don't get their way. at procisely 2200 hrs the pirates drag the two helpless soldiers out and force their guns into their mouths. the leader then rouses himself and asks if the crew wishes to deal yet, if not he informs them that they will have then signed the death sentances for thest two nice lads that have "volunteered" to give their lives in the cause. after about 10 mins the same person gets on the intercomm and sadly says that they will still not deal with the likes of him. the leader sighs and just leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. time seems to slow down at this point the sound of the other soldiers raged breathing sounds like a windstorm. most of them look down so that they don't have to witness their buddies getting killed. the gleam of the light off of the tears of several of them can be clearly seen by the pirates. the two helpless victoms can only look up at the pirates with obvious fear in their eyes. one of the pirates says to them to enjoy their last look at this life. the other says that he wants to remember the way his victoms eyes look at the exact moment he pulls the trigger. the sound of metal on metal is defening in the room as each one of them slowly pulls the trigger.





Click.




not one sound more can be heard in the room. all of the soldiers is stunned as the doors slowly open to reveal each of the sgts standing there. all four of them walk into the room and ask what in the !@## is going on here. the leader quickly stands at attention and says that they are just conducting a little "training" simulation. the sgt in charge rolls his eyes and tells the cpl to knock it off then. the other sgts agree and procede to point out that it seems they have made quite a mess of cargo 1, sense they messed it up they cannot think of anyone better suited to clean it up. that is after they untie the new troops and appoligize. as they procede to do this the look in each of the victoms is mixed between Shock, Anger, and Confusion. they cannot seem to grasp that this was just a simulation. one of them shakingly points at the dead trooper and asks why noone has noticed him and why noone seems to care. one of the sgts walks over and informes him that, that is because the "trooper" is in fact a replicant droid used in this kind of drill. that in fact there is no real damage to the droid due to the fact that all of his circutes are contained in his stomach. you can tell by the distanctive tatoo on his right arm which is put there so that the droids can be instantly told apart from the real thing. he tells the new guys to go back to the troop quarters and get cleaned up as well as get some sleep. all of them file out of the room forgeting there clothes in the process. the sgts just grin and say that the cpls might as well clean up the discarded uniforms and return them to their proper owners in the morning. leaving the other three just laugh and shake their heads in discust at the antics. the other sgt walks over to the screen and appoligizes to Rufas and Zuleika for this little display. as he leads them out of the room he informes them that this is a tradition on this ship and has been planned out for weeks in advance he is sorry for not letting you in on it from the begining.

ooc just a run down the events of the last post are sorta true. the oriantation is pretty exact. i have heard so many briefings like it that i can probibly recite them from memory. the next part is a fairly good example of what was called a shark attack in basic training. the last part is loosly based on an event that happened at one place i was. the sgts got mad at something a Lt. said and took it out on us. pretended to shoot one guy and punished the rest of us for an hr all the while yelling. one of them did in fact stand off to one side and watch. i did exagerate just a bit about the rest of it though. they didn't have us strip after all, and they didn't make a mess.:D

as a point though who says i cannot write when the mood takes me;):p:rolleyes:

hope it wasn't to graphic for you or any of the censors lol

oh yeah nice song. i haven't exactily got one myself. the closest i could use is one i have called March of Cambreadth by Heather Alexander i got the song from a cdrom disk that came with one of the posleen books Hell's Faire

Rufus likes the show considerably. He logs it in his datapad. He thinks the droid soldiers are really interesting. He would like a chance to "look them over." He barks and says it is just like breaking in a new pack member.

The bugs he provides were truly gruesome, the interrogator bug with its various needlelike appendages, the tank bug with its huge number of appendages, the crawling many eyed tentacle beast, the spiny warrior worm with its huge spikes and massive maw, the poisonous jumping spider, the psionic overseer bug with its huge brains in its back.

ooc lol glad you liked it. though when i said "bugs" i meant virus and bacteria but kool anyway. oh one of my favorites is this one bacteria that can strip the flesh off of a man in under 5 seconds.

ic The sgt grins and says sure lets go see one in storage right now. he takes you over to a training bay. there are many such droids in the bay most of them still undressed. this makes things easier when we need to change them for different missions. they are pretty stupid things really. just a bunch of preprogramed actions. they do make useful sims for basic combat training purposes. we can just shoot them up then with minor repairs have them do it again all over. this takes care of the problem of teaching guys how to kill and then worrying that they may freeze up at the site of an enemy. much more useful then the common outline targets. plus if you link up a master comp to them they can actually perform conplex hand to hand drills. during this trip you are welcome to visit this training bay to watch various drills. we do this kind of live training due to the fact that people might think we are weak. grinning he says that the underestimation of our troops can come in quite handy:D

Rufus and Zuleika ask it they can use a couple small droids. They would like to dress one up as a rabbit, and one up as a squirrel. They need some exercise, and it is customary for them to chase small robots, as it is considered, ahem barbaric to hunt down live rabbits and squirrels on the gym track. It would be a chance for them to exercise.

well we never really thought of using them for that purpose. as such i will put a few techs on the job to produce a few such bots. just as a point we could also set up a few for combat purposes as well though we would need specs for form,smell,and general mannorisms to make them more lifelike. we of course would outfit them with immeadiate kill switches in the case of one actually succeding in besting you that way they would just shut down if they managed to make a "kill". safety is important to us in this. let Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick know that we can set up the same thing for him if its necessary. also we might be able to set up some kind of joint combat sim so that we can run through possible scenarios though you would have to set up the enemy list on non terran based life forms. we already have techs working on producing viable equipment based on our's as is.

ooc: on this subject due to the differance in the canid skin i have produced a "form suit" primarily made of mesh. this allows for hair to escape outside the suit. it has all the same properties as my base uniform. the belt is easy the helmat still has to be molded and the boots and gloves are probibly unnecessary. posting my uniform specs now so that you can get a better idea of this tech for possible conversion. the other suit for Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick could be a little more dificult to convert due to his specific physical form though not impossible due to the material properties.
http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/906/fwoj0.png (http://imageshack.us)

Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick informs you that he doesn't particularly need a combat suit. He has about 15 centimeters of hard chitinous armor over his segments. If they would like a combat measurement it would be fine. He offers to demonstrate what a living organic incubator and bioreactor can do. He tells you that he can eat just about anything, he was designed to process garbage, as well as live in a variety of environments.

First he sprays some caustic chemicals over a prepared area, it melts steel. Then he releases several small flying insects containing organic explosives they explode on contact with a piece of metal. Then he releases what would be cleaning chemicals in aerosolized form if a humanoid breathed it they would be dead in about ten seconds. He pulls out an old tooth, it is quite hard capable of grinding through bonded concrete. Please test how your suit handles flame, thermobarics and fusion flamethrowers are used on the battlefield on occasion.

He says he is not a warrior, a warrior would be ten meters long, he is a relatively young example of his species.

Rufus mentions that as a citizen he was trained in both close combat, kinetic and energy weapons. Having a rail rifle, or volt rifle, can be handy in some situations. Energy weapons don't always work. He also goes back to his room and brings out something like a jump rope handle and presses a button. There is a very thin monomolecular wire about eight feet long with a magnet at the end of it glowing cherry red. He adjusts the length of the blade with a slide stretching it to ten feet then rolling it in to two feet. Don't forget close combat weapons.

Rufus mentions several species that might be hostile including some of the different bug species, heinlein bugs, neela, and some of the more dangerous critters go for armored close combat, berserkers are machine intelligences-- they tend to have cutting saws, slicers, and beam weapons, other horde creatures use distance weapons, but are deadly in close. Not all critters fight in close, some humans and others use adaptive camouflage, basically digital or holographic camouflage for their armor, while not invisible they are hard to see.

Rufus offers to have footage of the Second Vodais Plague sent over. It shows humans changed in strange ways, they are very thin, and possessed by an almost insatiable manic urge for sex, violence, and rage. The footage shows changed people moving much faster than normal and trying to infect other people. It looks like a frightening form of plague zombification. This has probably been our mostly deadly enemy. It has mutated into several variant viruses.

OOC: This is a version of the Clay's Ark virus put together by Octavia Butler. There are loose variants of it like the Rage Virus from 28 Days, or the vampire virus from Ultraviolet.

well thought I would offer the sgt says with a grin. true energy weapons sometimes don't work, but ours are less energy more plasma. basicly they work by magnetic propulsion. near the end of the the barrel the round is ignited and is converted into plasma. works a little better then full energy systems. your weapon is interesting, i would love to see a dimenstration of its use some time.

OOC: hey i just checked looks like our little post here is drawing some attn. hope we can draw as many people to view this as we can. to those who are viewing this thinks for the attn.

Rufus disassembles the weapon. First he takes out a compact dense nanobattery assembly , and a nanobattery ultracapacitor. These are in the handle, after that he takes out a spool of nanowire, followed, by several stasis generation rings. He shows you the slide button and the activation key. He points to the tip as he activates, it. This is a slashing weapon. The tip is a counterweight to hold the wire in place. The stasis generation rings form a stiffener making the wire much stronger and resistant to blows. The wire itself is a string of carbon nanotubes with a monomolecular edge. It is very hard to see when in use. You have to watch the counterweight to know where the blade is. Between the blade and counterweight is the edge. It will cut through almost anything. Bringing the blade in close to the body is dangerous, so you stretch out the elbow to keep it away from the body. It functions very similar to the saber, it is a cutting weapon. Speed and accuracy is more important than strength because of the cutting edge. It does not need a lot of strength to cut. He demonstrates short motions with his forearm to cut a steel pole in half.

wonderful weapon crows the sgt. I can see how it could be quite handy. we defenately have nothing like it here but i might as well show and tell a little myself just to be on the fair side he grins. motioning one of the soldiers over he says i would like you to give a little demo for rufas here. the soldier immeadiatly salutes and prepairs for his demo. calling out the sgt has two large training bots placed into lethal training mode. he informes rufas that he shouldn't step into the training area as in this sim the safeties have been removed off of the bots. simply stated their mission is to protect the field from hostiles.

the soldier quickly and smoothly dons his helmat. instaid of picking up a plas gun he grabs a foot long thin bladed knife. grinning he steps onto the field.
immeadiately the bots take notice of the lone combatant , one of them rushes toward the soldier murder in its eyes. just as the bot makes it to the soldiers position the soldier seems to shift without really moving much and vanish from sight. as the bot slides to a stop a small wound appears just at the base of the bots skull. no more then a half an inch across in all it hardly even bleeds. the effect on the bot is instantainious, both of the bots eyes cross and it falls down to the ground dead.

the sgt now moves rufas behind a protective screen. things are about to get a little hot he grins. taking quick measure of the curent situation the remaining bot moves to take up position at a fortified position equiped with a quad barrel automatic plasma cannon. the sound of the cannon is like thunder in the enclosed space as round after round tears into the floor of the training area,though not even one round passes outside of the designated combat area. the sgt informs rufas that the bot has figured out that the intruder is using a reactive camo device and has decided that the best course is to give the intruder no chance to survive. this would of course be very effective if the ground was simply flat but as it has features as you can see there are gaps in where it can fire and hit anything.

paying close attention rufas can just make out a slight movement in the outline of the mentioned terrain. its kinda like seeing a ghost, it can only just be glimpsed out of the corner of the eye.If you look at it directely it disappears entirely. this area of movement moves slowly through the terain like a ghost even seeming to pass through objects at times(though that is just an illusion).it works its way up to the fortified position and around behind the bot. the bot sensing movement tries to turn around, but it is too late. as the bot falls to the ground the soldier reappears, grining he slowley walks over toward the sgt and rufas. as he comes closer rufas notices a ragged gash along one arm made by flying debris. the blood flow seems to have been kept in check by the medbots but that hasn't done a thing for the gash or the fact that it is obviously painful. the sgt pats the soldier on the back and sends him off to the med bay to have that thing fixed.

OOC: ok ok so this post may be a bit flashy:rolleyes: as we now seem to have viewers i wanted to give them a show lol. anyway my next post will start the next leg of our mission. i will not give any details as i want it to be a suprise but i would advise not to send anyone you like out on any missions in the near future:D. beleave it or not you actually gave me some of the idea in an earlier post needless to say i am going to mix a few genre's in this so bare with me. but i will promise you that i won't be using bugs:p see if you can guess who i am copying in this next mission.;)

ooc sorry i don't have anything tonight hope you haven't given up on this post.

Rufus lay down in his soft beanbag chair and relaxed for the night with Zuleika. Click-Click-Hiss-Tick-Tick swung in his spiderweb hammock, clicking and ticking row row your boat until he too fell asleep and dreampt of the far off stars and the deep old ones. The clock read 23:00 hours Commonii time, time for bed until another day. Bumpity, bumpity, bumpity.

the next day at 0600 the warning claxons sound and the group of ships jumps into hyperspace. the captain looks at rufas with a grin and says he plans to take them to see a nebula in the region that is close by. a lot of our fuel is taken from the exotic particles that are in abundance in just such steller objects we will be passing quite close by this one so i figure we might as well show you the sites as we go. as the day wears on the science officer notices an anomily in space. captain there appears to be a small planet orbiting a nearby burnt out star, something on the planet is giving off huge amounts of energy. the energy signiture is like nothing i have ever seen. its not that far off our current course we could be there in about 4 days. the captain looks over to rufas, what say you do you think we should check this anomily out or continue on to the nebula. the science officer informs rufas that this system is listed as uncharted, it doesn't even have a designator number. we would be the first people to visit and map this system.

ooc i decided that in this instance you should have a say in the path taken in this. this is due to me still working out the details of the aforementioned idea. i don't want to mess a perfactly good story up (in the case of the idea). I am mainly going to be winging this one so bare with me. i am really trying not to plagerize too many sf movies and that can be hard. lets just say that this is a mix of several things. well i figure i know what you will decide so i hope you enjoy the story;):p oh i will post a little later today as well so a hope to add at least two posts to this story

Rufus thinks for a minute, why we don't send a few probes ahead to get at least visuals of what might be happening in the uncharted system. It is uncharted space. Caution is sometimes warranted. We often design our probes to look like asteroids or meteors. He makes a brief call over to the science ship and they send over the design of a probe that looks like a meteor or asteroid on the outside packed with instrumentation. It contains a subspace ansible so the signal runs through higher dimensional space, so it is not easily tracked. There is a set of plasma conduits that can completely burn out all the instruments inside the probe if it is captured or tampered with. Depending on the initial results of the probes we will make a final decision.

sounds like an idea says the science officer, after all from what our sensors say this system is very close to our current path anyway.
after setting up the probe to the specs that were sent,as well as rufas' directions the probe is launched into space.

Rufus suggests a general search pattern that will partially conceal the probe as it moves. First move it through the outer oort or comet cloud, making measurements of comets and bodies in the oort cloud, then make a short trajectory, to any asteroid fields that may be in existence, move through the asteroid fields until it can make a jump to a ringed planet like a Saturn, where it would move in close to the planet to observe. The probe should pick up any industrial space mining or oort cloud activity in the asteroid fields or oort clouds and stay at least partially concealed.

the probe starts broadcasting images back to the expidition. the images show a dead star, and one planet. though the star appears completely dead it seems to be giving off a pale light. the planet itself appears to have been inhabited sometime in the past. no life signs can be detected on the planet. scaning for ruins detects a large roughly circular valley 1000 ft deep in the southern hemesphere. scans reveal a 5 sided pyramidal object with a large stone object,possibly some kind of temple. there also appears to be a large crashed spacecraft near the object. the whole valley seems to be the location of the strange energy signature that was detected. ringing the object is six rings of upright stones. other then the dead star and the planet there is no other steller objects anywhere in the system.


ooc sorry that i didn't post twice like i wanted too. i got caught up in a few things. also i just wanna say that despite similarities between this scene and a very popular series of movies it has nothing whatsoever to do with that series.:rolleyes: I may be unorigional at times but trust me i ain't that bad.:D

Rufus suggests taking one of the probes and moving it as close to the star as possible, even throwing it away, by circling the probe inward until it burns up to get the best possible energy and light readings.

He also looks at the site of the dead planet. He seems a bit puzzled. It does not look good. His first concern is the crashed ship. He wants to do an analysis to see if they are sending any kind of distress signal or just crashed. He suggests moving the second probe into orbit and getting as detailed images of the ship, as well as taking full spectrum readings on the energy pattern and the alien site as possible., then releasing a small atmospheric probe from it.

Hiss-Hiss-Click-Click-Tick-Tick calls the science ship. Could you release three missiles with a high resolution GPS mapping satellite, and two exploration probe droids. We need to check the site. http://www.frazmtn.com/~punstr/blueprint/pdroid.gif

OOC: The sensor pod on the probe droids would cover chemical sensors, including an artificial nose, in addition to a variety of nonstandard sensors.

the probe launched toward the dead star starts sending back info to the ships. the sun has almost no energy signature whatsoever. low traces of photonic energy is all there is. other then that there is nothing. as the probe continues to drop toward the surface of the sun the gravitational pull increases to several million times normal. the probe is subjected to titanic gravitational sheer, whole pieces are ripped from its casing. the last images received from the probe are of the surface of the dead star.

the probes sent toward the planet are a different subject each probe sends back conflicting information. the only thing that isn't conflicting is the large valley. taking various scans reveals pretty much the same info as before. specifically scanning all known frequancies reveals no traces of a distress signal whatsoever. base images of the unknown craft reveals that it is exceadingly old, older then any known races in the galaxy. at least 957 million years old or older. it appears to have crashed on this world long before known history began. atmospheric scans reveal an atmosphere over the valley that is similer to earth. the rest of the planet is covered in a highly toxic atmosphere.

one of the probes sends out a smaller probe toward the alien structure. as it gets withen 5 meters of the structure it suddenly just shuts down. it falls to the ground completely dead.

As one of the probes dies at 5 meters. We send the other probe at approximately 20 meters away to do a complete scan of the pyramid and the standing stones. Basically a complete scan outside of the dying range to get any openings or other details which might be available.

Click-Click-Hiss-Tick-Tick mutters something about the cold ones, the intelligences that came before even insects and bacteria when the universe was young. He does a scan of the older amoeboid, and ancient races in the archives for anything that might represent the ship. He is looking for anything even remotely related legends, pictures, rumors, myths. He wants the approximate height, shape, and design of the standing stones so he can get an approximation of anything similar.

Rufus turns to the captain, "We have some second lifers aboard the science ship, these people have volunteered to join the scout service in exchange for a full regeneration in their old age, exile, and a chance to start anew. Would you like me to ask a few of them to go. They knew the risks when they signed on."

the captain tells rufas that he is considering sending a team of troopers to the planet. one of your teams are welcome to join any expidition to the planet,though
i think though that we should wait until we see what the second probe turns up.


another probe decends to just under the point of no return. images flood back showing the whole area in detail. the ringing stones are younger then the main structure. they are made of obviously indiginious rock. the larger stone is made of an unknown material resembling stone. the color of the stone is similer to coal, yet somehow the whole of the stone seems to be slightly clear.
writing spirals around the stone from base to peak. the language is old, older then anything that has ever been seen. the pyramidal structure is made of the same material as the stone slab. an oddly sized and shaped opening leads into the enterior. just looking at the images is uncomfortable, it almost feels like you are being drug into the stone, yet at the same time pushed away with great force. the crashed ship is definately younger then the structure. it appears to be made of some slightly bluish metal. there are no decernable markings anywhere on the craft. a large rip has been torn from the side of the craft. what little can be seen of the interior of the craft is corroded but structuraly sound. scaning around the area turns up one very dead creature. the skin of the creature if it can be called that is like looking at the skin of a creature in the last stages of some terrible desease. the color resembles something that has just been vomited from the belly of the devil himself. but its the eye of the creature that is the most terrible. it has one large eye seemingly half covered in a pale filmy material most resembling a second lid. it is defenately non huminoid. it has several tentacles ending with small digits more like unto worms then anything like fingers. from the positioning of the body the science officer is willing to speculate that this creature isn't the race that created the structure. it almost looks like he was fleeing from something within the craft itself.

Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick gasps, "A cold one, this is most dangerous. To send a crew down might not be the best idea." Down through the ages there have been legends of creatures like the cyclopes on earth, and other creatures of the dark, we have our own legends, for all intents that looks like something drained the water content and bioelectricity from its body.

Rufus looks at the language and speaks, "This must be a forerunner place, it might even have connection to the Eternals. We have samples of the Eternal language, it has more depth than sanskrit, and takes many many years to learn. Even reading the eternals language brings deep meditative states. This may have similar effects. I am worried that if we try and translate it, it may drive the reader mad."

Zuleika speaks up, "I have limited empathy, it is occassionally comes up in our species, however to read this properly we need either someone with very deep near unbreakable convictions, or a mind trained against psychic invasion or intense torture. There are also sometimes structures which use non-human geometries and patterns, this can disorient the human mind very easily, with enough difference, it can induce shock."

The science ship sends over a specialist to go down to the planet along with her file. It reads enslaved by worms, reconstructive plastic surgery after being spit on by acid spitting snake, survivor colonial invasion by rage zombies-- it describes how she was infected by the rage virus then cured . It reads like a nightmare. The woman is utterly calm, she has silver hair and purplish eyes. She has brought two long chitin needles and some yarn in addition to her regular gear. On her right arm is a tattoo of an equal sign with a circle around it. She looks to be a heavy worlder.

[planetside]

arriving on the planet the woman starts her investigation. she begins the search by going over to the monumental stone structure. very little of what is written on the stone can even be comprehended, but that which can be read she immeadiately sends back to the ships. there are referances to a war/battle/cataclism on the stone as well as a name or possibly names of an unknown being/beings. she sends back all the information she can.

Ta'Xchl'-HoA'Tlhl---lord/master of the Dark/void/empty places--- Keeper/thief/not the rightful owner, of the Scroll/Book of Nxl'Shl----Master/lord of the eye of L'Rol'Thl

on board the science vessel the captain agrees to go along with the suggestions of rufas and his counterparts. he has very limited knowledge in these things so he feels its best to go along with wiser heads in this. the science officer, a great sceptic says that quite frankly he doesn't beleave in those kinds of things. that said he reluctantly agrees to go along with the captains decision on this matter.



[deep within the pyramidal structure] a mind becomes aware of a lifeform in its area. rousing itself out of its eons long sleep. it begins looking/searching the area for other little lifeforms. its been so very long sense anything new has come to this place,and the mind has plans for these little creatures. Oh yes very big plans indeed.

Martha Ohyes, takes the parts she can read, then asks for a corresponding search for symbols-- that are not read, map signs, general symbols, non-written counterparts, pictographs, anything that might be a map, measure symbols, also common symbols that represent ideas across cultures. Hopefully this will illuminate if the record is not just written but also pictographs. She wants correspondence between the words that are there and pure symbols. She is looking for things like eye, thief, war, darkness, books, and other things. She also asks for an analysis of patterns in existing words to see if they follow a similar pattern to any other non-translated words.

She also tries to get a better analysis of the materials which the stone pillars are made of. She makes a suggestion that this might be programmable matter in a carbon matrix of some kind which they might not be fully familiar with. They have just started working with programmable matter, a science which is in its infancy in the Commonalitarianism.

Martha takes a few minutes and practices empty mind meditation, the void which cannot be grasped. It has helped her before when dealing with the worms.

[deep withen the Pyramidal Structure]
the mind becomes aware of what the little creature going by the name of Martha Ohyes is doing. cleavor little creature this one, but thats not important. subtlely it begins translating the stella for her,adding the things it wants her to beleave where necessary.
looking further it finds many other such creatures, just out of its reach. oh the plans he has, and the fun he will have when he gets a few of them to come to him. drawing as much power as he can to himself he slowly reaches across space and plants a few "ideas" in the minds of a few of the more receptive little creatures.

at the stella
working for hours Martha Ohyes begins to translate whole sections of the text. it seems so obvious, she cannot understand why she never saw it before. the writing is three dimensional. using that she makes and transmits her findings back to the science vessels.

the war was at an end. the victors/mortal enemies/userpers hold the defeated/victoms in bondage. not knowing/not caring what to do with them, they decide to imprison/bind them throughout the universe.
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here for all eternity shall Ta'Xchl'-HoA'Thlh be imprisoned/bound/tortured/tormented.
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let this place stand as a monument to the power of the {-------}. let it stand as a reminder to those who do not know their place.
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let this place become forgoton until the end of all things

Martha Ohyes sends a simple message, "Under no circumstances are you to pick me up for any reason at this point. Send me a long term supply of food and necessities, maybe a small ecosystem-agricultural pod. I will continue work at the site, leave a beacon so I can transmit my findings. If I die, I die here. It might be better if my clone insurance was activated. There is something here imprisoned according to the writings. It is alien, and has alien intentions. Whether it is good or bad, we do not know, but it is imprisoned because of an ancient conflict which we do not understand and should not take part in. Do not trust your own intentions. Immediately send this message ahead to your respective governments. I suggest quarantine."

She sends this to both the Commonii ship, and the various Schwullunde ships on multiple frequencies so not only the captain, but the crew know.

[within the Pyramidal structure]
oh what a clevor little creature this one is. well then the time for subtly is over it thinks, at least with this one.
with monumental unimagionable power it warps and changes the message she sent. when it arrives back at the ships it will read

minimal danger. Send me a crew to aid in my exploration. I will continue work at the site. There is something here imprisoned according to the writings. i beleave it has been dead for eons. the writings suggest it was good, but it is imprisoned because of an ancient conflict. Immediately send this message ahead to your respective governments. I suggest further study."

directly to martha ohyes the mind speeks for the first time. little creature i am very aware of you, oh yes and your little message. that little problem has been taken care of. you shall be my little slave in this, oh yes indeed. my willing slave.

ooc naughty naughty lol. oh sorry bout that. thats just the evil inside of me. that will probibly be my only need to use that little trick. well within the mantle of powers given to these beings i think. i will admit you are good. but as they say its easier to get the genie out of the lamp then to put him back in.

Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick speaks up addressing the crew, "You must listen to me, from the first message the words lord/master of the Dark/void/empty places, and Master/lord of the eye both refer to the devil or as you humans call him Lucifer. In the old days there was a conflict between the old ones and what you would call the "cold ones", the enemies between the stars, neither side survived the conflict. That creature from the ship is a cold one, an enemy. I can tell you that there are lies being spoken here, Martha never entered the pyramid, so she cannot know what lies inside, neither did she enter the ship. We are being made privy to an ancient conflict where nothing good can happen. Be warned."

Rufus further states this statement does not match with our contact protocols, "We do not automatically assume a race contacted is benevolent, I do not trust this. She would not have been in contact long enough to pass judgement on an alien object. We have a policy of non-interference in alien conflicts, it goes against the rules of the scout service. We quarantine conflict zones."

The earlier message clearly causes some conversation in the science ships. It is forwarded to the scout base.

As the creature enters her mind, her mind expands in a meditative exercise, drawing in the creature in, something counter to the state of darkness, a deep sense of peace strikes at the center of the creature. She states "In the beginning, there was the word, and the word was with god." She focuses this into a simple chant. She focuses on the symbol of the New Harmonites, tattooed on her arm, an equal sign inside an infinite circle. If it tries to withdraw, she expands the circle in her mind.

one of the schwullunde troopers stands up. sirs if what you say is true then your specialist may need rescuing. i speek only for myself but I am sure that i can gather up a few of my fellow soldiers to go on such a mission.
here here says one of the science crew, not only that but i would like to know whats generating that energy signature. it suggests something powerful that might be usable for the good of the universe. if anyone goes down i am willing to go myself.

the captain says that this worries him as well. If anyone goes then there can be no help sent to get them out of the situation.some things are just too powerful to mess with.

looking at rufas he says. this being you think may be down there, do you have anything that can block its powers even temporarily. also do you think we could get a vessel close enough to rip the crashed craft off the planet. that way maybe we can study it and not have to worry about that being down there.

[planetside]
laughing at martha ohyes the being tells her that he is far older then her god.
would you like to see what i did to those pathetic creatures that crashed here, showing her horrors beyond the comprehension of most mortals. I did those things to them because they served those who imprisoned me and my kind. it took all of their power to bind us like this. then rose the beings who destroyed them, or banished them out of this plane. i care not what happened to them. i am he who created the space between the little things you call galaxies. do you really think your little mind can bind me. see the whole of my creation and fear. at this he shows her the whole expanse of the universe, and shows her exactily how small she is in relation to the universe.

ooc: i guess i might as well let the cat out of the bag so to speak. here is what i am basing this off of,well loosly based that is.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Old_Ones
there is no mention of this one due to the fact that he is mine. the other things mentioned the eye and scroll are his personal belongings. i may use them in other parts of this post. the main difference between those and this one is that i make them far older. think of it this way, after being banished from that other universe they formed the ns universe or at least the one we are in at the moment.here they were again imprisoned by the elder gods who were defeated by the younger gods who were defeated by the god or gods of the current beleaf sytems. at least as i see it. your war between the old ones and the cold ones happend after they were imprisoned.

The old one makes an interesting mistake, expanding a humans consciousness beyond its shell triggers something in humans similar to enlightenment or seeing the totality of the universe, it is an epiphany like Leaves of Grass. It also is more than a human brain can take. She passes out as her mind readjusts.

Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick, says, "I am still young so I am not privy to the full lore of the elder ones, they say one who is not mature enough loses his mind in these studies. I have heard that some of the older members of my race may be able to assist. He goes to speak to the ansible. A simple message is sent, in a sibilant strange hissing language." "Come elders, an old one has broken its seal and walks the world anew, I am but young and am not ready for the mysteries."

At the edge of the system, a strange ship emerges from hyperspace, it looks like a big silver scarab with gold markings on it, numerous goldish red tentacles undulate on the side of the ship it is jetting towards the planet in the system on plasma jets.

with her passed out the entity can take control of her body. keeping her passed out shouldn't be much of a problem. an unfortunate side affect of this is that a large amount of its powers are hampered. looking around his prison with actual eyes is interesting after eons. with a grin that could make life wither he walks into the pyramid. inside is a large chamber with a large baleful gem floating in the dead center of the room. underneath this lies a large hole which appears to be no deaper then 12 ft. at the bottom of this lies all that remains of his true form. anger washes over him as he thinks of just how powerful he was before the {------------} came. at that time the universe was pure,none of these little creatures thinking they were the masters. what life existed in that time,existed for the sole pleasure of their masters. no matter once those who were coming here got here he would have back his true form. then he would release all of his brothers and sisters and remake existance. a slight burning pain radiates from one arm of this body. curse this cleaver little creature,putting a symbol of power withen her flesh. with a flick of his mind he burns the mark from her arm. ahhh much better. now to prepare the room for his rebirth.

its just too bad that he cannot sense those who would thwart him due to his current limitations.

on the ships a mass call goes out to all those who have been chosen. strong powerful and utterly impossible to ignore. those onboard all the craft who have been chosen are instantly corrupted. new powers form in their minds as well as new forms for their bodies. dark radiates off of their new forms. looking at them hurts the eyes of any who happens to catch a glance of them. the promise of power was all it took for those hapless souls to sunder their will to their new master. with that sundering no amount of distance could protect them from his will. most change and ripple into grotesque forms.
only two remain unchanged phisically.one who has became the new high priest of the entity and one who is to be a sacrifice unto the newly risen master. the high priests eyes glow with a baleful fire as he takes his minions to the launch bays. there they kill any who attempt to stop them. taking a large troop transport, they procede to blast their way out of the ship. once outside they lock onto the rest of their compatriats onboard the various ships and transport them aboard. the new high priest snarles as he spots the new craft that has arrived. with his new powers he can sense the purpose of those onboard. snarling a command to his minions in the ancient tongue, he commands them to wrap the vessel in darkness and shadows. as the craft shimmers into nothingness it streaks toward the planet as fast as it can go. there is no time to destroy the interloapers, the resurection of the master must be accomplished at all costs.

The worm ship moves towards the planet. The brain bugs with neural ropes connected to the ship sense the small shuttle hurtling planetwards. The worms confer very briefly, then they reach out with minor psionics and disable the ship.

Screws come out of engine parts, minor overheating destroys electronics, several small plasma balls form, minor ghosts in the machinery, causing surges which disable controls and electronics, the containment crystals and delicate parts separate, trigger mechanisms for weaponry stop working leaving the ship, a floating coffin. They reach out calmly, the metal on the doors starts to smoke as old symbols, are burned into doors and entryways sealing the followers inside. The flagella seize the floating coffin and several large bugs that look like black crickets come out. It looks like they have been engineered to move around in space. They burn sigils into the ships and seal the ship with elder symbols taking it into the docking bay.

ooc :uhhh, ohhh clevor clevor

on the planet deep in concentration busy opening the seals the entity known as Ta'Xchl'-HoA'Thlh senses his minions distress. he cannot make out what is holding his minions, but he is defenately displeased. he can feel the weight of the ancient wards and signs blocking the ships exterior.
storming outside he grins as he spies the large warship that he pulled out of the sky eons ago.yes that should do nicely.

in the ancient ships control room the entity walks over to the controls and places his hands upon the controls. green lightning sparks along the controls.

in space:
the Worm vessel is suddenly grabed by a force. scans reveal that it is some kind of extreamly powerful tracter beam. several such beams grab hold of the ship in multiple locations. over all channels a voice speaking the words of a powerful spell of the most ancient order can be heard. the signs and sigals burned into the transport start to flash and burn and melt. as the spell starts working the voice in the purest form of the ancient tongue speaks. I have no idea who you are, but you are interfearing in things way beyond your puny intellects. I shall not be hampered by the likes of anything in the universe. i haven't even used my full power against you, and you are helpless in my grasp. your mental powers cannot hope to counter the power that created your little universe,long before your kind were ever born. either release my minions or i shall rip your craft apart like it isn't even there.

planetside:
the entity grins thinking, imagine me using the toys of my enemies followers in this way.

ooc: good job. i never thought of using this vessel in this way. it was origionally intended as setting. good thing i placed it here. this little story is getting much more interesting i must say. I cannot wait to see what your next move will be. unfortunately we seem to be making that little non combat rule scream in torment. lol. well have at thee then :D

The ship feels the powerful tractor beams and wards. A massive red worm starts singing in the old tongue, several join in the song, it is a piping sound, it goes tilikilili, tilikilili and the sound reaches into the garbage systems, and minor subsystems in the pyramid, and the ship the wards which were used by the old ones servants who rebelled begin to activate.

It is a sweet piping sound, a gurgling sound, an ancient maddening din, the sound of the shoggoth, and the worm who cleaned the pyramids and served the servants of darkness food, and ate the trash. The supposedly mindless and terrifying creatures who had had enough of their servitude and rebelled against their masters who were at war. In their time they had grown from semi-intelligence to full intelligence in the eons that had passed.

The piping sound picks up, and a clicking sound, a chirping sound add to it forming a song of binding, an old song which will activate the secondary wards on the standing stones reaching up towards the ship.

The wards on the ship are glowing, however in addition to the old technology, new technology has been added gravitic repulsor shielding from the Commonalitarianism which counters kinetic, gravitic, and scalar weapons. It is enough for the moment to hold off the warship. Small ships begin dispatching from the tendrils falling planetward, and at the ship, they carry worms and insects with wards.

snarling at the sound of that language. the entity spots the smaller craft coming in hot. blast these small pathetic creatures. fine so be it. lightning flashes and all around the ship things start coming alive. animating the dead minions of the enemy to use as troops. another spell allows for the animation of the dead spirits of the enemy to use as well. this is really getting to the entity. its becoming difficult to maintain power. then he has an idea, a terribly grusome idea.

in space:
multiple beams of green light start blasting at the worm fighters. while they are manouvering to avoid the lancing beams, a huge beam from the planet streaks toward the dead star. green with streaks of purest darkness and night blasts into the heart of the dead star.

the dead star:
as the beam strikes the sun the dead star begins to erupt. huge fires erupt all over the now activating star. horror fills the hearts of all who watch as the light of the star changes to pure darkness. the star has officially become a darkstar. the negitive version of a normal star. huge amounts of negitive energy floods the star system feeding the entity.

planetside:
power wells up withen the heart of the entity. wards of power begin to fail all over the planet and system. he feeds this power into the tracters and weapons systems.

all over the worm ship the ghosts of the long dead alien race Begin to appear. they immeadiately tear into the worms with purest hatred.


ooc sorry i hope i haven't used too much power. i mean its not that hard to reactivate a star. just jumpstart it with nucular energy. of course get it wrong and you will either get a nova or a black hole, but...........

Things looked horrible for the worms, it looked like all hope was lost. However, a few of them managed to get inside the giant ship through the tear which the enemy had created in the hull. They prepared their wards and prayed. One of them managed to get into the engine compartment. She started switching small controls, the interdimensional engine began to power up, and start to overload. A rift began forming around the ship.

Down on the planet Martha woke up. She was in the control room for the pyramid. She was a bit disoriented. She stumbled around, something guided her to the wards, there was a simple message. "Press button in case of emergency." She had no idea what it did, but she did it.

OOC: Think what happens when you use too much power in ancient damaged ship which hasn't been used in 960 million years especially if you pour huge amounts of power into it suddenly, especially the weapons and shields...

ooc ohhh ahhh nice nice one tiny problem what would happen if said craft suddenly blew up. it would take the planet with it more then likely. now as the entity is in spirit form. the only thing holding him here is the planet:D. after that all he has to do is fly off somewhere with alot of matter and energy,say a nebula. :D


as the huge interdimensional engines roar to life the entity forgets to hold ms ohyes unconcious.she forces him out of her body and stumbles off. he floats toward the engine room to see what is up. seeing the rooms he snarles in a rage.

on the planet: craft ripples furriously. these engines were not meant to activate on a planet. the stress plus the extra negitive energy rips the chip apart, but the breach cannot be contained. the stress starts to rip the planet apart. huge lava vents burst into action.

out in space:
the worms hadn't expected this, nothing had expected this. the planet rips itself apart. huge chunks of planet fly out from their origional position. the shock wave is gigantic. a form suddenly starts to take shape. hazy and insubstantial. the form looks like unto a gigantic worm except that this worm spans 1000 miles and has tenticals in various locations about its body. the head of the form rears up. row upon row of small red glowing eyes glair out into the cosmos for the first time in eons. its color if it can be called that is like into dead space, absolute nothingness. it flies off toward the darkstar as fast as it can move. the monstrosity then grabs hold of the star and drains it dry of all energy. sparks of greenish lightning spark all along its form. with one last glare at the worm vessel it flies off into space. deciding that it will just have to make for itself a new body out of the stuff stars are born from.

from the worm ship a small craft emerges only capable of holding 1 person it folds space and flies off. it contains the new high priest. he has a feeling he better find the masters scroll and eye fast. its too bad he had to leave the minions behind but the gap in the wards was barily just big enough for one and those blasted worms resealed it before any more could get loose. he was just lucky to get away at all what with the masters prison exploding like that.


ooc::rolleyes:when i said its harder to put the genie back in the bottle, i never imagioned that you would just smash the bottle. looks like we have found our recuring enemy for our little story. oh and what about the high priest and minions. one gets away and you are left with 50 slavering corupted souls to contain.
well i think that that part is done on to the next one. well this incident will defenately help with some of the things i had set up for later.;)

lets get back to the main story for a bit shall we, bring the worms along if you like.

The worms are both saddened and shocked, they had lost this time, but in time they would contain the escaping entity. They had hoped to throw the entity into hyperspace as the engines blew, but the rift did not form in time.

They catch the barest glimpse of the escaping pod. They open the ship slowly, forcing the captured enslaved beings to submit to the elder signs, containing the darkness in egg shaped objects which are processed into a kind of plasma furnace which burns the eggs to nothingness. Many of them cannot change back. They have become too corrupted. The price is writhing fire as they combust spontaneously held in place by the elder signs, what is left is piles of ash.

There is no more planet, only the remains of a planet. Oddly, the button that says press here in case of emergency... was a stasis field. Martha Ohyes is floating in space forever waiting for a rescue that will never happen. She is written off as being dead...

Meanwhile, the notion of a book and eye seems to form in Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick's mind. It bothers him. He feels like a one eyed entity is haunting him, it is very elongated and has small tenticular hands. The thing comes to him in his sleep with instructions which he finds compelled to follow. He seems to be able to get elder lore from his data pads when he does not want it.

The bug ship leaves to hunt the entity. They leave a very large older worm with the ship, Clack-Clack-Tap-Tap, who is to help if there is trouble.

ooc ok i think we can leave off here for the day by tommorow i should have a few ideas figured out. i think chapter 2 just ended.the book and eye will defenately come back up and you can just bet that there will be trouble:D oh you can pick martha up at any time she is safe or as safe as can be expected. she was to have died anyway if things had went according to the entities plans. of course if you don't pick her up i just might, after all she could be usefull:D.catch you later..and remember
Don't read from the book,,even if its just 101 ways to use a dead shogoth

By chance after the planet is cooling, the science ship finds the stasis field with Martha Ohyes in it. They haul her in with a tractor beam. She is brought back. She looks haggard. After a while she goes to the com channel and calls her "teacher" in the New Harmonites. She tells the story of the destruction of the world. The teacher responds, "Even in destruction there is harmony, everything has its purpose in the universe, in due time you will see more, I see you have reached the omega point few do, now you must learn a new thing, you are ready to face yourself, first we shall teach you how to hold the symbols of truth within.

Martha spends the next several days sequestered learning to embed various symbols and parables in her mind, instructions are given to her on how to build a palace of memory, and the keys to universal symbols, a few specific symbols are very old, these are embedded in her mind while she is in a meditative trance by her teacher. She does not even know they are there.

Rufus is scared out of his wits. He has never seen anything like this. He has heard of zombie stories but never seen a world explode.

Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick begins to do experiments guided by the strange alien shadow, he delves into the intersection of bug, human, canid, and elder science. He spends time in a now abandoned cargo bay building strange things, a klein bottle, an extradimensional mobius strip, tesla machines which give off crackling energy from subspace, a miniature black hole in a bottle, a zero point energy turbine, stuff which is supposedly impossible or on the extreme fringes of science starts appearing in the bay, tall ringed pillars crackling with purplish green lightning, a brain in a jar. Three of the ex-possessed have joined him as lab assistants in long white coats.

the captain has a funeral for those who were destroyed in the incounter. he has the remains brought on bourd and has each sealed inside a torpedo case. upon these he requests that containment wards be placed each case is then sealed inside a solid chunk of tritanium adamentite. these are then launched outwards into space to never be mentioned again. he has all records of the incident purged from the record, so that the families will never know.
the science officer begins taking interest in Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick's work. as much of the core science as he can understand he records, so that if anything can be learned it will be able to be taught to others.
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the high priest, lost in deep space suddenly has a vision of a huge temple. a voice informs him that he is to journey toward the place that cannot be seen and there he is to build this temple. along the way he should gather as many willing converts as he can to aid in this mission. shouting in joyful madness, he welcomes his masters command. and begins his long journey.

The scientist runs into some trouble, the bug science is not science it is a philosophy created over generations called eggism, that lets them manipulate biology in strange ways that don't match with human science, there is about a 40% obvious overlap, a lot of it the worms don't even understand how it works but it does, the problem is one of pattern recognition, the bugs recognize different patterns in the world than human science. It is fascinating finding the interconnects. There is a lot of very advanced biosciences happening, the ability to create chimeric creatures combining mammalian, lizard, insect, and alien building blocks of life.

The other problem is one of "mad science", a psychic state of being where experimenters can create things that can't possibly work in the normal scientific world, at least not in human terms. Some of the experiments are unduplicatable under any normal conditions, but work under strange psychic parameters, the connection of certain planetary alignments, the placement of nebulas, the chance pairing of rare materials, the existence of the right kind of party hat. Yet they work somehow. Watching this is disorienting for the scientist.

There is also the issue of completely incomprehensible and alien ideas emanating from the alien ghost that are sometimes quite frightening.

The scientist gets some interesting duplicatable effects, but many work somehow, but not by any human agency.

the science officer really didn't expect to understand much,but well the urge to understand the universe is impossible to resist.

the captain gets on the intercomm. we are arriving at our next stop. HN-097061-SR. This is a star forming nebula. it is currently forming what appears to be a large blue white star. the main gas cloud is already shrinking into what will be a new system. that is in another few million years. we will be taking on some of the gases to manufacture starship fuel . after taking on the gasses we will head out for SM-040644-SR, it is a large system rich in life within the sector.

The scientist learns some very interesting things while studying bug science, while following Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick's experiments, he learns how to make biological hydrogen batteries, living plants that you can tap for electricity, or split water into hydrogen and oxygen. He learns about a bioceramic and chitin vat which can serve as an electric plasma furnace, using electricity generated from the special plants. Following the research further, he learns how these can be used to feed into a strange device, that is almost incomprehensible that can open a small door into a klein bottle shaped pocket universe about a mile around. It is absolutely empty with nothing inside, or outside true and absolute nothingness. There is something which looks like a suction device which is supposed to attach to a wormhole teleporter of some kind like the Schwullunde use.

the science's being discovered are beyond beleaf. the science officer can already see possible leaps in understanding of the universe. thinking about the klien bottle experiment he decides to give an idea. why don't you see if it would be possible to create an infinately compressed dimensional field inside of it.

viewing stations all along the ships are filled up as almost everyone wishes to grab a glimps of the nebula. speaking to rufas the captain says, we as a people almost never give names to the astronomical bodies in our sector, would you care to name this nebula in honor of our two nations new relations.


OOC oh by the way some of those idea's you are coming up with are brilliant.

Rufus suggests that they name the nebula, the Concord Nebula for agreement or friendship.

Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick's brain is going, he is wondering if he could make a trap out of mobius strip inside the klein bottle. He waves his tentacles, and clicks several times. I am not sure but it looks like we may have a trap for that creature soon.

on the observation platform the captain declares, we hereby name this nebula the Concord Nebula. chears fill the room from everyone attending. we give it this name as a sign of friendship with our brothers of in the Commonalitarianism.

the science officer looks pleased. that would certainly be helpfull. of course if you add the infinately compressed dimensional field it could also be used to hold, well almost anything. of course on those models you would have to build an exit but that shouldn't be a problem, well at least i think it wouldn't.

Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick is very pleased. Could we contain that giant thing in this bottle. I am planning on attaching the wormhole suction device to the klein bottle to suck in and trap the giant being. We would have to of course prepare the pocket universe to contain it ward the exit and seal it up.

sounds like a good idea says the science officer. the warning claxon's go off and the ships jump into hyperspace. slightly adjusting his uniform and frowning, well that was a bumpy one. what about weaving the wards into the fabric of the pocket universe, that way once he is in the whole pocket universe could act as a ward.in fact to be extra safe give it the dimensional shape of a ward so that he is traped inside of the ward.

hiss-------mayday,mayday,mayday---hiss. this is the captain-hiss-of the CSS Thanitos-hiss---------------- please anyone who can hear me i beg you--------------hiss----------------oh god what are they---------hiss------------the crew is dead---------hiss------- we are adrift-------hiss--------no,no please no----------hiss-------------

what is the location of the Thanitos at the moment, the captain asks. they are located about a days journey from our location. we are the only ones in this area at the moment.
set course for the thanitos
yes sir

Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick spends an hour with his assistants under the hypnotron to get some hypnotically induced sleep. Then they prepare. Newton, Fermi, and Eisenstern put what looks like big collanders on their heads with antennas sticking out of them, then shawls with runes stitched in them, then pick up purple rifles with what looks like a big satellite dish on the front and back. Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick puts on what looks like a small tinfoil party hat, and begins strapping on various strange looking devices.

They begin turning on various machinery and hooking things together. They carry most everything into a coneshaped device about the size of a small tent on the outside, but much bigger on the inside...

He makes some adjustments then snaps the wormhole suction device into the interdimensional pocket universe klein bottle.

the convoy of ships drops out of hyperspace. the CSS Thanitos is floating dead in space. scans reveal no life aboard. the Thanitos floats at an odd angle relative to the galactic plane. there appears to be no damage whatsoever to the ship. the captain hails the Thanitos in hopes that someone is still alive, even though somehow he knows better. he calls for Rufas and Clack-Clack-Tap-Tap to come to the bridge to give there impressions and to ask their opinions. also he calls one of the warships to ask for a boarding party to be readied. in his opinion this stinks of the unknown. one of the other ships moves closer and locks on with a tracter beam to pull it into a safe position withen the group. the two warships pull broadsides of the Thanitos and lock all weapons on her just in case. scanning the region for any wreckage reveals nothing at all. This puzzles the captain, and he hates puzzles. the destress call indicated some kind of attack, but there appears to have been no attack. he went to school with the captain of the Thanitos, so he knows he wasn't the type to make rash judgements. thinking on his feet he requests a bio scan for any and all biological agents as well as chemical. he requests the commonalatarianism vessels do the same though he dosen't beleave for one minute that this is some kind of chem/bio agent.

on board the Css Draco. the captain calls for a team of his best troopers to ready themselves to board the Thanitos. He doesn't like this situation one bit. he orders full combat gear for the troopers as well as several hunter/seeker drones to be readied.

ooc hunter/seeker drones are a smaller version of the common drones used to survay and take samples from planets.they are fitted with type 2 plascannons
http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/2522/hornettsqj3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick adjusted his tin foil hat and began chanting mathematical incantations from a data pad which read Mathematical Control and Interpretation of Higher Order Interdimensional Beings with Negative and Positive Charges, Including Charts, Formulas, Statistics, and Incantations for the Mid Level Practitioner, Clack-Clack-Knock-Knock author.

His assistant Newton was carrying what looked like a nintendo game controller attached to a portable television set with numerous antennae sticking out of it. Newton said, "We are picking up strange energy readings from the ship, there may be interdimensional beings of an unknown type there sir." Little lines started squiggling across the television set, and what looked like several pac man critters were bouncing all over the place. "We are definitely reading the emanations of multiple beings."

Various equipment was brought in from the laboratory, what looked like two giant backpacks with ray guns attached to them were handed to the troops. Newton says "This is an ectoplasmic catchomatic, use it on any ghosts or zombies you may find." It looks like the guns from ghostbusters.

Martha Ohyes had come into the front of the ship by now. She had a new symbol tattooed on her arm. It was different than the old one, a circle with a triangle inside it with an equal sign inside the triangle.

OOC: The book is a tribute to Charles Stross's ideas in his book The Atrocity Archives.

well then says the sgt in charge, looks like everyone is all suited up. turning around he barks orders to the platoon of young men behind him. one small three man team moves off sets up a small laptop style system with a joystick. 10 small hunter/seekers imeadiately start up. flying around the room with a shrill buzz. with a quick push of a button the hunter/seekers transport over to the thanitos. images of a small cargo room are sent back, pretty standered layout. with a grin the three man team stands up, grabs their equipment, and declares the insertion point clear. the sgt grins and says, all who are planing on coming along in this little excursion better join the group. as everyone gathers close he pushes a small button on a small hand held device. everyone is transported over to the Css thanitos.

on board the thanitos
everything is dark in the cargo room. barking orders he breaks the platoon into several teams of various size. each begins to set up their equipment around the room.

OCC ok ok you are quick. i see you recognized my use of the name Thanitos.:cool: love the ghostbusters thing you got going lol though the magick thing may be a bit more useful. oh and the new tatoo is kool and using a hermetic circle is interesting.

Martha Ohyes and Newton Beam Over, Newton hands two of the backpacks to the troops. He is holding the funny handheld device. Martha Ohyes has a dish gun. A lightbulb turns on in the collander hat which Newton is wearing illuminating the area. The antennae on the top of the collander hat are giving off small sparks like the RKO radio tower. He says, "I detect the presence of strange beings."

The team is glowing from protective mathematical symbols which Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick has woven around them.

Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick continues chanting and taking various devices from his other assistant, Eisenstern. The room on the ship begins to glow a little bit.

the hunter/seeker team transports the drones outside the cargo hold into the main ship. each begins to send back images from the rest of the ship. the images are quite horrible. there are dead bodies laying in various positions all over. sending a quick command to the drones the h/s team initiates a basic scan of the bodies to look for the cause of death. information floods back indicating that there is no obvious cause of death. not one of the bodies has even the tiniest scratch. as the drones continue their search, one of them picks up a slight movement. the image is sent back as a live feed, all that was caught was a slight dark movement. it lasted for about .005 seconds with no direct line of site to what caused the movement.

Newton gets a few of the drones back to the cargo bay and makes some adjustments. He adds a few bits of electronics, a few of the drones are giving off funny sparks. He sends them back out, there is a little antennae on it which says "deathalyzer" on the base.

It scans the bodies for life energy readings, negative energy readings, psychic manifestations, and similar interdimensional things. These readings are sent back to the monitor.

Newton says, "I think I've got it, well maybe I haven't, who knows, but on we go."

Martha is feeling a bit uneasy.

the drones send back the pertanint information. there is no energy readings of any kind coming from the bodies, not even microbial life. all energy seems to have been drained from the bodies completely. the drones move on looking for anything relivent. as they continue to scan several pick up very low level EM anomalies in various locations. one of the drones flies into one open room. it sends back images of the room. nothing is out of place, as it begins to make a basic sweep the images just go dead. from the cargo bay everyone can hear a slight <clunk> sound.

Newton says, "We have the poltergeist activity, low em creatures. " He makes a call to Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick, Newton says, "Bring out the ectoplasmic entities."

Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick begins chanting several small dancing lights begin floating around the crew, slightly green and flickering, they give off a slight phosphorescence. Newton says, "Bog phantoms, Will O' Wisps, Ghosts in the Machine."

We need to go inspect the bodies...

the sgt assembles a small recon team, he says that he insists that they join you. the doors open slightly so that each person can file through. the recon team take up positions to either side of the corridor. each position consists of two men, one standing one kneeling. the air in the corridor is stale from lack of properly running air vents. the temperature seems to be around 75° F. as you move into the corridor, a small, dust sized light shoots off down the corridor at high speed, and through a wall.

Newton and Martha Ohyes follow the team, they give two of the schwullunde troops the "ghost catcher guns". The whole team is glowing with numbers crawling all over them. Many of the soldiers are having remembrances of childhood songs like 12 buckle my shoe, ABCDEFG, and similar things. They can see the will o wisps floating around them with their green lights summoned by Click-Click-Hiss-Hiss-Tick-Tick, the commander thinks he hears childhood laughter in the distance.

as the team progresses foward down the corridor they feel a distinct chill in the air. as they turn a corner they spot a shadow just down the corridor. standing about 5 ft tall it looks humanoid. the shadow turns looks at them and moves further down the corridor in less then a second. there it stops and seems to wait, almost teasingly.

ooc sorry for the down time i am having isp problems at the moment. using a free isp for now. hope to get this fixed soon

The will o'wisps move towards the shadow and start dancing a mesmerizing dance in front of the shadow, a tinkling singing comes from their dancing, like fairy voices attempting to charm the shadow.

Newton points his reading device at the shadow to determine its ectoplasmic and energy density readings. He says, "Just what kind of shadow is this?"

The will o'wisps only seem to anger the shadow. it quickly moves a short distance from them. the temperature inside the corridor seems to drop a few degrees. a slight humming sound can be heard through the radio systems, similer to static. the shadow seems to draw up them burst outwards toward the group. one of the soldiers goes down holding his side screaming. after that the shadow vanishes. lifting up the shirt of the soldier reveals an angry red welt running across his ribs. the welt is slightly warm to the touch.