NationStates Jolt Archive

Charon I, Open Cluster M36, Perseus Arm, Year of our Lord 852, Fall of the Death Season, 0700 hours...
A single ship (http://moddb.com/images/cache/mods/82/8237/gallery/thumbmoty_53379.jpg) enters real space without a sound. Several lightyears away rotates a planet, white and cold. Communications are opened and a single message is sent:
This is the Xiscapian Cruiser Specter to Avalan ground control, we are carrying a diplomat to be sent to your planet. Request permission to send a shuttle to Tintibulus.

A quiet, feminine, voice picks up and begins to speak back to the vessel; unusually eloquent in the tongue for a race largely ignorant of the outside worlds.

"You may direct yourself towards any landing site; public or military, as is appropriate. When you have done so, please relay your position, so that you may be more properly received."


Offscreen

Acquisition of Wormhole Technology has sparked the Avalan imagination, and stirred otherwise stagnant feelings. Passionate writers and editors speak as loudly as they can either in support of the purchase, or in condemnation of the sacrifice. Many private businesses have been stamped out for capital to mitigate the aftermath of the International Convention's losses, and the populace is strangely restless - if largely in the government's favor.

Of a more obvious note, however, is the gigantic construction projects occurring a short distance away from the planet itself. Encompassing an empty void the breadth of a small moon, an epic feat of design is being attempted. Tens of thousands of thin, brass-stained beams have been stacked in a vaguely spherical scaffold; a design interspersed with intricate and nonsensical curves and corners. Though enchanting to behold, there was a certain, inescapable, wrongness that pervaded the structure; perhaps alluded to by the countless batteries - with their bizarre, twisting, ends* - that were interspersed at seemingly random junctures.

Several makeshift 'factories' had been erected; refitted ships with assembly lines which worked with mind-blowing speed and precision. The blueprints and basic design of the newly acquired Wormhole Generator was being transmitted from the ITC, and the device was being replicated on a much larger scale.


*Fixing this detail into the factbook.

A shuttle (http://www.revell.de/starwars/reqRessources/img/produkte/abb_imperialShuttle.jpg) disembarked from the Cruiser as it drew closer, flying downward, the white shuttle lost against the snowy planet. It flew though the atmosphere and landed gently at a public, civilian spaceport. Vanadict (http://photobucket.com/mediadetail/?media=http%3A%2F%2Fi196.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Faa203%2FTempest_King%2Fkitsune0.jpg&searchTerm=kitsune&pageOffset=10), followed by two Black Guards (http://web.nafcs.k12.in.us/users/galena/Classrooms/Fifth/student51_Smith_Web/TANNER/Tannerpix/Shadow%20trooper%20II.jpeg), strode down the ramp. Vanadict had long, red hair and dark eyes. Her ears and tail were also colored red, a rare color for an Xiscapian to have. She was beautiful in a soft kind of way, but the katana sticking out of her blue robes betrayed this. Her pale skin flushed slightly against the cold as she waited for the Avalan representatives. The Black Guards stood passivly behind her, hand folded behind their backs, features obscured by their helemts, their black armor standing out against the white snow and gray buildings.