SLYNES - Swirly Lights Yonder, a Never Ending Story

[Anonymoose]

Nekopterus: The new hive has taken shelter in a cave complex, and diggers have found a suitable source of near-pure water. The Thinkers that are now running the hive are changing, now that the pheromone suppression of the Hivemother does not exist. Their minds are more open to one another, and they find it difficult to separate their thinking capabilities. One Thinker in particular, 101, has basically become a mindslave of the others, having no initiative to calculate or extrapolate, but instead being a bank of mental energy for the others to draw upon. The workers are changing as well, brilliant colors becoming obvious on their remnant wings, and their abdomens turning an emerald green on the underside. While the hive scurries about, these changes are practically unnoticed, but they indicate the difference between the two new hives.
Opterus: The Hive is swarming. The old swarm ship plan is insufficient for the exodus about to be underway. The Hivemind has come to the conclusion that the only way to expand the Hive is to take to the stars and carry the Hivemother with it. A ship more massive than the sum total of the previous ships is being constructed. It will take many cycles of Opterus until this ship is done, but it will be the home of the Hivemother, and therefore, worth it. The schematic of the ship, which will be composed of organic materials and metal, will have a circumference of about 10km, with arms spiraling from the center. (I'll provide a pic soon.) The Hive can't stay on Opterus.

 

[Megaman_zx]

yeah, don't expect any big stories for a while, i literally broke my arm in half, so i have to type w/ 1 arm.

 

[Bil]

yeah, don't expect any big stories for a while, i literally broke my arm in half, so i have to type w/ 1 arm.

Damn. Sorry to hear that, man. No big deal.

On a side note, I'm thinking that updates will be every other week, giving everyone enough time to write out stories (for those that can, of course) and whatnot. I want to keep this low-stress, particularly what with so many other big NESes going on right now.

Also, I've clearly been slacking on the issue of writing a story for the Snud. That'll come soon enough, I promise!

 

[Daftpanzer]

@Megaman, ouch! That doesn't sound fun. I hope you're on the mend now.

@Bil, do the Snud look anything like this? (I actually tried to do this using Spore again, but it decided to lock up my whole computer)

 

[Bil]

Hmm. Kind of! I was sort of imagining the body as a solid lump of flesh, more or less, though rigid (not like a sack filled with goo... eww...), but that's fairly about right.

 

[TaylorFlame]

Just as a suggestion, it might be a good idea to mark on the map the location of any militaries. Right now its not really important, but when a war begins, its probably a good idea to have a clear way of identifying where armies are so they dont jump from planet to planet magically.

 

[Bil]

I was intending it, if anyone gets around to a war. I'm also not currently marking every fleet, either, but will as the galaxy becomes more and more active.

 

[Bil]

Planet Sneed

All over the vast planet of Sneed, the Snud were awakening from their hibernation chambers, creaking and groaning as they shook off ten thousand years of, more or less, sleep. They all felt disoriented, but those that had stayed awake (or, rather, their descendants) helped them through the wake-up period, brewing a sort of coffee for them and preparing breakfast in all the restaurants and street-side cafes that littered the city streets all across the planet. Robots scuttled about, doing this and that, not really seeming to notice that there were a lot more Snuds around than there used to be, what with these robots, as well, being merely the descendants of those left behind.

Markets flared up fairly quickly, as everyone was looking forward to get back into the buying/selling business, and goods and wealth again flowed through the gathering places. The great stock markets lit up and blurred with activity almost at once, as the eighty-seven corporations re-established themselves as the ruling powers and got down to the business of sorting out what had been going on in the past few thousand years while they were gone. The technicians assigned to dealing with the space-borne robots were hard at work studying all the telemetry about the recently-arrived aliens in the system.

From the Satellian point of view (supposing that their sensory equipment was operational), it would have seemed like this was another lifeless system, excepting of course the moderately large, lush planet in the habitable belt of the system. It might have seemed that only primitive life lived here, but that seeming did not last long. Within hours after their arrival, all sorts of lights flickered on all around Sneed, and transmissions blazed across the system, mostly relating the news of the past few thousand years as well as the new market status. Robotic ships all over the system blinked on, coming out of their 'sleep' routines, with smaller, scuttling robots crawling all over their hulls to assess any damage that might have occurred while they were waiting.

It was after all this that, what had seemed to be an odd asteroid belt, was in fact composed entirely of artificial satellites. They flickered on, announcing their existence to the aliens with lights and activity. Robot craft buzzed about this belt of satellites, fixing what needed fixing, relaying software updates, etc. The lighting systems began to coordinate with each other, creating patterns along the outer edge of the belt, displaying odd designs and shape constructing out of thousands and thousands of pinpoints of different colored lights. The message was likely not understood immediately, though its design was clearly meant to be interpreted by sentient minds.

With a little work, the Satellians might notice that it is a greeting. The images show a rough outline of what a Snud looks like, as well as various series of light patterns that denote prime numbers, then scientific and economic formulas, and finally an encoded greeting that read something like this:

WELCOME ALIENS

PLANET SNEED IS CURRENTLY OPENING FOR BUSINESS

PLEASE FORGIVE THE INCONVENIENCE AS WE ORIENT OURSELVES TO YOUR EXISTENCE

YOUR BUSINESS IS ALWAYS APPRECIATED

HAVE A NICE DAY

 

[Megaman_zx]

i'm gonna post pictures of the x rays on the www thread.

 

[Daftpanzer]

So, they call themselves the Snud... The Satellians will formulate a response sometime soon.

 

[Bil]

Yeah, I have a fondness for either long names or short, blunt names when it comes to alien races.

 

[Daftpanzer]

I didn't mean to criticise, I like short names too, I mean aliens might call themselves by the equvialent of 'we' or 'us' etc

 

[Daftpanzer]

@Bil, I have some annoying questions relating to possible stories and orders:

* Would some Satellians be allowed down onto the Snud homeworld to meet with them in person?

* How much do my guys actually know about our ship that was captured by the Lelinthians? I mean, do they know for sure it was captured, or did it just lose contact?

* Could I communicate with the Lelinthians in any way or send them information about my race, without sending an actual fleet back there?

Thanx

 

[Vertinari118]

Changing Times

Times are changing on the slime world of the amoebas. For the first time since life began in the universe the balance of power shall be upset and one memory colony will rule supreme. Recent events had not gone unnoticed on the slime world and this is part of the cause of the upset. New stars burned in the skies, sometimes for seconds, sometimes minutes, sometimes hours or even years. They were every colour imaginable and clearly not stars to the ancient memory colonies or at least not natural ones. Other life beyond the amoeba dominated and perfectly maintained slime world existed.

One day one of these artificial stars flew too close to the amoeba homeworld, a bountiful land of jungles and green growth, full of diverse and complex lifeforms that could not exist without amoeba assistance. It plunged into the atmosphere out of control, polluting an entire continent and almost killing Nine. One quickly quarantined the scene of the incident and began its investigation. That was over a thousand years ago.

"Master colony we have just finished our probing of the new object's structure. Its molecular arrangement is very complex, with countless new compounds and substances being discovered. However if we partially strip the device we should be able to transform you within a few days."

"Excellent. After such a short time we will go from the most advanced theoretical species in the world to the most advanced and powerful war machine ever known. We shall burn the universe until all is kept in the perfect balance. Dismissed."

The device began to disappear beneath a vast horde of amoebas; huge mounds of earth piled high into the sky as the earth was robbed of all her goodness but the earth would suffer far more in the near future. One was slowly converted into a god-like entity capable of destroying continents, boiling the oceans and ascending to the stars. He was perfect in every way. His armour plating was metres thick and impenetrable to all weapons the amoeba and their world had at its disposal. His claws and cannons were vast, able to destroy anything anywhere on the planet. But his masterpiece, the things that would make him a god were new to the amoeba world and there had arrived one thousand years ago. The vast organic fuel chambers were full to the brim and the small fusion reactor taken from the heart of the device would power his new engines. His electromagnetic shielding stopped anything from touching him unless he wanted it to. His lasers and torpedo banks were perfect. One thing was not perfect, in his glory he missed the sound of flapping wings. Soon his world would burn in war.

"One has found something, some new knowledge he has not shared with us. He must be made to share it. Release the war pheromones and prepare to lead your colonies to war. We march!" cried out Two.

The others quickly agreed.

The vast array of wildlife and colonies were deployed. The war was about to begin. No-one knows which colony fired the first shot but within minutes the perfectly balanced world was destroyed. The seas turned to acid. The plants melted beneath the intense barrages and all non-amoebic lifeforms died. Within days the Sun disappeared and casualties ran into the trillions. When the first month had ended five of the ten memory colonies lay dead on the battlefield, their knowledge was absorbed by the remainder and the war continued. A year rolled by and almost all life was dead, only One, Two and a handful of Two's colonies survived. One then played his final card. He blasted off and forcibly assimilated Two from the air. The last of his colonies surrendered and all but two of them added their selves to One. The last two would rebuild their world, with all available genetic information left with them.

The amoebas had ended space and taken vast leaps in their ability to create inorganic technology but at what cost? Would this war destroy their people or would it lead to a new beginning?

OOC: I doubt this story is really good enough to give me One as a very advanced spacecraft but at least it is something no? All images are from deviantArt

 

[Lord_Iggy]

Wow! Really cool to get a clearer idea of the Amoebas!

 

[Bil]

* Would some Satellians be allowed down onto the Snud homeworld to meet with them in person?

* How much do my guys actually know about our ship that was captured by the Lelinthians? I mean, do they know for sure it was captured, or did it just lose contact?

* Could I communicate with the Lelinthians in any way or send them information about my race, without sending an actual fleet back there?

I forgot to include this, but the Snud also transmit coordinates (in some fashion) to the Satellian fleet, which is probably where they want them to land.

The other Satellian fleet knows that the lost ship was left behind, didn't catch up, and if they have some kind of FTL communication, know they aren't responding to signals (and weren't transmitting anything from the moment the fleet jumped out of the system). You would definitely be able to send a signal back (again, if you have some kind of FTL comm.) or send a probe containing a pre-programmed message, or whatever you want to do. You don't need to send a fleet back, no.

OOC: I doubt this story is really good enough to give me One as a very advanced spacecraft but at least it is something no? All images are from deviantArt

I definitely liked this as an intro for your species! I'm going to give you Tech Level 1 for free, just like how everybody else got, a small economy, and a fleet ("One") to use, just to make it easier for you to get into the game. Remember, I said that "fleets" don't have to be a large number of ships, and in fact, could be just a single ship that serves the purposes of a "fleet" (basically, a particularly large and powerful ship, that would be able to take on a fleet of smaller ships of equal power).

 

[Anonymoose]

I would be lying if I said I didn't want the worldship fighting that thing.

 

[TaylorFlame]

I would be lying if I said I didn't think a war against colonies of space-going amoebas wasn't awesome.

 

[Daftpanzer]

Onboard Exploration Ship #7/3, a couple of Satellians stared in wonder at the great sparkling band of lights which had encircled planet Sneed for the past few days.

"Confirm?"

"Mmm.... I Confirm... Amazing..."

"Scientific formulae?"

"Mmm... Repeat that visual..."

"Triangulation... Pi.... Wonderous! Ah... All this excitement is giving me a headache..."

"Mmm... A communication, also... When we looked at this part..."

"Interpretation completed already?"

"Yes. You seem surprised?"

"I merely anticipated much difficulty and delay!"

"This is our passion..."

"Well, what does it say?"

"Mmm... Welcome, Aliens. Sneed-planet effort exchange is opening. Request with gratitude your inconvenience, we are in alignment to your existence. Gratitude for your effort. You will now receive a pleasing day."

"Hmm..."

"Mmm... I will reconfigure..."

---

Fleet Interlopation #123/77/44

Regarding: Exchanges with the inhabitants of Sneed

Intended recipients: Fleet, General.
Priority: Yes.
Vessel of origin: Supply vessel #1/1.
Mind of origin: Gurumm Ulunnunn Nurr-Unn Unn

-MESSAGE

We are all adapting to this momentous discovery. I must warn against the disappointment that some have already expressed. It is too early to tell what wonders the Snud may offer us. Is it not said that a wise man, to a fool, often seems like a fool? Then stop this foolishness. We must proceed with all dignity and respect. We must assume the Snud are our gatekeepers for entry into the great pan-galactic civilization. I see no harm in operating with this assumption.

The Snud seem very interested in exchanges of items and artefacts. This may be a test of some kind, but fleet consensus is to cooperate fully.

Now, after discussion with the fleet, we have marked out the following spare items for the initial exchanges:

* 1 pod of personal computers.
* 1 pod of mainframe computer components.
* 1 pod of 3D image projectors.
* 1 pod of air/water recycling systems.
* 1 pod of power tools.
* 1 pod of medical equipment.
* 1 pod of vacuum membranes.
* 1 pod of mixed food.
* 1 pod of mixed narcotics.
* 1 pod of miscellaneous cultural artefacts.
* 1 pod of miscellaneous rock samples.
* 1 pod of high-density power batteries.
* 1 pod of hull repair materials.
* 1 pod of exotic radioactive elements.
* 1 astro-alignment position finder.
* 1 wide-band orbital telescope.
* 1 orbital communication pod.
* 1 standard flyer.
* 1 hexapod surface walker.
* Data stores - Full biology-history documents of Hmmaiaa. Full bio-history documents of the Satellian species. Technical schematics of our Bubble Drives and all main ship systems.

To honour their request for trade and exchange, we will request the following:

* Food samples, for scientific study.
* Snuddian computer hardware.
* Basic biological information, for comparison with life evolved on Hmmaiaa and Ulann (the green world).

All crew are invited to make proposals and suggestions.

-END

---

A lone Satellian flyer descended through the atmosphere of planet Sneed. Its envelope of hot fiery plasma began to disperse, revealing a gold/platinum hull shinning brightly in the sunlight. A new, harmless trail of water vapour began to form in its wake, as in plunged into denser air. The craft's optical sensors unfurled themselves and locked on to a large circular expanse of hard material on the surface below.

The Snud were probably watching. Watching every twitch of the flight surfaces. Criticising the irregularities in the landing approach. Peering through the hull, to see the oscillation of electrons in the flight circuits. Peeing into the brainwaves of the Satellian crew. They were the aliens. Who knew how old they were, how long their civilization had existed. Who knew what wonders they guarded.

But, there was no use for nervousness now. There was nothing that could be hidden. The visitors had to be totally honest about themselves. For some of the crew, used to the subtle layered intimidation of the undercities, it was actually a liberating experience.

More of the surface became visible in high resolution. An odd patchwork of structures was visible. Some were covered in vegetation, and a few were even in a ruinous state. The order and logic of the aliens was clearly of a higher order than their own.

Motion was detected. Aside from the swarm of small robotic entities, there seemed to be a large crowd of Snud encircling the landing platform. It was hard to pick out any individuals, but it was an exciting experience nonetheless. A small screen inside the craft gave the crew their first real-time glimpse of the intelligent alien forms.

Breaking thrusters fired, briefly enveloping the craft in smoke and flames for a second time. Then the sparkling hull reappeared, and within moments it had half-glided, half-fallen onto the platform with only a slight bounce. The gracefully-curved craft was like a tiny bead of gold in a very large, solid, hard, embracing hand.

Even before the vector-thrust nozzles had cooled from their red hot state, a hatch began to open in the rear. A six-legged Satellian slowly shuffled out and dropped the small distance to the surface. She was clad in a tightly-fitting environment membrane, holding various pieces of equipment between her front two limbs and her mouthparts. The Snud maintained their distance around the edge of the platform. She could have extruded her big-eyes and stared at them, but she decided it would be better for her thought processes if she concentrated on her immediate environs. She felt safely insignificant next to craft in the middle of the empty expanse.

A few minutes passed as she set up a large light display panel. This would, hopefully, send a signal in the same form as they had been greeted. The test flashes went OK. On a control panel, she entered the code for the concept of 'hello'. That was all that needed to be said for now. As the lights began to flash in a new pattern, she bowed her front end and flexed her mouthparts in salutation...

And that was it. A great moment in history of the Satellian species. Was it significant for the Snud? Who could say... She felt strangely calm, anyways. It remained quiet. The air was warm, with a gentle breeze. She realised she had stepped right onto this alien world without even thinking about it. A seasoned space traveller, indeed! The light panel continued to flash with determined precision. She took a moment to meditate and absorb the ambience.

---

Around the same time, a battered explorer ship entered orbit of the Satellian colony world of Ulumm-Bukk, and began relaying the story of contact with the Lelinthians. It would gradually become clear that contact had been made with two alien races, almost simultaneously. And most annoyingly, neither of these races conformed to expectations.

 

[Megaman_zx]

nice story, i'll have to get to work on mine.