Quote:Transcript of gatecrash debrief, December 12 20XX.
Interviewer: O. Simpson, Convention Security (Gate Division)
Interviewee: M. Fnord, team leader crasher group 023 (Order of St. Grimace)
Location: Grand Central FOB

Q: Okay, it's 0900 hours December 12 20XX. Everything from here on out is on the record.

A: Once more unto the breach, eh Liv?

Q: Something like that. You and your team always seem to be on the point when something strange happens.

A: What can I say? It's our wyrd. Honestly though I wouldn't mind if somebody else took up the banner for once.

Q: Law of averages, Mal. Now, your team was first-in through gate address PKX-18901, right?

A: Yeah. The first-link didn't show anything particularly promising locally, just another Selenian type rockball. But the camera picked up what looked like reflected light from a habitable planet, so they sent us to check it out.

Q: What was the ROE?

A: Stay near the gate; Selenians are dangerous but the dangers are pretty well documented so far. The gate was emplaced in a lava tube, so less chance of getting death-from-above via stray meteorite. We were to check out the habitable world remotely, telescope observations only, see if we could pick up any transmissions, and then return to Grand Central. Once we got the paydata, people who weren't us would take it from there.

~***~

"Okay, we're in. Starting logging. Ahem. This is the Order of St. Grimace travelogue of PKX-18901, Mal Fnord recording. So far, as you can see, we've got... rocks. Lots and lots of rocks. No atmosphere, gravity's about one-sixth standard so that matches the first-link report. We're going to set up base camp just over here to the side and then. Well, I guess then we'll take a look around outside."

~***~

A: Base camp went up pretty quickly, not our first time at the rodeo after all. So about a hour into the mission we were ready to head out and get a better look at the target.

Q: And that's when you saw it?

A: Yeah. The camera must picked up planetshine from a chimney in the tube. We got out of the cave and it was in the sky not quite at zenith, probably close to thirty-forty degrees.

~***~

The gatecrashers stepped out of the cave into glorious desolation. "Okay," the leader said, "So if the camera saw planetshine, and if it's not right in the entrance then it must be close to overhead..." he trailed off as he saw the Earth hanging full in the sky.

"Oh, you've got to be fucking KIDDING me!"

~***~

Q: What were your first impressions?

A: Honestly? I thought we might've come full circle and found a gate on Luna. I mean, that makes sense, Luna's not particularly well-explored outside of the settled areas and it's possible that a gate could be hiding in a nook somewhere if it's off the trade routes. So we radioed for a comm check and got nada. Once we got the telescopes set up we could see that all the orbitals weren't there, so obviously we weren't in Kansas anymore.

Q: And the next hypothesis?

A: Alternate universe.

Q: You're kidding.

A: Not really. Yes, it's really damned weird that 'alternate universe' is considered the sane and rational alternative to pure irrationality, but who the hell knows how the gates work? It was always a possibility that the wormholes weren't sending us around the galaxy but to other dimensions. Of course, we managed to put some data together that disproves that.

Q: How so?

A: The going theory is that if we end up in an alternate universe, the stars should be roughly the same as they are in ours. Only something really alternate, like one where the sun exploded a billion years before like evolved, should be one where the stars change. Or at least that's how I understood it. Anyway, the star patterns weren't the same as at home. They're similar, but all the regular suspects aren't visible. C-Sec's got the astrographic data?

Q: Yes. We've got people working on it as we're talking. Anyway, what happened next?

A: Honestly, not much more. Once we'd gotten our jaws back in place we spent the 36 hours doing the planned observations. Based on that, the place - Earth, Jesus I can't believe I'm taking this so calmly - is inhabited. We saw signs of large population centers, city lights and such, most of it round the Indian Ocean basin. Spectroscope analysis of the atmosphere indicates an industrial society, lots of coal burning, place'll have a nasty greenhouse problem in a hundred years or so. No radio transmissions, or at least nothing we could pick up from our spot.

Q: Do you think that the planet might have suffered through a nuclear war, like the one on Strangelove?

A: Not like the one on Strangelove, there's too much shit alive down there. We didn't see any signs of a nuclear war, but from that distance we might've missed it. It did look like somebody did something nasty to Europe and North America, might've been nukes. I guess we'll need to get a team closer for a better idea.

Q: So in your opinion this planet can't be the source of the Strangelove civilization?

A: Be nice if we could wrap that up with a neat bow, wouldn't it? No, the Strangelovians are too old, too technically advanced and they left their toys around. Even if these people were the Strangelovians only... regressed, we'd have seen debris in the high orbitals if nothing else. Here? Nada.

Q: Quite. So after you completed the observations you returned to Grand Central?

A: Couldn't do much of anything else, really. And people really needed to know about this nonsense.

Q: Mm. Well, Mal, I think that'll do for a supplementary. Anything you'd like to add for the record?

A: Only this. If C-Sec doesn't just wipe the address and pretend it never happened, my team wants in on the followup.

Q: Obviously I can't promise anything, but we'll see what we can do.

Quote:It's not really meant to replace the current version of Fenspace - despite my meanderings I'm not interested in scrapping six years of work just for the hell of it

robkelk]I'm tempted to propose doing both, but I don't know whether we have the resources to do two projects in parallel. (Heck, we're having enough trouble writing up all of the Big Six factions in original-recipe Fenspace.)[/quote]

Part of that's because some of the factions weren't really meant to have big writeups, they were just there as background filler but as the PC factions grew in political power... something had to give. As for a parallel project... yeah, I'm not sure I have the mental bandwidth to do it, but if there's enough interest I might be talked into it.
[quote=robkelk]Sometimes I worry about Sora. Eimi and I double-checked her personality profile before we coded her, and neither of us put any Patty Hearst into the mix... but there she is."[/quote Wrote:"Dad... maybe it's you."

"No, no I don't think so..."

- Gil and Klaus Wulfenbach Kohran and Noah Anderson, in conversation, 20XX.

[quote="Foxboy]Peshawar.

M Fnord Wrote:"Dad... maybe it's you."

"No, no I don't think so..."

- Gil and Klaus Wulfenbach Kohran and Noah Anderson, in conversation, 20XX.

Quote:It's the Ronald D. Moore reboot.

HRogge Wrote:Still, I wonder if the Fen could stay relevant in the Solar System unless Earth decides "the area is not worth the effort".

Proginoskes Wrote:So how does this version's Supertechnology/Handwavium work? Is it basically what "we" have, but subtler? Or is it something else entirely?

M Fnord Wrote:Madsci... madsci is probably closest to mainline wavetech in how it works; it's all bespoke, generally can only be reproduced by the person who made it and tends to treat the laws of reality as vague guidelines. As you can guess, it's the rarest and most worried-about part of the whole thing.

M Fnord Wrote:It really depends on how you define relevance. Will the Fen ever be like they are in the mainline, commanding the heights of the solar system? Probably not. There's not quite enough of them (though more on average than in the mainline) to offset the advantage Earth's population and economy offer, even with miracle technology.

Quote:But that doesn't mean they're not relevant. The Convention operates out on the ragged edge of the frontier, which gives them a certain frontier mystique. People join the Fen on a pretty regular basis - especially people who'd like something better in their lives but don't want to live under the Space Powers' collective thumb. Also, the Fen aren't simply lurking in holes in the outer system, they're actively involved in shaping things. They may not be the political force that they are in the mainline but they're much more of a cultural force, which may turn out for the better.

Proginoskes Wrote:Hmm... 999 nines of purity (that is, impurities are no more than one part in 10^999). Lenses and mirrors that bend/reflect every incident photon, absorbing none. Materials with impossible properties, like semiconductors with exactly-tuned bandgaps and high-efficiency fluorescent materials with matching emission spectra (this combination, especially if the semiconductor has high carrier mobility, would allow for solar cells many times more efficient than current state of the art).

HRogge Wrote:If the Fen manage to keep a (slight?) edge on handwavium based tech it could work...

M Fnord Wrote:You seem to be a little hung up on political/economic dominance, like the Fen must be kings of the solar system or else it's all for nothing.

Quote:Things are different here.

In the mainline the Fen control the solar system, but they're largely considered irrelevant on Earth, at best tabloid fodder and at worst a nebulous boogeyman for the paranoid. Here, the Fen don't control the solar system (they've got claims on big chunks, but actual control is limited to places like Callisto, Titan, Oberon and Triton) but they are very relevant on Earth. Fen 'culture' is a big thing downstairs, it's not some shunned subculture that exists to be poked at on an episode of CSI, it's trendy. There are scenesters who wear "authentic" gatecrasher jackets with patches and insignia. Nerdy kids have posters of Stella Via or the Port Lowell domes on their walls and dream of being the next Callie MacDonald. Japanese fashion districts look to Luna and the sky-habitats of Venus for inspiration. Martian punk folk is the next big thing on Billboard. These things are important, they matter more than how many ships or guns or lines drawn on a map there are.

Here, the Fen are pretty obviously on the political edge, and that probably won't change until the TITANs wake and eat Earth. But they've got one huge advantage that the mainline Fen don't have: the respect and interest of the 'Danelaw.

Proginoskes Wrote:I kinda thought South is Rising just petered out, but the only thing up on the Wiki is the Dramatis Personae and I didn't think to check the Google Doc.

robkelk Wrote:Hmmmmm... Should we port what exists to the wiki, with a tag saying "incomplete and likely to remain that way forever," or should we scrub the project from the wiki? Leaving things as-is appears to be rude...

Proginoskes Wrote:I'm in favor of wikifying it. Never know when or who inspiration may strike, and the Wiki is more accessible to new members of the Collective than the GDoc is.