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Notice of Intent
12-06-2014, 07:17 AM
Notice of Intent to Incorporate under section 74656.1864 of the Galactic Charter Regulations for Colonial Expansion
The aliens were among us
The galaxy is teeming with life; the leading theory being that the earliest self-replicating molecules formed by chance late in the life cycle of the first-population stars, then spread on the shockfronts of novas and through hyperspace fractures formed by the sudden shifting of their mass-shadows. Essentially anywhere something can survive, something does.
We never knew they were there
The great Galactic Wars lie tens of thousands of years in the past, the treaty organizations and trade councils formed in their wakes having grown and merged into a massive interstellar bureaucracy that governs all with a papery grasp, impersonal and pedantic.
When their survey was complete, they acted
"Seriously, they speak how many languages on the at planet? It'll take weeks just to read the formal notice of intent in all of those, and it's not like the locals even have receivers to hear the broadcast!"
"There's nothing saying they have to be listening, just that we have to broadcast the notice in language understood by every local inhabitant thirty duty cycles before the motion is put to vote, so regional representatives have time to arrive. It's doubly pointless, since the review meeting is at the sector capital, but the forms have to be followed and all the entries filled. It's why we sent a fleet's worth of observers down there for the last seventy orbits."
Only one man heard the warning
Dr. (name) was, frankly, a nerd. He did number puzzles, studied foreign languages, and traded cryptographic challenges with an online group for fun, had his own personal server room (Well, a room where he kept the still functional older computers as he regualrly replaced his current primary one, running protein folding and SETI clients) and had originally been aiming to work in high-energy experimental physics until the US canceled the Supercollider and shut down the Tevatron, leaving the only remaining operational hardware overseas. Not that he was a rabid flag-flapper, either, but his family and friends were here, and staffing needs in the field were never large to begin with. With that avenue largely closed, he had instead pursued string theory and the design of sensors capable of detecting tiny fluctuations in the fabric of space itself. That was how he came to be the first sapient native to Earth to decipher a hyperwave broadcast, when the regular "noise" he'd been trying to show had a connection to the mass shifts of solr wheather and prominences was suddenly drowned out by a far stronger signal, one that was immediately recogniseable as carrying basic amplitude modulated sound in the normal audible range. The fact that it was in Chinese when he set up a program to convert the measurements back into sound was slightly concerning at first, until he found that the message was simply being repeated over and over by descending order of the population that spoke it, but then it started playing in a language he understood, and he didscovered that there was good reason to be alarmed.
There are thirty days left to build a hyperspace-capable shuttle, gather representatives of the nations of Earth, and attend the Colonial Review Board, or else
If the Motion to Incorporate is passed as laid out in the aliens' broadcast, Earth will become an Expendable Resource Extraction and Processing Outpost, and any inhabitants not registered as Galactic Citizens (meaning, in effect, all of humanity) considered outlaws and claim jumpers, subject to suppression and removal from properly registered claims (i.e. anywhere there's something remotely valuable, like oilfields or mines or factories) unless they comply with the registered owner's terms.
Can human civilization survive?
You decide!
... 'cause I ain't go no more on this. I was reaching just to put it together this much.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
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... This sounds like the job for an HFY Story Thread! ;D
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Sounds like humanity is boned
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Whatever you do, don't invite them around for dinner...
The last time a bunch of natives did that to some newcomers, it didn't go so well for them.
Removing 6 billion people is a bitch. 6 billion people with the willingness to use nuclear weapons on their own land, doubly so.
"They nuke themselves?"
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
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Yes, and with a willingness that makes Andurians weep with shame at their inability to equal. Not one step back not paid for a thousand times in blood and nothing for those who seek to conquer to look to as conquest or spoils. This is our vow, and pity the soul who seeks to try our resolve.
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Hm, well, I did say that the Galactic Wars were tens of thousands of years in the past, didn't I? I wouldn't be so naive as to assume that the galactic residents have forgotten how to fight, but if Dr. Name (The engineer who will save the day!) can't get hold of a ship and somehow convince or shanghai a bunch of reps, Earth could well turn into a hole in space that devours troops and equipment sent to pacify it. History shows again and again, the only way to "pacify" a human population is a) intermarry and be mutually absorbed, or b) graveyards are very peaceful. HFY all the way!
Though honestly, my intent was an edge-of-your-seat high tech thriller about zoning ordinances and points of order, not hot zone ordnance and knife points.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
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Think we can do a bit of both? For being something of a loony, Ron L. Hubbard succeeded at this quite well in Battlefield Earth.
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Well, I guess that if pacifying and commercially exploiting Earth proves to be too costly, they will just demolish the planet to build an interstellar bypass...
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Douglas Adams we are not.
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For some reason I'm getting mental images of this happening to, say, the world of darkness or some other secret supernatural setting that the aliens managed to completely miss, and when the occupation force turns up finding things getting really sticky indeed...
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Bleagh. My opinion of WoD was soured by whichever version of Mage it was where the Technocracy had won in all but name (apparently, this was "Old World of Darkness," whatever the "new" one is) being my first exposure to the setting in detail, and my general loathing for for the sanity points meter WW includes in some form in every one of their games, which inevitably fills up and causes episodes of the player not being in control of the character just by using the abilities that set them apart from NPCs in the first place. I don't hate it as much as Robotech, but it's on par with Evangelion or zombie-apocalypse crap.
Don't let that stop you from filling out the idea if the spirit moves you, though, I'm just some guy on the internet after all.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
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i'll only play the new release of OWoD and only werewolf then, dont know what your talking about with the sanity stuff. (gets an evil grin) We are fenspacers, we make our own vampires and werewolves, *cackle cackle cackle*
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Paradox, Resonance, Limit, I forget what it is in Scion and never knew for Vampire, Werewolf, or Changeling, I'm sure their superheroo game I can't even rmemeber the name of had it too. The only real exception is the Street Fighter RPG, where Rage is your super-meter that enables special attacks, which is why Thrash (derived from the SFRPG with some Mekton twists and independent refinements) is the only Storyteller-system game I'm even willing to consider playing. But then, grim & gritty doesn't hold much appeal to me in the first place, so I'm not really the target audience - my general response to the idea of "Oh, the hardship that is living with the inner darkness inherent to my powers!" is basically, "Then get some more SUN!" (Generally followed by a plasma bolt to the face, if the speaker is undead.) This is perhaps ironic, considering that in person sunlight makes my skin itch and hurts my eyes to the point that I legitimately do the movie-style Dracula Hiss when stepping into direct light from somewhere more comfortable, but I don't go whining about it, just put on long sleeves and sunglasses, and don't try to use it as an excuse for any mental issues.
I'd add a "Praise the sun!" image macro here, but I'm not sure but what that would undermine my point since it originates from an undead game protagonist. Then again, maybe not, considering the nature of the game it comes from.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
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Quote:never knew for Vampire, Werewolf, or Changeling
Humanity and Rage for the first two; I don't remember ever even reading Changeling so I don't know what it is there.
I like the idea that the invaders missed a whole lot of secret cultures/races/species that have been deliberately hiding; maybe we can turn it up to 11? "Holy Karztang! This is the planet Great Cthulhu chose for his retirement? Everyone out of the Pacific Basin!"
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Heh, exactly.
Not just WoD, just chose it as an example because it's a fairly iconic secret supernatural setting. Harry Potter, Dresden Files, Touhou, Supernatural itself, Buffy, Negima...
My mental images weren't series specific. They were alien soldiers being turned into frogs/smote with lightning/finding their gear possessed by angry ghosts/you have been eaten by a grue type specifics. The more the merrier!
Just anything where the aliens could completely miss the fact that they exist at all, and so when the occupation force shows up, they end up all kinds of horrible trouble. (Oh look, Castlevania just rose into their main staging area for eastern europe... too bad, so sad.)
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In Changeling it was "Banality". Basically the forces of 'normality'. Things like 'working a 9-to-5 job' and anything related to 'being a normal person' instead of 'being a faerie lord'. Extremely banal things included cold iron, polyester, broccoli, income tax....
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Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
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Quote:ECSNorway wrote:
In Changeling it was "Banality". Basically the forces of 'normality'. Things like 'working a 9-to-5 job' and anything related to 'being a normal person' instead of 'being a faerie lord'. Extremely banal things included cold iron, polyester, broccoli, income tax....
Ah yes! And that reminds me of a quote from my quotefile which, dammit, would have let me answer the question completely: Quote:Changelings are creatures of Glamour, which is magic derived from the human creative impulse; they abhor Banality, which, as my wife puts it, is the impulse that drives you to buy a Volvo.
Back to the topic at hand, though... I think the idea we should strive for is something on the order of a snippet I once saw about alien invaders arriving at Marvel!Earth and getting some of their advance intelligence a little too late; it was something along the lines of "This planet has repelled Galactus several times in the past ten years? RETREAT!"
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Marvel!Earth also already has several groups with access to interstellar travel through various means, and contact with major galactic powers such as the Shi'ar Empire. Something like the OP would be seen as a bureaucratic asspull and end up with Earth successfully prosecuting the idiot responsible in galactic Court.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
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It's also not in any way a secret or hidden society that the aliens could miss. That snippet about those aliens hitting the marvel verse is probably pretty amusing in some of the same ways, though, which is probably what he meant.
I kinda like the idea of several of the secret societies not having any clue each other exists as well as the aliens not knowing, myself.
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Amusingly, something like what you're suggesting did happen in Marvel. Some random alien species tried threatening Earth, expecting them to just roll over. SWORD, the agency tasked with space defence, then proceeded to explain the facts of life to them. Without any violence at all, the bad guys got the message and got the hell out of there :lol
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Ahahah, I see. Yes, oh yes indeed. Though it kind of heads away from "Dr. Name, the Engineer Who Will Save the Day!" they could be operating on the home front, as it were, while he works on the options mentioned for finding allies and learning the system to get Earth included on more beneficial terms, since no matter how effective they are a single world can't actually win in the long term against an enemy that outnumbers them by a factor of one thousand inhabited planets per human... can they?
It's no more audacious as a plan than going from modern day RL tech level to hyperspace-capable in a month, even if someone had already found one the deadlined shuttles or emergency evac boats previously mentioned and that time only has to be devoted to figuring out how to operate and navigate in it, on the hardware end. Even if the Colonial Review Board hearing got packed with too many "Naturalized Settlers" (observers who'd lived on Earth long enough to qualify, essentially) to swing the results in their favor.
WRT the means of transport for the spacebound crew, I favor the idea that various spooky agencies had discovered the observers and/or hardware, and rescuing one of the aliens from the clutches of $dunLikeUs is one of the earlier plot points, so they have an interpreter for languages and customs, and also a legitimate excuse to use one of the medevac boats - even if operating on similar base principles Earthly medical science can't really to more than banadge the leaks and splint broken bones for alien biology.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
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Between the Sons of Ether and the Void Engineers, oWoD (or as Onyx Path apparently prefers, cWoD) is a poor choice for a secret magic setting for this story unless a) you don't include MtAs or b) don't let the aforementioned groups have interstellar travel. Although I think even the more, heh, traditional mage groups are capable of interstellar travel; they just somehow manage to do it without spaceships, and that's not even considering shapechangers like the Nuwisha or the Corax, both of which also engage in interstellar exploration via the Umbra (aka spirit realms).
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Ah yes. The Corax. Happy-Fun Raven and Crow shifters with a penchant for sticking it in other peoples faces. Not very good fighting stats, but then they can handle silver. (Gold, on the other hand, is their weak spot.) This obviously makes them extremely hazardous to werewolves as they love to wear the stuff casually. (They love shiny stuff.)
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Quote:Matrix Dragon wrote:
Amusingly, something like what you're suggesting did happen in Marvel. Some random alien species tried threatening Earth, expecting them to just roll over. SWORD, the agency tasked with space defence, then proceeded to explain the facts of life to them. Without any violence at all, the bad guys got the message and got the hell out of there :lol
took me a while to find where I stowed this pic. 8) ![[Image: retire_anonib.jpg]](http://i293.photobucket.com/albums/mm50/Norgarth/RPing/PCs/retire_anonib.jpg)
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