[RFC] [R to the E to the T to the C-O-N] Rebuild of Soviet Air Force

[M Fnord]

This one's been coming for a while, really. The following material is part of a retcon of the Soviet Air Force that KJ and I have been working on for the last month or so. If you've been on IRC you've probably seen us hashing stuff out at least once. The whole point of this is to fix a really bad decision I made way the hell at the beginning of Fenspace, where I populated the VVS with people who weren't interested in the project. It's an old habit, and it's a really shitty habit at that. So, six years later we're going back and doing the Rebuild.

So, we've got a lot of ground to cover, time to get rolling:

---

The Core - the OG VVS

In the beginning, there was The Game.

The Game was a huge, sprawling conspiracy-fantasy online RPG that had been running since 1990. Like most things on the internet, players came and went, drama erupted every now and then. The Game more-or-less ended in 2004, but the last iteration of players had grown fairly close over the course of things and so stayed in contact. They hung out on a small IRC server run by a former player, occasionally talked about The Game and maybe-someday-when-the-time-is-right reviving the concept for a new generation of internet users and just generally hanging out.

In 2006, the wave crested and the players started thinking along certain lines. One made discreet inquiries towards getting a ready supply of handwavium. Another already had a supply and started experimenting with it. And a third started wondering about the possibility of doing something really extraordinary with handwavium. Everything came to a head in the spring of 2007, at a rare face to face meeting between the players. The ex-gamemaster came with an audacious proposal: buy surplus space hardware from whoever was willing to sell, patch it together into a working spaceship, apply handwavium and see what happened.

Not everybody in the group of players agreed with the plan. They liked it as a general thing, but their lives were pretty comfortable right then and there on Earth, and honestly they didn't feel like they had anything to gain by gallivanting off into space. Others thought it was a grand idea, but didn't think they could detach themselves from their obligations.

Out of the players, five had enough fire and little enough to lose to go ahead with the plan, and two more decided to tag along and get everything on film for posterity's sake. These seven formed the core crew of the good ship Ptichka, the masterminds behind her refit and the original Oshkosh Terror Gang.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Proginoskes]

Well, I can't find record of what makes this different from the original Origin (i.e. the names of Ptichka's crew-at-launch) , so this meets my approval on the grounds, "Retcon? What retcon?"

[M Fnord]

Oh, it gets retconny. We're posting in chunks because a lot of details are still getting hashed out but out of the core crew (who're listed on the character guide on the wiki, under "Space Commies" IIRC) the only ones staying the same... mostly... are Mal and KJ.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Proginoskes]

Ah, the Character Guide. The one place I didn't check. *checks* Well, I think Vangeek is still occasionally around as a kibitzer like me, if not an actually writing anymore. The... sublime stubness of the pages for the other four, though, is highly indicative. Your faction (mostly), your project even (we all contribute, but you have the wizbit), your choice; but even if I had the power to block the retcon, my only comment would be "What about Vangeek?". Elena van Oorebeek has a presence in a few stories, but the others are total ciphers, and so don't really exist to be retconned away.

In summation: Even knowing that it is a retcon, I say go for it. Ms. van Oorebeek will simply have to find her own way Up.

[KJ]

She's actually one I don't know that is changing much (unless she wants)... it's just the rest, who, go figure, haven't remained static, and we probably shouldn't have used without a bit more separation from their RL personae in the first place but... well, it's easy to say that with hindsight, isn't it. That and filling in a gap or so that's been sort of a niggling irritation (at least to me).

In practical terms I don't know how much of a difference most of the changes will make to most of everyone else writing in the setting, save that they make a difference to us.

[robkelk]

If I recall correctly (and I did at least glance at all the character sheets on the FenWiki last month), it's only Mal, KJ/Kali, Vangeek, Shad, and the AIs who have any defined presence in Fenspace so far...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[M Fnord]

Continuing on with the Rebuild, here's the revised/expanded/more interesting than the Wiki character profile for Mal Fnord. Most of this stuff is new in the sense that it's never been seen here before, but a lot of the ideas have been backing Mal's appearances for a while now. The big retcon here is I'm dropping the 'S' in 'S. Malaclypse Fnord' 'cos it's a stupid affectation and nobody uses it anyfuckingway. Also, it's written for a 2022 POV, so there may or may not be spoilers for certain things. Enjoy!

---

The Visionary: Mal Fnord
Generalissimo & Chairman of the Central Committee

“Brothers and sisters, I have a scheme.”

History

The man originally behind Mal Fnord was born Sam Wildman in the little redneck mountain town that inspired ‘South Park.’ He was taught at an early age to always be one of the good people in the world, since there were too many of the bad. Sam was just another face in the crowd during his youth, a solid B student through his early school years, though he had a tendency to wander off on odd tangents, and his extracurricular activities often involved oddly elaborate plans that sometimes worked better than he expected.

And then there was The Game. Sam fell into The Game around his senior year in high school, and he was hooked pretty much from the first moment. As the years progressed, he started as a common n00b and ended as The Game’s last gamemaster and pretty much the only person who knew everything about it. It might have had something to do with his character, a wily sort of Wise Master archetype that had contingency plans for everything and always tried to cover all possible angles. This type of thinking appealed to Sam, and as a result he and his character – the man known only as ‘Malaclypse Fnord’ - began to blur together.

At the University of New Mexico Sam studied astronomy and political science when he wasn’t busking for beer money, and slowly rediscovered the joys of socialism and fell in love with the Carl Sagan ideal of the scientist as explorer and activist. Unfortunately, the world at the time wasn’t interested in activism, or even science for that matter. Graduating on the cusp of the fun stopping, Sam started working desk job after desk job to keep body and soul together. To keep his brain alive, he threw himself into The Game and into the local fandom, cultivating a network of contacts up and down the Rocky Mountains. The Game itself finally came to a rousing conclusion under his watch, and the remaining players stuck around, played a few smaller games and generally hung out.

When excited chatter about the new ‘miracle material’ started appearing online and in the cafes, Sam (who by this time answered equally to ‘Mal’) saw great potential, not just for things he’d dreamed of since he was little but for larger visions as well. Handwavium seemed to be the key to the end of scarcity, the end of resource conflicts, maybe the beginning of the Star Trek future that Mal thought was the best hope for the species. The plan to get hold of an ex-Soviet surplus shuttle and get out there to start work on the distant utopia, that came a little later. It wasn’t until almost a year later that he sprung the plan on old Game comrades.

That one... didn’t work out quite like Mal had hoped. By the end of the plan, he and his friends were branded criminals and terrorists in their home countries. As punishment, or maybe because they didn’t have any better ideas, for his sins Mal was named Generalissimo of the newly-founded Soviet Air Force. Since it was his fault they were in this mess, it was his responsibility to fix it, or at least make it better.

So he did, and the conversion from Sam Wildman to Mal Fnord was complete. Explorer (though since the end of the war he doesn’t get to run off into the wild much anymore), scientist (he still keeps his hand in when possible) and master politician, Mal Fnord is a SMOF’s SMOF, doing what he can to bring Utopia to Fenspace and, if only by example, to the rest of humanity as well. If he misses the simplicity of being just another face in the crowd... he keeps it to himself.

Handwavium Quirks/Abilities

Officially, Mal is a plain, unmodded human being like every other unmodded human being out there. This is a lie. The truth is a great deal more complex. Also, Mal doesn’t know this, though he suspects something’s a bit awry.

Random Facts & Personal Data

• Has - well, had - one of the largest collections of conspiracy literature in the western hemisphere. Most of it was confiscated and “lost” during the Terror Gang debacle. He’s since replaced most of it with digital copies, but it’s just not the same.
  
• Knew Jeph Antilles back in The Day, and passed him an early generation of Faget-Lozino-Lozinskiy handwavium.
  
• Played guitar when a college busker, but these days he only brings it out for special occasions or after the third beers.
  
• Is solidly convinced that Tecate is the greatest beer in history, and after enough of them won’t shut up about it.
  
• Mal has been in a long-term relationship with runaway Stellvia heiress Sora Hasegawa since 2014, and the two of them have been in a tangled Heinleinian relationship with fellow Soviet Athene Weatheral since 2017. None of them get much sleep, but they’re happy.
  

Fandoms: Star Trek, The Culture, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ken MacLeod, Carl Sagan, The Illuminatus! Trilogy, Lord of the Rings, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Tengan Toppa Gurren Lagann.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Black Aeronaut]

Interesting... Please continue.

[Star Ranger4]

Athene Wetheral? How appropriate that you've called it a Heinleinian tangle. :p

Since I dont recall seeing her in print of late I assume this falls under the potentially spoilerish stuff?
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

[robkelk]

As far as I know, Athene is an Infinities character. There is some information about her on the FenWiki... (You won't find most of it on her own page, though you only need to go one link away from her page to find it.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[M Fnord]

Since I dont recall seeing her in print of late I assume this falls under the potentially spoilerish stuff?

What Rob said. Athene "Tina" Weatheral is a character that's been waiting in the wings for a long time now, and she'll have a full character writeup in the thread once we've gotten past the core crew. She's also playing a minor but important role in Candle in the Dark, so watch for her there.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[shaderic]

Hey, this is a personal nitpick, and it's your character after all, but...
What's with the ambiguous 'Lie'?
I know you're doing an overhaul but... well, I like the design of Mal as a SMOF without 'mods. About as normal as can be, for a Fen, but still very much a powerful individual. And, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that simple's best, most of the time. Unless you have a serious plan/plot-point about the 'mod, I'd recomend dropping it. But hey, you're the boss...

[M Fnord]

Hey, this is a personal nitpick, and it's your character after all, but...
What's with the ambiguous 'Lie'?

The ambiguity's there as a dodge. There're multiple things I want to do with the character, but always in motion the future is. I use the 'this is a lie' to set up a fallback explanation should we take Fork B (or C, D, etc.) instead of Fork A. In the regular scheme of things it's probably not that important but I want that fallback there just in case.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[LynnInDenver]

My reading of it is that most people believe that Mal is completely 100% wave-free original, but if Mal has a biomod, he doesn't know if he has it or what it is himself. Some Fen do get biomodded and never know it, because the benefits are so slight they don't matter, or simply because they haven't actually been put in a situation that the effects actually become noticeable.

For instance, one might gain the ability to survive in vacuum for a significant amount of time (read: longer than 40-60 seconds), but since one doesn't as a general rule go tossing themselves out of open airlocks and hull breaches, it would go pretty much unnoticed bar an incident that does so for them.
--

"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor

[Rakhasa]

Hey, this is a personal nitpick, and it's your character after all, but...
What's with the ambiguous 'Lie'?

The ambiguity's there as a dodge. There're multiple things I want to do with the character, but always in motion the future is. I use the 'this is a lie' to set up a fallback explanation should we take Fork B (or C, D, etc.) instead of Fork A. In the regular scheme of things it's probably not that important but I want that fallback there just in case.

So far, when I found myself in this situation I have used the conditional and the rumor ("this may be a lie", "some people believe", "there is the rumor"), wich leave me the posibility open if I need the plot  in the future.
That is one of the main reasons Marduk has so many conspiracy theories running around. Well, that and googling "fnord" when I found it in the wiki once too many. I promise I did not believe a single word, and I am not reading the links. Honest.

[Star Ranger4]

Some Fen do get biomodded and never know it, because the benefits are so slight they don't matter, or simply because they haven't actually been put in a situation that the effects actually become noticeable.

This would also cover why Murphy Murphy is seemingly unbiomodded despite all the fwierd and frustrating things that happen around him where handwavium is concerned
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

[robkelk]

Some Fen do get biomodded and never know it, because the benefits are so slight they don't matter, or simply because they haven't actually been put in a situation that the effects actually become noticeable.

This would also cover why Murphy Murphy is seemingly unbiomodded despite all the fwierd and frustrating things that happen around him where handwavium is concerned

There are so many folks like this running around - http://www.fenspace.net/index.php5?titl ... 3%B6dinger]including the first fan is space - that it's surprising the writers don't know of more of them.

(Word of Writer: Noah Scott is not biomodded, nor will he ever be biomodded.)

Anyway... less digression, more retcon, please.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[KJ]

Part of it may be waiting for some lazy ass *innocent whistle* to finish his character bio in the WIP document.  
Of course KJ... er I mean some mysterious holdup... ahem... is hardly the most important updatee.

[M Fnord]

Anyway... less digression, more retcon, please.

Because you, the reader, demanded it. Today's update veers off of the "so what" territory and heads straight into Bat Country. I present the first completely new character from the Oshkosh Terror Gang!

---

The Genius: Deidre Griest
Minister of Weird And Unusual Sciences, Chief Designer

“To the rational mind nothing is inexplicable, only unexplained.”

History

Let’s get one thing straight off the bat. It’s Deidre, not Dee. Never Dee. Under no circumstances whatsoever should you call Deidre Griest “Dee.” Bad things will happen if you do. With that in mind, let’s get rolling.

Born third out of five to a well-respected old-money Providence family, Deidre’s parents expected her to live the same sort of life they did, as did their parents and grandparents before them. Destiny had other plans for young Deidre, though. Gifted with high intelligence and imagination, Deidre swept through secondary school, received a full ride at Cornell University, majoring in physics and mechanical engineering and was on track to receive a Rhodes scholarship when something happened that shifted her destiny again. While tooling around one night on her motorcycle, a drunk driver zigged when he should’ve zagged and clipped her while moving at speed. The wreck ended up causing severe damage to her right arm, not enough to force amputation but more than enough to make it mostly useless. The months of hospitalization and rehab forced Deidre to turn down the scholarship offer and threw her into a period of forced inactivity.

With nothing better to do, she started checking out old haunts on the internet and discovered The Game. She threw herself into it, and ended up as one of the major players through the Game’s endgame. Once out of the hospital, she went returned to Cornell to finish up her degree and start her postgrad career. Cornell provided her the tools she needed to build a battery-powered exoskeleton for her right arm; this Mark I cyberarm restored a good deal of function to her arm and allowed Deidre to feel (mostly) whole again for the first time since the wreck.

When the wave crested, Deidre’s connections to the university tinkerer underground gave her access to some of the first samples to come out from wherever they’d been hiding. Handwavium interested Deidre in a very personal way. Even back in the beginning, there were rumors to the effect that ingesting the stuff could have very interesting results. After several years of having a mostly-useless right arm and hand, and only getting 50% functionality using her cyberarm on a good day, Deidre was willing to take a gamble on “very interesting.” She procured a nice large sample of handwavium and then deliberately set off what might’ve been the first intentional biomod in history. Setting up a fishtank full of straight handwavium and a set of cameras to record the process, Deidre shoved her right arm, prosthetic and all, into the tank and literally sat there while the handwavium did its magic. Eight hours later the wreck of her arm had been replaced by a carbon-composite replica of a healthy arm that had full range of motion, full tactile sensation and a working USB 2.0 port in the elbow. She also had eight hours of video showing the process of the handwavium modifying her damaged limb and the prosthetic into the new cyberarm.

With data in hand, Deidre used her experience with biomodding to write a doctoral thesis: “Interactions of the substance ‘Handwavium’ with biological and mechanical material.” It was one of the earliest academic studies to deal with handwavium, and it was rejected by the university on unclear grounds. Stung by the rejection, Deidre dropped out of sight to become a professional mad scientist, taking her handwavium samples with her. She surfaced for the big Game meeting where Mal Fnord proposed his big plan. Since Earth didn’t seem to have any use for her insights, Deidre signed up as the official technical advisor. Her hand-bred handwavium (the ‘Griest-1’ strain) was the root of the ‘Faget-Lozino-Lozinskiy’ strain used on Ptichka and all subsequent space shuttle refits and new construction. It was also sometime during the Ptichka refit that she began experimenting with the mind-machine interface in her cyberarm. Deidre remains silent on the details, but one of her experiments resulted in a fully-operational artificial intelligence loosely based on her memories and mannerisms. She originally named the AI “Deidre 2.0,” but pretty quickly everybody started calling it “Dee.”

After the Oshkosh Terror Gang had their day, the newly-formed Soviet Air Force named Deidre as Chief Designer and resident mad scientist.

Handwavium Quirks/Abilities

Deidre’s most obvious handwavium ability is of course her cyberarm. The current (2022) version of the arm is the Mk. V, which has several upgrades based on her own research as well as a few goodies from the Whole Fenspace Catalog. Outwardly it hasn’t changed much from the Mk. II prosthetic’s carbon-fiber shell, but the internal workings have been modified to decrease weight and increase overall strength and data capacity. The arm’s major quirk is that, unlike most cyberlimbs, she can’t remove it for maintenance or overhauls.

Deidre also has a tendency to self-experiment, at least with minor cosmetic things. Her latest project has been “mood hair,” a network of LCD crystals grown within the follicle and extruded like normal hair. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “blue hair day”, aside from serving as a warning to others.

Random Facts & Personal Data

• Deidre and KJ DuPree had a romantic relationship through the later phases of the Game and (supposedly) even up to the early part of the Ptichka refit. It fell apart due to irreconcilable similarities. Bickering and competitiveness aside, they still get along well.
  
• Surprisingly, she’s not really a cyberpunk fan. Claims it’s “too mean.”
  
• More than a decade after she left New England for the last time, still has a bit of that snooty upper-crust accent, which she exaggerates for effect at times.
  
• Keeps a copy of her doctoral thesis handy, on the off chance that a groundside university still might be interested.
  
• A closet White Wolf gamer, her current main character is a Lunar Exalted that she runs in an ongoing online campaign. She has the suspicion that the rest of the Oshkosh Terror Gang would tease her incessantly if they found out.
  

Fandoms: Ghost in the Shell (all iterations), Transhuman Space, Battle Angel Alita, Eclipse Phase, Schlock Mercenary, Charles Stross, Alastair Reynolds, Vernor Vinge, Girl Genius, Full Metal Alchemist
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Black Aeronaut]

Snrk. This is a girl after my own heart. How long until she goes full-conversion?

[Terrace]

Snrk. This is a girl after my own heart. How long until she goes full-conversion?

You know, I don't think Gina would like you looking at other girls.
Yeah, "after my own heart" has always had shipping undertones to me, no matter what I do.

[Black Aeronaut]

That's the point, entirely. With someone like that around, there's going to be a few occasions where Gina hauls him away by the shirt collar.

[Proginoskes]

If no-one says what bad things happen when you call Deidre "Dee", somebody must perform the experiment and publish the results.

[Rakhasa]

If no-one says what bad things happen when you call Deidre "Dee", somebody must perform the experiment and publish the results.

For Science!
Though being part of your own experiment does not sound like proper procedure. It's much better to get an intern to perform the experiment while you watch from a safe distance.

[Black Aeronaut]

Gina looked at Ben as he hung from the ceiling in cased in a glob of.... something.

"What the hell happened to you!?"

"Dunno. I was in here working on a project with Deidre when I asked her to pass me the hydrospanner when... oh."

"What?"

"Stupid me. Called her 'Dee'."