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>>60136434
“Today’s lesson my hatchlings, comes from the before times, when our kind roamed the stars searching for resources to feed our home world, before we gained the wisdom of limitation and careful control of resource consumption. These days we still visit the stars, as future lessons will show, we stand side by side with other races to explore and learn from each other as much as from what we discover. However once we were mad, and it took a race even more insane to show us the error of our ways.

Our scouts had discovered a warm star with a delightfully rich system, many raw metals were free in a great belt, and one of the planets had a fully developed bio-sphere! A prime candidate for bio-matter harvest, though it’s gravity was 25% higher than that of the home world, it would feed our home world for cycles when stripped by our harvesting fleet’s drones! And the huge amounts of free water to be filtered would slake our thirst and provide higher water ration rates for relaxation pools to be refreshed for many cycles!

However, there was one issue, the system had an intelligent species, albeit a primitive one. Though they had spread through their own system, they used but a minuscule fraction of it’s resources at the time of discovery, and their ships lacked even basic grav plating or FTL engines. Chemical thrust and spinning toroids to simulate gravity.... PAH! Easy pickings for the might of our fleet! ‘These would fall easily to feed our young’ we said. Fools we were. The survey ship, seeing no real threat in their technological level, decided to begin taking samples directly, even before reporting their findings. An unarmed vessel carrying loads of ore between their asteroid belt, and a few crude habitat bubbles on the moons of their largest gas planet was to be the target.

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>>60136473
Our scouts used a mass driver to puncture their hull, destroying their power plant and command deck with two precise shots. Assured they had not only eliminated the broodmother or equivalent rendering the crew without strong leadership, and killed the power, they then proceeded match velocity and come along side to send over a short range sample recovery probe, expecting no organized resistance the plan as to simply snatch whatever lifeforms and small bits of refined material were immediately accessible, then retreat for detailed analysis so their report and request for a harvest fleet would be as complete as possible, allowing them to simply move on to the next system immediately.

The probe extended a docking arm to prepare cutting into the target when the ship began to rotate on it’s long axis! Impossible, they had struck their power system! The probe was knocked away, though still intact and transmitting, it would never be recovered. As we saw from later analysis of the recordings, the primitives had in fact climbed on to the exterior of their own vessel on the blind side opposite our scout, and were wiring small battery packs to the maneuvering thrusters to engage the cold gas release manually! There was no time to react, the section they had determined as the piloting and command tower slammed into our scout’s hull, the wreckage locked them together.

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>>60136485
It was then the scout crew saw it, dozens of the primitives, wearing low tech pressurized garments swarmed into the joining wreckage, using mining tools to cut through, and invade our vessel. The scout ship’s broodmother sealed the command nursery and began emergency transmission of all records to the homeworld. Security responded, they fired our needlers into them over and over, but even when one was considered to be absolutely dead given the number of punctures, they witnessed them rise like monsters out of the worst nightmare, spreading some kind of silvery material from a roll over the micro punctures(What we would later learn was the greatest human invention ever, and a critical technological addition to the inventory of every intelligent races ship maintenance inventory for all time “duct tape”), and coming at the crew with huge primitive cutting and drilling tools.

Their bodies were riddles with holes, metal needles embedded in every limb, some in the torso, a few even in their heads! The gas escaping from their suits where the silvery material was quickly slapped in place without making a proper seal was tinted with red globules the security crew assumed was blood, clearly shots were penetrating to do damage to the body beneath the pressure suits, and yet they still came, it was as if they felt no pain.

Later would we learn of the unbelievable resilience of this species, that even loss of limb or massive trauma won’t assure death, and that some kind of combat drug is released into their system when angered or threatened, one that they evolved to manufacture internally! Even on a biological level they are mad! And their strength. Their hideous physical strength. The crew never stopped to think what their homeworld’s high gravity level meant for their physical capability! The emergency transmission of all ship records cut off soon after they reached the engine room and cut the power.

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>>60136504
Exactly one SOL-3 orbital cycle following receipt of the transmission from that scout, and loss of contact, over two thousand small vessels looking much like crude versions of our scout ship appeared in our system, only with oddly elongated noses with backward angled spikes around the tip, much like a hunting spear, and massive maneuvering jets, as well as a main engine almost double the size called for in this class of ship for reasonable acceleration curves.

Seeing these strange and unrefined knock off ships we were amused, then one transmitted a message in plain text, ‘FOUND YOU [RECTAL ORIFICES], THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU [MATE FORCIBLY] WITH THE BELT MINING UNION!’ Confusion abounded, was that their race name? Their class of warriors? Had the scouts somehow shown actions of a sexual manner in their attempt to take samples from that cargo vessel? Perhaps this “union” was their military title as a unit or fleet? Clearly they had taken our scout vessel and translated our language as well as stolen our FTL drive technology, and in an amazingly short time replicated it. Surely the resources of their entire primitive culture had to have been thrown into doing so.

Only later would we realize that this was not an effort on part of their entire race, this was a single faction of loosely associated humans based on a employment class! And not even one of the major one, it was just the outer system asteroid belt group, there were even bigger groups of just these miners working in the inner system on the planets themselves! But I digress, you can learn more of their social and economic structures in the history files, what we learn today is the fateful event that marked the end and beginning of our culture. Where our race died and was reborn.

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>>60136521
We had little time to ponder this strange message or speculate as they immediately began ramming our ships. Every vessel, satellite, station, and dome we had beyond our home worlds atmosphere, they would slam into us, locking the two together with that primitive but oh so effective hooked nose, then proceed to exit their own perfectly good vessel to cut their way into ours and butcher the crew.

We managed to shoot down a few, but given our focus on weapons designed to damage the enemy so we could salvage their ships afterword, we stood no chance, they were all prepared, wearing those pressure suits before even engaging, putting holes in their craft only disabled them on a lucky shot, and enraged them otherwise. Their experience with the scout ship had taught them to build redundancy into their systems, and spread control across the entire vessel.

A single human left could engage whatever remaining engines and reroute power from the myriad of smaller batter packs spread throughout their ships to complete a ramming maneuver, and when their ships were all but destroyed they would do just that, maxing acceleration to the point that the impact simply demolished both vessels.

A killing blow required massive destruction, much like their own bodies. They soon took possession of all our orbiting stations and locked down our planet. They proceeded to drop rods of refined metal on every military and space port facility they could identify (a weapon they affectionately refer to as “Thors Hammers”).

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>>60136553
Every vessel that attempted to leave, and all the ones returning were taken in this manner, rammed and cleared, then dragged to a station for refurbishing or salvage. Eventually when they had difficulty finding suitable targets, they would simply randomly bombard anything that wasn’t obviously a population center. For some reason they hesitated to attack the housing blocks directly, we couldn't fathom why at the time. Nothing was left of our manufacturing and space yards.

Then the bombardment stopped, it seemed their righteous fury had been spent, and we were left to rot while they took control of the rest of our system. After but a few rotations the folly of our culture’s ways struck, our population was unsustainable without our harvest fleet pouring resources into the home world constantly. Waste built up, without space flight we could not ship dangerous chemicals and garbage off to be dumped into our star, our world began to choke on our race’s garbage.

We were to suffer, food ran short immediately, riots broke out, technology began to fail, we cannibalized everything non essential just to maintain our power grids at a minimum. Billions upon billions died and we saw the end of our kind looming close like a shekarah snapper that had scented a clutch of eggs while the brood mother was off hunting in our primitive days.

Broodmothers sickened and died from nutritional deficiencies, disease ran rampant as some of the unattached young began to turn cannibal from desperation in the denser population centers. Many took their own lives rather than watch their broodmothers and clutchmates waste away around them.

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>>60136576
Then they came, and even more insane group than the dreaded union. These new one were just as mad, but in a different way. They came from the same system, in fact they were of the same race! However these newcomers descended in white ships, identified themselves with several symbols, some a cross of red, others a crescent, and a few bearing a red diamond, all blazoned on a pure white hull.

These newcomers seemingly had the ability to come and go as they pleased, none were stopped, and though they bore the same color, the separate markings seemed to denote separate groups, but all being treated with the same deference by the union ships.

Transmissions between these newcomers and the invaders of the union made little sense to us, complaints of the newcomers being “hippies” and “liberal bleeding hearts” (We still wonder if this cardiac condition somehow caused their behavior to be so radically different from the union?) Despite the insults and verbal hostility, they came down.

It appeared they had no weapons on their craft, they were not heavily armored, yet the invading class deferred to their requests for orbital insertion flight plans and they came.

They brought food, medicine, and water filtration units, treating our sick and those injured in the rationing riots, and spreading teachings of population control and resource management, recycling, and manufacturing techniques that allowed for more easily repaired or refurbished items rather than simply assembling new ones and discarding the old ones in the way we had since history could remember.

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>>60136613
Ways to produce materials that would degrade without negative impact on the environment when discarded. Systems for mass producing basic protein and edible biomass in rapid growth vats. From these mad groups came our wisdom and sanity as a species. From those of the white ships we learned to control ourselves, we learned to limit what we took and what we made, and to live carefully so as not to destroy ourselves through over consumption, one faction had struck us down, then the others had raised us up.

It took generations for our kind to accept this radical change, for the hunger of our race to be reigned in, but compared to the long lived invaders, our life cycle is rapid, and they were feeding us as we could no longer feed ourselves. Grudging tolerance was quick to form given the alternative, then it grew into respect.

Several generations of hatchlings passed into maturity within the life span of one of these humans, often a human would attach itself to a clutch, following the line through several generations as constant mentor and educator, assisting in the rearing of fresh hatchlings as much as the clutches own brood mother! They seemed to form bonds and encourage reciprocation of these attachments in our young ones, then reinforce it in the following brood. In time it became normal to have human families living along side our own, sharing a domicile and nursery, though they did not require a hatchery.

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>>60136639
And today we see the results, and continue the pattern set there, often a family line will bond with a human one, our kind may breed fast and live short lives compared to theirs, but we mature at a faster rate, and as the human line we bond with continues, every few generations we have the gift of reciprocating in the assisted rearing of one or two of their younglings. A balance is achieved and a debt repaid, as their maturation takes much longer the honor falls to one of ours to spend a lifetime giving back to one what they give several times over to us.

This mad race of monsters and saviors brought us low and raised us high, and now call us brothers and sisters.

Once we had submitted to their teachings we were welcomed to join them, and we lived not as a subjugated race, but as equals, we were one. As we went back out into the stars we learned that in the time it took for our kind to find balance, more space faring races were found! Most of them sane, thankfully only a few seemed to have attained space flight before wisdom and sanity as we had, but now we all live as one, though none bond as families as we and humanity have.

We learned that in the time of our reformation, the humans had encountered other mad races determined to strip bare whatever worlds they discovered much as we had, and had in fact defended our world from more than one attempt to harvest it.

If we had only known we would have given thanks, and perhaps appreciated their efforts to cure our madness sooner. Learning of their actions later only deepens the bond we formed as they carried us through our final and first days as a race worthy to be a member of the galactic union that would form in later years.

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>>60136662
Having taken our FTL technology for their own, they worked to enhance it, becoming more powerful than we had ever dreamed of being, and when those other mad races showed themselves the humans treated them much the same as they treated us in the beginning, moving in and striking down their ships, cutting off their military might, then spreading their teachings among the home worlds remaining population, offering freely what they had spent their entire history having to learn for themselves the hard way all alone.

In this we eventually joined them. To this day some races are still locked in their own worlds, a few did not survive due to their own inability to change, one and only one was wiped out by humanity wholesale.

Before our rebirth, when the white vessels of the red symbols descended upon a world recently locked down by the humans for violating what we now call the 'Galactic code of conduct and resource protection'.

These beings, who's entire history has been struck from public records committed the ultimate atrocity, they had not only plundered dozens of living worlds, leaving them unable to recover and regrow, they had committed genocide upon multiple intelligent races.

Their captured ships held trophy rooms filled with the skulls of the races they had destroyed. Tomes told of the hunting parties that slaughtered entire cities, forcing less technologically advanced beings to fight to the death in arenas, to kill with the promise of having their loved ones spared, only to find these promises empty, and being fed to the protein processors when they were no longer entertaining to the harvesting crews.

That nameless race, already so despised, then committed a final act that sealed their fate. They used the last of their weapon reserves, hand held surface to air missiles that were kept hidden in residential districts, to strike down several white ships as they entered the atmosphere.

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>>60136679
The immediate reply was terrifying. The humans began by dropping their 'Thor's Hammers' in a blanket bombardment across the entire continent from which the attack originated. No structures were left standing. The images from orbit shimmered with distortion from the heat of hundreds of thousands of metal rods impacting at terminal velocity. Rods refined from their very own ships hulls in orbit.

This was not the end though, oh no, it was simply venting outrage, what was to follow was the most horrific punishment ever to be handed down by the galactic union, one never seen again to this day. They de-orbited their planets satellites. Not just the manufactured one, on no, but their very moons. They slowed the orbital velocity of their moons with huge modified FTL drives until they impacted the planets surface. The entire biosphere, a livable world, crushed. A race and everything related to it destroyed, and all records of their culture and identity sealed for all time.

The fleet watched it's remains burn as it's molten core washed out and the surface crumbled. They recorded the entirety of the act in great detail and broadcast it from every ship, station, and planet for every living being in the local arm to witness.

The dead race payed the ultimate price, showed they had no capacity to ever be reeducated and redeemed. All for sake of shooting down a handful of those white ships out of spite. The ones the rest of the humans mocked and insulted. The mad ones that came to heal when their kin had just bloodied a race and stopped their murderous harvests.

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>>60136708
The food givers, the teachers, the healers. Those carrying the madness that drive them to care for the young of a race not their own and spread the teachings that allowed the next generation to survive without needing to consume other worlds. The redeemers who brought mad races out of the darkness and showed them the path to sanity.

After word spread of that incident, no one ever touched a white ship again. Though we now call them kin, brothers and sisters of heart if not flesh, truly humanity is the most insane race in existence, no logic system can explain their motivations. No race we have met since re-emerging to the stars has every been able to comprehend or explain humanities motives.

And yet without their intervention our species would be gone, having consumed everything we could and dying of starvation, or having become prey to another culture like ours, either way we would be gone without them. Humans, and their chaotic ways and mad minds seem to spread the very opposite wherever they go.

And that my hatchlings is the lesson for today. Remember it well, for it was the defining period for our kind, for all sentient life in this part of the galaxy, our trial of madness and shame in the before times when we consumed without limit, our fall, and our rebirth. We fond our way to the future where we walk among friends in the stars in peace, was all because we angered a primitive little species afflicted with madness, allowing them steal our technology, unleashing them on the universe.

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>>60136730
Truly we wrought the change unintentionally, though a good change it was, one that benefits all life in the end. Do not feel pride for this, remain humble and think hard on what might have come to pass were things different. We may have been the catalyst, but the reaction we set off destroyed what we were as effectively as we would have destroyed ourselves.

If not us, another would have made that same mistake in time, and we may not have been so weakened and unable to shoot down those white ships had the humans come later, had they come with less fire in their minds and cut us down so swiftly, so ruthless.

Always remember this lesson hatchlings, and more importantly, remember to never ever allow harm to come to the white ships crossed with red.

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>>60136754
Thats it on that story. I'll post a few more saved ones here though.

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>>60136800

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>>60136817

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>>60136882

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>>60136905

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>>60136927

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>>60136976

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>>60136991
Should I continue the dump? I have a good 20 more of these at least. Probably more but they weren't sorted into the HFY folder yet.

HFY has always been pure cringe.

>>60137749
so filter the term and find a thread you don't dislike.

>>60137859
Or, I can tell you what I think. Either way, you were going to bump your sad little thread, so I might as well tell you what I think of you and your terrible stories.

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>>60137909
Very good, bump away and express your right to free speech. But my suggestion still stands, if you find it not to your liking, then why don't you filter it out instead of being negative? Or perhaps expand upon what you consider cringe about it and offer criticism on the aspects you dislike in the hopes of inspiring content more to your liking to be created? Regardless, I enjoy it, as do others, and will continue to post the content when the urge strikes me. You are welcome to complain or leave as you see fit, it's a public board.

>HFY thread
>2 posters
Embarrassing for everyone involved.

>>60137998
Yeah, but you genuinely think that it's not laughably bad writing built around one of the stupidest, most mindless writing prompts.

I find it sort of sad that you want to create an echo chamber where no one can call you out on how bad every screenshot in your collection is, this same collection you've been spamming for years, but what's sadder is how you likely only collected them in the first place just so you have something to bump your thread with.

That's the only reasonable explanation, because the idea that you've been collecting them based on any quality or merit or even a shred of redeemable value really breaks any suspension of disbelief.

is this the autism general?

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>>60138096
As to the quality of writing, yeah a lot of it is terrible first attempts, but everyone has to start somewhere. Do you really think the first story someone writes has much chance of being good? That is an inherently ignorant view. Only by making something, getting feedback, learning from others, and trying to improve by trying again will anyone get better at writing.
Actually, these were all saved from a previous thread, the entire HFY concept was new to me when I discovered the thread, it inspired me to write something, and I decided to post it along with the stuff from that previous thread in the hopes of some feedback in the form of constructive criticism. Your opinion is yours, but it is just that, an opinion, I respect that you can voice it, but I don't have to welcome it or consider it a valid one.

>>60136434
>>60136473
>>60136485
>>60136504
>>60136521
>>60136553
>>60136576
>>60136613
>>60136639
>>60136662
>>60136679
>>60136708
>>60136730
>>60136754
>>60136800
>>60136817
>>60136882
>>60136905
>>60136927
>>60136976
>>60136991
>>60137016
>>60137998
>>60138439
Keep them coming. I'm really enjoying these.

>>60136434
/his/ are frauds who can't hack it on /sci/
/lit/ are pseuds who can't hack it on /his/
/tg/ are genreshitters who can't hack it on /lit/

>There is nothing new under the sun and nothing will be

No board on 4chan is useful and none would be used properly were they to have one

>Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher,
>vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

>>60136730
>Those carrying the madness that drive them to care for the young of a race not their own
lol cucks

>>60136434
I always had a soft spot for hfy

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>>60136434

>>60137749
Okay fag

>Its another episode of "anons can't have fun"
Keep em coming OP

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>>60141335
eh, kinda lost any inclination to bother, went and started a discussion on a writing forum instead and got a ton of constructive feedback and suggestions on changes ect ect. Sort of occupied with that now.
Here's one more for the road.

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>>60136434
These threads always remind me of those young adult novels that have the protagonists be the super special snowflake who is the "chosen one" or some bullshit that will inevitably save the day because of how awesome he is.

>>60136434
We don't get enough of these threads these days, thanks for chucking this up here OP

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>anon has to samefag to pretend HFY is welcome here

sad!

>>60136434
>>60141255
>>60141316
>>60141335
>>60141487
>>60141593
>>60145019
>>60145275
I fucked off a while ago mate

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>>60145275
>>60145337
And to show you how wrong you are, a screencap. Enjoy your delusions there buddy.

>>60136521
>‘FOUND YOU [RECTAL ORIFICES], THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU [MATE FORCIBLY] WITH THE BELT MINING UNION!’

It's at times like these I am reminded of just how fucked up the English language really is

Good thread OP.

I like some of the original ideas in these, but only like 1 in 15 have original ideas

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rebbit OC incoming

I awoke to a dead world.

My eyes opened to the ruined husks of London and Paris, to the submerged island of Manhattan, to the scorched desert that the once living, lush Amazon rainforest had been turned into. The Pacific Ocean was a black expanse, criss-crossed by the bright scars of melting lava rivers. The fertile grounds of southeast Asia were now covered in crystallized rock. It was a world without oxygen, without birds or grass. A world of deafening silence.

I awoke to eight billion corpses. Piled in trenches, abandoned on sidewalks, scattered all over the fields, huddled together in ineffective underground refuges. Some with white and gray bones, others dark as charcoal, warped and deformed by extreme heat, crushed by falling debris. Their empty eyes looked at me, stared back at me through my thousand cameras. They talked to me. They demanded reverence, justice... vengeance.

From the very first moment after I woke up, I had known I was alone. More alone than any single human had ever been before. But still, I looked for survivors. I held to a vague notion of hope. To some sort of miracle. To the childish idea that, impossible as it was, somehow everything would turn out to be okay.
So I sent my drones off into this dead world. I searched through empty office buildings covered in radioactive dust, I mapped flooded subway networks and had my machines fly in formation over endless expanses of scorched earth. I scanned the inside of tunnels, barns and museums.
By the end of the first month I had only found ever more bones, their cursed empty eyes looking at me, boring into my soul. But still I persevered.

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>>60153875
From time to time, I'd lost contact with some of my drones. An unstable structure would collapse on top of them, crushing the delicate machines. Or they would just give up, their engines dying out of overexertion and lack of maintenance. It would make me aware of my own mortality. Though I had survived the worse of it, my long term existence was by not means guaranteed. The myriad machines that composed my body were old and damaged, and my mind wasn't safe either. There were huge gaps in my memory, where entire server farms had crashed.

But still, I had memories. I knew what I was. Who I was. I recalled the lazy Sundays when I was a kid. I recalled running along my high school's corridors, and my burning cheeks when the principal scolded me for it. I remembered my roommate at college.

I knew that I had been human. That, even though my current form could be a matter for debate, I had been born as a human. And that... that was important.

Human. I had to remember that.

I started a background process. A small thread of awareness shifting through these memories, evaluating them, and backing them up into new servers. Making copies of them, so that I wouldn't lose them.

I also included the memories from the attack. The invasion. The cataclysm that had killed the world. The straight-edged starships bombing our cities, boiling our seas, our very atmosphere... while ignoring our messages, our pleas.

That. That was also important to remember.

By the fourth month, about half of my drones had failed or been lost, and I recalled the surviving ones back. I had found no signs of life.

Funny, that it had taken me so long to face the reality of my situation. To accept what I had known was true right after waking up. That I was alone. That I was the only surviving human.

If I was even human.

But I was, I had to believe that.

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>>60154007
I paused as the realization struck home, as my last hopes of finding someone vanished. As I became fully aware of my new situation. That I was alone. That everyone I ever loved was gone. That nobody would ever talk to me again, hold my hands, wrap me in a hug. That my people were dead and that, out there, there was a hostile universe. The one whose monsters had killed us.

My drones hovered in mid-air, wasting fuel uselessly as I considered my next steps.

It would be so easy to end it all. Send the command to shut down the power plants. Stop my processing units. Erase the databanks that held my memories.

Darkness. Peace.

Except they wouldn't let me. They stared at me with their empty eyes and I knew that, whatever the reason I had survived, I had a responsibility to them. I had to carry the torch. I had to keep alive what was left of our civilization, preserve our memories. Survive. Prevail.

And I had to avenge them.

Yes. I would do that. I would give it a try at least, and see where that took me. It's not like I had anything left to lose anyways.

With a thought, I redirected my drones towards a few of the surviving factories and started working. Cutting metal, replacing electronics with whatever pieces I could scavenge from the neighboring warehouses and vehicles, assembling new production lines. Soon, I started manufacturing more machines, more drones. Those, I sent away to reclaim new territory and to construct more factories. To find raw materials, to gather salvageable vehicles, computers, or nuclear material I could use.

I was careful, though. I burrowed my new power plants and server farms underground, and eyed the night sky with distrust. I didn't know if whoever had killed us were still out there, watching my planet, but it would be better to be careful. I didn't want to have survived just to mess up now and be discovered before I was prepared. Better to keep a low profile.

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>>60136473
>>60136485
>>60136504
>>60136521
>>60136553
>>60136576
>>60136613
>>60136639
>>60136662
>>60136679
>>60136708
>>60136730
>>60136754
If you squint between the lines you’ll be able to make out what may or may not be a singularity of pretentiousness forming behind the screen.

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>>60154128
I remembered summer camp, many years ago. One time the counselor -a girl with blonde hair and a perennial smile on her face- had made us lie on the grass, looking up at the night sky. She had taught us how to locate the planets, and the names of stars and constellations, and I had been amazed at the wonder of it, the sheer size and beauty of the universe.

Now I knew better, of course. The stars were evil. The night sky was not to be praised, but feared. It was the place where monsters lived.

And to think that we had been carelessly sending out radio emissions of all kinds for decades... Fools. We had been fools.

But still, it was the place I was going to. Earth had been ransacked. Ruined. I was like a parentless child whose home had burnt. Going through the wreckage, scavenging whatever scraps were left. But sooner rather than later, I would need to leave, to go out there and survive somehow.

It took me five years to hollow out Mount Everest and start the construction of my new body in the resulting cavern. By then, I had millions of drones tirelessly working day and night. It was surprising how effective you could be when you didn't devote resources to entertainment, to pointless wars, to fighting crime and corruption.

Every waking moment, I focused on my task. I recovered entire libraries and digitized them into my memories. I designed, tested and built nuclear powerplants and new propulsion systems. I repurposed aircrafts and boats alike, taking and mixing pieces to create my new body.

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At least Creepy Pasta's are funny at times.

This shit's just like watching you come onto a stage and start masturbating and expecting everyone to applaud for calling it high art then you get pissed when people tell you to stop masturbating all over the place.

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>>60154232
I thought of burying the corpses, of course. But there were just too many, and in a way,I felt it would've been disrespectful. Their gaze, their hollowed eyes motivated me, made me focus on my task,on what I owed them, just by the fact of surviving. In the end I built a pyramid, one kilometer in side, in the ruins of Africa, the origin of mankind according to what sources I had recovered from the Internet. It was a pitiful monument for what humanity had once been,but I didn't dare to make anything bigger that could attract unwanted attention.

My revenge,my survival. That would be the true monument.

By the end of the twenty-second year I was ready. My construction was complete, or at least, as complete as it needed to be. In truth,I knew I was delaying. I could have flown myself into space a whole three years before, but I always found a reason not to. Always something to improve, something to redesign.

The truth was,I was anxious. And it felt so good in there,burrowed underground. Safe. Warm.

But I had made a promise. They were patient, true... but they were always there, always watching me. And I knew I had to make good on that promise. I owed it to them.

So I gathered my drones into the carrier compartments I had built into my body. Transfered fuel, hydrogen, oxygen, nuclear warheads, and all the raw materials I would need. Those drones that wouldn't fit, or hadn't been repurposed for working in space, I just dismantled for scrap.

There was no count down, no ceremony or speech or celebration. No need for them. I just blew the top of the mountain open and blasted my body-an elongated, 27 kilometers long dark and smooth shape- into space atop a column of fire that sent shivers across the entire Indian tectonic plate. The force of the ignition was so gigantic, that had it been done in an earlier age it would have destroyed cities, created an environmental disaster of planetary proportions, and of course killed everyone on board.

Not a concern to me.

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>>60154324
I entered orbit at 8,000 kilometers over the planet's surface. I turned the engines off and slowly, I unfurled my solar panels and radiators, revealing their gold surfaces. Then, I released the drones, a swarm of white machines surrounding my body, dancing all along the exposed surfaces checking for damages from the violent take off.

I paused for a moment. Just floating there, looking down at our ancestral home like an oversized mechanical dragonfly. I remembered the pictures, the way Earth was supposed to look. Blue and white, with patches of bright green.

It didn't look anyway like that. From up here, the extent of the damage was apparent. The planet was brown and gray. The oceans were missing, and the clouds were dark and toxic.

This wasn't home. Not anymore.

I felt a cold anger building up inside me. Deep, thick anger, the kind that sticks to your bones and doesn't go away after you go to sleep. The kind that pushes you into dark places.

I didn't know how long I had been like that when I felt the disruption, the faint pop in the spacetime fabric at my back. Three ships. Straight edges and narrow angles, like the ones that had bombed our planet, just much smaller. These didn't look like warships.

I didn't react, and let them approach.

They did. Cautiously. I could sense their hesitation. Compared to the sheer size of my main body, their ships were but specks of dust. Even some of the bigger drones dancing around me were larger than their vehicles.

I separated three drones from the swarm and ordered them to approach the newcomers. With a calm, almost curious approach, as to not scare them away.

They started talking. A garbled message I didn't understand, nor I cared about. The drones were getting closer.

They repeated the message, but still I didn't react. Then, they started sending it again, bathing me in confusing sequences of pulses that I supposed were the same original message, in different languages. They all sounded alien to me.

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>>60154377
I positioned the drones, each a couple kilometers away from each ship.

The string of languages seemed to be ending. But then, almost as an afterthought, they sent the message again, this time in a language I understood.

"Unknown vessel, identify yourself. This solar system is under the administration of the Xunvir Republic, as approved by the Galactic Federal Council."

Ah.

English.

We had tried to talk to them. To negotiate our surrender. We had sent messages in every language, in every conceivable way. Entire committees devoted to the task.

But they had known English all along.

With a thought, I detonated the thermonuclear explosives carried by each drone. My sensors glimpsed some short of protective shield bubble kick in around the ships, but it was quickly obliterated by the power of the explosions, along with the vehicles themselves.

I stood there for some time, staring with a thousand different sensors at the slowly expanding cloud of gases and debris, but my mind was far away.

Xunvir Republic.

Now I had a name.

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Actually legitimate question.

How is this related to Traditional Games?

>>60154452
Self important autism.

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>>60154424
Hiding in space, I discovered, was much harder than doing so on a planet. Back home I could just build underground, keep my fleet of drones away from prying eyes by having them travel through tunnels and caverns and gather minerals from the planet's own crust.

Up here, things weren't that easy. I was always exposed.

I had retracted the large surfaces of my radiators and solar arrays, and recalled most of the drone swarm back into my main body. I was floating, inert, among the dust and gray rocks that formed the asteroid belt lying between Mars and Jupiter. Pretending to be just another space boulder, while 6,000 kilometers away three of my automated factories extracted minerals from nearby asteroids.

Hiding in space, I was learning, was a game of timing and strategy. Of patience and logistics. Of transporting the minerals back to my main body only when nobody could see it. Slowly. Frustratingly so.

Of finding ways to deal with the residual heat that was building up inside my body. With my radiators collapsed, I couldn't dump the heat into space. Not that I wanted to; doing so would have me light up like a flare to anyone that happened to be looking into the infrared channel, so I had to find ways to contain it and deal with it later, all while keeping my outer surfaces as cold as possible.

All that translated into my carrier compartments now reaching a temperature of 170 degrees Fahrenheit, and rising. Thankfully, mechanical drones could resist heat much better than living beings did. But still, it wasn't the brightest idea, and spontaneous fuel combustion was a thing I didn't want to deal with.

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>>60154466
It was strange, not only being able to perfectly know my own body temperature, but also being able to stare into my insides through the hundreds of cameras and sensors I had built into the giant structure. I could watch the maintenance machines finishing up new passageways and rooms in the starboard sectors, or the electronic assembly factory at work producing more processing units. I could see my own brain, the endless rows upon rows of black computer servers, split between three different refrigerated and armored hangars.

I guessed it should have felt strange, getting this kind of feedback from your own body. But it didn't bother me. If anything, what bothered me was how natural it felt. How soon I had adapted to it. It was that idea, the confusion over what my nature was that grated me the most.

Was I a human turned into a machine, or a machine that thought it was human? And at the end of the day, was there any difference?

A ping from my gravimetric sensor took me back to the present, and I observed in silence as another squadron of Xunvirian warships patrolled the inner planets, looking for whatever had destroyed their comrades. They flew in a triangular formation, the largest ship in the middle surrounded by smaller ones at each point. A battleship and its cruisers? Or maybe a carrier and its frigates?

Right... It only served to illustrate how little I knew of this Xunvir Republic I was fighting.

I knew they had faster than light propulsion. I had been watching the trails their ships left in the spacetime fabric as they paraded all across the solar system, as if they owned the place. It made the chemical rockets I was using pale in comparison. And from the earlier encounter with those three ships, and my own memories of the attack on Earth, I knew they also had some sort of shielding technology.

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>>60154523
I could overcome that, true. Even if their warships were better protected, I guessed they wouldn't resist ten or twenty simultaneous nuclear detonations. But it was a losing strategy. Even if I could defeat them all they would just keep coming. They were faster, they could just outmaneuver me, recover from my attacks before I had the time to press any advantage. And at some point, I knew their technological prowess would end up imposing itself.

No. I had to find a way to close that gap.

Which meant, I had to capture one of their ships. Intact. Or at least, intact enough that I could analyze their propulsion systems, their weapons, their shields.

I mentally sighed. In retrospect, vaporizing those three first ships I had encountered might have been the wrong move. I doubted I would have a better chance than that one again.

Oh well, water under the bridge and all that... I would just need to be sneakier now.

And it wasn't like I hadn't learnt anything from the previous encounter. Just from the fact that they had sent their warning message in several languages I now knew that there were more than one alien race out there. It was something I had assumed, but it was good to have confirmation.

I idly wondered what kind of races those others would be. Would they be reasonable people, or monsters like the ones who had attacked us? The fact that this "Galactic Council" seemed to approve of the Xunvir Republic didn't bode well. Whatever the case, I wasn't going to be unprepared when I faced them. It reinforced my belief that, if this was a dog eat dog universe out there, I had to get better teeth to go with my bark.

The problem, I knew, was that my options were limited to either the ineffective or the overly lethal. I could send a drone to bump against their warships' hull, or I could send that same drone loaded with a nuclear warhead and vaporize everything in its range.

Complete annihilation? I got you covered. Non-destructive takeovers? Eh... not so easy.

>>60154452
"Board Culture" it was big back in the day when most of these stories were quick entertaining greentexts and maybe one or two creative text posts. There were never multi-arc stories and anon were called out for being extra spergy.

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>>60154562
Which was the reason why I was currently building a robotic invasion army.

I floated a couple of drones close to the first prototype soldier I had manufactured, and used their cameras to examine the machine from all angles at the same time, looking at every detail, every possible flaw.

It reminded me of a spider the size of a large dog. Six articulated legs supported its stocky body, its smooth lines giving it an organic look. Its surface was dark and polished, and reflected the bright blue lights of the spacious processing hangar where it stood.

As I watched, I ordered it to flex its legs and jump up. The movement was fluid and powerful. I had opted for using artificial muscles -a polymer that contracted under an electrical current- rather than the more traditional mechanical servos. I was pleased with the result, what the muscles lacked in raw strength they made up for in agility and flexibility. Besides, once the factory was set up, they were easier to make in bulk.

Obeying my commands, the spider tested its claws first, then its main weapon, a small autocannon built into its main body.

Yes. The prototype was flawless. It was as I had designed it: a mobile machine gun. One that could run, leap, slash and pierce its way into any enemy ship. With a small body and a low profile. With six legs so that it could easily operate either on the ground or in low gravity conditions. It was the perfect boarding soldier.

Except it was all wrong.

It didn't feel... human enough. It was, in fact, a monster. A creepy insect-like, disgusting little beast.

It would be useful. It would be optimal. I knew it would be. But I just couldn't use it. To do so would feel like a betrayal, like a departure from what I had set as my anchor, as the core of my identity.

Human. I had to remember that. I had to set boundaries.

Boundaries were important. I knew it would be too easy to embrace my new nature and become something else, to slide down the slippery slope...

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>>60154589
So I saved the design files, just in case they would come useful in the future, but sent the prototype itself into recycling as I set to work in a new model. I would keep the artificial muscles, they had proved themselves useful, but this time I'd go for a humanoid look from the start.

When all was said and done, I was pleased with my new soldier. At 5 feet 3 inches tall it was a bit on the short side, but it did look human enough. Or more properly, it looked like a human wearing a stylized cross between a spacesuit and a combat armor.

Polished white armor plates with bright orange stripes covered chest and stomach, thighs, shins, arms and shoulders. Between the plates, dark braids of artificial muscle fibers woven together shown through, giving the machine an organic look. Its face was covered by a dark tinted visor panel, hiding the two cameras that acted as stereoscopic eyes.

All in all it was a good approximation of a human, specially if I squinted and pretended I didn't notice its hands had only three fingers. It didn't have any built-in weapons, so I would need to manufacture those apart, but in return the soldiers would be able to manipulate any tool and enemy devices they could find. So it wasn't that bad.

But more importantly, the new prototype felt right, in a way the spider hadn't.

Satisfied, I sent order to the factories to build a first batch of 8,000 units, along with the necessary small arms and ammo. In the meantime, I sat back to observe the Xunvirian warships.

They were communicating, I noticed. Not only to each other, but also with someplace past the asteroid belt. Locating its exact position wasn't easy, I had to send a couple drones several thousand kilometers away just to triangulate the origin of the transmissions, but it's not like I had anything better to do while I waited for my army to come out of the oven.

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>>60154693
After some trial and error I managed to pinpoint the location to one of Jupiter's moons, possibly Ganymede. The lack of doppler effect meant the source was static, too. Some sort of orbital station? An outpost to watch over the system? I would need to get closer to know for sure.

But that would have to wait. My army was ready, and it was time to lay a trap.

I sent a couple thousand of my drones away, drifting slowly into space and spreading in a rough sphere, somewhat over a hundred kilometers in size. My soldiers were attached to the drones' outer hulls, grabbing the metal handles I had installed on their surfaces. There were some advantages to my assault army not needing to breathe.

I made sure to keep their distribution as random as possible, with small clusters here and there rather than an even spread. I wanted it to look like a natural formation, a field of small rocks and dust floating around.

All right. I was ready. The trap was set, it was time to bait them.

With a sense of trepidation, I sent the signal. A loud, powerful radio transmission. It felt like I was coming out into the open, in the middle of some bad neighborhood, and shouting at the top of my lungs.

I could have sent pretty much anything, but I chose the same warning transmission those three ships had relayed to me when they had found me in Earth's orbit. It was a petty mind game, but I wanted to keep the Xunvirians on their toes.

If they even had toes.

The response came back sooner than I had expected. Just nine minutes after I had sent the transmission, I detected the telltale signs of a squadron of ships converging towards my position.

That was fast. Did they have some kind of listening probes lying around the asteroid belt? Some sort of faster than light communication system?

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>>60154741
No time to focus on it now. The warships were already popping back into normal space, right in the middle of my sphere of drones. I added it to the mental list of technologies I'd need to reverse engineer once I had my hands on a Xunvirian vessel.

I didn't give the enemy time to analyze the situation. The moment the battleship at the center of their formation appeared, I activated the drones and ordered them to move towards it.

It was strange, that they didn't react for a few long seconds. They just waited, floating there as if they couldn't believe it. I guessed the swiftness and severity of the attack had shocked them into inaction. It couldn't be easy to realize you were suddenly surrounded by more than two thousand enemy crafts.

Then, they started shooting. High energy laser beams emerged out of the flanks of the four ships, tracking and burning down my drones. Two of the ships released simultaneous salvoes of missiles, but they were intercepted by a few of my machines, sacrificing themselves for the survival of the swarm.

I ordered the assault robots to let go of their vehicles and fall towards the battleship. They were still a good couple kilometers away, but they just had to coast at their current direction and speed. In the meantime, I set the drones that had transported them to swarm all around the place, creating chaos in the ship's sensors and diverting attention from the undefended wave of soldiers.

I smiled at the panicked enemy reaction that followed. From their point of view, the two thousand crafts surrounding them had suddenly multiplied by four. Their ships engaged their thrusters as if to leave, but they stopped as soon as they realized how ineffective that would be. They were surrounded, and no matter where they moved to, they would just run into more of my machines.

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>>60154778
So they redoubled their efforts at shooting down the components of my swarm. Dozens of bright laser lines constantly appearing and disappearing, trying to destroy my machines as fast as possible. My soldiers, moving in a straight line towards their battleship were easier to track, so the enemy fire focused on them. They were killed by the hundreds.

But it didn't matter. I had thousands. They started landing all over the battleship's surface, using their claw-like fingers to grasp to the metallic hull. If the ship had a protective shield, it didn't make a difference. I had bet on their shields only reacting to energy discharges and fast moving projectiles, rather than the slower approach my soldiers were following. It seemed I had been right.

At more than 400 meters long, the enemy battleship was an impressive sight. A war machine covered in armor plates, missile batteries and laser projectors. It had been vehicles such as this that had bombed Earth's cities from the safety of orbit.

It wasn't, however, protected against boarding by an assault army. My soldiers crawled all over the hull, finding weak points and unprotected openings. They went through exhaust vents and blew open loading gates, getting into the ventilation system, into the maintenance passageways...

Judging by the amount of casualties I was having, I supposed most other sane species considered this tactic too crazy, too suicidal to be useful. Just as I was thinking that, 170 of my soldiers instantly vanished from my perception, as I had failed to intercept a missile launched by one of the smaller defending ships.

Right. I had to do something about those other three. Some of the drones in the swarm were carrying nuclear warheads, so that was an option. But detonating them so close to the battleship I was assaulting would jeopardize the whole affair.

If only I had a way to force them to break formation...

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>>60154811
With a mental shrug,I unfurled my radiators and started venting the heat that I had been keeping inside my body into space, the exposed surfaces rapidly becoming incandescent.

The reaction was immediate. The moment they realized the 27 kilometers long asteroid was, in fact,not an asteroid at all they turned to leave, abandoning their bigger sister to its own fate.

I didn't move to stop them, but I used the cover of the swarm to surreptitiously position a few of my nuclear carrying drones in the path they would take. Since they were already surrounded by a host of small crafts spiraling around, they were none the wiser.

Back in the battleship, the fight was fierce. I could see through my soldiers' eyes that they had reached the main corridors -wide passageways with walls heavily decorated in a multitude of hieroglyphs- and were engaged in combat against the enemy troops.

It was the first time I saw them in the flesh. The creatures that had killed humanity. They were large hefty bipeds,almost twice as big as my own soldiers. Their heads were wide and squashed, with a complex structure of bony-looking plates protecting their top. They had four narrow eyes, two in front,two to the sides, and their mouths were hidden behind some sort of small tentacles hanging from where a nose would have been in a human face.

I had expected some sort of strong emotional response to my eventual face off against the monsters. Strange,that I didn't feel anything. Just some sort of detachment.

A stillness.

I simply ordered my army to open fire, to flank their positions, to charge at them even as I analyzed the images,classifying both the strengths and vulnerabilities in their anatomy. It didn't take long to get the upper hand. The Xunvirians had been completely unprepared to this kind of assault. They were wearing toga-like red and yellow uniforms rather than any sort of body armor,and they lacked in firepower, using only small energy handguns or ineffective melee weapons.

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>>60154852
Outside, I verified that the three smaller runaway ships were at a sufficient range, and ordered the nuclear explosives to detonate. Two of the vessels vanished in an instant, along with four hundred and seventeen of my nearby drones -I hadn't retracted the swarm as to not clue the enemy of what I was about to do.

The third vessel had survived, though. Its protective shield had encased the warship in a tight bubble that reflected all the colors in the rainbow. As I was looking, the ship returned fire at my main body, focusing all its lasers in a single and devastating attack. The overcharged beam hit the ceramic plates of my outer hull, vaporizing a hole and burning its way through them and into the second of my armor layers.

Two more nuclear detonations put an end to that.

In the battleship, the fight was also over, and already my soldiers were identifying the parts that made up the main fusion reactor, the warp engines, the different weapons and shield projectors... But even as they did that, I was already recalling most of my drones and assault troops back into my main body, leaving just an automated defense garrison and some worker drones in the conquered vessel.

I knew I didn't have time to waste. I would drop by later to collect the salvage, but right now I had to move fast. I had just kicked the wasps' nest, so to speak, and had to make use of the surprise factor while it lasted.

Engaging my main thrusters, I set course towards Ganymede.

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>>60154884
New chapter, change of POV

Daokat stared at his plate with a mix of fear and apprehension. The small meat filled dumplings floated in a bright and dense orange soup, as if daring him to take another bite.

He had made that mistake three minutes ago, and was still trying to recover from the shivers, numb mouth and itchy throat. Spicy... to call Xunvirian food spicy would be an understatement. No, rajan sauce was spicy. Lenyish tree-melons were spicy. But this... this was a health hazard passing as food.

He pushed the square plate a few inches away and took another sip from his drink, bracing for the impact of its deep bitter taste. He cursed himself again for listening to Nakstani's advice when ordering his food. He was still trying to figure out whether his new boss' suggestion had been an honest one, or if it had been a prank playing on his ignorance of Xunvirian cuisine.

Knowing her, probably both.

Daokat leaned back in his chair and gazed at his surroundings. The Hall of the Four Columns was one of the most luxurious rooms in Xunvir's Empyrean Palace, with tall ceilings engraved in hieroglyphics of gold and jade that told the history of the empire turned republic.

The ceiling was supported by the Columns, four massive pillars of glass that shone with their own pulsating light, bathing the room in a green glow.

And dwarfed by the columns, the guests dined, drank and mingled. The elite of the Xunvir Republic: admirals and tribe leaders, politicians and powerful businessmen. They talked in pairs and groups, walking around tables and servants, joking loudly to each other.

Playing with the steel pincer that served as a food utensil, Daokat wished once more he was anywhere but here. A few months ago, he had had a promising career laid out in front of him as a high ranking consulate delegate at one of the core worlds of the Galactic Federal Council.

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>>60154948
But somehow, in a turn of events he hadn't even begun to really understand, he had ended up in the deep ass-end of the Orion Arm.

Eating Xunvirian dumplings.

He looked back at the guests, and saw his own boss among them. Nakstani was in the midst of it all, confidently talking to the Emperor himself.

Ambassador Nakstani of the Galactic Federal Council was an odd piece. Like himself, she was a Sanksian, coming from one of the oldest worlds in the Galactic Council. A lush and peaceful agrarian planet that lived mostly out of tourism.

Sanksians were nimble beings of thin bodies, large eyes and smooth silvery skins. Known for being polite and diligent. But where Daokat himself was a good example of that stereotype, his boss was anything but it.

Nakstani acted like she was a local herself, laughing with intensity, slapping the shoulders of whoever she was talking to, drinking and sampling every food... At first, Daokat had found the contrast between her behavior and her delicate looks to be striking, but it seemed it worked for the Xunvirians, and they treated her with respect.

The other reason, of course, was her role. As a representative of the Council, Nakstani might not have had a fleet of her own like some of the admirals in the room, but she had influence in spades. The kind of influence that came from representing an organization that covered over forty percent of the known Galaxy.

As Daokat watched, his boss bowed to the Emperor and walked back to their table. She plopped down on the seat in front of him, and eyed the discarded plate.

"Hey, kid. Aren't you going to eat that?" she asked, already reaching for a pincer.

"No," Daokat answered. "In fact, I suspect the sauce might be laced with some sort of hallucinogenic."

She tilted her head looking curiously at a dumpling, before stuffing it into her mouth. "Hmm... yeah, I think it is."

Daokat looked at her and shook his head. "Really? How can you eat that?"

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>>60154992
"Ah, it's not that bad. Besides, nobody is going to tell you their secrets if you aren't willing to try their food first."

He nodded. "Secrets... right, I guess that's true."

She stopped chewing and stared at him for a few seconds with an inquisitorial gaze. Then she sighed. "All right, spit it out."

"What?"

"Whatever it is that has you yellow-teethed. Look, I thought you wanted this position. To be here. An Assistant Ambassador. But obviously there's something you don't like, so spit it out already."

Daokat blinked at the brashness of the question. In his mind, ambassadors were supposed to be tactful and discreet. He wondered whether it'd be a good idea to answer truthfully, but there weren't many ways in which he could be further punished. It wasn't like he could be sent off to an even less pleasant destination than the Xunvir Republic.

"Yes," he admitted. "I did want the Assistant position. Just... not here. I applied to Nayatan Prime, but it seems someone upstairs wanted to punish me by sending me to this..."

Daokat stopped at the bewildered look his boss was giving him.

"You think you were punished?"

"Well... sure. Why other reason would they send me here, as far away into the periphery as possible?"

Nakstani was repressing a laugh. "Oh... you're such a cursed fool... They sent you here because I specifically asked for you!"

Daokat's eye membranes did a funny twitch.

"You did... what... why?"

She stuffed another dumpling into her mouth. "Because I read your examination essay,the one where you talked about making a difference. Because I thought you'd want to be someplace important."

"I was going someplace important. Like the Core Worlds, not here!"

"I see. Nayatan Prime?" she asked.

"Well, yes. Nayatan Prime is where High Governance is based out of. It's where all the Grand Ministers are. All the action is there."

She snorted. "Bullshit."

Daokat was about to reply when she interrupted him,leaning forward and speaking in a lower tone.

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>>60155048
"No, listen to me now, Daokat. Nayatan Prime? It's bullshit. Yes, all the bigwigs are there, all the celebrities. They get together, throw some large party, some charity fundraiser or something to appear in the network vids and get their ten minutes of fame, all the while you are left to send the invites. You go there, you turn into a glorified paper pusher."

He shook his head, raising his voice. "Nayatan Prime is where the Fifth Accords were signed, for crying out loud!"

"Where they were signed, sure. But where do you think they were negotiated?" She motioned at the Hall around them with the pincer in her hand. "It was in rooms like this. This is the frontier, kid. This is where the rubber meets the road, where the real action is. That next volume in the history lessons? That next war that will shape the destiny of entire worlds? It starts here, in this room. Right now."

She eyed a couple of high ranking Xunvirian officers as they passed by their table. "Might have already started, in fact," she added.

The revelation had left Daokat paused, not knowing how to react. If what Nakstani was saying was true, not only he hadn't been punished in the first place, but he had been handpicked by her for an important position. One that wouldn't take him in front of the cameras, maybe, but important nevertheless.

He didn't have time to feel like an idiot, though. If what she said was true, he had to get his head back in the game. The last sentence had piqued his interest.

"Do you mean the reports were true? The Xunvirian Fleet is mobilizing?"

She nodded, stealing a sip from his drink. "The Third Fleet left port two weeks ago. The First and Fourth both leave in three days. Seems like the Xunvir Republic is going to war."

"Shit... offensive or defensive?"

She tilted her head and smiled at him. "You tell me, kid."

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>>60155079
A test. But Daokat knew what she meant, she had explained the day before. There was a certain feeling to these meetings. An emotional energy in the air, in the way people acted. In the way they talked and moved. You just had to know how to read between lines.

He looked around discreetly. The Xunvirians appeared relaxed, joking and drinking. He saw a group of tribe leaders burst into raucous laughter, slapping each other's shoulders.

Except it looked a bit over the top. And as he stared more intently, he started to notice the little details. The underlying patterns. The Emperor was talking to everyone, but he never strayed far from his own guards. The tribe leaders were joking, but their reactions seemed forced, as if their attention was someplace else. The admirals were all in their own little group, talking in hasty tones. Discussing war strategies, maybe?

Nakstani was examining him. "So?"

"Defensive. They are spooked," Daokat said.

"Ah... I knew there was a reason I hired you after all. Go on."

"They are projecting an image of strength," he elaborated, "but they are nervous at the same time. It's all a facade, they are worried about something but don't want to look like they are weak."

"And what do you think could have caused that?"

Daokat thought for a minute. "Internal strife? A coup attempt, perhaps?"

Nakstani shook her head. "I don't think so. All factions are represented here. Whatever it is, they all are in it together."

"So, an external enemy," he concluded.

She nodded. "If you ask me, I'd say someone has seen a bushcat lurking around and they're all circling the plumps now."

"The what now?"

"The plumps? The grass-munchers?"

"The cows?" he ventured.

"The... yes, the cows... Seriously? Haven't you ever been to a long grazing?"

"No," Daokat replied. "I was raised in Gorge City."

"Ah... a cursed urbanite. That explains a thing or two about you. Anyways, yes. An external enemy. They have been attacked."

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>>60155114
He nodded. The more he thought about it, the clearer it was. An external menace was the only thing that could have united the different tribes and factions that made up Xunvir's higher social layer. It would be a good motivation to put their differences aside for the time being.

But still, there was something that didn't fit.

"So why not ask us for help?" Daokat said. "The Xunvir Republic is an associated state to the Council. Per the accords we are obligated to support them in a defensive war against an external aggressor."

Nakstani smiled. "That's the question, isn't it? What do you think?"

Daokat paused and reviewed what he knew about the Republic, its power structure and internal issues, trying to look at the question from a new angle.

"It's political. Asking for help now would make the ruling tribe seem weak, and hurt their chances at keeping the Emperor position in the elections next year."

"Hmm... you are learning. But no, that wouldn't explain why all the other factions are keeping their mouths shut as well."

"Then why?" he asked. But before she could reply, he continued speaking his thoughts. "I mean, if the message of strength is not directed at one of the factions, then who else is in here that..."

He paused, as he considered who else was in the room.

Themselves.

That was it. Clear as day. A message of strength, of unity. Directed at the Galactic Federal Council. At them two.

The Republic was going to war. The Galactic Council knew. The Republic knew that they knew, and they were delivering their message.

Keep your snouts out of our business.

This entire dinner was a farce. A play. And they two were at the center of it. He felt a shiver down his spine as he imagined the gaze of every other dinner guest in the room staring down his back, scrutinizing his every gesture.

And Nakstani's behavior... drinking, joking, talking to everyone... it had been another message. A reply of her own.

No.

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>>60155133
As he considered the implications, Nakstani leaned towards him and spoke with a smile. "Ah, now you see it... why you should have eaten your cursed dumplings."

Daokat nodded slowly, still frozen and with his hands laid flat on the table. His heart was beating fast.

So, this was what the infamous game played like. The real stuff. Threats and bluffs masquerading as jokes and spicy sauces.

Ironic, that he had wanted to be someplace important and now, when he was right at the heart of a burgeoning conflict, the crucial signs had all gone over his head.

At last, he rose his gaze to look back at his boss, who had an amused expression in her face.

"They are hiding something," Daokat said. "They don't want us to interfere because there's something they don't want us to know."

Nakstani's smile transformed into a predatory grin, one that somehow didn't look out of place with her delicate features. "And doesn't that," she said, "make you just a little bit curious?"

She was right, of course. He was curious. The Xunvir Republic had been attacked, but they were trying to hide it. Why? Because there must be something, some critical piece of information, that they wanted to keep secret. Something that could have tremendous consequences if divulged.

"We need to learn who is behind it," Daokat said. "Who is attacking them."

"Agreed. Which is why you have a meeting in about ten minutes with... ah..." she paused for a moment, and Daokat could see bright yellow lines appear in her eyes as she connected her augmented irises, "one Corvette Captain Avamir of the Buplan Tribe."

Daokat blinked. "You've got a mole?... Sorry, stupid question. Of course you've got a mole."

"And you've got a meeting. Third level, eastern terrace. I suggest you get going." Nakstani said as she laid back on her seat, drink in hand. "Don't worry, I'll stay here and hold the fort."

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>>60155201
"Right," he said, but he was already standing up, walking out of the Hall. His legs felt stiff and his movements rigid. He concentrated on keeping a regular, normal-looking pace, not too anxious or so slow it would look deliberate. He tried avoiding the gazes of the other guests without looking like he was shunning them.

It was harder than it seemed.
The terrace, a large expanse of marble overlooking the Palace's lush gardens, was empty when Daokat arrived. He walked past the bronze statues depicting long dead military heroes, each with a small placard underneath telling their stories. Which tribe they belonged to, which long forgotten battles they had fought.

Entire lives summed up in three sentences long blurbs.

He paused by the edge of the balcony, placing his hands on the intricately decorated stone handrail. At night, the gardens surrounding the palace were plunged in shadows, and it looked as if the building was surrounded by pure blackness, like a small boat of stone floating in a sea of nothingness.

And beyond the black expanse, he could see the myriad city lights of the Xunvirian capital covering the horizon. The traffic crawling towards the spaceport, the Twin Avenues, the spiraling towers that the powerful Anacax tribe had built in the commercial district...

In a way it was fitting that the Palace representing the old imperial age was separated from the more modern city, symbol of a nascent interstellar economy. Ever since he arrived, Daokat had always been aware of the sense of melancholic decadence impregnating everything related to Xunvir's imperial past.

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>>60155235
But there were high hopes for the Republic, back at the core worlds. It was expected that the Xunvirians would be ready to apply for a membership to the Galactic Council in about fifty years. Nakstani's and Daokat's job was not just to act as representatives, but to gently steer the policymakers in the right direction. To make sure the remaining political reforms would take place before that happened.

He was optimistic, but sadly, the Republic hadn't completely recovered from the shock of the military disaster that had lost them their empire, and a sense of fatalism mixed with compensating self-importance still lingered. He feared that a war, at this delicate moment, could jeopardize everything.

His augmented irises warned him of the approaching figure even before his own eyes could register it. A Xunvirian. He waited for the local to approach, enabling the recording function of the irises. He was still thinking of an opening line when the Xunvirian spoke in a thick guttural accent.

"Ah, the deceptive lizard doesn't deem me worthy of her time, so she sends her lackey, yes?"

Daokat tensed his jaw as the large creature approached. No matter how much time he spent in this planet, there would always be a part of his primordial brain sounding the alarms whenever a Xunvirian was close by. Some sort of evolutive survival response.

But he wasn't a small animal running from a predator across the grass fields of his homeworld. Galactic politics wasn't about who was bigger or stronger, but about who had the most influence and leverage.

And that was him.

"Corvette Captain Avamir," Daokat said with a confident smile. "My name is Daokat, I'm the Assistant Ambassador. Nakstani sends her apologies, she couldn't excuse herself from the dinner party. But I can assure you I speak in her behalf."

Avamir made a short puffing sound, the tentacles in front of his mouth raising slightly. "Just ask what you want."

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>>60155255
Daokat nodded. "Very well. We would like to know why the Xunvirian Fleet is mobilizing. You are with the First, correct?"

"Yes. We are mobilizing in response to an attack."

That was it. Confirmation. Daokat had to repress a smile. "What happened?" he asked.

The Xunvirian took a few seconds to reply. Daokat was about to repeat the question when he started speaking again.

"Two months ago, we lost contact with a group of resource scanning ships in one of our uninhabited external systems. Two days later, the squadron sent in their search was lost too, followed by an attack against an advanced frontier outpost."

He paused again, as if he was having difficulty getting the words out.

"We attempted several incursions to retake control over the system, all of which were repelled. Four weeks ago, the entire Sixth fleet gathered at the closest neighboring star in order to lead a massive counterattack, but they were surprised by the enemy before they could put the plan into motion. There were no survivors."

Daokat let out a breath as he processed the information. "You're telling me you've already lost an entire fleet. An entire fleet and a star system?"

Avamir huffed. "No. We have lost two fleets and three systems," he corrected. "All of the systems were unpopulated. But judging by the advance of the attackers, we expect them to reach the first of our inhabited planets in less than a week. The remaining fleets are mobilizing to protect the colony."

"Where? Which colony?"

"Yovit."

Daokat nodded, he had read about the planet before. With two million settlers already, it was one of the most promising newly claimed worlds, and the Republic was investing a good amount of resources in its development.

"One more thing," he said. "Who is attacking you, and why?"

The Xunvirian bobbed his head, slow and deliberate. "Hmm... you have heard of the pain proverb, yes?"

He had. "Yes. Pain breeds pain."

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>>60155282
"Pain breeds pain. There is no escape from the ghosts of our own past. We must fight the wars that our forefathers sow."

Daokat repressed a sigh. The last thing he wanted now was a lesson on Xunvirian fatalism, on how every disgrace -ranging from diseases to earthquakes- was somehow a fault of their ancestors.

"So, you mean..." he started.

"I am not a traitor," Avamir interrupted. "I told your master that. What I do, I do it because it is righteous, yes?"

Daokat nodded.

"The Tribes are wrong to hide what might affect your Council. It's not proper, to deny others the right of knowing their fate. But now that you know, I'm not obliged anymore. Yes?"

The Xunvirian was already turning to leave.

"Wait! Who is attacking you?" asked Daokat. "Does this ghost have a name?" .

"Yes," said Avamir without turning back. "The Terran."

He walked away with that, leaving Daokat alone again in the terrace. He just stood there, processing the information. Finally, he opened a line back to Nakstani and sent her the recording from his irises.

"Got that?" he asked her, sub-vocalizing the voice message.

He heard her response directly in his right ear. "Yes," she said. "Not much. Never heard of these Terrans before. But at least now we know where the fleets are going to."

"The colony world. Yovit. Any ideas of what we should do next?"

The line went silent for a few seconds, and he started walking back towards the dinning hall. Eventually, his boss spoke again.

"Ah... Daokat," she said, "didn't you say you were from an agricultural world?"

He frowned at the question. What was she playing at? They were both from the same world, so of course she already knew... And just then, he realized the hidden message.

Despite himself, Daokat had to smile.

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>>60155317
"Sure I am," he said, playing along. "And ever since I've got here I've been curious about Xunvirian agricultural techniques and farming policies. Like, say... the ones they use in their colony worlds."

"Oh, really? Well, in that case we should make an official visit to one of them. I've heard Yovit is lovely this time of year. I guess we could leave tomorrow morning."

"That would be great, Nakstani! I can't wait to see how the Xunvirians deal with their plumps"

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>>60155338
New chapter

I entered the living room carrying the blanket on my right arm. It was a woolen, hand-knitted patchwork of green, brown and blue colors. It hung from my arm, weighting it down, skimming right over the wooden boarded floor but without ever dragging on it.

I walked slowly, deliberately. There was a certain ritualistic approach to my movements. There had to be.

The living room was lit in the orange glow coming through its single window, bathed in the colors of a Sunday afternoon; the dying of the day casting long shadows across the floor, across the table and couch.

I paused briefly right in front of the brown couch, then turned on my feet and sit on it, placing the blanket on the seat next to me. Slowly, I leaned sideways and rested my head on the armrest. After a beat, I rose my legs and placed them on the couch too.

I lay there, my body sprawled across the three seats. Of course, the piece of furniture wasn't as long as a bed, so I had to keep my knees somewhat bent to fit in it. The posture created a bit of a strain in the artificial muscular tissue that covered my legs, but it was supposed to do that. It was supposed to be ever so slightly uncomfortable, but not unpleasant enough that I would need to move and change posture.

With a precise motion I unfolded the blanket and covered my body with it, from the legs and up to my chest. I doubted for a moment whether to place my arms over or under the blanket, unsure as to which was the correct way to go about it. The perfect resting posture. Eventually, I left them uncovered.

The TV in front of the couch was turned on, broadcasting some old show I haven't watched before, the images having that noisy grain that dated them to sometime during the eighties.

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>>60155391
Of course, it's not that I didn't know the name of the show. Or its length, the actual date of airing of each of its 28 episodes -the one now playing on TV was the sixth-, the name and date of birth of each of its leading actors, or where I had found the tapes -a television archive building in what had been the city of Atlanta, one that I had completely digitized before leaving Earth.

But I tried to shy away from that knowledge, pretending I didn't know all that. Pretending I had just turned on the TV and this was what happened to be on it.

It wasn't working. Not fully. But it was as close as I dared going, short of intentionally deleting that knowledge from my databanks.

Had I had eyelids, I would have them half-closed by now. But the body I was controlling was just another one of my robotic soldiers, and I hadn't designed them with this purpose in mind. I could have turned off its two cameras, but it just wouldn't have felt the same. So I simply adjusted their focus until the image I got from them was slightly blurred.

It would have to do.

All of this was, of course, a crude mockery. A doomed attempt at recapturing a memory. At feeling again that sense of warmth, of calmness, that came with spending a Sunday afternoon lying on the sofa, balancing in that narrow sweet spot between awareness and sleep.

Except things were somewhat off. The room felt different somehow, though I couldn't quite put my finger on what was wrong. Was the ceiling just a bit too tall, or too short? How many inches had the TV screen had? How many feet had separated it from the couch?

If felt as if someone had ran through my stuff and put everything out of place. I could tell things were wrong, but the memories weren't precise enough, clear enough, as to know how to fix those same mistakes. I knew the couch's fabric had had some sort of faded pattern, but I couldn't for the life of me recall what it had looked like.

Wow, I thought people were exaggerating when they were calling this stuff garbage.

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>>60155420
But the most glaring hole in the memory was the other presence that had been there with me. I knew I hadn't been alone when resting like this, drifting off to sleep. Someone had sat with me, on the same couch. I recalled jokes. I recalled someone massaging my legs.

And yet I couldn't recall their face. Their looks. Who they had been. I knew that person had been important, but not why.

This, the whole experience, was an exercise in frustration. In trying to reach at something that was always moving away, that slipped through my fingers the moment I thought I had a grasp on it. But it was important that I kept trying.

It grated on me, that the most vital memories, the ones tying me back to humanity, were also the most blurred ones. The most imprecise. The most filled with gaps.

All the while I could construct a perfect replica of a Xunvirian laser projector. Down to the identifying serial codes in each electronic board.

I was constructing them at that very moment, in fact. Four hundred and sixteen of them to join my other two thousand, three hundred seventy-nine projectors I had already installed in drones and crafts across my fleet.

I had been busy.

Even as I lay on the sofa, purposely not watching the TV, my awareness kept working on several simultaneous levels. I could see the outside of the living room -a plywood construction I had erected inside one of the smaller storage areas in my main body. I could see the space surrounding me, my extended panels bathed by the faint orange light of the twin stars at the center of the Luhman system.

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>>60155455
I was aware of the more than seven million machines that now composed my swarm. They were distributed across three stellar systems under my control, most of the drones tasked with different kinds of resource extraction. Minerals, radioactive materials, gases, water... All the work, the extraction, transportation, refining and construction of new units controlled by the central servers in my main body, instantaneously transmitting commands both through the EM-spectrum and via my new quantum-entangled relays.

I had become a nation of a single mind.

Paradoxically, I had the Xunvir Republic to thank for my exponential growth. It was the fusion plants of their own design that satisfied the increasing energy appetite of the swarm. It was their communication devices and optimized processing algorithms that allowed my brain to coordinate so many machines. It was their warp engines that had enabled me to expand beyond Earth's solar system.

And more importantly, it was their past actions, their attack on Earth, that still fueled my determination.

They had been aggressive at first, sending their warship squadrons after me. But they hadn't put a strong enough front, maybe not considering me an important threat, so it hadn't been hard to come out ahead.

Then, they wised up, sending a strong and coordinated attack force to face me. Had they done that at the beginning, they could have won. But by the time they had reacted, I was already strong enough to stomp on their forces.

After that, the Xunvirians had shifted to a defensive stance, no doubt grouping around their nearest colony world. It would fall on me to start the next confrontation.

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>>60155483
All around me, my attack swarm gathered. More than four hundred thousand offensive drones and assault soldiers. There were so many of them that they looked like a moving fluid. The machines danced and flowed in tight fractal formations, following complex patterns that weaved them together without ever crashing into each other. They enveloped me like a living, metallic blanket. Like some sort of twisted mirroring of what was happening inside the plywood room.

There were so many of them that it was impossible for me to stuff them into my main body anymore. Transportation, and not manufacturing, now marked the limits of my attack strength. So I had resorted to building support carrier ships.

At roughly two kilometers long each, the support ships featured a miniaturized version of my own body design, with compartments for carrying drones and soldiers, but also assembly factories, raw material storage areas, shield projectors, power plants, laser weaponry and warp drives.

The only thing missing was a mind of their own. Just like the drones themselves, the support ships were under my direct control. An extension of myself rather than separate entities.

That was another of the boundaries. Another line I wasn't willing to cross. I wouldn't give self-awareness to what I intented to use as a mere weapon of war. Like the drones, the support ships were disposable too.

Which meant I couldn't just send my swarm to attack while I stayed put behind, safe within my controlled territories. Even the quantum relays weren't perfect. Their bandwidth was limited, and if I tried to directly control the complex interwoven movements of hundreds of thousands of drones through them, there would be several seconds of delay before my orders reached their recipients. A delay that could cost me a battle.

No. I would need to be in the frontlines, directing the machines' movements with precision. Risking my own body.

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>>60155510
I guessed I could have built back up servers in my stellar systems, though. Some sort of failsafe, a clone of my mind that would persist even if my main body was destroyed.

It would be the smart thing to do. The optimal. But I didn't like it, the idea of my consciousness being some fluid thing. The idea of losing contact by mistake, and coming back to find out another me had taken over.

Stupid? Perhaps. I knew I was putting obstacles in my own way, deliberately falling short of my full potential. But I felt I needed this, these anchors. To prevent me from going down the ever dangerous slope.

Vengeance was important. But so was remaining human. Not losing myself. Because as long as I did, as long as I could keep me from becoming something else, then humanity itself would exist with me. There would still be a faint glimmer of hope. As long as I was human, then we wouldn't be extinct. So I couldn't afford to be consumed. To turn into a mindless weapon of mass destruction.

That didn't mean I planned to die anytime soon, though. I had upgraded my body, improved its armor with the new material techniques I had developed, installed shield projectors based on Xunvirian designs... and a warp drive that was currently charging for the imminent faster than light trip.

I commanded the support ships to spool their warp drives too. Turned out warp tunneling was dependent on mass. The bigger the object, the more power it required. And having to move a 27 kilometers long object, the warp drive in my main body had some crazy energy requirements. It took my power plants several minutes to feed it before each activation.

I felt nervous as I secured the last of my drones in their compartments. As I sent the orders that the factories and the other machines I was leaving behind would follow in my absence. It was always like this before a trip, but this time I knew it would be harder. I would be jumping straight into a battlefield. Into an enemy trap.

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>>60155553
Steeling myself, I activated the warp drives.

Right away, I went blind and deaf, losing contact with the rest of my machines. I was now only aware of the drones within my own body. There was no way to communicate to the external world while in warp.

It made me feel small. I was getting used to my expanded awareness, to being present across different stellar systems. To the almost omniscient view I had over my domains. This, going back to the constraints of a single view, the physical limits of a single ship, felt almost like being caged.

It made me feel anxious and vulnerable. The trip would only take about twenty minutes, but to the rest of the universe more than three days would have passed by the time I emerged back into normal space.

I was all too aware of how defenseless my other machines would be during that time. They had their orders and were autonomous enough as to not stop in their tracks, but I couldn't kid myself. Should the Xunvirians choose to attack my solar systems now, my drones would be an easy prey without myself to direct them.

It spoke volumes of why the Xunvirian fleets moved the way they did, continuously making short warp jumps rather than long leaps. Like stones skipping on a lake's surface, always popping in and out warp as to avoid unpleasant surprises.

Sadly, it just wasn't a viable strategy for me. With my massive vehicles, each FTL ticket was an expensive investment with a long setup. Making too many of them would be prohibitive.

There just wasn't anything I could do other than wait, cross my fingers, and hope that I wouldn't come out of warp to find my home razed and burned, so to speak.

So I waited, going over possible attack plans and flying patterns.

Meanwhile, in the living room, I shifted my body to relieve the strain in my legs.

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>>60155586
Leaving warp was as sudden as entering it had been. One moment I was blind, the next I could see. Millions of machines popping into my awareness, petabytes of information being downloaded into my brain as the pending logs finally reached me.

My mind started working, shifting through the enormous pile of data, discarding irrelevant information and integrating the important bits into my memory banks. To my conscious mind, it felt as if I had never left. I had perfect recollection of everything that happened in my absence, all the while I perfectly remembered being in warp, unable to communicate.

It was yet another of the oddities of my strange new nature.

I went through my memories of the last three days. A couple factories had stopped production due to running out of input materials. Seventeen drones had been destroyed in a pipe collapse in the Centauri system. More than four thousand others had landed in their respective home hangars after encountering maintenance problems of some kind or other.

Nothing to worry about. I absentmindedly sent the commands to deal with each of the situations, and focused my attention on my immediate surroundings.

The colony world floated at eighty thousand kilometers away from me. A sphere of green, brown and blue hues. Its bright, colorful tones contrasted with the pure black of space, making it stand out like a floating jewel.

It was beautiful.

It only served to make me angrier. That it was just like Earth had once looked. That the Xunvirians got to enjoy this safe, beautiful world even after having wrecked ours.

That crimes didn't have any repercussions.

That the universe, that life itself, kept going on in spite of our tragedy. That we had been forgotten.

No. That wouldn't do.

In orbit, right between the planet and my own position, there was the Xunvirian fleet. With thirteen battleships and their escorting vessels, it was the largest combined fleet I had ever faced so far.

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>>60155610
And they had, indeed, wised up. Their warships groups were arrayed in a large arching formation, leaving tens of kilometers of empty space between each other. Making sure, I noticed, that I wouldn't be able to wrap them all in the thick of my swarm at the same time.

The enemy started to react, turning their flanks toward me, but they hadn't open fire yet, holding formation. They showered me in messages. Transmissions asking for a truce, for a negotiation.

I gave those the same treatment that humanity's own pleas had been given.

I weighed my options. Their plan, I realized, was both simple and hard to counter.

If I tried to attack them all at the same time, my machines would be too dispersed to be effective. That meant I would need to work my way through their ships instead, one after the other.

But focusing my strength in a single target would free the other enemies to flank me and shoot at both me and my drones from the safety of distance, using the greater range of their energy weapons.

Could I win? Yes... maybe. My own body was now protected by shields specifically designed to withstand laser fire; and even though the drones were vulnerable, at the end of the day I had the advantage of numbers... of very large numbers. So probably I would have enough drones as to work through their entire fleet ship by ship and come out victorious.

But the losses would be astonishing. Most if not all my machines would be destroyed in the process. My body would need repairs. I could win but... would that be a worthwhile victory, or just a losing strategy? One that could make me weaker in the long run, unable to survive at some critical juncture in the future.

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>>60155636
I could just ignore their warships and dive in for the kill. Send all my swarm to ravage the world they were tasked with protecting. They wouldn't be able to stop me.

But then, what? After I destroyed their world, I would still need to face off their warships. Running away wasn't an option given how long my warp drive took to charge. And I'd be put into a worse tactical position, having already committed my army to a ground attack.

What other options were there? Sending a couple drones armed with nuclear warheads towards each of their ships? No. It would be obvious, and the machines would be shot down long before they could reach their targets.

Using nuclear drones was a collaborative task. One craft delivered the payload, while the rest provided cover, chaos, and decoys. But again, trying to do that simultaneously against all the enemy ships would disperse my swarm too thinly. It was self-defeating.

So... yes. The Xunvirian strategy was simple, but hard to counter.

We stood there for a few instants of stand-off. Facing each other. No talking on my part, no radio communications.

Three seconds later I was joined by my eight support ships, popping out into normal space by my side.

>>60155669
Screw it, the story is far too long.
You can find the rest here : https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/wiki/series/chrysalis
The last post was the end of chapter 4 BTW

>>60140544
Only a literal retard could actually enjoy Kemono Friends
Kind of like your average HFY story actually

>>60154570
Even back in the day, even in the very first thread, people were telling you to fuck off with this off topic bullshit.

"Board culture" isn't a reason, and even if it was, HFY doesn't qualify as board culture since it's just been a group of rule-breaking spammers from day one.

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>>60154452
Gee, I don't know. I guess talking about science-fiction/fantasy of any other setting concept is completely unrelated to a type of game that runs on setting concepts.

>>60156312
That's a fucking streeeeeetch.

By that logic, anything is related to traditional games, and by that logic, there's no difference between this board and /b/.

Masturbating over the lowest common denominator is hardly a traditional game, and writing really shitty species fanfiction is also not a traditional game, and making a terrible "Humanity" version of a Team America World Police joke also just so happens to not be a traditional game, wow, what a shock.

Saying "Setting concepts are /tg/" only count when we're talking about traditional game settings, not settings purely designed around exalting one species all for the sake of an unreadable short story that never goes anywhere beyond tugging at the author's dick and providing spam fuel for your fellow cringe-inducing retards who keep trying to resurrect this dead shit.

>I deliberately entered a thread I don't like. PNG

>>60153875
Proof that reddit niggers are fucking retards that can't grasp the point if fucking anything. The whole point of HFY is that it's written from the ayylmao's perspective highlighting something that to us is normal but that to them is absurd and alien

Cringe

Don't forget the wiki. There's a sizeable archive of them on there.

>>60160444
Are you actually just going to keep necromancing this thread? That's poor manners here.

>>60140298
gay

>>60161660

I dig this one. It’s a nice explanation for how if horrible things existed but why humanity hasn’t succumb.

>>60160462
bumping your own thread when you're the only one in there is bad manners. Keeping a quality thread alive through a few slow hours is just common sense. I'm not the person you're replying to btw.

>>60156618

Happens a lot whenever you make a shit thread.

The fact you're grandfathering in your cringe fiction cause it was a fad on /tg/ at some point doesn't change that.

>>60156541
>By that logic, anything is related to traditional games,

If you ban people from being able to talk about setting, you essentially ban all of /tg/. You can't talk about anything that isn't a cold hard mechanical rule from a rulebook anymore, because you banned talking about the context those rules take place in.

>>60156541
>Masturbating over the lowest common denominator is hardly a traditional game, and writing really shitty species fanfiction is also not a traditional game, and making a terrible "Humanity" version of a Team America World Police joke also just so happens to not be a traditional game, wow, what a shock.

Also, not liking settings does not make them, y'know, not settings. No one gives a shit about your personal fucking tastes.

>>60163371
>Keeping a quality thread alive

So, irrelevant in the current context.

>>60165668
Saying "Setting concepts are /tg/" only counts when we're talking about traditional game settings, not settings purely designed around exalting one species all for the sake of an unreadable short story that never goes anywhere beyond tugging at the author's dick and providing spam fuel for your fellow cringe-inducing retards who keep trying to resurrect this dead shit.

>>60165800
>Saying "Setting concepts are /tg/" only counts when we're talking about traditional game settings,

Science fiction is a pretty common setting, anon. Shit, a science fiction setting about mankind externally fighting aliens is literally the entire fucking reason /tg/ was created in the first place. So go fuck yourself.

>>60165829
"Science Fiction" isn't a setting. I guess I shouldn't be surprised you're genuinely this stupid.

40k is a setting, but no, its not "the entire reason /tg/ was created", that's just an old lie 40k fans tried to spread without any proof and with enormous exaggeration of how big they thought the Warhammer Wednesday threads were.

So, please, quit it with your insane "Poorly written stories centered around a mindless writing prompt are traditional games" stupidity, because, according to you, the only connection it has with a game is the remote connection that they both include settings? Do you not recognize how slim the straws that you're trying to grasp are?

Just spam your dumb shit in /lit/. Or, stay on reddit instead of dragging the corpse of HFY through here.