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You hold up the lantern and continue forward, each step becoming more easy than the last as the light seems to almost pull you further onward. As you begin to climb the mountain leading to the grand structure, the light dims. The great orbs in the distance falling further and further away, until only the faintest light exists outside of the small lantern in your hand. You feel more and more alone, as if surrounded by a growing fog of shrouded thoughts and wispy haze as you climb the mountain to its peak where a great structure stands just beyond the slope.

You examine the structure ahead of you, standing tall over the landscape, magnificent, yet ruined, a palace stands, if barely, its form crumbling with time. At its base is a doorway, small, and freshly made from the ancient stone around it. You move closer, and for a split moment catche the glimmer of light shining from beyond the doorway, calling to you. The light flickers forward in the lantern, as if pulling you in as a cold wind picks up around your feet. You walk forward, following the flickering flame of the lantern until the shadow of the open door frame casts over you with a deep, cold shiver.

You turn to look back the way you cam, suddenly realizing your mind is alone in this growing cold, she looks back at you, from the distant red sun as it sets over the horizon, and the doors close behind you.

You are Adam Seiner, and you are alone.

Welcome to Seiner Quest!

>Archives http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=Hive%20Queen%20Quest
>Twitter https://twitter.com/HiveQueenQuest
>Various pasta http://pastebin.com/u/QuestDrone
>FAQ ask.fm/QuestDrone
>Discussion page http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Quest_talk:Hive_Queen_Quest
>>
>>3015191
Oh this will be a journey through the Underworld thread.
>>
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>>3015191
For Mother!
>>
>>3015191
>Siener Quest
Oh Jesus. I was prepared for spoop.

But not for this.
>>
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>>3015191
Oh boy we gonna get extra spoopy today! Time to walk through the void!
>>
>>3015201
>underworld
>not the spoopiest
>>
>>3015191
the first time i am here for the beginning of a thread.......Curse my britfag timezone.
>>
>>3015191
There is a darkness around you. Not a lack of light, but a tangible darkness felt like prickling needles over your mind. You move, but it feels slowed, like walking through thick molasses. You can feel no space beyond you, as if you were buried alive, and yet you continue to walk and feel no wall, your lantern's light touching nothing beyond you, reaching no wall and offering no illumination. Ahead of you, suddenly, you can see a light flicker in the distance. You can feel it, as if its small flame were a raging bonfire, its warmth stings as it purges the biting cold from you.

The light dances, flickers, and grows. You can't tell if the darkness is abating, of if you are growing more accustomed to it, but the darkness around you seem to take form, growing from the darkness like ice freezing from the air. You can make out the smallest portion of its structure as its crystalline form twists into fractals of impossibility through geometries that could not exist. They are still, reaching into an unseen cold eternity, but as you move further into the dark chamber, the surfaces seem to shift, rippling like knives just beneath the surface of water, the blades grinding through one another with a sharp sound that echoes through your mind as an infinity of fractal structures suddenly shift into new infinities. The whole chamber, and unseen layers of it beyond, seem to come to live slowly, like a great machine powering up after unknown eons of unmaintained slumber, its gears grinding with rust and its factors groaning in protest at their movement, as if a great, living beast slowly wakes.

You wonder if you have stepped into its lair, or its mouth.

The flame ahead of you continues to flicker, as if swinging from an unseen rope.

>Approach the flame
>Call out to the darkness
>Turn and attempt to egress
>Other (write in)
>>
>>3015218
>Approach the flame
I dont think it would be a good idea to make "noise" in this place.
>>
>>3015218
>Other (Pray to the First Hive, maybe if we use faith we'll find a way to the First Queen)
>>
>>3015218
>Approach the flame
"Those who bring light may see, but are seen. Only the Blind may see in the Darkness and remain unseen."
>>
>>3015218
>Approach the flame
>>
>>3015228
We should avoid making noise in general.
>>
>>3015218
>Turn and attempt to egress
>Other (Remember your study about the anglerfish from earth that used to attract it's prey by using a shinning light. It's trying to attract you don't fall for it.)
>>
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>>3015232
>>3015228

I kinda doubt that...
>>
>>3015218
>Approach the flame
>>
>>3015237
Yeah I'm thinking it's a trap too. When in the darkness we can't be seen but in the light is a different story.
>>
>>3015237
>>3015240

I don't think it's the void or something overtly dangerous, since Emmerich himself said that wherever Seiner has gone, he couldn't follow and Emmeric was trying to prevent Seiner from getting here in the first place.
>>
>>3015241
>>3015235
>>3015232
>>3015228
>enter the fucking trap
Welp this was short.
>>
>>3015218
>>3015228
Changing vote to approach cautiously and keep an eye out for other things of note.
>>
>>3015218
>>Approach the flame
>>
>>3015247
EMMERICH SAID THIS SHIT IS DANGEROUS EVEN TO THE ENEMY.
>>
>>3015247
An this place does seem kind of...dead. It dosent seem like a place of active power, but like a tomb or a long abandoned home. There could be dangers, but likely not from the Void Gods
>>
>>3015247
The point of thw light is not to see but to attract anyone. Remember what it was said that only humans can walk the void hidding and jumping from shadow to shadow?

But i guess this will be a short run.
>>
>>3015251
Why do people want to step into the thing described as a mouth?
>>
>>3015232
Changing vote to this because why the hell not this is something else >>3015250

>>3015255
I don't remember him saying that but okay.
>>
>>3015261
Well Seiner is dead i guess. No honestly did people never watched horror movies? This is such a obvious trap that it hurts.
>>
>>3015263
YES. That's we are supposed to do. BUT PEOPLE DON'T CARE TO LISTEN AND QD IS LIKELY TO GIVE A SECOND CHANCE HERE.
>>
>the surfaces seem to shift, rippling like knives just beneath the surface of water, the blades grinding through one another with a sharp sound that echoes through your mind

That sounds like a mouth with very sharp teeths to me.
>>
>>3015218
>Turn and attempt to egress
>>
>>3015269
He explicitly stated this is a place "where the divine cannot go." This world is fucking dangerous especially if you're a god.
>>
>>3015218
FINE THEN<FINAL CHANGE
>Skim across the edge of the shadows while keeping an eye on the light.
There.
>>
>>3015237

It's not a trap.

At least not a real one. But it may be a test.

>>3015273
No it's nearly identical to the description of the white crystal that Seiner found.
>>
FUCKERS DON'T FALL FOR THE OBVIOUS TRAP FOR FUCK SAKE!
>>
>>3015218
>>Approach the flame to examine the source without stepping into its illumination
>>
>>3015279
Emmerich works for the Void
Emmerich could not go here.
Emmerich did not want us to go here.
Emmerich was trying to stop Seiner before he got here, whatever this was.
Obviously, we would want to at least investigate why he was trying so hard to keep us from going here.

>>3015218

>>3015247
>>3015269
Changing vote from to >>3015280 Happy now?
>>
>>3015283
Testing to see who is dumb enough to fall for it most likely. Don't touch stuff in this place. This here is a place were thoughs manifest and become real.

The thing is LITERALY dangling from a rope as if it was a bait! Fucking read it!
>>
>>3015218
Can you do another to clarify things
>>3015283
>it's not a trap
Are you retarded? IT FUCKING IS. This entire world is a death world that will destroy if you aren't careful. Aren't you going to exercise caution when we have only one goal?
>>
>>3015289
He wants to stop us from reaching the First Hive because that would be the beginning of the end for our poor Enemy.
>>
>>3015218
You walk forward, the distance between you and the strange flame an indeterminate and seemingly arbitrary concept. As you walk closser, it feels as if the flame moves to match. As you get closer, you see a figure. He is holding the lantern, identical to your own, and you recognize the face. It is old, worn with wrinkles with a pair of glasses and a tattered lab coat draped over his body covered in blood, crusted and dry, a gaping wound on his neck having long since run dry.

You look back at the figure as your eyes meet. Your hesitant step is matched by his, but his face is stern, looking into you judgingly.

"You are you, and why are you here?" He says. There is a strange firmness to the air in front of you, as if he stands just beyond a massive pane of glass. It seems to shudder at your perception of it.

>Answer (write in)
>Who are you?
>Touch the glass in front of you
>Attempt to smother the lantern
>Other
>>
>>3015292
Someone, almost undoubtedly the First Queen, invited him here as a messenger.

This place is safe from the enemy's intrusions.

Do you think Grandma would do anything worse than an ultimately harmless practical lesson on spying from the dark.
>>
>>3015291
It's had me suspicious since it sounded like it was dangling bait.
>>
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You guys lack the paranoia already? Is this because we are not playing as the Queen?
>>
>>3015309
Well we're only in the most dangerous location of the universe on a journey that could determine the fate of the Red Hive.
>>
>>3015306
>Answer (write in)
A blind servant sent to search the land of the dead.
>Attempt to smother the lantern
>>
>>3015306
Someone seeking answers. Who are you?
Also the fact that
>Attempt to smother the lantern
is a premade option has me concerned.
>>
>>3015306
>"You are you,

Yes, I am I.
>>
>>3015306
>>3015316
Wait, are we smothering our lantern or his? Because if its the latter that may come off as hostile.
>>
>>3015306
>Who are you?
>>3015316
The answer is simple. Light attracts things and there could be something showing up soon.
>>
>>3015318
It's not him that's retarded. We know explicitly it can't be him.
>>
I'm thinking it was a mirror Seiner or something, since the gaping neck wound kinda calls back to that time when we sawed his head off.
>>
>>3015319
>He is holding the lantern, identical to your own, and you recognize the face. It is old, worn with wrinkles with a pair of glasses and a tattered lab coat draped over his body covered in blood, crusted and dry, a gaping wound on his neck having long since run dry.


I guess this isn't Emmerich but the Seiner. The one that was killed. Seiner 2.0 said he had doubts if he was still that Seinner i guess it's one of those things.


>Answer (I'm here looking for anwser)
>>
>>3015306
Wait... 'you are you' was a typo for 'who are you'?

>Answer (write in)
Don't you already know? I'm you, though I can't be sure, philosophers would dispute the point. I'm here to learn, the Queen sent me.

We're just talking to the face of Seiner 1.0 guys. Cmon. It's obvious.
>>
>>3015328
It's Seiner 1.0

>>3015324
Yeah i realized that was stupid just after it came out of my fingers.
>>
So QD how did that conflict with Emmerich end?
>>
>>3015191
>>
>>3015306
>Who are you?
>>
>>3015353
It hasn't even begun yet, from a certain point of view.

Just wait for Sunday like a good cliffhanger geez. We may have more rolls to go before he's banished back to the darkness whence he
came.
>>
>>3015354
I have to say I appreciate the filename of this and that you post it in every thread.
>>
>inb4 the psionic isulation we put around the ship makes so the psionic jammer doesn't effect him

Well at least we don't have any Valens in the resort yet so it shouldn't be too damaging.
>>
>>3015368
SPORES how do they work?
>>
Rolled 25 (1d100)

>>3015306
>Attempt to smother the lantern
>>3015314
Support
>>
>>3015369
How bad of a trip you think the Valen will get if they smell the psionic spores?
>>
>>3015314
>>3015316
>>3015374
Humans can “see in the dark” so smothering the lantern makes some sort of sense, but it will be difficult enough to light it again we may wish to wait before committing to this.
>>
>>3015306
Also
>>Answer (write in)
I'm a creation of [the White Queen's name, but in tachyons]. So were you once.
>>
>>3015386
Wonder if this will be a simbology about "passing the lantern".
>>
>>3015386
It says 'attempt' for a reason.

Seiner is probably on safety rails right now for good reason. His path has been prepared for him.
>>
>>3015395
>safety
>in a Halloween thread
Pick one.
>>
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Hell yeah! TIme to bring out the photos in the Bone Zone!
>>
>>3015395
Never assume you are on rails such that you can’t fuck up in a quest. It leads to bad things.
>>
>>3015412
Seiner is in a little cart that's riding along the rails through a spooky house full of ghost exhibits to spook him and teach him lessons. He's safer than he ever was when Emmerich was still hunting for him. He's in Grandma's loving yet terrifying care.

The bad shit will be when he leaves and rides heroically to rescue the damsel from the dastardly Winston Emmerich.
>>
>>3015306
>>Who are you?

>>DO NOT attempt to smother yet. It may make the entity flee or turn hostile before we can question it.
>>
>>3015314
Highly appropriate, support
>>
>>3015314
>A blind servant sent to search the land of the dead.
This is also good
>>
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>>3015306
>Who are you?
Smothering something that might be there for our benefit before we find out what it is isn't a good idea
>>
>>3015306
You look the figure back in the eyes. You recognize the face, although his injuries make it hard to tell. You steady yourself. You can think of a number of responses, but you hesitate.

"I think... that depends." You say, more to yourself than the figure. "But I'm here for answers."

"Information is costly." The figure says back. "Receiving what we think we want changes us. Many times, we are not the same person we were at the beginning."

"I know." You say back. "I've paid that price, only to realize I was toiling after a shadow the whole time." You look to the flame in your lantern. The figure seems to smile, the shadows of your flames leaving long streaks over his face as you hold your hand closer to the small lanter, opening the glass door on its side.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=breVuXLuKUc

"Are you sure that is wise?" The figure says. "It is dark here."

"It doesn't matter." You say. "I think I've been blind this whole time, and just never knew it."

You pinch out the flame with a stinging burn in your hand, and both lanterns go dark. The cold returns, growing now as if the air around you is freezing solid. It aches like an old wound, deep in your bones, and as everything goes dark, you drop the lantern, its handle too cold to touch. You don't hear it hit the ground, and as you reach out for it you can't find it. You begin to panic in the pitch blackness, and as you feel over the ground you stumble for a moment, and you catch a glimpse of motion as you fall to the ground, your eyes pinched shut.

You look out again, only to see nothing, but there is a sensation beyond the darkness. You blink, trying to clear your eyes to gain some perception beyond the endless shadow, and something beyond it responds, shifting to your movements. You close your eyes fully again, standing up as you can feel your mind pull in a strange new perception, images, motion, thought, all shifting before you. You feel the shifting structure around you, rotting, decaying, and growing. Its structure is expanding like a dying star inflating before its implosion, its final gasps only accelerating its death. The realization comes to you without an understanding of how, its composition felt like a phantom limb you've never had to begin with, and before you, deep within the halls of its structure, there is something.

There is more motion. What you thought a wall shifts, and moves, its entire structure crawling down a distant corridore as the trailing portion of some great entity vanishes into the twisting labyrinth of its layer, its movements shaking the whole structure, sending reverberations through your very mind, and yet it feels empty, like the shed skin of a snake given life of its own. A shadow broken away from its master, and as it leaves, a strange light follows it, casting long shadows along the walls behind it.

>Follow the creature
>Call out to it
>Attempt to head the creature off ahead of it
>Other (write in)
>>
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>>3015458
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=breVuXLuKUc
>gif related

>Follow the creature
>>
Rolled 13 (1d100)

>>3015458
>Attempt to head the creature off
For Mother!
>>
>>3015458
>>Follow the creature
>>Stick to the shadows away from the light
>>
>>3015458
>follow after it from the shadows
>>
>>3015458
>follow in shadows.

Shadow hide you siener
>>
>>3015458
>Follow the creature
>>
>>3015458
>>Follow the creature
SNEAK SNEAK SNEAK.
>>
>>3015458
>follow in shadows

SEINER IS SNEAKING FOR MOTHER!
>>
>>3015499
>>3015493
Don't forget to use inside voices like Mother taught you!
>>
>>3015458
>>Follow the creature
>>
>>3015458
>Follow the creature
>Other (Use the darkness to keep yourself hiden and don't breath)
>>
>>3015458

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkKQ_R4b53E

You follow the creature, trailing the light cast by its strange, empty shadow, your own form moving between dark crevasse in the walls, shifting between the darkness of the moving crystal structures around you. You quickly reach a new chamber, impossibly large, it folds in on itself, like countless rooms stacked together in the same space. It is built like a hollow tower, its walls an endless arrangement of empty archways where ruined husks stand like rotted tree trunks, hollowed out with age. The walls, great pillars of shifting crystal, flitter and shift like a series of flowing mirrors, carrying within them new images as they spin, showing new walls, new layers of archways, and yet more empty, rotted stumps of decayed bone.

In the center is an obelisk of seemingly endless size, stretched up through the tower like a massive spine. The light dances at its base, as something is seen curled around it. It shifts, moving in a spiraling motion around the central spine as a set of great arms each out, their clawed fingers gripping the walls as the body floats behind a vast headcrest. It emerges from the pit of the tower bellow you, emerging like a vast snake coiling through the air as its hide trails behind it like tattered robes. What was once an egg sac hangs behind it, the front half a torn and tattered collection of cloth-like flesh, dried and rotted, leaving the whole abdomen hollow and empty. A strange light emanates from within it, illuminating the remaining skin like a tattered lamp shade as it flows behind the figure's body.

You feel its mind, a soft, almost meditative hum, like breathing. It flows over the space around you like flooding water, filling every crevasse as the crystals continue to shift and move, but you see now how they are all connected, the same structure in different places, held together by a scaffolding of thought held as parts of a singular whole. Every part of the structure stemming from the singular entity like a spider's web leading into its center, all of it tied together along its headdress, almost supporting it like a marionette.

"I am the First." She says. "You are the one that was sent?" It feels less like a question and more a statement, as if scripted and rehearsed.

>I am
>Answer other (write in)
>Ask a question (write in)

Also please forgive any momentary delays as I sporadically hand out candy. Shouldn't be too many left out there at this point.
>>
>>3015637
>>I am
>>
>>3015637
"I am the First." She says. "You are the one that was sent?"
Oh shit it’s grandma!
>>
>>3015637
>I am
>>
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>>3015637
>>I am
>>
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Fuck, someone just rang my doorbell and I didn't get any candy...
>>
>>3015637
>>I am
>Ask a question (write in)
Why does the void seek to destroy your kind? What caused the war in the beginning?

And most importantly, can their vision and influence be countered or otherwise contained?
>>
>>3015637
>I am

I wonder if this is really something we can trust.
>>
>>3015637
>>I am
>>Answer other (write in)
"Knowledge is a weapon in this war. And those with knowledge are the most vulnerable. But one cannot win this through ignorance alone. How did this all begin?"
>>
>>3015637
>>Answer other (write in)
>I am sent by the daughter of the ones you sent
Hi Granny!
>>
>>3015637
>Request her knowledge
This is most important thing we can get from her.
>>
>>3015637
>>I am
>>
>>3015637
>>Ask a question (write in)
Are you really the first? None were ever older than you?

Where are we? This place is old, but the doorway carved into it that i took, that the lantern I was given led to...

That looked new.
>>
Why is nobody going for requesting the knowledge of the tech of the Ancient Hives?
>>
>>3015668
I'll support that.

>>3015674
It's dangerous, anon. And we'll likely get the chance later.
>>
>>3015678
How the fuck is it dangerous? We need that shit the most.
>>
>>3015674
We are.>>3015657
>>3015659
>>3015662
>>3015668
We're just being slightly poetic about it, but we're keeping our eye on the goal here.
>>
>>3015674
We literally just met her. At least let her say more than a sentence before asking for shit.
>>
>>3015637
>>Ask a question (write in)
Are you...alive, in the usual sense of the spacetime I came from?

I saw what happened to your vassals. The ancient Queens. I didn't see what happened to the White Queen this year, or the Black Queen 70 thousand years ago.

Is the White Queen somewhere here, the way you are?
>>
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>>3015674
>>3015679

calm your tits anon, we'll get there eventually.
>>
>>3015683
That shit isn't even that valuable compared to some of the other stuff they have.
>>
>>3015679
Well thought-constructed machinery generally has the potential to be dangerous. Especially when your enemy(ies) are known to come after thought-constructed machinery.
>>
>>3015674
Stop being retarded and eat some candy anon sweet crystal jesus.

All that ancient knowledge was technically already passed down to the White Queen, who passed it down to us. We are unlocking it as we speak, bit by bit.
>>
>>3015684
We kind of are already doing that though. People are already leaning toward getting stuff from her instead of introductions.
>>3015693
We understood none of that shit. It's fucking useless in it's current state. Getting her help makes it all instantly useful however.
>>
>>3015698
>People are already leaning toward getting stuff from her instead of introductions.
its pretty much just you, anon.
Poster IDs are a thing in this board.
>>
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On a unrelated note. I just found the Hive most recent product
>>
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>>3015698
>>3015698
We're asking her for history, not technological data. Getting to know her a bit before putting the moves on. Just let it flow.
>>
>>3015706
I thought multiple people were asking for information from her.
>>
>>3015698
This ghost is dying. This entire palace is dying, giving what help it can before it crumbles and shatters. Whatever help she can give us, she's going to give us whether we ask for it or not.

But it almost assuredly won't make Seiner an instant expert in multi-dimensional physics. This shit will probably take time even with accelerated boost from the wisdom of the First.

I guess we can cross our fingers and hope this place is like a hyperbolic time chamber.
>>
>>3015637
>Write in: I am the creation of your daughter the White, and a child of her daughter, the Red. I come seeking knowledge. Can you help me?
>>
>>3015637
So this is Mt. Olympus, where the gods once reigned.
>>
>>3015709
Whatever. I have a sense of urgency to get this shit done now since there is a ghost fucking shit up in our house and we can't afford to waste time.
>>
>>3015710
You bet we are, but we figure QD wouldn't cock block us with a single chance to ask the First a question then shut out any chance to retrieve vital technology from her. Most Every ancient being we've touched base with so far in this quest has given us multiple chances to interact with them.

Besides, the First herself was waiting eons here for this singular event. I highly doubt she let Siener go without bestowing upon him the vital knowledge needed to win this war.
>>
>>3015733
What is time really? Does the concept of "time" truly have any meaning in this place?
>>
Christ, the halloween color sceme is hurting my eyes. Is it for everyone or is it 4chanX exclusive?
>>
>>3015733
Seiner doesn't even know about Emmerich yet, and time passing is probably very relative here.

There's no advantage in rushing it. No one understands the urgency at work here better than Grandma. She knows the score already and won't waste time.
>>
>>3015737
I don't want test it since now isn't the time for that.
>>3015746
At this point we are just dancing with word waiting for QD to post.
>>
>>3015637
Stare into the light in her shattered eggsac. "What did they do to you?"
>>
>>3015745
EVERYONE. I have no idea how to shut this ugly shit off.
>>
>>3015745
Its bearable for me, can't you just change the theme?
>>
>>3015763
I dunno about 4chanx, but on the usual site...
>Scroll all the way down
>Lower right corner you have a "Style" drop down menu
>Select a style other than default (I like "Tomorrow")
>>3015761
An excellent question.
>>
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>>3015637
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nonGP8Q2dHs

"I am" You say back. Her mind seems to pull back, not away from you, if anything you feel dragged in with it, like a sudden rush of air as you feel the outer layers of the vast palace of thought you are in suddenly die and freeze over. The remaining parts seem to warm and grow brighter. Her form shifts, swimming through the air like a sea serpent through an unseen fluid as she coils around you, spiralling downwards as her head grows closer. Thoughts coalesce like a thick mist, quickly condensing into something approaching matter. Her form is still there, yet she is also a new being. A tall and slender woman, her face pale and old with skin that seems almost translucent and a dress of tattered, gossamer wings. Her eyes are empty orbs of vibrant stars, like windows into distant nebulae where pulsing stars and the roaring plasma fields of stars-yet-to-be pulse with energy, forming, dying, and bursting in moments. Her gaze becomes locked onto you, and you feel as if you could almost fall into it.

"Are you really? The First Queen I mean. It's just a title isn't it?" You ask. A part of you wonders if it question would be taken as rude. The Queen you know is an odd being in that respect, but this is a very special situation.

"I was not the first to call myself Queen." She says. "I was the first to ascend, and take my species up from the mud in which we began. I did not discover the process by which to do this, but I was the one to master it."

"So you developed space flight for your species? I'm not sure I understand." You reply.

"You presume I am using metaphor." She replies. In her eyes, the constellations begin to collapse, imploding and colliding as the brightest stars form together, suddenly bursting into a black hole in the center, forming like pupils in her eyes as the nebulae spins around it in bright colors. "I am not. I was the first to reach beyond our constraining dimensions. My mind became a beacon to which our species was drawn, guiding them in from the dark chaos of mortality. I became one of the Three, the head of a vast empire, and a god of this galaxy, seeding life, protecting it, nurturing it, and reaping it when necessary."

"Are you still...." You stammer, thinking of how to say it properly. You are no longer sure of what is possible here. "Are you really here? Still alive?"

"I am, as all things are." She replies. "My mind was not held wholly within real space, but had expanded into the Void. When my body was destroyed, this fragment remained. My roots were cut, but my branches live, for a time. I am not what I was, and I will become less still. I stay here for my task, to see my plans fulfilled and my children live. I have seen you, Adam Seiner. Your kind hold an importance in this task. There were many humans who stood before me in the many branches I have seen, but when they collapsed together, it was you."

>Ask about the past
>Ask about the Void
>Other
>>
>>3015768
Thanks, I rarely care about style since this is the only board I ever visit anymore.
>>
>>3015761
I would second this question
>>
>>3015773
>Ask about the Void
>Ask about the past
>Request her assistance
>>
>>3015773
>>Ask about the past
>>Ask about the Void
>>
>>3015773
>>Ask about the Void
What are they? What started this war between us?
>>
>>3015773
>>Ask about the past
>>Ask about the Void
>>Other: Stare into the light in her shattered eggsac. "What did they do to you?"
>>
>>3015791
Supporting
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>>3015791
Sphere people but Seiner wouldn't know.
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>>3015773
Not Grandma, but Grand Matriarch.
>Ask about the past
Especially the other three. What made the Cluster a force that could equal someone like the First, and what of the Silicone as well?
>Ask about the Void
>>
>>3015773
>Ask about the Red Queen

Is there anything special about her? Was she always meant to be? Or is she merely happenstance and any could have done her task?
>>
>>3015796
She just said what happened to her. Her body was destroyed.
>>
>>3015801
I like it.
>>
>>3015801
This is pretty good too

>>3015802
Yeah, I realized that after I posted previously.
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>>3015773
>Ask about the past
>Other: (How do i block someone that is able to reach the world from the 4th dimension!!)

>There were many humans who stood before me in the many branches I have seen, but when they collapsed together, it was you.

Well ain't that something.
>>
>>3015801
I like this too. Are we the Feral child, the seed of our reborn species, or the last queen to fight this war, or all of the above?
>>
>>3015773
>>Ask about the past

Also, Granny Firstie, uh. when we say 'the Void' do we mean... the place that we are? outside the 3 dimensions? Or do we mean the enemy. The term is so ambiguous. Which one should we use? Does the enemy have a better name.

Also, that neutral party, the Cluster. I've gotten a trickle of information on them from the Red Queen. Did they exceed the hives in biological mastery? Did they have applications of psionics or FTL that you lacked?
>>
>>3015815
Remember that this is the realm of dreams. It makes sense that beings existing here can see quantum improbability. Luckily that shouldn't help them predict things much.
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>>3015827
Every space faring race has their own unique form of FTL.
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>>3015815
We technically already know how to block him. The damn Psionic Shroud. It was super effective.

Or, you bodily drag them back into the 4th dimension yourself. Since Seiner is gonna learn how to do that too.
>>
>>3015773
>>Ask about the Void
>>
>>3015865
The WQ's ghost basically told us the shroud was a good idea, but that it wouldn't last forever. We need something that will remove the
>You feel the notice of a distant mind
debuff
>>
>>3015838
Seiner is an improbability like no other. He's the son of the person who built the first functional psionic cannon, a clone created by the Red Queen, the only human alive to speak with the White Queen (her shade techanically), and now he speaks with the First Queen. At this point Seiner should be a believer of fate.
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>>3015878
>son
Wait, I think it's actually grandson.
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>>3015865
>Or, you bodily drag them back into the 4th dimension yourself. Since Seiner is gonna learn how to do that too.

Now i'm picturing Emmerich and Seiner having a fight just like Neo and Smith from the Matrix.
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>>3015878
*Grandson
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>>3015881
it is grandson
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>>3015878
Seiner is the new Jesus, he even died and was reborn again. Lee is just the hive prophet.
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>>3015878

What is fate, if not the planned events ordained by omnipotent and omniscient cosmic beings?
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>>3015883
Probably while shifting in and out of space on the Builder's Legacy, with fitting boss fight music provided by black metal bands.
>>
I too am curious what more cultured Queens would think of the Red Queen, my guess is that she'd be considered stunningly competent but also a fucking clown who devotes a worrying amount of time to playing in dirt with beasts and dead things like Theseus.
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>>3015888

He died as a man, and was reborn in the heart/soulwomb of a Not-Yet-A-God.
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>>3015898
There's even a good argument to be made for him having been reborn to atone for the sins of his people.
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>>3015888
I'm guessing Theseus wouldn't be super fond of Seiner becoming the new Jesus considering he insisted we kill his Dad. Hopefully in his "reborn" form Seiner and Theseus can find reconciliation.

>>3015897
They'd probably consider her a savant when it comes to research and highly competent militarily, but an uncultured feral child when it comes to tolerating the insults and disobedience of the younger races.
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>>3015904
We could just ask SQ what they would think.
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>>3015878
>>3015888
>Both were respected Union Scientist
>Seiner was obsessed with finding out the truth behind what happened to his Grandfather on the moon
>Emmerich was a nutjob who spent too much time with the Void
>Both were remade and reborn by the things that killed them; Us with Seiner and Emmerich becoming a Void Walker after being pulled into the Void Crystal
>Seiner finally saw the light and is trying to atone for his sins
>Emmerich went cuckoo and is furthering the goals of the Void Gods

>>3015895
>>3015883

>Emmerich and Seiner having a fight just like Neo and Smith from the Matrix.
>Probably while shifting in and out of space on the Builder's Legacy, with fitting boss fight music provided by black metal bands.

It's like pottery.
>>
>>3015904

Ah, I am rather convinced that Theseus as he is now wouldn't be terribly bitter about Seiner. I mean, Theseus has factual, absolute evidence that hostile existential threats exist, and for a human, a Rogue AI classifies, even if it was later disproved through Theseus' own actions and thoughts, the logic is sound.
>>
>>3015895
It hadn't even occurred to me that the Seiner-Emmerich fight is going to have Ceph-Valen Death Metal as its soundtrack.
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>>3015895
Man that is do rad. Shifting in and out of the station pulli g each other and punching or using psionics while the burning Jupiter on the background.

Shit would be fucking metal.

>>3015904
Eh Elizabeth forgave him i believe Theseus would too.
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>>3015904
Imagine if the Hive ever co-researched fourth dimensional shenanigans with the Unity, we'd be pretty much obligated to send in Siener to direct the effort.

It'd be the most awkward family reunion in galactic history.
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>>3015910
QD confirmed for George Lucas. So this is what he meant by "home videos that no one will see"
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>>3015911
Besides Theseus has proven to be way better then most humans about certaing stuffs. I know he might be a little bitter at first but i think he will ultimatly forgive Seiner.
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>>3015773
"One of three, but what about the other two?" You ask. You've felt this knowledge from the Hive before, this talk of the ancient Three, the precursor races of the galaxy. "And how did this go so far? The Void, the war, all of this destruction?"

"They are..." The First coils her body, taking flight above as if finding the topic painful to speak of. "The cost of our victory." She finishes. Her arm reaches down to you, as her slender, spectral form reaches out with her hand, her great claw reaches through it, poth touching your forehead at once as your mind falls away, as if a pit had opened beneath you.

You are suddenly elsewhere. Many countless millennia ago. You see a circle of Queens around a crystal, their thoughts focused upon it as its structure inverts, its mass expanding into another space as its form turns black and obscuring, its surface reflecting nothing. You can see it further though, its form reaching out, slicing across spacetime like a dagger and plunging into the heart of some unseen life form elsewhere in spacetime. There is a mental scream, a sudden sense of agonized panic and the fear of imminent death, and as the crystal begins to shift, like a twisting knife, the mental cry dissipates, its source smeared across the Void like an afterimage stretched across a photosphere of a singularity. The sense shakes you, piercing your mind like a hot needle as the scream echoes in your head.

"We did not start the War, but we finished it." She says. There is a shame to her voice. "We reached through the shadows and struck at our enemy's minds, flaying their thoughts and souls. They fled their space, wounded and afraid. We were victors, but our knowledge came with a terrible cost, one that all the galaxy would be made to pay."

"They used it against you, then?" You ask. "They found out your tech and counter attacked?" The spectral form of the First shakes her head, her eyes glowing with an aura of sadness, hanging along the glowing eyes like tears.

cont.
>>
>>3015921

>It's happening
>>
>>3015921
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xcxle_sS8jY

"No." She says. "I warned them this was a dark path. They claimed I was greedy, unfit to rule. They could not see what I saw. That their path would fray our minds and descend us all into chaos. The Queens were hungry, powerful things. I could not give them the temperament and patience that comes with knowing weakness, and so they were vengeful gods. They saw this place as their fortress and their weapon. Once it began, there was no path to stop it left open to me. I had failed, and we paid for the blood we shed."

You feel the memory before you see it. The shrieking voices of a thousand Queens as a shifting form of crystal falls from the sky, impacting the ground as the First Queen struggles to think, her drones collapsing around her, their glittering bodies and advanced technology useless as their minds are left blank. The First Queen's mind begins to crumble, tattering at the edges, as she focuses her conscious into a single form, directing all force into the one , infinitesimal point.

The Palace of Thought, the vast, non euclidean fortress at the center of the Hive's vast empire, implodes. A singularity engulfs the continent, tearing the planet asunder as its gravitational axis is suddenly shifted, its atmosphere igniting from the force as its crust upends. Her mind becomes clear, frozen in a moment of infinite time at the brink of oblivion, the thought construct around her calcifying with stubborn pride and hope.
>>
>>3015914
She hasnt forgiven him, she just recognizes that he is now irreplaceable. We still need to have another talk about even though we can regrow body parts for him so maiming him wont be permanent, its the principle of the action that makes it bad. Is it ok for me to beat the shit out of a sibling as long as there is no permanent damage? Fuck no. I think Theseus' reaction to his survival will be more...interesting.
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>>3015927
>tfw everyone around you is a retard and fuck everything up but you can't be really mad because in the end you allowed them to reach this point.
I know this feeling.
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>>3015927
>The Void Gods are actually Queens who have gone mad with power.
Please tell me i'm wrong
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>>3015942
They aren't.
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>>3015927
I can see how the Ancient Queen's use of the void precipitated their own downfall, but I fail to see why the First feels as though it was instrumental in their own destruction. They used a terrible weapon against their foes, which was in turn turned against them, but is that really all that happened?

It sounds to me like the use of the Void caused their minds to fray in ways that go beyond merely being blinded by pride.
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>>3015942

Dude, ever since we met our horrific cousins we've known the Void Gods were family, distant cousins at the very least, this just means that they were actually our great aunts all along.
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>>3015942
You're wrong. We know they're the third race.
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>>3015909
She's our daughter and our subject. It'd be hard to find a more biased witness, although if we ask her to be honest she probably would be.

>>3015921
>>3015927
Well that's interesting, the First Queen pulled the same hiding in the void trick we thought the "Void" did.

Also, it's good to know we didn't start this war, I was worried about that.

>>3015942
It is starting to sound as if the hatred, greed, and arrogance of the queens crystalized into what the Void now is. The Schism was a schism BETWEEN the queens, the war ended much sooner.
>>
Oh well...time to become a kin slayer i guess.
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I don't think that I've pressed the "Update" button this much in a looong time.
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So, new theory (which could prove to be completely wrong with time): The Queens won the war against the Sillicates, where the Cluster was neutral. However, the great costs of the war lead the first queen to lose control and several of the remaining queens went mad with power and became the Void. The "Schism" has nothing to do with the sillicates - it refers to the civil war between the "queens" that followed.
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>>3015990
Actually I think we are missing some information here.
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>>3015927
Did she... just create a black hole with the power of thought? God damn
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>>3015990
>>3015996
Well it does seem to explain why the Void would just discard their psionically controlled silicate machines and start using organic slave species, when they had perfectly useable servants beforehand.

The Void aren't the Silicates.
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>>3015996
I agree we don't have enough information to conclude this yet. Perhaps with time we will figure this out.

>>3015999
Agreed.

The name "schism" also makes more sense to refer to a civil war instead of a war between different species anyways.

Also, it helps to explain why so much silicate stuff is left lying around mostly functional. The actual silicates were all killed with precision attacks using void shards, but they left lots of their toys lying around.
>>
>>3015990
After seeing the prevalence of silicate based life on Nowhere and P2, I've got to say I find this theory extremely improbable. The silicates have been associated with the Void as far back as they were both brought up. The only way we could link rogue Queens to our enemy was if the rogue Queens turned THEMSELVES into silicates, and used that technology to slaughter their biological relatives.
>>
>>3015927

The memory rips at your mind, tearing at you like the whipping winds of a tornado. As it abades, you realize you have collapsed to the ground, your hands clasped around your head tightly. The throbbing pain is gone, the agonized screams quiet, yet they still haunt you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAfmvuobv-s

"This was the Schism. In truth, it began before the War ended, the moment members of our kind chose to use the Void as their weapons and taint it with war. I warned them, but they could not understand the weave of the universe." You see a branching tree, stretching up and into infinity, its many branches splitting off endlessly. You try to see them, each one holding some strange universe of possibilities, and then you watch the circle of Queens lash out into the Void, their crystal folding into it and away from real space, and the branches begin to die, rapidly collapsing. Paths of incomprehensible potentials, falling into splinters, until there is but a single path, a branch reaching upwards into infinity through space and time, where the Schism grows, the First Queen is killed, and the Void becomes at fortress of hatred and bile, of a petulant demand for control even as the galaxy descends into chaos.

But there is also another, so small you missed it. The First Queen reaches out to it, holding it delicately in her hands. It is not so much a branch as a twig, tiny, delicate, and glowing vibrantly with hope. You look into it, and like a fractal form it expands, now a full tree with its own branches. You see the Ark launching, the Skyl revolt, you continue to follow, racing through the past as more branches collapse with ever choice, shunting you along a singular line of reality. The White Queen isolates herself as the Black Queen plots with the crystals, her own penchant for violence taking her down dark, and similar roads. But she was not the first to attempt to walk that path, and now, there are others waiting for her at its sad end.

You see Earth, primitive man fleeing under the fires of a Hive fleet, their genetics reformed, culled as needed, pruned and shaped with care like a bonsai tree. You see the Union, the Confederation, the Colony Wars, and the Psionic Canon.

Millions of branches collapse, sealing off before you can catch a glimpse of their realities, and now so few remain. With that one weapon, the universe has been set onto a narrow path, one that ends in only one way.

You watch the White Queen die, and the tree seems to fall and die with her, but there is something new, a small seed thrown from its branches. It lands on a remote world, covered in thick fog and strange life, and from it, a new tree grows, an infinite tree standing tall like a great albion oak, its possibilities endless.

"It is here that there is hope." She says, looking at the crimson tree, its bark covered in blood red scars and growing layers of moss, its trunk host to creatures living within.

cont.
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>>3016002
>The Enemy went a little crazy and turned the weapon use on them against the Hive empire.

But that's wrong. The First Queen explicitly says:
>"They used it against you, then?" You ask. "They [the silicates] found out your tech and counter attacked?" The spectral form of the First shakes her head, her eyes glowing with an aura of sadness,

>"No." She says. "I warned them this was a dark path. They claimed I was greedy, unfit to rule. They could not see what I saw. That their path would fray OUR minds and descend US ALL into chaos. The Queens were hungry, powerful things.

Sure as hell sounds like the queens minds frayed and they turned on each other. She explicitly says the the silicates did NOT discover the tech and counter-attack.
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>>3015998

>tfw you will never think so strongly that you end up creating a black hole.
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>>3016002
>"They used it against you, then?" You ask. "They found out your tech and counter attacked?" The spectral form of the First shakes her head, her eyes glowing with an aura of sadness, hanging along the glowing eyes like tears.

>"No." She says. "I warned them this was a dark path. They claimed I was greedy, unfit to rule. They could not see what I saw. That their path would fray our minds and descend us all into chaos. The Queens were hungry, powerful things. I could not give them the temperament and patience that comes with knowing weakness, and so they were vengeful gods. They saw this place as their fortress and their weapon. Once it began, there was no path to stop it left open to me. I had failed, and we paid for the blood we shed."

Seems to imply otherwise.

>>3016005
I just checked the archives, Thread 66.3
>"The Schism began because the War ended." She says. "I was born to fight our current enemy. I know little of those who came before. I know there were the Three, and we were one of these Ancients. The galaxy was divided between us, and we held unquestioned dominion over it. In time, as it always does, conflict arose. I know one remained neutral, while the other fought with the Hive. Our kind won the war and drove them to their homeworld, but at a terrible cost. The details are lost to time, but the space we hold now was once theirs, and their silicate tools remain."

The silicate tools belong to their old enemy, but the WQ doesn't directly say that they were the same as the enemy that she was born to fight. That also implies that thye may be different entities altogether.

>>3016012
FUCKING CALLED IT
>>
>>3016012
>She says, looking at the crimson tree, its bark covered in blood red scars and growing layers of moss, its trunk host to creatures living within.
All the other organisms that we have fostered and aided.
>>
>>3016012
>You watch the White Queen die, and the tree seems to fall and die with her, but there is something new, a small seed thrown from its branches. It lands on a remote world, covered in thick fog and strange life, and from it, a new tree grows, an infinite tree standing tall like a great albion oak, its possibilities endless.
>"It is here that there is hope." She says, looking at the crimson tree, its bark covered in blood red scars and growing layers of moss, its trunk host to creatures living within.

Ah hell yeah, here is where we see the Red Queen in all her true glory. Infinite possibilities and a shelter for other creatures.

QD, I just have to say, your writing for this entire section has been just beautiful. Thank you.
>>
>>3016012
>She says, looking at the crimson tree, its bark covered in blood red scars and growing layers of moss, its trunk host to creatures living within.
And this is how we appear to our own kin. The one who bore a great many calamities and bleed for it, and who carries lesser species forward to greater possibilities.

The poetry of your quest and writing never ceases to impress me QD. Bravo.
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>>3016012
i don't even..wow.
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Holy shit
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>>3016020
Also the fact we aren't just covering every planet with Hive creep and tur ing it in basicaly a Hive only world.
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>>3016012
But why does it seem so... cheeky
>>
>>3016012
>"This was the Schism. In truth, it began before the War ended, the moment members of our kind chose to use the Void as their weapons and taint it with war. I warned them, but they could not understand the weave of the universe." You see a branching tree, stretching up and into infinity, its many branches splitting off endlessly. You try to see them, each one holding some strange universe of possibilities, and then you watch the circle of Queens lash out into the Void, their crystal folding into it and away from real space, and the branches begin to die, rapidly collapsing. Paths of incomprehensible potentials, falling into splinters, until there is but a single path, a branch reaching upwards into infinity through space and time, where the Schism grows, the First Queen is killed, and the Void becomes at fortress of hatred and bile, of a petulant demand for control even as the galaxy descends into chaos.
So the Void gods aren't the silicates and maybe not even the queens who used the void as a weapon but the void weapon itself animated due to the intent of the queens who used it?
>>
>>3016031

So...


>"Evil didn't exist until man felt malice for one another."

Type situation.
>>
>>3016032
Evil and malice seem to be the default state of every sentient organism that we know of.
>>
>>3016012
>You see Earth, primitive man fleeing under the fires of a Hive fleet, their genetics reformed, culled as needed, pruned and shaped with care like a bonsai tree. You see the Union, the Confederation, the Colony Wars, and the Psionic Canon.
>Millions of branches collapse, sealing off before you can catch a glimpse of their realities, and now so few remain. With that one weapon, the universe has been set onto a narrow path, one that ends in only one way.

I don't know if this is just fluff describing how the Void intervened directly because of its firing, or if the psionic cannon literally bends spacetime and prunes alternate universes so that it'll only go down a specific path.

>>3016031
Might be, the WQ herself said that the OQ looking too deep into the Void led to her losing control of herself
>"Her mind is lost to madness." Your mother says. "She no longer holds sentience, but has become a drone herself. She is not the sister I once knew. You must kill her, not to avenge the lost Queens, but to give her mercy. Her actions were not her own."
>>
>>3016031
Of course. We never really thought about it but if the void is the realm of thought why wouldn't it become what it's used for. The ancient hives created the weapons that disturbed the Warp and now we're fighting the chaos gods.
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>>3016031
May I point out the homeworld of the Sphere people turned into that "thing." It's really unclear what exactly is the enemy.
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>>3016035
A cannon powered on the destruction of an alternate universe. I like it.
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>>3016035
It would explain the apaprent immunity of the enemy. It controls which realities collapse therefore the improbable of "no damage" becomes fact.
>>
>>3016038
Could be just a red herring. We know that the Silicates fled to their homeworld, which is in this region, and it is apparently protected enough that the Ancient Hives' void weapon didn't reach them there.
>>
The finished psionic cannon wouldn't be as crude and could control which realities collapsed instead of destroying them all.
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>>3016029
BECAUSE IT WAS ALWAYS CHEEKY

EVER SINCE THE FIRST QUEENS LEARNED OF THE POSSIBILITIES OF THE VOID

AND LEARNED OF ALL THE LIFE THERE IS TO TROLL IN THE UNIVERSE

AS IT WAS, AS IT ALWAYS WILL BE

AS EVER THERE EXISTS A QUEEN, THERE SHALL BE CHEEKINESS IN THE UNIVERSE
>>
>>3016035
The queens may have given the void substance and form by using it as a weapon against the silicates. When the void gained true sentience it turned on the Queens that used it the most, fed it with the greatest power, and seized them for itself.

>>3016038
The First Queen also turned herself into a black-hole to escape psionic weapons.
>>
>its trunk host to creatures living within.

And now i'm thinking of Raligah, Phatoms, Skyl, Ceph, Taidaren all in miniatures inside of it and the Barren Queen like a small sprout hidding in the shade of our tree.
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>>3016041
>Enemy is a psychic entity that transcends spacetime and is impervious to all forms of harm
>Design a weapon that alters reality and sifts through every possible universe until it finds one where the enemy gets fucked up.
>>
Jesus christ the poor silicates, this whole time we thought they were the enemy but the were victims the whole time.

Makes P2 the grave world we discovered seem forlorn almost.
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>>3016062
They picked the wrong fight.
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>>3016035
Its the white queen being a dick and eugenicsing early man with extreme prejudice.

This is interesting because this actualy points out an interesting limitation to the queens or at least the old queens where they seem to have a limited sense of causality as decisions once made prune their causal concept tree. Perhaps similar to the Bugers of Enders Game who when they change their mind on something they strait up forget that any previous contradictory decision is just forgotten or stricken from their conception.
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>>3016054
We are a point of infinite possibility that was spawned from two succesive times that the possibilities of the universe collapsed into a single outcome. WHen the void stares out at the future of the universe and smiles as it see but one outcome remaining, me drag our claw thru the sand, making another path. And when the void turns to us in a fury, we stare back at it, with a smile.
>>
>>3016031
Aw fuck i just realized this proves the "Void gods are ancient AIs" theory slightly true, even if it was an accident.
May the Anon who came up with that theory please step up for well deserved bragging?
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>>3016059
Don't forget the most important ones, the humans.
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>>3016062
I guess it's like gradma said we didn't started the war but we will surely finish it.
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>>3016072
It's wrong though. AI is manufactured not naturally occurring.
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>>3016071
I've always believed that best response to maddened hatred is mocking derision.
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>>3016069

Well.

I mean.

Our most basic method of Thought uses Faster than Light energies and particles. I imagine that "Time" as humans understand it means non-euclidean dick.
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>>3016069
i think that was a mix of despair and old age i mean at least the Sacared queen thinks that we do things the way we do because we are so young.

Mostly i think that due to our wild nature we developed a absurd desire for research and that's why we preserve ecosystems because each planet may change or evolve on their on with time and create new knowledge and research.

At least that is my head canon.
>>
>>3016074
Oh yeah...those too and soon also the Valen!!
>>
>>3016094

There's also the early-youth experience of us trying to be covert and trying to not trigger the, at the time, incredibly dangerous native wildlife, so it put an emphasis on working WITH the ecosystem in our mentality.

Remember when our Drones were cordyceps'd? We were afraid that getting rid of the things responsible would Summon Bigger Fish in addition to being incredibly obvious.
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>>3016012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFQQsVsPFv4

You look through the branches. The tree is still full, but there are a few branches that have collapsed, a few possibilities locked away, for better or ill. You see war, destruction, death, from all forms of life. Yet also there is patience.

You see in one branch as Gemini burns. A million drones descend upon the planet's surface as Union warships fall from the sky in chunks, their drives igniting and immolating the landscape in the quantum fire of hawking radiation before consuming themselves in a spectacular death.

In another, hive fleets intermingle with the vast cylinders of server ships, atomic warheads flashing like lightning bugs in the night between them. You turn, and another branch shows Valen merchant warships bursting open as a hive fleet boards a hypergate before a moment later it ignites into a deliberate containment breach, the vast amounts of energy held within bursting forth and wiping out vast swaths of both fleets.

You turn again, and you see yourself. The strange planet of the Red Queen under your feet. Something is different here. You see yourself in a panic, a CIP pistol in hand as a hive warrior tears open the primitive sponge-like shelter of your camp and tears open your throat. More follow behind, filling the shelter as they devoir the rest of the team. You shut your eyes, and as you open them a moment later you see the planet burning, the first wave of a planetary invasion throwing itself uselessly against wave after wave of drones.

"There were so many ways she could have fallen into our bad habits. To think herself above all other life." The First says. She turns to you, and quickly corrects herself. "She is, as is the nature of a Queen, but there is a difference between being greater, and thinking yourself greater. She knew weakness, and it has tempered her in a way no other Queen has been since myself. Other Queens must learn this through failure, but she has struggled for life, and so she values it." She pulls on a branch, bring it to prominence as you watch the end of a brief fight between some humans and a terrible beast. Time passes in a flash, and you see several drones carrying the bleeding human away.

"This is my favorite moment." She says. "It was so necessary. The creature so meaningless." You watch the flashes of tangential branches where the human is consumed, dissected, or interrogated in various combinations, only to watch as the drones provide food and shelter to the wounded human, and carry him back to camp where you see your own self in a past life look upon the drone with cruel, suspicious eyes, unaware of the true potential of what controls it.

"When the hive saved Lee." You say.

"Yes. Any other Queen of my generation would see no value in such a creature. Everything was a tool to them, made to serve their hive either by its life or by its death. That is the mindset that sent them to look upon the Void with violent intentions."

cont.
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>>3016110
>"There were so many ways she could have fallen into our bad habits. To think herself above all other life." The First says. She turns to you, and quickly corrects herself. "She is, as is the nature of a Queen, but there is a difference between being greater, and thinking yourself greater. She knew weakness, and it has tempered her in a way no other Queen has been since myself. Other Queens must learn this through failure, but she has struggled for life, and so she values it." She pulls on a branch, bring it to prominence as you watch the end of a brief fight between some humans and a terrible beast. Time passes in a flash, and you see several drones carrying the bleeding human away.
>"This is my favorite moment." She says. "It was so necessary. The creature so meaningless." You watch the flashes of tangential branches where the human is consumed, dissected, or interrogated in various combinations, only to watch as the drones provide food and shelter to the wounded human, and carry him back to camp where you see your own self in a past life look upon the drone with cruel, suspicious eyes, unaware of the true potential of what controls it.
>"When the hive saved Lee." You say.
>"Yes. Any other Queen of my generation would see no value in such a creature. Everything was a tool to them, made to serve their hive either by its life or by its death. That is the mindset that sent them to look upon the Void with violent intentions."


Awww
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>>3016116
She'd probably love the stories of Humanx Commonwealth.
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>>3016110
And there are some people who hate Lee still.

mm mm mmm
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>>3016110
Alright folks you heard it here.

It's canon, Lee is best waifu.
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>>3016094
>>3016108
I now want Seiner to see us in this plane but have us completely changed from a massive read star to a small sad shy little girl holding a lighting bug lamp in one hand and a handmade bug net in the other.
>>
At a hockey game rn which made me think. What if we made a sports team composed of clones? We'd make big credits with little investment
>>
>>3016133
But they would win all the time against human teams.

To make it more exciting, multiple drone teams, each controlled by a quantum thinker. People would bet on which team would win against the other.
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>>3016110
Man, imagine if all the "Cut his arms and legs off" anons had won their votes.
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>>3016136
Replicant clones are no different than regular humans.
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>>3016133
Grav ball is a thing...we should build a stadium in a space city one of these days. Just think of it? Playing grav ball in literal space!

Or at least the closest thing to it.

>>3016124
>>3016116
Kinda sad she didn't liked the scene of us saving our first thinker the one that drived our pod to the planet and we still have him in our Hive and take care of him.
>>
>>3016139

Let's just hope she wasn't looking too closely when we mind-raped Lyle into joining us
>>
>>3016130
Awww, that would be so cute.

We're still a very small tree, though, all things considered. We still have a universe to grow through.

>>3016139
Probably would have the quest end sooner, or at least be a lot more violent. I really like how the queen developed, though. I also really like how struggle and the value of life has tempered us. If we have any daughters, they should need to struggle and learn to value life as we and the scarred queen have.
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>>3016142
except for their triplex-DNA which makes it easy to gene mod them to maximum legal physical ability. Pure humans would still have a chance to win but the odds would be stacked against them.
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>>3016139
In some dimension they did.

>"You watch the flashes of tangential branches where the human is consumed, dissected, or interrogated in various combinations..."
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>>3016148
Lyle attacked the Hive, butchered our children, and we didn't kill him and instead made him love us and grow stronger. That's pretty different from how most queens would treat a violent intruder I suspect.
>>
>>3016142
Welp, misread the clone part.

>>3016139
>been with the quest since the first thread
>see the fruit of all our shitposting has slowly pushed us into the Good/Pragmatic path.

>>3016147
Itss different because the thinker was already part of our hive and had an immediate usefulness that was logically worth saving it.

Lee at the time was as burden and a possible threat to our very existence. The First Queen obviously doesn't put much stock herself in diplomatic points with the lesser species.
>>
>>3016152
Only hybrids have triplex DNA. Replicant clones are pure humans to the core.
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>>3016152
Do you not know what a replicant is or how cloning works? Replicants are no different than a vanilla humans.
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>>3016148
Eh we could have just eaten him and done we decided to spare him and even gave him a steady job. We can even give him a allowance now that we have our own business.
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>>3016110
You continue to watch branches collapse, further and further, until the tree is trimmed, but still filled with potential. Many of the paths end well short, but others continue out to infinity, far beyond your own horizon.

"I can see no further." She says. "My death has fixed my observations to a point in spacetime long past. The branches become too numerous beyond this moment, but your Queen, by child, can carry on this torch further still."

"Wait." You say, suddenly confused. "What do you mean death, what you said before-"

"Yes. Death is meaningless, we all continue to exist in our points of spacetime, but we can no longer create new branches. Our paths have all collapsed, and what remains is a line, running from birth to death, existing in its way for all eternity. This line is common to all things, living or not. My paths have been pruned, but my foresight of them allows me to influence them still."

"Are you saying you're... speaking to me from the past?" You ask. "And you've predicted all of this?"

"I have guided what paths I could, pruned those that would result in failure. I have done what I could. The White Queen knew this, in a fashion. I gave her a great cache of knowledge, filled with terrible secrets, among them the realization it was not her fate to live, but to build a foundation for chance at hope."

>Ask additional questions (write in)
>Ask about your abilities (write in)
>Ask more about the Red Queen (write in)
>Other
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>>3016110
I wanna hear about the other members of the Three. It'd be great if we could bring the old gang back together.
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>>3016139
You know what would be awesome once this quest wraps up? If QD did a couple of omakes of how this quest would have turned out if we had voted differently at key moments. What would have happened if we just ate Lee when we first met him? How would things have panned out if we immediately tried to open up ties with the Union, when we first had the chance? If we had warred against Theseus when his drones first came to us?

It would be like looking down a closed off branch, not unlike Siener is doing right now through the Void.
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>>3015191
This just makes me wish we never killed Seiner. Kinda sad to think this is a clone.
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>>3016152
Replicants aren't Hybrids anon.
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>>3016161
>Ask additional questions (write in)
So how can we defeat the Void? What do we have to do?


>>3016165
Well his death pretty much meant that his rebirth as our clone had greater impact.
>>
>>3016161
>Ask additional questions (write in)
Tell us more about the Three? Tell us of their past and potential futures.
>>
>>3016161
>>Ask additional questions (write in)
>>Ask about your abilities (write in)
And what, if any caches of technology can you provide us? Can you show us how to use Void engineering without opening ourselves to attach from the Void?
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>>3016165
There was no real hate behind but a request from an ally.
>>3016161
Let's ask about the homeworld of the third race and also get that sweet tech.
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>>3016165
The way I resolve the mental clone issue is the same way I solve the Ship of Theseus issue. If the new iteration fills the same niche as the old and there is no competition for the spot, it is in all practicality the same as the old. If we mad another Seiner, then neither of them are in all practicality the old Seiner.
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>>3016161
Seconding this >>3016170
We need more lore!

Also kinda unrelated: anyone up for converting the Scavs into a universal peacekeeper species instead of a raider species?
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>>3016176
Well now that I think of it we are the Ancients the Scavengers worshipped, one of them at least.
>>
>>3016161
>>Ask additional questions (write in) Is the Void...former queens? Fallen to rage and darkness? Turned into mere tools by tools they once themselves used to destroy?
>What does the psionic canon actually do?

>>Ask about your abilities (write in) How can we defeat the Void and the obsidian queen without falling prey to the same failings as the queens you once knew?

>>Ask more about the Red Queen (write in) Do you have any advice for us on the path? Are there any branches we should avoid?
>>
>>3016161
>White Queen knew this, in a fashion. I gave her a great cache of knowledge, filled with terrible secrets, among them the realization it was not her fate to live, but to build a foundation for chance at hope.

oh...

>Ask more about the Red Queen (Why is she so different from the others? Was she altered like us humans wrre?)

>Ask about your abilities (What can i do to protect the Queen and avoid the tree from dying like the others?)

>Ask additional questions (will you still be here if i leave?)
>>
>>3016176
They would need to pay for their crime first!

1 moderately sized couch as was promised.
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>>3016180
The Scavengers probably worshiped the silicates before the ancient hives destroyed the silicates. They may be as much an enemy of the Void as we are ultimately, seeing as the Void was originally a tool of the ancient queens to destroy the silicates.
>>
Now that I think of it can we pull souls from the Void?
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>>3016189
The worship the "might makes right" thing the hive had going.
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>>3016130
Mang that's cute as hell
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>>3016176
Well we already have a broodmother and a alpha...sooo we already have the tools to create our own pack.
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>>3016188
But of course! Can't let them get away with our couch unfulfilled.
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>>3016176
I would be completely down to turn the Scavs into a peace keeping, scouting force. All we'd have to do is genetically boost their sociability and intelligence and they would work out that maybe fighting everything and everyone you meet to death isn't a terribly smart way to go.
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>>3016200
Why not take all control of the entire Armada?
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>>3016161
>Ask additional questions
If the Void has been tainted, what needs to be done to 'un-weaponize' it?
How can I avoid the influence of these... things... that taint this dimension?
If death is meaningless... is my grandfather here somewhere?
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>>3016181
>>3016186
Supporting both of these, they're both extremely relevant.
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>>3016209
Support
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>>3016209
Oh shit the temptation to leave the trail to fulfill a personal need at the expense of the greater goal.
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>>3016206
All in due time, all in due time.

>>3016204
Why make the scavs a peacekeeping force instead of being peacekeepers ourselves? The amount of modification and resocialization we would have to do to the scavs would be on par with the white queen's genetic manipulations of the humans to change their society so much. It's a massive change. We could try, but it would be long term and in the meantime it's more cost-effective to produce our own ships.
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>>3016161
>>Ask additional questions (write in)
So, right before I left on this vision quest of mine...

I got the sense the Red Queen saw something unusual. A semi-collective minded race of nomads called the Scavengers, and a set of 4 psionic artificial moons, hurling living rocks to defend a planet.

It sounds like something that dates from your era.
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>>3016209
>that spoiler

Well shit.
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>>3016215
But anon, they wouldn't be doing it alone. For they will have the greatest weapon of all! Family and Friendship and Formics!
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>>3016215
Personally, if we could somehow infest the Scav High Matriarch or at least convince a good portion of the scav fleet to follow us, we could use them as cannon fodder to throw against the OQ's fortified systems.
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>>3016165
No, his death and resurrection and the inherent philosophical paradoxes of it tie in too perfectly to the themes of the Void, and there being this whole inscrutable "dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind" where minds seem to exist as projections of the brain and the concept of death itself is nearly meaningless.
>>
>>3016161

Supporting these two.
>>3016181
>>3016186
>>
>>3016161
>>Ask additional questions (write in)
All minds are here in the Void, right?

...What about... artificial minds? Quantum minds? Humans, we made computers out of quantum circuits, not infinite folded spacetime. Seemed cheaper at the time.
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>>3016233
So basicly our Siener is the old Siener or at least he is now to an extent since he is here. This does open up a can of philosophical worms of if you make several clones of someone who exists and send them off in different directions do they ever split off into their own person or would they be be a paradoxical causal tree when they die since their single remaining branch is actually multiple branches.
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>>3016233
logically speaking this makes resurrection impossible as all the possible futures Seiner had have been removed but this clone had its realities opened up by our action of giving it self actualization
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>>3016259
If we did make multiple clones of the same person, with the same mind, do you think we could collect their memories once they die and combine them into a single clone? If memory sharing between clones becomes possible, it wouldnt be a far step to turn them into human hive minds, with multiple bodies of the same individual.
>>
Makes me wonder why we never cloned Lyle. Having 2 Lyle's is better than one... Especially with the knowledge of the branches
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>>3016264
Doesn't work that way according to QD. We will only ever have one elite agent named Lyle.
>>
I believe the void is the consequence of tachyons being interactable and having infinite velocity. Essentially it's a method of interacting with the possibility of every particle in the universe at the same time resulting in some kind of method to simulate the past by looking at the collapsing of the states as they happen(ed) while the future you can see all the states that the future can collapse into. After that influencing the future is to simply prune the tree of the branches that end in results you don't want like the first queen has done.
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>>3016267
How did QD explain that we couldn't just copy him to the molecular level?
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>>3016264
Nah Lyle's sheet was what gave us our brawlers (at least that's what i think)
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>>3016012
That was fucking beautiful.
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>>3016273
Because there is a "natural talent" factor that makes so there's more than just biological and psychological factors that defines how good somebody is at something.
It's weird.
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>>3016273
Because he said we can't and this is his quest and he is the one that determines the rules?
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>>3016273
I think at a certain point there’s just QM fiat that you can’t mass-clone hero characters because reasons.

sounds pretty reasonable to me
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>>3016263
Multiple bodies to the same mind would still be one mind, one soul this would be a soul with a fixed and incorporated root soul. This assumes that dead seiner we just met was potential real and not a metaphor memory shadow of seiners knowledge that hes a clone of a dead man.
>>
Easy enough to explain. Lyle's probability tree is just extremely unlikely to occur. Even if we clone every single molecule and place them exactly right the quantum probability of those particles would not be the same as Lyle's. Cloning that would be some post-game level of control of the void.
>>
>>3016161
"So what exactly is the Void?" You ask. "A being, a place, ancient Queens or are they mad and controlled by their old weapons?"

"The Void is nothing." The First replies. "It is the blank canvas. The empty mind awaiting epiphany. It is the wall upon which the shadows of all living things are cast, and here where they remain for all time, a tapestry of all forms, and a testament to their lives, no matter how small or easy to miss." Her spectral form reaches out with a hand, and you see a sudden flash of images. People, places, thoughts, wishes, regrets, obsessions. It opens up like a great door, revealing a sea of sprawling chaos bathed in shadow. You can see an infinity of beings, their lives spread out like long snaking paths reaching from birth to death, their own trees pruned away into a singular line of events, their forms screaming out their passions and reliving their deeds in an endlessly repeating recording, like a great video, each frame a moment in spacetime that is held before you like a great, unmoving meural, its motion only visible as an illusion when viewed at such an angle that time seems linear

cont.
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>>3016286
Multiple bodies would necessarily have different quantum probabilities as their atoms wouldn't share the same atoms. Note that the first queen said that everything exists here meaning it's not just some abstract soul but that every rocks and every atoms past and future exist here.
>>
>>3016281
>>3016282
>>3016283
Jeez... no need to gangbang me... I wasn't questioning our one true god, I just wanted to know what the wog said.
>>
>>3016161
>The branches become too numerous beyond this moment, but your Queen, by child, can carry on this torch further still."
>by child, can carry on this torch further still."
>by child

You know I usually don't fret over minor spelling details in this quest, but this seems important. Did the first mean 'my child' or 'by child' here?

If she meant 'my child' than that illuminates an interesting part of her personality and how she views the lesser beings that serve the hive.

If it wasn't a typo and she meant 'BY child', than that means to save the hive race and preserve the hope our forebears died for, we're kind of obligated to produce our own daughter queens.
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>>3016305
Don't you fucking read into a god damned typo.
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>>3016293
You hear a voice call out to you, the same as you heard in the river. You try to move in on it, to find it in the formless chaos, and you are no longer in the great chaos of shifting shadows, but standing in a lab on Luna. You try to reach out, but your hand hits glass. You are looking in on the room from a small mirror, as if it were a one-way window hiding your pocket of space.

"Adam! Adam, how long has it been?" The man is holding a thick microphone to his head, a bulky, military grade device built with primitive technology.

"Grandpa." You say, you don't notice the words come from your mouth. "You're... the moon it.."

"That's, true. Yes. But we found something here. Buried."

"I knew something happened there. I could never find your records, your notes, even your theories, because there weren't any. I could never have understood..." You mutter, the late Seiner nods his head at the phone as he smiles.

The old man laughs. "Yes, yes exactly, but this isn't just gold coins or holo-maps. It's alive, you see, and it's very old and very wise. I've been trying to learn all I can from it. You see it speaks with thoughts, not words, and it can do other things with thoughts too."

"Like what?" You silently mouth the words.

The old man chuckles and continues. "Lots of things, but what's important is that I tell someone about it. I need someone to know what's here, because I don't think the Confederates are going to last much longer, and I can't let this fall into Union hands. Do you understand?" His voice is growing more stern. "This is very important."

"I understand." You say, a hint of a smile twitches over your face.

"No, no. I suppose it's better he not know. But you need to know what's here, even if nobody else does, even if nobody believes you, you need to remember. It needs to be found again."

cont.
>>
>>3016305
Lets save the last part until after the thread please, we all know how this is gonna go down.

Recent revelations have made me reconsider my previous stance on this topic anyway,
>>
>>3016305
>If it wasn't a typo and she meant 'BY child', than that means to save the hive race and preserve the hope our forebears died for, we're kind of obligated to produce our own daughter queens.
Did that thought never cross your mind before?
>>
>>3016314
Several men can be seen in the hall just outside the door, one of them leans in on the door's handle.
"Sir, we've loaded the device and the harmonics are stable. The enemy fleet has been detected near Europa. We need you in the firing chamber." Dr. Seiner turns to face them for a moment, his mind still on the call.

"I'm coming, I'll meet you there." He says, then speaks again through the speaker. "I need to go now Adam, I think this will be the last time we get to talk. Don't... don't tell your father I called, it would only upset him."

He places the headset against the mount with a loud click, and you watch the last few branches fall away, leaving a firm, steady line of possibility following his life, and in your own, several appear, including the one that leads here, to this moment, where you stand and look back upon it all. You look at it like an infinity mirror.

"Okay, Seiner." He says. The sudden statement catches you off guard. "This is it. Your destiny. A life of effort, for one moment, a turning point. Every event has lead to this moment, and not any other." He is looking into a small mirror as he takes a deep breath, and exhales. "It was you for a reason."

cont.
>>
>>3016305
It might mean that we need to adopt everything into the hive. Our children stretch far beyond the limits of the genetic Hive.
>>
>>3016315
I mean, if our own daughters don't struggle growing up, they could easily fall into the same arrogant and callous trap that created the void as it is now

>>3016320
The tree that must have led to the old Seiner (the grandfather seiner) really was something isn't it.
>>
>>3016326
Thats why we will throw them onto death worlds so they have to struggle
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>>3016321
>everything
Fuck that noise. That would limit possibilities and solidify our limits without an outside source to help us grow. Adopt some of everything,sure. But everything, no way.
>>
Yeah this only reinforces my attitude that new queens are going to be a horrible idea. At the very most I could support firing a new queen into other galaxies or something but never within our own realm.
>>
>>3016316
Of course not, but hearing it from our near omniscient and future seeing grandma kind of changes the equation a bit.
>>
>>3016336
What, no? He called his grandson via Q-Comm and this had a lasting impact on the young Seiner's life. It's very unlikely there was a psionic implant on the young Seiner, although the senior Seiner was certainly influenced by the WQ in building the canon.
>>
>>3016341
I get the impression that you are so entrenched in the idea that daughters are bad and will bring certain destruction to our hive that absolutely no evidence to the contrary will dissuade you.
>>
>>3016326
Well making our daugthers have to struggle to survive would be a good way to garantee they wouldn't become like the other queens and the ones who die well they died.
>>
>>3016331
Throwing them onto a barren planet tell them to terraform it. It's both useful and practical.
>>3016341
Only if you're a shit mother will a new queen be a problem. Do you think the Red Queen is a shit mother?
>>
>>3016326
>>3016331
inb4 we make it Hive custom that daughter queens must experience strife and adversity instead of just being handed a system on a silver platter before being allowed to enter the galactic stage
>inb4 this is the setup behind Hive Queen Quest Beta


>>3016343
The galaxy is a really big place anon. Almost everything in the quest has happened within a sphere less that 50 lightyears across.

>>3016336
Would make sense, the WQ's relay basically implanted the research team with all the necessary knowledge and the mutaions to understand that knowlegde to make the psi cannon.
>>
>>3016347
This is true.
>>3016349
That's like asking if the first queen was a shit mother.
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>>3016345
Yeah sorry i'm tired.
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>>3016349
She will only be a shit mom if she doesn't drop her daugther in a death world.
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>>3016351
She didn't raise all of them remember? She even admitted the shit situation was her fault for not teaching them properly in the first place.
>>
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>>3016350
>inb4 we make it Hive custom that daughter queens must experience strife and adversity instead of just being handed a system on a silver platter before being allowed to enter the galactic stage
>>inb4 this is the setup behind Hive Queen Quest Beta
This makes far too much sense and fits far too well with the canon.
>>
>>3016350
>inb4 we make it Hive custom that daughter queens must experience strife and adversity
And we send them there blind and techless, just like we did when we started. Only that we'll scatter clues in the biosphere and planet, that leads to a data cache with a psionic telephone to us that will explain to our daughter that this is necessary to survive. Once they call us, they've achieved their coming-of-age ritual, and we'll give them a choice to stay with Mother or to carve their own path.
>>
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>>3016357
>>3016361
>remember way back in the first threads asking why a technologically advanced species would send their young to a death world with barely any tech or help
We've come full circle.

>>3016360
The HQQ Beta Queen has lived a harsh life.
>>
>>3016358
And what you're going to stop other queens from having more queens? And don't give me that "but they'll be loyal to us" bullshit because the first queen is dead proof of the fact that they will act on their own and fuck up at some point.
>>
>>3016360
>>3016361
>>3016364
It's so beautiful.
>>
>>3016361
>>3016360

I have no problem with sending out daughters once we have lots of space and there are no queen-killing abominations floating around interstellar space. For now there is too much going on for us to wait for the payoff and it is also risky. If someone else finds our "psionic telephone" (advanced relay?) it would be really bad for us. There's also a real risk the daughter might die before the "telephone" is found.

I'm not against laying daughters, in fact I think ultimately it will be inevitable, but I don't think we are in any position to have some in the near future.
>>
>>3016365
>And what you're going to stop other queens from having more queens?
Lack of available planets to send her to, for one.
>>
>>3016365
They won't? Why would they produce more queens? Your entire argument is based upon a vague "if" where we fuck up hard enough that queen thinks is smart to create a new dynasty.
>>
>>3016375
There's an entire galaxy out there.
>>
>>3016373
We can just send them to planets within our own domain and thus within our protection. Or send a small picket fleet to protect the planet we send her to. They wouldn't be in any danger from interstellar threats at all.
>>
>>3016365
Just make a tradition to drop the kids in death worlds. It worked for us.
>>
>>3016375
You know they could just send their own daughters out into deep space too. And if our daughters start fighting with each other, some of them might have daughters of their own, but instead of stranding them on a planet alone they might give them a few ships in secret to get a head start on their rivals. It's very risky and quite uncertain...
>>
>>3016377
Why would we create more queens? There's your answer on why they would.
>>
>>3016385
Research slots, continuing our race, refining the process of making good queens...
We have a few reasons.
>>
>>3016378
>>3016377
Anyway now is not the time we don't have enough space for another queen and we have to clean the void from the bad tachyons.

Once this is solved we can lay all the daugthers we want.
>>
>>3016382
Nah that is spoilling we didn't have fleets if someone comes by and she doesn't figure out how to survive she should be dead.
>>
>>3016388
Exactly.
>>
>>3016384
>>3016391
>>3016388
Well the simplest answer for that is that we, as the Matriarch of this new era of hive civilization, would serve as a neutral judge and and monitor any planets where a queen has laid an egg. Anyone who tries to cheat gets a kinetic impactor to the face.

But thats way too far into the future.
>>
>>3016385
I agree Anon.

I know the daugher debate is incredibly stagnant and well worn, but making new daughters and then assuming they will always just do everything we say (including avoiding fighting with each other or having daughters themselves) is frankly silly. Loyalty is different from blind obedience.
>>
>>3016378
None that are within dozens of light years of Leeland, and certainly none on the stellar map QD has provided us thus far.

>>3016385
>Why create more queens?
Let's see;
1. To open up more research slots
2. To more effeciently manage a given system or planet in our domain
3. To provide a backup in case we fail
4. Because based grandma told us to so we can save the future of our species
5. Because QD has done a damn fine job of introducing new and exciting characters so far, and being one of only 2 sane queens is lonely when we're carrying the fate of so many
>>
I think there's a part of this everyone is over looking now that I think of it. All of the starting locations had a sentient to we were going to meet.
>>
>>3016388
Didn't QD said that laying new Queens wouldn't open more research slots?
>>
>>3016398
>4. Because based grandma told us to so we can save the future of our species
oh for fucks sake.
>>
>>3016400
Yep. Just like the SQ has her own research slot.
>>
>>3016402
He's actually fagging it up based on an error.
>>
>>3016400
Nope he explicitly said we would get a research slot as long as they get the hive equivalent of a small house.
>>
>>3016331
Death world would actually be easy street for a new queen. I mean our adversity wasn't the world we were on it was the fact that we were completely and utterly alone surrounded by threats of an existential nature.
>>3016349
Suggested method of child rearing, a mostly barren world with a handful of struggling wildlife and a small red hive contingent with a careful selection of starter pack adaptations to hunt the new queen. Also a local sentient society living under mild to moderate threat from both the environment and our local contingent.

On top of that a cryptic message in a bottle in the form of a single thinker with a bare bones selection of knowledge about the hive.

Oh shit, maybe not a red hive contingent but a loyal scav pack. They don't get to strip the planet but they get their own trial by fire survival of the fittest growth thing ultimately being adopted by the new queen as a vassal or destroyed.
>>
>>3016399
Yup, Aral and Raligha also had natives or colonists where our interactions with them would have greatly shaped how we would deal with things in the future.

>>3016403
I'd still argue that its more because she has several thousands of years of experience which gives her a unique point of view on some things that we don't.

>>3016408
>Oh shit, maybe not a red hive contingent but a loyal scav pack. They don't get to strip the planet but they get their own trial by fire survival of the fittest growth thing ultimately being adopted by the new queen as a vassal or destroyed.
>>
>>3016408
Actually the more I think of it exposure to sentients early on is probably more important than starting on a deathworld.
>>
>>3016396
That's kind of my view too. It's an okay idea in theory, but really should be saved for the far future.

>>3016398
In answer to your points.
>1. To open up more research slots
Recruiting specialist scientists will help with this. While this is a big bonus, it doesn't necessarily fit a cost-benefit analysis at this stage
>2. To more effeciently manage a given system or planet in our domain
Why is it assumed any daughter would manage a planet more efficiently than we do? We could rule many more planets without losing efficiency. A daughter would if anything lose us efficiency especially if we use the "deathworld" route since it will take them a long time to grow to strength, and even at that point they may not share 100% of resources with us.
>3. To provide a backup in case we fail
The Scarred queen already provides this
>4. Because based grandma told us to so we can save the future of our species
It was a fucking typo. And also obviously we will need to lay daughters at some point in the future, but we do not need to do that NOW.
>5. Because QD has done a damn fine job of introducing new and exciting characters so far, and being one of only 2 sane queens is lonely when we're carrying the fate of so many
We have so many happenings already adding even more characters would make it difficult to move things along. Even good characters have to sometimes be cut for the efficiency of the Quest. When was the last time we talked to Theseus or the Cluster seriously? Why is it taking us so long to look at Morgan's docs? QD is amazing with characterization, but we don't need even more at this point.
>>
>>3016413
That was definitely important too. It instilled in us a care for the younger races that is extremely far from the norm for Queens. We learned a lot from Theseus and the humans in the early days.
>>
>>3016413
I honestly don't think leeland is a deathworld. To humans it might be, but it's really just extremely bizarre by its nature. It has food, shelter, water etc.
>>
>>3016415
>recruiting scientist
You really don't know about it do you? Mother's Favor is piss poor for getting worthwhile scientists (which receive penalties when not researching their specialties) and Mother's Favor can only be used once per planet.
>>
>>3016320
He adjusts his lab coat and cleans off the lense of his glasses, and turns from the mirror, walking down the hall. You hit the glass, beating it with your fists as he walks away, his body fading as the image collapses into the quantum chaos.

The image fades, and you return to the hive chamber. There is silence for some time until you look up, your vision blurred. You quickly run your finger and thumb over your eyes and clear your throat as you look to the First Queen. She stands before you, expectantly,

"So if the Schism has harmed everyone, what about the other two ancients?" You ask. "What happened to them?" Her spectral form looks away for a moment in thought, her body shifting in the air as it coils around the central pillar.

"The Three were a union of body and mind. Each of us a strength and weakness. We differed greatly, but we would shore up one another, grant each other strength. In this respect, the fault of this ending can be placed on the fact of our growing power and independence. The Three no longer traded, our interactions grew fewer." You feel a sudden pulsing image as eons of time flash before your eyes as civilizations rise and fall under the watchful care of the Three.

"We were united in one aspect. Our structure was pure and easy to control, and we had done so to the point of perfection." You see a strand of triplex DNA, arranged in an infinite series of possible structures. "Some of us used this more than others. The Cluster was the greatest of us, they were everything, their forms a litany of all life in the galaxy.They would cultivate these forms, and sell them to us, while we provided biomass so that they were free to allow their worlds to flourish as wild gardens producing new and spectacular forms, while our own worlds were efficient, clean, and orderly.

cont.
>>
>>3016415
How would the Scarred Queen, who is barren, be a replacement for us. Sure she could get herself fixed, but we don't know for sure if she'll do that.
>>
>>3016427
>we were thrust into a galaxy that is terrible and decaying
>everyone is miserable
Feels bad man.
>>
>>3016428
When she was born again as our daughter, she became fertile again. We have already seen her drones, anon.
>>
>>3016424
>mostly carnivorous megapredetors and mind control funguses filling the major water sources.
>Everywere that isn't fungal rainforest death is either scorched earth wasteland or frozen dead icelocked tundra

Ya not a death world
>>
>>3016428
The problem is she's too old to fill the role. We need one that's young. Also she's been able to lay drones for a while now.
>>
>>3016431
If you took out the bit about mind control funguses that statement could just as easily apply to ice age earth.
>>
>>3016428
The Scarred queen is not barren.

>Mother's Favor can only be used once per planet.
New daughters can also only happen once per planet. Also, unless we give our daughters a massive tech and infrastructure boost at birth (which we all agree is a bad idea) it will be months until they are capable of providing us with an extra research slot, if they even deign to do that. It would also be good for our daughters to interact with sentients on a planet, and we don't really have many deathworlds with a handful of sentients on them we can give to any daughters, now do we.

>>3016433
The Scarred queen herself repeatedly talked about how being put into a young body feels like she gained a new lease on life.
>>
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>>3016438
>Earth
>Not a death world
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>>3016443
I don't think you understand. Being an old queen the Scarred Queen doesn't actually have many branches she can make unlike us so she isn't an option for taking over if we die.
>>
>>3016438
The Queen was nearly killed the day she was hatched by a flying megapredator. She broke her leg in the fight. I'm pretty sure no flying creatures of ice-age earth could have posed a deadly physical threat to a queen in flight.
>>
>>3016443
Yeah, but she also states that our comparative vigor, adaptability, and willingness to interact with forms of life queens traditionally thought of as beneath them, stem in part from our youth as a Hive Queen.
>>
>>3016427
>"We were united in one aspect. Our structure was pure and easy to control, and we had done so to the point of perfection." You see a strand of triplex DNA, arranged in an infinite series of possible structures.
Does this mean the silicates have/had a triplex DNA pattern as well? If this was known before I missed it.
>>
>>3016427
Oh bother. Forgot to ask.

"When I was first uplifted, I had a vision of a black hole, and a planet of crystal in its orbit. What does it mean?"
>>
>>3016447
Maybe not air borne predators, but sabertooth tiger, pack of bear-dogs, or giant fucking wooly mammoths sure could.
>>
>>3016443
I want to use both Mother's Favor (small chance of getting research slot) and laying queens(guaranteed slots) for MAXIMUM BENEFIT. At that point we'll be rolling enough dice that no topic should take more than a day.
>>3016451
They're Sphere people anon not silicates.
>>
>>3016446
The branches aren't finite. As long as you nurture a single branch it will blossom into infinely more. The old queens use of reality destroying weapons caused the culling of probability.
>>
>>3016449
>willingness to interact with forms of life queens traditionally thought of as beneath them
I "think" the Scarred Queen also gained this from how she had to rely on the Phantoms for survival for thousands of years. Remember how protective of them she was when we were talking with her and offering to make her a Queen again? I think living with this individual race for so long has certainly influenced the Scarred Queen too.

Also, I feel like unfortunately we're just talking in circles about the daughters debate at this point. I'm going to just bow out as I don't feel like we're getting anywhere and the argument doesn't need to shit up the thread anymore.
>>
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>>3016427
"The Cluster was a master of the body, while we had merged the two, devoting the body to the service of the mind. We all Three had the capacity of psionics, but none of us could claim the mastery of the third, at least, not until the end of our War."

You feel a deep sinking feeling, like a shadow of some distant figure gazing down upon you with judging eyes from eons past, watching, waiting, observing for unknown ends.

"They refused our ways. They considered their bodies to be of no consequence. They perfected them to suit their needs, and then ignored them, allowing them to wither in their shells, but their minds... they felt every nuance of the Void, it was their tapestry. We all had our nooks within this realm, but theirs was a garden of thought and creativity. Their worlds were neither cultivated for adaptations nor farmed for food, but groomed, for the sake of their art. Each ecosystem a carefully balanced structure, woven over millenia into the fabric of spacetime, each living being upon it tended to with delicate care and at a precise number. They held total control over their worlds and all life upon them, and they were lush, beautiful things as a result, but too controlled to produce genetics of use, and too aesthetic to produce any nutrients of quantity." You see a vast landscape open fields and perfectly grown forests, even the weeds held in a natural balance. Far above, as animals walk about the fields, eating no more than they must, and dying no more than was needed, you felt them, rising like the morning sun of the world itself each day, looking down upon the surface, watching always, its influence felt in every aspect from the migrations of the animals to the patterns of the storms.

"They demanded control. They could feel the Void, too much in my estimation. They feld the suffering of others, the strife that modeled species into perfection, the fuel of evolution, and it put them in agony. They halted it, enforcing a stagnant peace across their worlds that would leave them beautiful and devoid of suffering, and devoid of true life and death. They abandoned the use of organic tools, instead making them of false life devoid of souls, and denounced us for our own lives. For our consumption and cultivation of our worlds."

"So the war was over a philosophy?" You ask. You sense the First seem to almost shrug.

"It was not so simple. It began more as a failing of relations, and then broke into skirmishes. The skirmishes spread quickly." You feel a sudden memory. A drone in its tunnels as it tends to a farm of fungal spores of some alien type is suddenly torn from the hive, its mind assaulted with a strange sensation of foreign commands. The assault fails, and the drone dies, refusing to so much as beat its heart so long as the foreign voice speaks to it, but the attempt is a grave insult. A hive fleet is mobilized within moments.

cont.
>>
>>3016005
>>3016013
>>3016047
>>3016056
>>3016062
>>3016189
>>3016451
They're not silicates. Stop calling them that. Silicates are their robot slaves. The enemy is, or was, perfectly biological.
>>
>>3016461
We've been talking circles around the issue for years now.
>>
>>3016461
Yeah, we are kind of talking in circles right now aren't we? I'll drop it, I'm starting to nod off myself here.

But boy, the thread where we all finally settle this issue is going to be a hot one eh?
>>
>>3016472
We need at least one young Queen to gaurantee a future for our empire in case we die. That's my take.
>>
>>3016472
Yeah, that one will be something to remember for sure.

>>3016463
Interesting, so now we finally get to hear about the enemy that first touched the Void, before the Queens mastered it and turned it against them. The enemy that used the sillicates as tools rather than organics. Very interesting.
>>
>>3016481
Why don't we just lay an egg and put it under hibernation someplace safe or unexpected. Put a psionic failsafe which hatches it in the event that we die. There.
>>
>>3016487
Because that gaurantees nothing.
>>
>>3016463
>the ultimate villain is space hippies who got bullied until they turned into goths
>>
>>3016463
>I don't care how perfect you are stop messing with my shit
the war in sum
>>
>>3016492
Damn space boomers making the universe hard for us space millenials.

>>3016491
Then we'll argue about it another day then.
>>
>>3016491
Having a living new queen guarantees even less as it would either have to grow in isolation which would make it no different then a hibernating egg or it would be a functional queen and as a result would inevitably be involved in the current conflict.
>>
So the third Ancient race was a bunch of perfectionist control freaks who were allergic to all conflict and up their own metaphysical asses about AESTHETIC.
>>
>>3016498
Personally I only care about the potential of our planet being destroy with us on it. We need that new queen to have experience to replace us.
>>
>>3016492
Less hippies and more a bunch of people on OCD who can look at the chaotic tapestry of reality, or vegans who can actually feel the suffering of every animal across timespace being slaughtered and are but hurt at us for eating meat/contributing to the chaotic nature of reality.
>>
>>3016465
>>3016458
Yes, it looks like you're right.

Is this the first we've ever seen or heard anything concrete about the nature of the biological race that built the silicates?

Also, damn, who are the Ceph worshipping now exactly, and what was coming out of the hell-portal at Nowhere? We know that the Void Gods use crystalline technology to subvert biological life.
>>
>>3016463
Also this is really weird, because the Ceph and the Scavs are absolutely abominably adept in causing chaos and suffering.
>>
>>3016463
>They abandoned the use of organic tools, instead making them of false life devoid of souls

So how does that reflect on Theseus? Seiner had a hand in creating him.
>>
>>3016512
Could be that in their minds, a bit of extra chaos in the short term is worth killing the biggest suppliers of long term chaos.
>>
>>3016512
I still don't think the scavs have anything to do with the void, maybe the precursor race that started the war and created the silicates, but not the void gods the ceph worship
>>
Has it occurred to you guys that they are out to kill all life?
>>
>>3016512
>>3016522
Let me explain this better, basically a derelict craft is what allowed them to progress, I don't think they were intentionally uplifted at all. They're just following navigational charts and created a dogma of slaughter based on their own ethos. More or less.
>>
>>3016512
The Scavs seem to have just latched on to the relics of precursor race (the spheres/silicates) as the center of a religious crusade, but they're wrong about their ultimate nature and the creators of those artifacts probably didn't intend any such thing. Like the Covenant's religious doctrine around the Forerunner artifacts in the Halo universe.

>>3016517
I mean, he did, but the sphere race isn't the one tweaking the future of Humanity or I'd have thought the First Queen or the White Queen would have talked about interference.

>>3016523
They certainly do hate how messy and chaotic it is.
>>
>>3016512
Well the first is talking about the silicates here, not the Void which created both races. This thread really makes the difference between the two quite significant.
>>
>>3016527
I think this is it. The Scavs have decided these artifacts were put there to guide and test them, but it's got nothing to do with them at all.
>>
>>3016531
>>3016529
>>3016527
Hell I suspect depending on the timeline the orginal artifact may have been wreckage of both hive and sphere ships.
>>
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>>3016463
"I cannot say which one among them first attempted this. I cannot say if this was an agreed upon action, or one of them acting out of turn, but it was the final wedge between the Three. The War had begun."

You can feel it. The sea of chaos and shadow bellow you is filled with the memories of quintillions of sentients whose skies cracked open and watched in helpless terror as fire covered their worlds, as their gods engaged in terrible war in the heavens above. Worlds are consumed either in crossfire or as fuel to grow the warengine as the conflict quickly spirals out of control.

The locals across countless thousands of worlds pray to the skies in vain, using a wide range of appendages and speech organs as the war in heaven crashes down around them with the fires of energy physics that are incomprehensible to them as the forests burn with fusion plasma and cities incinerated by exotic matter reactions. Others offer sacrifices, sending vast shipments of food or tribesmen so that some small, unimportant Queen may afford a better picket for her system and possibly save the rest, only to have those very picket fleets fall upon their world in burning defeat, replaced with the constantly vigilant, unceasing gaze of the watchers above. The sick and infirm begin to die, suddenly, and painlessly, they fall asleep and never wake up. Overpopulated regions are suddenly vacant as swarms of carrion eaters calmly arrive as if called for, devour what is left, and quickly depart, leaving a population of careful number, no more, no less. Always in balance.

You can see a low gravity world, one covered in vast, twisting trees many kilometers tall and wide, the canopy reaching over the whole of the planet. It is a distant world, one left to fester and evolve to be cultivated for its adaptations, and the war comes to it in turn. A strange craft, made of stone and glass, enters the system as the picket fires upon it. The battle unfolds as a bitter, agonizing fight as both sides destroy one another, the last of the exchange leaving the craft broken and beaten as it falls into the atmosphere, its pilot in a panic as a psionic flash erupts just before impact, sending a pulse of radiation out over the vast jungle, vaporizing a great swath of the region as the ship's remains collapse into the shattered jungle depths to an unknown fate.

>Ask about your own abilities and training (write in)
>Ask about the Red Queen (write in)
>Ask about Theseus
>Other
>>
>>3016523
>>3016528

Yeah, true life is too chaotic for them. They prefer domination and control as emphasized through the use of silicates. Maybe it is their desire to remove death that caused them to take the first steps towards their ultimate doom. Or maybe it was fear of how death was changing the nature of the Void itself (where the 3rd lived) that caused them to feel a war was necessary. The irony is incredible - a war fought to preserve the Void from death and suffering ended up ultimately tainting it tremendously.
>>
>>3016532
Honestly it wouldn't even surprise me. The way the flicker drive operates is startlingly similar to the way our blink drive works after all.
>>
>>3016533
>Ask about Theseus
>Ask about your own abilities and training (write in)
How can I learn safely? Can I too cut down branches of probability?
>>
>>3016533
>Ask about Theseus

And the notion of "false life"
>>
>>3016533
>>Ask about Theseus
>>Ask about your own abilities and training (write in)
So how exactly can a blind one like me fight whatever it is in the void?
>>
>>3016533
And there's where the scavs came from.

>>Ask about Theseus
The real elephant in the room here. I want to believe we will always be friends, but is that possible?
>>
>>3016533
>Ask about your own abilities and training (can we get the tech now)
>Ask about Theseus
>Ask about the Red Queen (Anything that can help her)
>>
>>3016533
>>Ask about Theseus

And the scavs a blight by any given measure, were the result of a battle and destroyed refuse. This is some Sheev levels of ironic
>>
>>3016533
>Ask about your own abilities and training (can we get the tech now)
>Ask about Theseus
>Ask about the Red Queen (Anything that can help her)
>>
>>3016533
>You can see a low gravity world, one covered in vast, twisting trees many kilometers tall and wide, the canopy reaching over the whole of the planet. It is a distant world, one left to fester and evolve to be cultivated for its adaptations, and the war comes to it in turn. A strange craft, made of stone and glass, enters the system as the picket fires upon it. The battle unfolds as a bitter, agonizing fight as both sides destroy one another, the last of the exchange leaving the craft broken and beaten as it falls into the atmosphere, its pilot in a panic as a psionic flash erupts just before impact, sending a pulse of radiation out over the vast jungle, vaporizing a great swath of the region as the ship's remains collapse into the shattered jungle depths to an unknown fate.
Oh shit, that's the Scav's homeworld!

In answer to the prompt:
>>Ask about your own abilities and training (write in) What am I now? What is my purpose?

>>Ask about the Red Queen (write in). How can I help keep the Red Queen from falling to the Void herself as so many other Queens have?

>Ask about Theseus: I have created silicate life myself, although in another life I had wanted it destroyed. Can you see if it plays any parts on your trees, or is it hidden?
>>
>>3016537
Fun fact the wing is the main part of the blink drive so it's completely possible for the wing to get torn off land on a planet.
>>
>>3016533
>Ask about the Red Queen (write in)
How can I replace Lee as her waifu
>>
>>3016533
There's the Scavenger origin story.
>>Other
> A strange craft, made of stone and glass

What was this craft of the Watchers? What was its pilot? A silicon machine?

They used something before the slip drive?
>>
>>3016553
We need to ask about drives and other tech.
>>
>>3016533
>>Ask about your own abilities and training (write in)
So I can see everything in the present and the past, theoretically.

But am I really limited to the spectrums of what my primitive biological eyes would see if I were present in the flesh?

Would there not be a way to perceive patterns of electrical impulses coursing through wires, or the superpositions of a quantum encrypted database?
>>
>>3016544
>The real elephant in the room here. I want to believe we will always be friends, but is that possible?
You know, the Scarred Queen was right about a lot of things, but in the end she still died a horrible death. It may yet be we can remain friends with Theseus even if she does not foresee that as a possibility.
I want to believe...
>>
>>3016556
We could ask about the FTL that cast the Ark away at a massive range. Not sure the First had access to any others.
>>
>>3016550
>its pilot in a panic as a psionic flash erupts just before impact
Blink drive?
>>
>>3016533
>Ask about your own abilities and training (write in)
How can I effect the war between Gods? Can you teach me, train me, so that I can learn to use my abilities to fight the Void and protect the Queen?
>>
I really don't see why Theseus wouldn't remain a good ally.
>>
>>3016578
It's more about the nature of "real" versus "artificial" life.
>>
>>3016578
Because if he advances to the level of the silicates, he would likely become even more easily influenced by the Void than even the OQ.
>>
>>3016552
BAD ANON
Not that I can really blame you
>>
>>3016585
I'm starting to think that's not the case, the silicate servants of the Enemy race seem to be wholly separate from the void
>>
>>3016579
Well she's been telling us it the whole time

Real life has a soul, leaves a reflection in the void

Fake life does not

By that defination then yeah thesuses ain't real
>>
>>3016533
"Wait." You ask, a sudden realization upon your mind. "What do you mean false life?"

"You mean the intelligent stone you helped to build?" She asks. You hesitate in your response, but the emotion is felt before you give it words.

"Yes, yes." The First says. "I understand your thoughts on this, but all life was once not life. You were once a series of amino acids in a fluid, a clump of unintelligent cells, but eventually, the strands of these soulless things gathered together into something that could cast a shadow upon this realm, something with a tree of potential to whittle away throughout its life. This 'Theseus' is no different. It is merely a far more proficient collection of cells. It holds a level of intelligence, but even with its randomness, it is still a difference engine to fate. This being has no capacity to perceive its worldline, but is fated to simply streak through it like a bolt of lighting or a flowing river. Its tree of potential is no different to a stone's, or a pool of water, however, it does have the potential to become more."

"Doesn't that make him alive?" You ask. "The fact he has that potential?"

"That was not your question." The First says suddenly, appeasingly almost. "This being has no soul to project into the Void, but that is not a testament to a lack of life. A plant lives. Cells of your skin live. For now, this being is a lever wielded by your Queen, and forged in part by you." You search for words, your mind unsure. Your thoughts wander through arguments and fights as you have felt the passion of both sides of this debate, and it stings to be here once more. You sense something else, like a soothing balm over a skin burn as the First reaches out to a branch and pulls it to your mind.

"You see here?" She says. "Theseus may yet earn a soul. There are branches where you were never conceived, but that does not mean you do not exist. This Theseus has simply not yet been conceived. He is an egg, although an intelligent one." You look at the spectral image of the First Queen, her face offering some attempt at reassurance, although it is a foreign emotion to her. Her true form curls around the central pillar uncomfortably. You look to the held out branch of potential. At first, you think it is a small white sphere, but as you look more closely its size becomes apparent. A uniform planet, perhaps, but as you look closer still you realize it is not uniform, but simply vast beyond measure. Its surface an incalculable thought construct, its mass well beyond that of a star, all tucked away into some pocket of Void possibility, thoughts racing through its network as beams of emotion lance out to other, distant stars within the Void. Other minds. Queens perhaps, or other such server thought-constructs, you cannot be sure.

>Ask about the Drive technology of the Ancients
>Ask about your training
>Ask about the Red Queen
>Other
>>
>>3016585
Friends won't let friends overdose on the Void. We should share relevant info with Theseus.
>>
>>3016589
Then why call it false life?
>Ask about the Drive technology of the Ancients
>>
>>3016589
>Ask about the Drive technology of the Ancients
>>
>>3016589
>>Ask about the Drive technology of the Ancients
>>Ask about your training
>>
>>3016588
But he can still become a real boy!
>>3016589
>it does have the potential to become more."
>>
>>3016589
>>Ask about the Drive technology of the Ancients
>>Ask about your training
>>Ask about the Red Queen
I hate to do this QD, but I do really want to hear about all of these subjects.
>>
>>3016598
I wouldn't consider it unless he joins the Hive.
>>
>>3016589
>>Ask about your training
So he can earn a soul huh, how vaguely ominous
>>
>>3016589
Ask about the Red Queen
>>
>>3016589
>Ask about the Drive technology of the Ancients
>>
>>3016589
>>Other
I saw a black hole, and a planet of crystal in its orbit. What is it?
>>
>>3016606
Or ask about what the hell black queen or the ceph plotting
>>
>>3016609
This is worth asking.
>>
>>3016609
You know if we can find the time to ask this, it could be worthwhile.
>>
WE COULD ASK WHERE THE CEPH HOMEWORLD IS.
>>
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>>3016621
OH HOLY SHIT YOURE RIGHT
>>
>>3016589
>Ask about the Drive technology of the Ancients
>Ask about your training
>Ask about the Red Queen
>>
>>3016589
"I feel like when I move here, I'm not so much as moving, but suddenly am in a new location." You say. "I assume this is something similar to how the Hive's own FTL functions?"

"We will ourselves to be in new places." She replies. "To do this, we use our minds to take our vessels outside of this reality, and then place it back in a new location"

"So it's not really a technology as it is an innate capacity of psionics?"

"No, not entirely." She says. "To accomplish this requires a great will, and powerful computational skills. The narrow functions that are needed can be produced easily into the form of our engines. A Queen will build her ship with this capacity but little else, while the Cluster will make an organ-self whose only duty is navigation of the greater form. A Watcher has a greater command of their mind, however. They need only a focus to maintain their vision of the destination. Their vessel has no full drive as a result, only a level with which to leap off from." She moves through the air, descending back towards you as she speaks. "And, finally, you will be able to do this, in time, in a manner similar to our enemy's fingers pulling back reality to allow their slaves access to the Void, you will be able to move yourself through this space, and back again."

"You mean I'll be able to teleport?"

"No." She says quickly. "You will be able to walk in a new direction. Just as the Shards, as you call them, exist extended into the Void, so to do you. Young Seiner, you are a Void Shard. Your mind penetrates the Void and expands beyond spacetime as you used to know it. The powers inherent in the fingers of our enemy are all given to you in equal measure as a result."

"Fingers.... you mean the Void Shards are not really shards?" You ask.

"They are shards, as in parts of a greater whole. They are no more separate items than a drone is separate from its Queen. Every shard is but an extension of its creator, a splinter of its soul, its shadow in the Void. They are here fully, their minds locked within this realm. To reach the outer reality requires a tool to reach. A finger with which to grab objects in spacetime."

"So the Void Shards are actually just one device, but seen from a lower dimension... like a medical scan image, viewed frame by frame. As seen from that perspective, a single object looks like several, right?" You ask, a smile of realization on your face. The spectral image nods, her massive head shifting in an approximation in the air.

"Yes. As fingers reach into a pool of water, their ripples are seen in many places. These fingers can be broken individually, or all at once, by breaking the hand that moves them."

"The Anchor..." You reply.

cont.
>>
>>3016630
>humans are void shard
SHIT JUST GOT REAL.
>>
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>>3016630
>No, Seiner, you are the Void Shard
>>
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>>3016630
>Young Seiner, you are a Void Shard.
Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.
>>
>>3016630
>Young Seiner, you are a Void Shard

YO HOLD UP, WHAT BRUH I AIN'T NEED THIS SPOOK.
>>
>>3016633
>>3016635
I think it means that Siener is a Siener Shard. Siener is just the bit that sticks out in normal space from his shadow in the void.
>>
>>3016630
Oh man, humans are so much more valuable than we anticipated.
>>
>>3016638
I know, but I just had to make that reference.
>>
>>3016630
>Every shard is but an extension of its creator
NOOOOOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE

This means the void shards we know are the shadows of portions of the void gods projected onto / intruding into reality. Every time someone tinkers with a void shard they're in actual, direct contact with the void gods. They're fingers of Cthulhu, physical shadows of a higher-dimension horror-hand from beyond reality.
>>
>>3016643
We've know about this for years anon.
>>
>>3016645
Did we know it was so damn literal? They're not just cool toys the void gods made to open portals to the void or to grant powers to their slaves.
>>
>>3016646
Yes kinda. Elizabeth did describe them fingers back then too.
>>
>>3016646
Yeah actually. Elizabeth worked out what the void shards were ages and ages ago. And we knew that every time we looked into one we risked being spotted by the void, ever since the first time we tried using one.

There's a reason we keep all our shards in a psionically sealed bunker on Leeland, you know.
>>
>>3016643
We already knew this. we didn't realize that it was an innate function of void presence.

That means that we are a void shard anon. Lee is a Void shard. Lyle is a Void shard.

The most interesting part is that Our drones are Queen void shards, but they also are individuals, would they be shards of themselves or is their individual void presense to small to cast a sufficient shadow?
>>
>>3016643
Well, they're Crystallized Orz. Now imagine the weapon that shoots Void Shards - imagine a gun that shoots your own fingers at the enemy's history.
>>
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>>3016630
"Yes." She says. "It binds their worldline together and ties those near it to them with sympathetic bonds of understanding by exchanging the thoughts of their minds. Their worshipers gather images of their greater beings, and in turn send their thoughts and desires in the form of prayer. This mixes their trees of potential, and grants their fingers a greater lever with which to exert mental force upon their souls."

"So where is it?" You ask suddenly, your excitement growing.

"It is within the Hall of Souls." She says. "The thought-fortress of my lost children."

"I've seen visions... of a massive crystal on a planet, or near it... I was never sure what it meant. I remember seeing a black hole and-"

"A singularity may puncture the Void as well as any tachyon." She says suddenly. "But it often damages what is sent through, or obliterates it outright, and it is a one way journey... unless one peels it open." A mental image arrives in your head. You see a black hole, the same one you felt when you first received this power, but long ago... and it is newly formed. Stars towed together and thrown against one another until a critical mass was formed. There are more structures, five white dwarfs, each pulled from their old orbits and sent hurtling through space over a great span of time not fathomable by your own perceptions beyond a basic, academic sense of numbers. You watch time progress at a rapid pace, and over time a countless swarm of Void Cutters arrive, each one trailing a new star as their wings expand out over the star's hemisphere, reflecting and refracting the radiation and forming the very star's surface into a great thruster, pulsing in their formations to move them into place.

The stars are carefully adjusted in their orbits over the course of many years, until their orbit is perfect, their gravity a balanced counter-action against one another, and then they are pulled inwards, their gravity wells tightening as they close in on one another, their orbits spinning faster and faster. There is a moment before impact, just as the stars start to lose their form, when the black hole seems to open, the event horizon is torn apart by the spinning gravitational force. A naked singularity, open to the horrors and wonders that lie beyond spacetime itself, erupts forth in the creation of a White Hole as spacetime is torn asunder and a stream of unreality is forced upon the universe. The whole structure collapses, the stars tearing themselves apart in a few short instants, and as the carefully balanced gravitational vortex is broken the white hole destabilizes, the singularity collapsing back in on itself, and the one-way door is formed once more, quickly devouring the stars.

cont.
>>
>>3016656
then imagine the psyonic canon. a weapon that shoots your targets own fingers at itself.
>>
>>3016646
No duh durr. There wasn't a nonliteral version. It was very explicit and blatant, it was the entirety of the explanation of how they work at all with their ever changing shape.
>>
>>3016657
>Shkadov thrusters
just how fucking long have they been doing this
>>
>>3016665
About a million years.
>>
>>3016665
the hives and its enemies are old anon
>>
>>3016665
Oh, you know, about six months give or take
>>
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>>3016657
But there is something new among the eroding disk of star-corpses. A shining, expanding mass of mental thought-construct, perfectly smooth, perfectly reflective. It is made of antipathy and armed with rage. A formation of Void Cutters spiral into a formation, their shards pulling apart spacetime into a funnel as the object pours through like liquid mercury, and beyond the hole, on the other side, you hear the tachyonic scream of a psionic cannon.

"This is but a fragment of the Hall of Souls, a portion of the capacity of a thought-construct." She says. You feel a glimpse of it. An endless structure of tachyonic energy, forming, shifting, and reforming in on itself forever in dimensions beyond your three. Deep, deep within, beneath an endless layer of armor and labyrinthian halls made of screaming agony made manifest, is a planet. A world of deep, black oceans and palaces of coral and held within its pocket of dimensional space by a series of great pillars, vast crystal obelisks reaching from the fortress beyond into the small pocket of reality and puncturing the planet's crust, heating its oceans with life giving warmth, and spreading the Anchor of the void shards, growing as great forests in the plains of the ocean depths.

>Ask about the Red Queen (write in)
>Ask about your abilities
>Ask more about another subject (write in)
>Other (write in)
>>
>>3016674
jesus tapdancing christ they've literally armored themselves in hate
>Ask about your abilities
>>
>>3016674
>>Ask more about another subject (write in)
How might one infiltrate this Hall of Souls, or at least the world within it?
>>
>>3016674
>Ask about your abilities
Wait... so the Enemy isn't actually those giant liquid death-creatures that pour into normal reality. Those are just their temporary thought-constructs. That explains why they're so devastating.
>>
>>3016674
>Is that the Ceph homeworld, where is it?
>Ask about the Red Queen (any we need to know, any possibilities we must avoid?)
>>
>>3016674
>Ask about your abilities
>>
>>3016674
>>Ask more about another subject (write in)
So what exactly are we fighting against? You told us that the Void is a blank canvass, and that whatever the Ancient Queens did to use the Void as a weapon against the Watchers tainted it. But what exactly *is* our enemy?
>>
>>3016682
No shit. That's a multidimensional nanite swarm as far as I can tell.
>>
>>3016674
>>Ask about your abilities

I felt the black hole pulling at me.

...Is that where the Ceph homeworld could be hidden? Was it moved into the void? Through the black hole? They grew very paranoid after the Skyl betrayed them.

...Actually, huh. We never did test it but the Skyl we first met. They said they had a death wish but could not die. We didn't really test that claim.

It seems odd that destroying their own cyberbrains would not kill them. So Void Crafting can make even ordinary matter indestructible, not just thought constructs?

But, the Queen, somehow, commanded a void shard to 'end' and that worked. Or did it just suck all of them into the Void. But why would the void shard ever obey the orders of a Queen in the first place?

The Queen operated a void shard and scried upon the mercurial enemy consuming a planet. Why did it respond to her mind at all? A drone does not obey the mind of anyone but its Mother.
>>
>>3016685
I also want to know what they are and what they want.
>>
>>3016690
Because I think we are dealing with a blind idiot god. This thing isn't actually thinking for itself.
>>
>>3016690
Nigger she just answered. It's the planet orbiting the black hole.
>>
>>3016674
>you hear the tachyonic scream of a psionic cannon.
NANI?!
>>
>>3016704
It was either from when the builder fired her psionic cannon or when mom did, since those where the only times when we say the weird metallic blob of hate.
>>
>>3016704
That's when the white queen died. The ceph opened some form of ftl similar in effect to the ripper drive and then she shot through it in the anchors face.
>>
>>3016706
But neither of them fit in this instance.
>>
>>3016674
"How could someone go about getting into that?" You ask.

"There are always methods. No location in spacetime is truly inaccessible." She says. "Your problem will not be getting in. That will be easy, compared to doing so unseen, even for you. To say nothing of getting out once more."

"So this planet, is that the Ceph homeworld?"

"These slaves. The latest fashion to satisfy their madness. Yes, and they wear their souls like jewelry, feeding on their worship to fuel their egos and their self satifcation."

"I still don't understand though, what exactly are they?" You ask. "You say the Void is a blank canvas, and they corrupted it somehow, but who are they, exactly, here and now?" The First Queen comes close to you, her great face floating near you as it enters the spectral image as she leans in towards you.

"We are shaped by our every action and thought. As we shape the Void, it shapes us. Our mind forms reality within this realm and that reality seeps into our own. We will make enemies where we fear them to be, and friends where we seek them. This is not a physical aspect, but a condition of the universe. The whole of the galaxy may shunt itself down a new branching path, and it requires the whole of its living souls to choose that path. By taking the Void as a weapon, my children chose a path for the whole of our galaxy, one of bloodshed, violence, and destruction. They can no longer see others as living souls. They have formed their reality into a tool of singular destruction, and because of this, all of reality is to them, something that requires destruction."

"If you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail..." You say. "Only, more literal this time, I take it?"

"As I teach you these powers, you must maintain a balance of your mind." She continues. "They have driven their minds into the Void in whole, become a part of it, and have allowed themselves to be molded by it. They have made it a hammer, as you say, and so they can use it for only one purpose, and can only perceive problems that are to be solved accordingly. To avoid this fate, you must maintain a will over yourself. You must know yourself, you must be the clay, and the potter. As you shape the Void, you must maintain your own self, or the shape you seek to make will use you as its mortar."

"You mean I'd die?" You ask nervously.

"No. It would be far worse. This is the fate of my lost children. They lacked the will to keep themselves whole, and so when they formed their weapon, they became it. They are now one, and they will not stop, they cannot stop, until there is nothing left for them to use their weapon on."

Then how do I stop them?" You ask.

"Are you ready learn to craft the Void? To shape the thought-reality without losing yourself in your own creation?"

>Yes
>I think so...
>I don't know
>Other
>>
>>3016674
So that's the mercurial thing. Eats planets sometimes. As you do. Wonder why just mundane matter works as sustenance.

And then it uh. Did it form a hard crystal cocoon around itself when it's healing from the White Queen's attack? The planet the USV Ranger dubbed Limbo orbiting Proxima Omega.

>>1911589
> a small world skims the edge of the singularity in an impossibly delicate orbit. The world grows in his view, its horizon stretching across his mind as he closes in on the strange, unnatural looking stone of the surface. Cracks can be seen running in jagged lines along a surface that seems almost sandblasted smooth. Stones rumble and crack, and a new fissure opens as a strange liquid seeps out, reflective like mercury. The surface seems to vibrate, thin, hairlike tendrils reaching up from the growing pool as faint whispers echo from bellow.
>>
>>3016710

>>3016674
>A shining, expanding mass of mental thought-construct, perfectly smooth, perfectly reflective. It is made of antipathy and armed with rage. A formation of Void Cutters spiral into a formation, their shards pulling apart spacetime into a funnel as the object pours through like liquid mercury, and beyond the hole, on the other side, you hear the tachyonic scream of a psionic cannon.

Thread 39.2
>Finally, you sense space open before you, and an elongated ovoid of reflective metal emerges. The surface ripples like water.
>You finally have their attention. You must be more of a nuisance than you anticipated.

>You charge the energy and unleash the cannon once more. The piercing death cry of the crystal within feels like needles in your mind. The beam lashes out to the looming hulk and tear at its hull. It begins to boil. The gurgling metallic liquid falls away in chungs, evaporating into nothingness. As the beam dissipates, you see a seeming crater in its bow, slowly reforming as cracks appear to form in the flowing surface. You can feel it screaming in pain and rage.
>>
>>3016714
>I think so...
So they were consumed.
>>
>>3016714
>Other
I must.
>>
>>3016714
>Yes
The void is a place of pure will no waffling.
>>
Actually do we know how to safely "kill" void shards? I'd like to get more psionic shrouds up.
>>
>>3016714
>>Other
My Queen needs it of me. I was made to serve, wasn't I.
>>
>>3016714
>Yes
>also I must ask if there is anything I should look out for or warn the Red Queen about
>>
>>3016714
>>Other
I must. It is my destiny.
>>
>>3016723
Dunno.
>>
>>3016714
>Yes
>>
>>3016723
Conceptually, all we need to do is separate the shards from the hand/anchor, the process of doing so somehow creating a dead zone where they can't see or sense.

I figure we may be able to get Seiner or others like him to do it quietly, since they're barely visible in the void, but thats still a theory.
>>
>>3016657
>"I've seen visions... of a massive crystal on a planet, or near it... I was never sure what it meant. I remember seeing a black hole and-"

That's...wrong.

Seiner hasn't ever had a single vision of a crystal on a planet or near one. He saw a 'planet' that was made entirely of crystal itself, with mercury lurking just underneath, orbiting the black hole.
>>
>>3016723
Only way I think we have is the psionic canon. So far once it was fired for a second shot has been a catastrophe.

The Moon: Fired once fucked up the commonwealth fleet. Fired twice Blew up the moon

WQ: Fired once, cleared out the enemy ships. Fired twice Blew up the hive ship along with WQ

so no safe way as of yet that I can recall.
>>
>>3016737
To attack, they must be attacked. So no we're not attacking them and basically begging for a counterstrike.

We'll hopefully hear about this peculiarly passive limitation the Void has later. And presumably if all living things forgot they existed at all, they would effectively cease to exist.

Even talking about them by hating on them like Disciples of Oblivion lyrics do probably empowers them. Thinking about them feeds them, attacking them makes you vulnerable.
>>
>>3016744
Correction, the cannon fired twice both times.

Humans got two shots off before the third misfired and blew up the moon.

The WQ's first shot killed most of OQs capital ships, the second shot wounded the liquid metal world-killer thought-construct, and the third misfired when the liquid metal blob thing started eating through the WQ's hiveship.
>>
>>3016744
>Fired twice Blew up the hive ship along with WQ
Incorrect. The White Queen was on the planet which is strange since the planet wasn't destroyed only glassed.
>>
>>3016750
But the way we think about shit influences the way the void works.
Our enemy was born when the Ancient Queens used a weapon in the void that nearly committed genocide on an entire galaxy-spanning species, infusing the blank canvas with an all-consuming desire for destruction.

What if we use could somehow do the opposite?
>>
>>3016714
You think over the question. You are a man of science, you have lived all your life considered the laws of physics to be immutable and constant, changing your perception of reality to fit what your latest models indicate it to be, but this? To simply will your reality into being...

You realize it is a false choice. You already have the power to see beyond the veil of reality. You can see your own paths, and there can be nothing beyond this point that holds anything of a pleasant reality without you accepting this burdon. It does not matter if you are ready or not, you must.

As if wielding a knife, you sever the branches along your tree of potential, collapsing into the moment of here and now.

"I have to." You say. The First Queen reaches down, and plants her claw firmly into the ground. The surface vibrates, cracks, and melts into a black, brackish pool of water.

"Then you will begin." She says. "I have shown you the paths of this universe, but these have been the past. You are far ahead of me in spacetime, you may see things I cannot, for you still live in this instance. Dive in, and find a place, seek outs its present, and look to its futures. I will guide you, and if you should begin to falter I will attempt to pull you out, but I cannot offer a guarantee."

"Sink or swim, then." You say as you look at the water. You catch images of other places, other times refracting within its waves.

"It will be easier to go to a timeplace you have a connection to, or where someone you are connected to is or is familiar with." She says. Even if that link has not been made yet, an intertwining of your potential paths in your future may serve as a link just as well, although it will be weaker."

>Visit Gemini
>Visit Theseus
>Attempt to visit the Commonwealth
>Other (write in)
>>
>>3016757
>Visit Gemini
>>
>>3016757
Visit thesuses
>>
>>3016757
>>Visit Theseus

I'm honestly torn between visiting Theseus, Seeing how the Union fucks up, or dropping by to see Elizabeth and see the shit she got herself into.
>>
>>3016757
>Visit Theseus
"Hello, my son. I'm sorry for what I did to you, and proud of what you've become."
Time for Pinocchio to be a Real Boy?
>>
>>3016757
>>Visit Theseus
The degree to which Theseus can be trusted in the future is crucial to deciding how much we can cooperate with him.
>>
>>3016762
>>3016764
>>3016767
So you guys don't want to help ourselves here with dealing with the Union?
>>
>>3016767
Well ain't that just the sweetest.

"I know you had me killed, and I forgive you"

Even for a soulless being like Theseus that would hit him right in the feels.
>>
>>3016757
>Visit Theseus
>>
>>3016757
>visit elizabeth (when she was creating theseus?)
Visiting a person and place he's familiar with, as a first dive, can't hurt.
Although if this fails I'll suggest Gemini.

I'm quite pleased with how many of my theories were touched on in this thread, including the "dumb AI"-ness of the Void Gods (as in, they're unable to do anything they haven't already considered or done - like a shitty AI) as well as the specific mind/bodyness of the Three.
>>
>>3016767
No. We don't have the tech to savely pull that shit off.
>>3016767
>>3016773
You guys do realize he can't hear psionic stuff right?
>>
>>3016757
>"It will be easier to go to a timeplace you have a connection to, or where someone you are connected to is or is familiar with."

So thats what Emmerich meant when he said he was using Elizabeth as a breadcrumb trail.

>>3016769
I figure that its best to start with things that don't have much in the way of psionic interference. Theseus as of right now is still mostly psionically inert circuitry, and the Red Queen is pretty much the only psionic being he regularly gets in touch with (Unlike the Union which might be under Void influence via Emmerich), so if Seiner fucks up here, he oughtta be safe.
>>
>>3016769
I assume we will have more chances in the future to skry upon the Union and see how they're fucking up this week. The question with Theseus on the other hand, is one we've had as long as we've known him, and how it is answered could change everything about our relationship with him.
>>
>>3016757
People often mention how much of a dick Seiner was to OK Theseus' termination, but think about it from his perspective. Him and an assistant have been working on a highly advanced PROGRAM to help stop crimes. Funding is getting cut, a bunch of people are yelling at him for results and he does not consider the potential of Theseus. Elizabeth does and it still requires a highly illegal upgrade for him to even become sapient enough to save himself.
>>
>>3016757
>Visit Gemini
>>
>>3016757
>Visit Theseus

You stand at the edge of the pool, picturing in your mind the being you wish to see. Flashes of machinery and distant serverships begins to fill the pool's reflection, and you dive in.

Please roll 1d100, best of three
>>
Rolled 18 (1d100)

>>3016784
>>
Rolled 21 (1d100)

>>3016784
>>
Rolled 71 (1d100)

>>3016784
>>
>>3016776
>You guys do realize he can't hear psionic stuff right?
But we can manipulate matter. I mean Emmerich can, no reason why we can't test it out on Zero One and write down a message, or something.
>>
>>3016785
>>3016787
>>3016788
Now that was close.
>>
>>3016785
>>3016787
This would have been terrible if it weren't for >>3016788
>>
Rolled 65 (1d100)

>>3016784
Yeargh, just when I posted. 1 minute cooldown between posts!

>>3016788
At least you saved us from further embarrasment.
>>
>>3016785
>>3016787
These two need to stop rolling.
>>
Rolled 68 (1d100)

>>3016792
I'm gonna blame Seiner because I couldn't think of anything to say to that wouldn't crit fail like "for the void" etc
>>
>>3016778
That's not new information. That's been obviously how it works since the very first time scrying was used.

A complete amateur found 3 targets, and all 3 were things the Queen had already met, or was connected to in some way we only found out the details of later.
>>
>>3016789
Seiner is only just starting to learn how to fly, and you want him to attempt a Spirit Bomb?
>>
Rolled 94 (1d102)

>>3016802
What could go wrong?
>>
>>3016785
>>3016787
>>3016788
This is what happens when thinkers don't praise mother. The Seiner must learn to praise mother to become better.
>>
>>3016804
You sadden me
>>
Rolled 80 (1d105)

>>3016807
I used a different number for a different probability curve, that way I can't deplete our 100's.
>>
>>3016809
That ain't how probability works m8.
>>
Rolled 240 (1d1000)

>>3016811
Are you sure?
>>
>>3016784
The water rushes past you in a torrent of cold and darkness, you feel the passage of... not time, but timelike aspects, like a landscape rushing past you from the perspective of a moving vehicle. The passing times and places coalesce, and you drift down to the surface of a distant lab on a distant world. You feel strained, as if holding your breath, and your movements are slow and fluid. Your feet don't quite reach the ground, and you drift as if held beneath the surface of water. The experience is straining, you watch your hand as you move your arm back and forth, your fingers shifting in and out of place. For a moment, they grow and shrink, wobbling back and forth as if their image were being refracted, but the sensation is all too real, and you maintain your focus, clenching your fist as you feel your body solidify in its form.

You open your eyes as you regain your composure, and you look around the lab. Metallic armatures cover the ceiling and surround some manner of operating table or workbench, if Theseus sees any difference between the two, and against the wall is a large tank banded with some manner of what looks like a set of circular looms. You try to move closer a sensation more akin to swimming than walking, and you look at the contents. There is a humanoid figure... a man, held within the tank. The circular loom runs with some manner of flesh-like substance, clearly a form of muscle fibre rapidly being grafted to a metallic skeleton. Organs can be seen within, already formed as a heart beats slowly within its exposed chest. The skull is open, and empty. You look elsewhere, finding the body's own worldline, and following it to find its brain. Suddenly you are in another room of the facility where a large collection of jars hold a number of brains of different types. Most are made of some silicone rubber-like substance.... but a few, seem almost... organic, although wich synthetic components grafted within as cybernetics. You feel their potential, and you look further. Time accelerates, new locations, laboratories, and you notice some new technology being utilized. The molecular structure of the cybernetic parts gains some kind of... lattice structure holding the rest together. The two are bound more tightly, more evenly. You see some have some manner of potential...

You follow the development, now focusing on the project itself more than the individual brains. There is some light at the end of this tunnel, you realize, and you rush towards it with hope, a knotted stomach, and an overwhelming urge to see what has become of your creation, your scorned child you had once tried to kill in its cradle.

cont.
>>
>>3016630
>while the Cluster will make an organ-self whose only duty is navigation of the greater form
Wait, Cluster's sounds like a hyperdrive.
>>
>>3016818
>Most are made of some silicone rubber-like substance.... but a few, seem almost... organic, although wich synthetic components grafted within as cybernetics. You feel their potential, and you look further. Time accelerates, new locations, laboratories, and you notice some new technology being utilized. The molecular structure of the cybernetic parts gains some kind of... lattice structure holding the rest together. The two are bound more tightly, more evenly. You see some have some manner of potential...
Sounds similar to the silicate hybrid / obelisk sample we have. Maybe we should have Theseus look at that next after silicate computing.
>>
Well now we know why he wanted just one seat at the concert.
>>
>>3016841
It wasn't obvious?
>>
>>3016840
I believe that's exactly the "breakthrough" he had. The mating of silicate and carbon life to create a proper vessel for Theseus.
>>
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>>3016818
You are unsure how far into the future you are, how many branches and paths you have gone through to get here. You don't know how likely or unlikely this reality is, but you know it is possible, and that is all that counts. The stars are not too different, maybe some mere decades off, a few centuries at most.

You float on the bridge of some manner of vessel. At first you presume it is biological, but there are aspects of machinery within it. It has a crew, a surprising novelty if this were a Hive vessel, but you feel the flesh in its hull traces back to a Queen. The crew is similarly strange. A Ceph is plugged into some manner of biological control port, its tentacles held within several pockets of flesh. The ceph has no shell, or not in the traditional sense. A strange, chitinous looking shell with a decorative black geometric shape covers its head, but there is a psionic signal from within the ceph's body, its thin shell covered in short, quill-like antennae.

Through the rest of the bridge you see others. A Phantom huntress is stationed at one of the consoles, a Skyl wrapped around a control rod near the back. At a small, elevated position, clearly the command chair, is a human in a chitinous skinsuit looking over some readouts as two other humans discuss something with him. No, one human, but the other...

He is a pallid looking man, of gaunt figure and indeterminate age. He wears a familiar set of glasses that are clearly largely for decoration although a data redout indicates it offers some manner of heads up display. The veins in his eyes are strange... running at right angles and spread out evenly across the eye, you see several veins just beneath the pale skin runnin in similar patterns.

"Captain, we are detecting a possibly localized Void disturbance." The skyl says from his station. The human looks back from his seat, and then quickly looks back to the terminal on his chair, pressing several buttons as the human near him quickly moves over to another terminal. The pale man looks to his data pad.

"It seems to be within the allotted tolerance range for the test, but it's highly focused. Within the ship, actually."

"We have an audience, it seems." The captain says with some amusement. "I was wondering when he'd show up, to be honest."

"Should we attempt to jam the scrying?" The pale man says. The captain shakes his head.

"He'd just watch the one where we didn't. Besides he's a good omen, if you'd listen to the merchant tales." He gives a gesture to the ceph, and the ship's engines come to life. A strange, folding energy emanates from its core. You feel as if it may be a void shard, but there is a calmness to it you have not felt before, and suddenly the ship falls away from you, your mind left thrashing in open water until you fall to the floor of the First Queen's chamber as you gasp for air.

cont.
>>
>>3016850
"I was growing concerned." She says. "I was not expecting such a scrying for your first attempt." You manage to catch your breath, standing back to your feet as the black pool reforms before you. "Now again!" She says.

>Visit the Union
>Visit the Commonwealth
>Visit Elizabeth
>Other
>>
>>3016852
>Visit the Union
>>
>>3016852
>Visit Elizabeth
>>
>>3016850
>>Visit the Union
Save Elizabeth for last

Also thats a very interesting future branch.
>>
>>3016852
>Visit the Union
so Theseus is making some kind of cyberman people?
>>
>>3016852
>Visit the Union
Let's get better at this before engaging in JEDI GHOST FIGHTS
>>
>>3016857
It's the future where everyone join's the hive.
>>
>>3016852
>>Visit the Union
Save the best for last.

Really want to try Commonwealth too though before the finale...
>>
>>3016850
>Visit the Union

"You must go deeper this time." She says. "You can not only observe, but manifest force where you arrive. This time, find something of your focus, reach out to it, and shunt it into a branch of your choice."

Please roll 1d100, best of 3.
>>
Rolled 19 (1d100)

>>3016865
Good luck, space ghost.
>>
Rolled 54 (1d100)

>>3016865
For Mother.
>>
Rolled 52 (1d100)

>>3016865
Can we ... exert non-kinetic force? A computer's circuits?
>>
Rolled 91 (1d100)

>>3016867
>>3016869
>>3016871
Mother damn it, we're losing our touch
>>
>3016850
>He wears a familiar set of glasses

Dressing up in his daddy's clothes.
>>
>>3016874
Yes you are. You should stop impulsively rolling.
>>
>>3016867
>>3016869
>>3016871
You see the highest roll was praising mother! The Seiner must learn that in this realm of thought and dream you do, not try, things for mother!
>>
This is really random, but I had a eureka moment in the shower. The scavs reminded me of an actual animal from earth but I could never remember what, but then it clicked. They're aphids, a lot of aphid species are mono gendered and reproduce asexually. A brood mother if you will gets to a certain age and size and starts to create tiny identical daughters. Some aphids even have a rudimentary eusociality. Like the scavengers they feed and take until their host plants are all but destroyed, then they spread like a plague to every other plant near the one they just consumed.

Fascinating
>>
>>3016865
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL2muFdthFA

You dive in again, surging towards your many familiar haunts, now in a literal sense, you suppose. The images, times and places, rush past you, flowing freely as they slowly gain focus into a firm reality. You feel the tug of a wandering mind, the images fading and breaking apart around you. You feel it loosing form, and suddenly there is a great thrust of force, dragging you through the choppy waters as the First Queen takes you by the arm and drags you deeper into the vision.

"You must focus!" She says firmly. "You have a connection with the people here?" She asks. You look ahead to a darkened bunker complex where Morgan sits in a special seat, his back exposed as he leans forward against a cushioned support as several doctors operate a set of needle tipped armatures connected to a long, spine-shaped metal plate that is held over his back. He breathes deeply as the hair-thin needles run into the skin and you sense his mind become cloudy with uncertainty and concern. Thoughts of betrayal, of self-doubt. You feel him worry of his own past actions, questioning if his actions with the Hive were truly his choices, or if he is just another unwitting slave of its Queen puppeted by some unknown means.

You see the paths branch out before you, twisting, splitting, and rapidly collapsing. This moment is balanced on a knife edge and could go in any direction. You see several actions taken, several possible outcomes, but each one branches further, and not every outcome further beyond this moment is desirable. You cannot control fate, but you may be able to direct it into a point where you can better control its fallout. The timeline to this point is held out before you, the intersections between Morgan and the Hive, and Jack's own paranoia as he stands watch with several guards, intent on taking his own readings next.

>Calm Morgan and have him remember his own past instead of the Hive
>Grant Jack an inaccurate epiphany
>Have the machine's reading malfunction and become less accurate
>Other (write in)
>>
>>3016887
>>Calm Morgan and have him remember his own past instead of the Hive

Come on Morgan, we need you to be clean and suspicion-free.
>>
>>3016887
>Calm Morgan and have him remember his own past instead of the Hive
>>
>Calm Morgan and have him remember his own past instead of the Hive
>>
>>3016887
>Calm Morgan and have him remember his own past instead of the Hive
Morgan is a bro and needs to pass this.
>>
>>3016887
>Calm Morgan and have him remember his own past instead of the Hive
Get him to remember WHY he made his choices:care for mankind, curiosity, a sense of justice.
>>
>>3016887
>Calm morgan

You reach out to the path, and you grip the one you wish, pulling the whole of reality along the branch, and in the process severing all others.

Please roll 1d100, best of 3.
>>
>>3016887
>>Other (write in)
"Hey Jack, whats this?"(other spooky nonsequiter ghost phrases)
>>
Rolled 83 (1d100)

>>3016895
>>
Rolled 28 (1d100)

>>3016895
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
>>
>>3016895
Think Happy Thoughts for Mother
>>
roll1d100
>>
Rolled 38 (1d100)

>>3016895
>>
>>3016897
Looks like I got it.
>>
Rolled 51 (1d100)

>>3016895
Well here we go, hope we dont Freddy Kruger his ass by accident
>>
>>3016893
>think about the motives that are anathema to the Council's ruthless consolidation of power

Maybe not.
>>
>>3016895
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nBA4O-Ehxo

Morgans thoughts begin to shift, but not from your altering them. They had always been this way, this is reality, his thoughts are his own, and you have no power over them, that is the realm of psionics, but you have not moved Morgan's mind, but you have moved the world from its foundations beneath him instead. The universe is new, and slightly different, and there is nothing you can see or feel to indicate anything has happened at all.

The imaging process begins, the doctors examining it closely as the test proceeds in silence, and you feel a tug, abrupt, and strong. The image becomes blurry, its future uncertain and foggy as you struggle to hold it in your mind, and a flash of a distant place comes into your mind, throbbing into your head as if someone were pounding on a door to break it down.

"Focus!" The First Queen says, and grips you again, tearing you away from the vision, but it is not you going to it, the vision comes to you, seeking you out, as if calling your name. A placetime scouring the Void for you, and you suddenly feel the mind of Elizabeth, a flash of her own tree of potential.

It is at a bottleneck. You race back to it, struggling from the First Queen's grip to examine it more closely. So many of its branches end here so suddenly, so few continue on. They all intersect with another, a being, a worldline of confusion, stretching through spacetime in loops and knots, following an atemporal path.... much like your own.

"That was Elizabeth!" You say back. "I think she's in trouble!"

"You are not ready, your will must be steeled further. You could destroy yourself if you craft with the Void against another."

"You can see it too though!" You say back, and a flash of her mind comes over your own. There is danger, a growing fear in her mind, and a pulsing, swelling psionic power. Her mind and body glowing like a reentry vehicle as a creeping darkness begins to envelop her, cutting away the branches of her own tree one by one.

"And if you leave, you could suffer worse than death." She says.

"I could save her! I can feel it, like it's right in front of me!" You shout, the tree growing more distant as tangling shadows grow around it like weeds and choking vines.

>Pull away from the First Queen and find Elizabeth
>Stay with the First Queen and continue your training
>>
>>3016847
>Mating
Our hiveminds shall meld sooner than anticipated Anon.

The True Husbando created this body to court us no doubt.
>>
>>3016915
>Stay with the First Queen and continue your training
Reminder the Jammer is option we chose and it works according to the future.
>>
>>3016915
>>Stay with the First Queen and continue your training
>>
>>3016918
Well, we can't entirely be sure that their jamming of scrying was the same as the generic psionic jamming.
>>
>>3016915
>Stay with the First Queen and continue your training

Losing one of the two would be a tragedy, losing both would be an unmitigated disaster.
>>
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>>3016915
>>Stay with the First Queen and continue your training
Goddamit.
Speaking from a utilitarian point of view, Seiner's survival is much more important at this point , but goddamnit
>>
>>3016915
I really want to believe that Seiner and Elizabeth combined would be required to win, but I will have faith in our daughter. i believe in her.
>>
>>3016922
How can we not be sure? Emmerich's void projection stuff is just a psionic thing in the end.
>>
>>3016915
>>Pull away from the First Queen and find Elizabeth
"Sink or swim" was the term?
>>
>>3016931
Void projection also involves fucking with spacetime branches and alternate universes, I think that's a step above basic psionics.
>>
>>3016915
>Pull away from the First Queen and find Elizabeth
Victory or death
>>
>>3016915
Wait a minute, this is Star Wars. This is literally Darth Vader's plan from The Empire Strikes Back.
>>
>>3016915
Stay with the First Queen and continue your training
>>
>>3016934
Nope all of that is psionics and a void projection is a purely psionic entity.
>>
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>>3016937
Huh.
>>
>>3016937
So players aren't falling for it.
>>
>>3016931
>>3016939
Your Venn diagram is wrong. use of tachyons, but not psionics. But jamming will probably work yes cuz it's just spamming tachyons.
https://ask.fm/QuestDrone/answers/142451466021
>>
>>3016937
>>
>>3016937
well, looks like Han and Leia are going to die.
>>
>>3016915
>Pull away from the First Queen and find Elizabeth
>>
>>3016950
Have you seen our rolls today?
>>
>>3016915
>Stay with the First Queen and continue your training
>>
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>>3016915
>>Stay with the First Queen and continue your training
Change of vote.
>>
>>3016953
Ya but Luke had to abandon his training to save them.
>>
>>3016960
This isn't the movie and you haven't even voted yet.
>>
>>3016960
Vader only tortured them to make Luke have Force visions of their suffering lure him away from Yoda training. If he actually killed them he would lose his bait.

Han's life at least already belonged to someone else.
>>
>>3016960
He didn't even save anyone though, he got fucked up and then saved himself.

Emmerich is looking for Seiner, him showing up is exactly what they want.
>>
Time is constant in this place. We know the jammer should protect Elizabeth, what we are really risking is infection of other related scientists in the human worlds.

I still think to continue trainning is the right option. its just going to come with a body count.
>>
>>3016966
Technically Leia saved him so not even that.
>>
>>3016969
No I mean he gets saved himself, not that he personally saved himself.
>>
>>3016915
Unrelatedly. So, if Seiner can use stepping stones in the Void, he can actually make it to the Commonwealth in basically 2 hops.

Grandfather Seiner worked on the Confederate side of the war. The Confederation collapsed to become the Commonwealth.
>>
>>3016915
>Stay with the First Queen and continue your training
>>
>>3016915
Should probably ask the First Queen... is this kind of tug from an emotionally important spacetime naturally-occurring? Is that a thing that happens?
>>
>>3016915
>Stay with the First Queen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_JgOlGq6i4

You allow the image to fade, drifting deeper into the water of the pool until it vanishes into the Void. The images flicker in your mind, and slowly fade away.

"You must distance yourself from all distraction." She says. "You are outside of spacetime, your must not allow yourself to be pulled by your connections to reality, or they will pull you apart."

"But you said that places or people I have a connection to make it easier to find them?" You ask.

"Yes, but you must not allow that link to drag you away. They are links to use for your ends, not pitfalls you must fall through."

"But she is in danger, what if-"

"The universe is in danger." The First Queen replies. "All life shall die. You are beyond such things, you perceive the strands of fate that exist behind the fabrication of free will, your actions cannot be commanded by the universe which you must protect. You will feel many such connections, and all of them will eventually sever. This is the march of time, and not even you will be able to stop it."

"That wasn't a natural event though." You reply. "I could feel it, something was changing the realities involved."

"Yes." She replies. "As They have been since their inception. I have attempted to weave a tapestry that stops them, and at every turn they have tried to cut those strands and sever the roots of my branches away to nothing. They have sown entropy across all possible realities, and would seek to have their minds rot idle in an empty uniform universe of decaying quarks. You would see that be done to stop the death of a friend. In time, you will likely see them all die, as the single-minded tend to do. You are no longer a part of the garden of this universe, you are one of its groundskeepers."

You turn slowly away from the echo, and go back to face the pool of water.

"Now you must learn control. You must be patient and disciplined, enough to watch a stone age for eternity, to follow even the smallest thing from its creation to its death.-"

You focus your mind, and the echo is nearly gone, your mind holding your own form, and the First Queen's mind, following the light of its thought as you navigate the infinite swirling chaos of the Void, and all of its eddies and currents.
>>
>>3016915
>Stay with the First Queen and continue your training

Pls don't get into a gun fight without learning to aim and shoot.
>>
>>3016987
And I think that's all for tonight, hope you all liked it. Maybe not as traditionally spooky as we would have liked. I'll try to stay around a little bit for any questions or comments, but I actually got called into work tomorrow and they moved me to an evening shift, so it is quite late for me.
>>
>>3016990
GG snd thanks for running
>>
>>3016990
Thanks for running man, this was very existential and really just....

Damn you're a great writer
>>
>>3016990
Thanks for running. This was certainly a welcome lore session. We know so much more now. Only question I have is how fucked Elizabeth is.

Hope you counted some of this for your NaNoWriMo word count.
>>
>>3016990
>Maybe not as traditionally spooky as we would have liked

Not every spoop has to be in your face QD, sometimes the spoop of realising your true place in the grand scheme of things can get you plenty scared.
Thanks.
>>
>>3016990
Thanks for running quest.

I hope Elizabeth gets out of this intact.
>>
>>3016990
Well talking to your own ghost reflection was something.
>>
>>3016993
We shall see, even I don't know, that's more up to you guys.

Also I've never really done NaNoWriMo, didn't realize it was going on.

Although now I suppose you know what I meant when I said the mechanics of the Void is how I tried to solve the FTL-causality issue.
>>
>>3016990
A trippy dream sequence like story is the worst place for typos because people will think they were intentionally trippy and get misled completely.
>"You are you, and why are you here?" He says.


Also when did Seiner get a vision of the Ceph homeworld's crystal spire. What did you think a "planet of crystal" referred to in the writein?
>>
>>3016990
Thanks QD. Great running, great writing, great lore dump. Amazing as always.
>>
>tfw this entire run was both "QD lore-dumps to speed up the glacial timeframe on this quest" and "metaknowledge the readers are going to suffer aneurysms trying to not use"

Fucking excellently done, QD. This is the first time in any media I've actually paid attention during an exposition speech. Kudos, mate.
>>
>>3016996
We rolled a 94 (or was it a 92?) for the jammer. She will be fine.

>You now realize that every 'bad option' on the vote pool was actually the trying to influence the outcome
>yfw QD saving us from most of our bad choice was actually Grandma fixing the time line and pucking the best option.

Man if any of this is true then Killinger launched the nukes because the branch was cutted leaving to only option (in his mind) to secure everything was launching the false flag ISG.
>>
>>3016990
So if we'd had Seiner not go in here this thread would be about Emmerich hunting him instead, right?
>>
>>3017242
Next thread.
>>
Even though the Silicates were our foes during the war, they themselves are not the Enemy and our war with them was born of mutual belligerence and stupidity. Because of this, it could be possible to ally with them again. While they will still be buthurt that we arnt vegan like them, we are still going against something that is fucking up the Void even more then us. Also, we could try to use Theseus as an intermediary.I know what you are thinking: Its already been established that Theseus isn't "alive" in that he hasn't been born into the void yet(no psionic bullhit), but if Theseus could gain it, his similar yet different perspective in relation to that of the Silicates could help win them over. Their skill at manipulating the void would be an unimaginable boon in our war against the Enemy.
>>
I kind of want to give Void crafting to Theseus and Heretic both. Heretic is already partway there, being an engram of amalgamated minds in a thought construct
>>
>>3017334
It was mentioned earlier in the thread prior to the void god origin reveal that the Silicates are all dead. We've been fighting their automated defenses.
>>
>>3016361
this is a good way but we will watch them from above
>>
>>3015921
>They fled their space, wounded and afraid.
They couldn't have done that if the were all killed.
>>
>>3015927
This is why multiple queens is a bad idea btw.
>>
>>3017419
Come on m8 that discussion is dead just let it rest.
>>
>>3017242
Except Seiner would still be on Leeland, so still frustratingly outside of his reach.
>>
>>3017386
And in theory we couldn't be talking with the first Queen because she was killed.

Also the Ark was a work of the first Queen that gathered the eggs from her dinasty and launched it outside of her space.
>>
>>3017430
Seiner body would be out of his reach. But not his mind and i guess soul?
>>
>>3016990
this was amazing
>>
>>3017419
I disagree with your opinion.
>>
>>3017342
Well no.

The Void has consumed and merged with the minds of various Queens into an amalgamated supermind of hate and death.

The enemy is the living concept of destruction itself. Using a weapon against it like the Psionic Cannon seems like it isn't a long term solution. It hurts them in the short term, sure, but it's still feeding the endless cycle of violence that they embody.

The First Queen said that the galaxy can choose a different fate collectively if everyone puts their mind to it, so... the nonviolent win condition is adopting several trillion orphans and making them all sing Kumbaya?
>>
>>3017342
but it still feels and reacts it thinks
>>
>>3017439
So does Theseus, but he isn't alive, apparently.
>>
>>3017471
he just does not have a soul and a soul is just a psi imprint
>>
>>3017438
So...how does the galaxy wide civil war of the humans fit in?
I mean even if the enemy does not gain anything but brownie points from it, I think it would be best for everyone involted if we would do our best to put halt on it
>>
>>3017438
Since the VOid is nothing and the imprints that advanced life leaves on that nothing, if we managed to remove almost all trace of the Viollent Queens, such as freeing the ceph, killing OQ and destroying the Anchor, then, while they can still exist, their ability to influence the universe will be next to nothing. Violence will always exist, after all ,it is how one being forces its reality upon the shared reality, but we can remove the Void Queens, so that they can no longer be a clot of violence in the shared metaphysical reality.
>>3017439
>>3017471
Which means that IF the silicates are all dead, we could still ascend their leftovers, just like how we could do the same to Theseus.
>>
>>3017486
You're not necessarily wrong about Theseus and the silicates there, and I honestly kind of hope you're right.

>>3017482
Compared to the conflict between the big three or even the old queens, the CommonwealthXUnion conflict is minuscule in scope. It's playing out across a dozen systems even at it's peak, which is a tiny, tiny sliver of the wider galaxy. The combatants aren't even locked in a struggle of mutual destruction yet.

The only reason it can even be mentioned as an element of the larger war being waged between the hives and the void is because the WQ used it as a cover for getting the blind (humans) to build the psionic cannon.
>>
>>3016491
Uh...that's kinda what the white queen did with the red queen. She made that egg and gave it 1 thinker then shot it into space on a pod when shit was about to hit the fan. Hell with the way the void fucks with probability I'd argue that doing the back plan would some how get red queen killed because of alternative dimension bullshit.
No new queens till it is necessary, any sooner invites disaster.
>>
>>3017590
This time around that plan isn't going to work, especially with the existence of things like Emmerich eliminating the Enemy's weaknesses. That plan isn't going to work twice so you need an alternative.
>"inviting disaster"
QD has repeatedly stated that laying queens isn't actually bad thing for us but rather a play style choice just like how terraforming planets vs core mining is a play style choice.
>>
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>>3016987
>You are no longer a part of the garden of this universe, you are one of its groundskeepers.
That was somehow an ominous and sad statement at the same time.
>>
At risk of being the slowest of slowpokes, I think that if we have a daughter we should get her a dog. And by dog, I mean some sort of pet civilization. At least among humans pets like dogs can be really helpful in raising children to be more empathetic and in pinpointing problem cases early on. When raising a daughter we could force her to rely on a non-hive species early on in order to teach her to care about such people, like how the Scarred Queen had to rely on her non-hive caretakers. We could also monitor her interaction with them in order to notice any Killinger-like behavior and take steps to head that off.
>>
Seiner has no sympathetic link to the Commonwealth. Eventually when Void Projection is fully mastered, we may want to find someone worthy to adopt and uplift into another Void Crafter.

We'll have to wait and see if this Jon Connery guy is upliftworthy or another good adoption candidate shows up.

Oh, and we'll have to find and uplift a human raised on a Valen world, one that isn't already committed to a different specialization like Anderson.
>>
Hey wait, Wise is a xeno studying scientist... we might be able to eventually adopt him and invite him to work in a lab on silicate biology or something as an auxiliary research roll.

There could be Wise/Palmer odd couple teamups.
>>
We know Windsor is lying about the number of void shards, both intact and broken ones, but we can't admit we know for a certainty.

We have to say that it seems suspiciously convenient and astronomically unlikely that they really had only a single shard, the one at Nowhere. Where there's one, there's more. They aren't lonely artifacts.

We could demand a face to face meeting with Windsor and Morgan on neutral grounds with a Valen moderator where we demand the codenamed 'Omega Artifacts,' with the Valen physically close enough so its well known empathic ability to detect deception is also in play. They already suspect the hive of similar abilities but we don't officially know that they suspect that. So publicly speaking, we're officially using the 'neutral' Valen, who will actually be terrified of crossing us in any way, as the nominal lie detector.
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>>3017758
Why can't we? I was, and still am, perfectly willing to go to war with the Union if they do not hand over those fucking shards.

This is the one single issue there can be no negotiation on with the Hive, the stakes are simply too high. If the Union keeps the crystals hidden away and continue to experiment on them, they will fall to the void, and further expose us to it in the process. Every other subject we can give ground on but not on this.
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>>3017758
It's not like we have anything at all to lose by admitting we know how many void shards they have. For all they know we're as omniscient as the void itself, and their effort to counter that sight will only distract them from the actual espionage tools we have at our disposal.
>>
How do I make my quest as popular as this one Anons.
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>>3017715
The human from the Valen embassy is a pretty cool guy. He could be a candidate to ascension.
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>>3017797
Good writing, good premise, decent characterisation and nice run times.

In short, a lot of good fucking luck to you
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>>3017797
Upgrade trees.

>>3017784
Windsor is cynical and smart and is capable of suspecting we found out through a very mundane way of terrorist attack and hackers on Project Moonraker. He already basically understood the 'bluffing' as a matter of pride earlier.

Better not to give him anything he can grab onto. And simply claiming or implying omniscience is not really any more likely to help us get what we want. Odds are he won't wholly believe it or if he does, we won't like the new security measures he'll try to implement.
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>>3017813
And we can't discount the possibility that they have void shards that we don't even know about yet that weren't accounted for in the files.

If we act satisfied when they give us the number of shards we know about, and they've actually acquired more, that will make them confident that we can in fact be fooled.

Reading his surface thoughts and emotions is the only way to genuinely be sure.
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>>3017784
The only thing that happens is that we reveal our spionage network is very deep into their territory.

Which Jack already suspect. However we can't be sure those are the only remaining void shards. We could ask just for the active ones (who are honestly the really dangerous ones unlike the inactive ones) and say we can sense then.

We could also do a public announcement stressing the return of the artifacts and that we appreciate the Union gorvenament being so carefull (read slow in delivering) in handling the shards do to their extreme sensitivity (people saw the cutter exploding into mini-black holes we could say that is what a unbalanced void shard does and we wouldn't even be really lying).

Basicaly not acuse then of doing anything publicaly show that they are doing their best in handling the delivery but that if they take to long more attacks may occour. We do this to make pure public pressure on then.
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>>3017823
Or we can just keep going with the Shadowruns using a parasited Kent as the head of our rebellious group.
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>>3017831
We could just say we know th Union has multiple shards and if they don’t hand them all over there will be war. We don’t need to define “multiple” exactly, so if they recently gained more shards they would be included. The Union would take a huge risk if they didn’t return everything after we already revealed they have a major info leak.
>>
To clarify some terms, I think we ought to start using the proper term for the third race of the original three: Watchers.

So we've got
Hive: striking a middle ground between psionic and biological mastery. Rulers, organizers, industrial masters.

Cluster: the undisputed masters of carbon/DNA biology. Gardeners, tamers.

Watchers: originally biological, they withdrew into their spherical shells and the Void and ruled through it with precision. They preferred complete control over every aspect of biology, life, and death, and controlled the strands of fate to keep everything in balance. They created silicon tools for their ends.

A war started between the Watchers and the Hive when a Watcher attempted to hijack a drone. The queens of the time, proud and confident, used their psionic powers to flay the Watchers' minds using the powers of the Void against the advice of the First Queen. This backfired and the Void became a place of hatred and terror. Eventually, the Watchers, stuck in the Void, create a naked singularity for a brief moment and in that instance create the Hall of Souls, primarily a thought-construct but deep within is a pocket of real-space which is the Anchor of the Watchers, and the Ceph homeworld.

It's a bit unclear if the current masters of the Void are corrupted (?) Watchers, Hive Queens driven mad, or a combination of both, but ultimately it doesn't matter. They feed off the prayers of their slave races, and their ultimate goal is to see the Universe reduced to a uniform soup of quarks. Probably in the "nobody can be suffer if there's nobody left" kind of sense.

In any case, our current goals appear to be simple:
1. Defeat the Scavengers. They are actively hostile, have ties to the original Watchers and/or the Hives that fought them, and are drawn to the Watchers' old systems.
2. Defeat the Black Queen.
3. Destroy the anchor.

At some point we'll need to start recruiting psykers or something, so we'll have to get the Union / CW conflict sorted, befriend the Valen so that they can get us into the Anchor, and possibly recruit/pacify Cluster.
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>>3017880
I kinda wanted to not leave ground so the Union higher ups can reverse our claims about then having the shards but i guess a more direct and less bullshit/political approach one that the Hive is making since it came to present itself should be a good one. After all everyone is already tired of political bullshit.

Also i think this will be the second riot on Gemini since we introduced ourselfs. Eventually they will stop having stuffs to burn.

And now most of the Union PDF in Gemmini is dead thanks to the Ceph attack.
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>>3017903
The Gemini defenses have been heavily damaged, the Valen are essentially catatonic due to hive weapon deployment, there are riots in the streets, and the hive has (probably) doubled the size of the original fuckhuge system escort since the Ceph attack. I would not want to be the politician that tries to deny the Hive a Void shard at this time.
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>>3017917
Not to mention the Ceph weren't defeated they were just routed. If anything another attack is very likely to happen.

Mam it must have being absurdly scary to the citizens to see to many void cutters and so many ships that the sky was literaly eclipsed by it.

Not to mention the Hive ships popping in in mid battle going into the fray and not ending just to the end doing their best and holding the line and routing the enemy.
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>>3017940
Another Ceph attack is probably not that likely to happen as a route implies we inflicted serious casualties. The Ceph attacked because they assumed they were taking advantage of what they saw as an exposed hive ship. The much lager escort fleet, proven stealth detection, and effectiveness of jamming should probably deter another attack for the time being. That being said, the Union has every reason to feel terrified right now.


In terms of attack risk, the OQ has actually been quiet for a long time and I suspect either her or the Ceph are quite likely to attack Builders Gift especially once the Skyl reveal themselves at the metal concert.
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>>3017902
I think your timeline is a bit wrong. The ceph homeworld wasn't the first location for the anchor.
The human civil war doesn't actually matter much as long as they don't start glassing population centers so we won't need to touch that one.
Cluster is pretty vehemently against getting in the middle of the Schism so I don't think that's going to happen.
>>
>>3017963
Man when are those new ships coming online?
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>>3017963
>Epic space battle between rival dark gods and corrupted hives as a backdrop for the black metal bands as they rock people's faces' off
>All while Elizabeth and Emmerich duel with unholy powers in the mosh pit
>Lyle jumps in half pissed because why the fuck would he miss this?

This is going to be the most metal concert of all time. No other civilization or culture in the universe is ever going to top this shit.
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>>3017994
10/10
would hold space concert again
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>>3017994
I get the sentiment, but Elizabeth and Emmerich are very different in terms of power and abilities. Elizabeth has psionics, Emmerich has probability manipulation.
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>>3017994
I guess we won't need to do a recruit campaing after this concert uh? Heck we were wondering were the cult whorshipping the have as saviour was. i take some might start to pop up soon.
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>>3017994
>Pump psionic spores into the air over the concert and literally turn the music and frantic mental energy of the partiers into lethal weaponry.
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>>3018032
Now i remember that the main group isn't just a black metal band but they are also a niche band whose music main focus is to reach multy layers in singing

>the metal heads can actually sing to disturb the void just like the singers/idols from macross

Man psionic space bards.
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>>3018032
>>That idea right there.

That's the kind of lateral thinking that gets the job done! Now if only we roll double Nat 100s for that fight to turn best daughteru fight scene into one to remember.
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>>3018051
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>>3017963
It's spelled rout. It was a rout. They took a 4-dimensional route to run the fuck away.
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>>3018177
I appreciate you.
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>>3018177
Fair enough, although I’m not the only one to have made that typo. Still, though, I appreciate the correction.

>>3009942
>Before long the Ceph begin to follow en masse, unable to communicate, the first to flee triggers a route, and they are in full retreat.
>>
So, the Enemy is a clot/fortress/shit-ton of VIOLENCE in the metaphysical realm(Void) They got that way by using high level psionic bullshit to attack the Silicates and the method caused their minds to evolve along the same lines(alter metaphysical reality and if you arnt careful it will alter you to accommodate your wish). So...what if we countered it by channeling our love for our children our(relative patience for other races, our hope for the future of all life and our sense of sacrifice to negate it, like a base and an acid? We would of course have to find a different method then what the Void Queens did so as to not alter us as well, but its one of the few ways can actually think of beating the Enemy without Hive Minding all life, which is undesirable for multiple reasons.
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>>3018247
I'm fine with our will along those lines changing ourselves if that's what it takes. None of those seem like bad things.
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>>3018247
Not going to work as far as I can tell.
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>>3018247
I highly doubt unfucking eons of concentrated hate from an entire civilization of hive queens in the void is going to be so straightforward.
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>>3018267
But anon don't you want to fire a love cannon up the void queenies's' hate guns' urethra?
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>>3018273
It'd be much more practical to just adopt everyone.
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>>3017797
Git Gud

In seriousness, good planning, excellent writing skills, and the ability to improvise quickly on the spot. An original and interesting premise helps too, as does strong characterization Anons can form connections to. My guess is QD has "trees" not dissimilar to what was described in this thread about how the Hive would act in particular situations and has plans for what happens if we choose various different options. However, there are also plenty of times the Quest will go "off the rails" when a write in option would win. A good QM would generally reward creativity rather than punish it by it being an unexpected approach. This requires quick thinking and a deep understanding of the setting.
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>>3018279
This is very true.
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>>3018336
Honestly "off the rails" moments are the most fun since they are also the most organic.
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>>3018491
And we're all about that sweet, sweet organic biomass.
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>>3018561
Tee-fucking-hee
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One thing I just realized, if Seiner can influence to "Grant Jack an inaccurate epiphany", then the much more experienced Emmerich could certainly do the same. Even when not thinking about the Void, Jack is incredibly vulnerable.

If Seiner is ever able to relay this information to the Red Queen, I will change my vote to have us warn Jack of the potential for outside influence. We have reached the point where unfortunately ignorance is not much of a shield, and Emmerich knows Jack far too well for obscurity to be any protection either.
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>>3018577
I believe a shared history is a far more powerful source than thoughts when it comes to void influence especially for races with extremely small imprints in the void so informing the union council that anyone with a history with Emmerich should be considered as compromised.
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>>3018615
Supporting. We should have killed Emmerich and atomized the bastard when we had the chance. If we can develop a way to make the bastard physical for a limited time, Id just love for Lyle to just curbstomp the bastard. No psychic duels, no metaphysical fights using similar yet different styles, just a crazy aussie beating the shit out of a nerd cultist.
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You guys think we can harness the power of rock to help Elizabeth? It might be more difficult to "shape the void" if more sentient creatures are involved. Not that we'd have an in-character reason to think that, but if the jamming does not work, and the shielding doesn't work, and physical strength doesn't work, we're kind of out of options.
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>>3016850
>tfw the Red Queen's efforts to protect life leads to Star Trek, with Theseus as Data.
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>>3019048
>To boldly go where no bug has gone before
>To spread cheekiness wherever it's needed
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>>3018879
In character, we didnt get the info dump that Seiner got, so "shaping the Void" would be, at best, something we think of on instinct when pushed to it.
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>>3019260
I'm just running through possible options, like what can we do to help Elizabeth? The options were to boost her psionics (try to overpower Emmerich mentally) or to send in drones (try to overpower Emmerich physically). Those options are still on the table if the jamming doesn't work, but are there any other? Sending in Lyle would be functionally identical to sending in drones, and I'm not sure a physical contest would be any good, since Emmerich isn't completely in the physical realm, and he's outright said that he's traveling through time. I'm not sure more psionics would be helpful either (although it may be worth trying), so we're kind of short on options.

The most off-the-wall idea would be to try to pull a "power of music and friendship to defeat a demon" by trying to harness latent psionic energies of the concert attendees or something, but I have no idea if that's possible or if it would help instead of making things worse.
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>>3019535
Sending in Lyle would most certainly NOT be just like sending in the drones. As a hero unit, he is capable of fucking shit up in ways that are simply impossible for our drones by virtue of QM fiat. It's like having Dillon electro-punch that Smith on Tannhauser even after he had dumped every single one of his specialty bullets at him. You would think his punches wouldn't do anymore damage than armor piercing and high explosive bullets, but they did.

Sending Lyle in would have the same effect. If the Emmerich can be affected in any conceivable way by physical interference, you can bet your bottom dollar that Lyle will find it, and will use it to split his crystalline skull in half.
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>>3019580
>If the Emmerich can be affected in any conceivable way by physical interference
That's what I'm worried about.

Still, ultimately worth trying if it comes down to that.
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>>3019589
Well Emmerich manifestation is still use of psionics if he want to fight Liz, he will just pick the branch were we haven't choose to use the jammer.

But that would make no diference because as Emmerich said he is "late in this instence" so i think this is just a astral manifestation and a psionic jammer will weaken his presence in the area.

This will most likely make the concert even more of a target so we better get ready to send some ships in.
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>>3019580
>>3019535
>>3019589
>not using psionic insulation to punch the ghost
It's like you guys don't know the story of the ghost puncher.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=tPwWsXZ3His
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>>3019683
>using psionic insulation to punch the ghost
I'm assuming the ghost would just try to not be where it is, but that is a good idea.
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>>3019611
I think if it were just that easy we would've died by now.
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>>3019611
Wait, oh no.

What if, by talking about the risk of the concert being attacked we are actively making it more likely QD will see the discussion and have it attacked? It’s like the real life Void shard - the more you think about something the more dangerous it is.
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>>3020024
thats is some meta-level bullshit. But I do remember talking about how the Ceph haven't touched us in the comeback thread and then lo and behold, the Ceph try to raid Gemini in the next thread.

While we're at it.
>voting options are basically the First Queen/Seiner trying to steer this spacetime branch into the best possible outcome while rolling the dice is trying to grab the stick from any sort of Void timeline interference.

>The Psionic Cannon is basically just one big route lock, both fluff and metawise, for better or for worse.
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>>3020048
This quest got really meta really fast.
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>>3020063
This quest has always been really meta.
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>>3019978
Well granny has being screwing with the Void plans so we didn't died so far thanks to her intervention too.

>>3020024
Then the concert gonna have one hell of a light show. Also we will be able to test our 15 heavy fleets and the other 5 attack fleets.
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>>3020048
>when putting off the Psionic Cannon all this time was the correct choice
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>>3020196
No shit. It's a hot potato. You don't be found holding it and you don't want to drop it so you pass it off to someone else.
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>>3020196
literally researching it would be super dangerous
>>3020265
its more like a bomb that ticks down when you look at it and at the same time you are playing hot potato
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Do any of you think we can do the same shit the Enemy is doing with worship? Use it to empower ourself.
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>>3020323
I kind of doubt it as we exist in the void only in a limited sense as opposed to the Enemy who for all intents and purposes is the void.
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>>3020334
Reread how it works. It states that it uses the connections made to empower and sustain itself. It sounds doable from my perspective.
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>>3020347
>"No. It would be far worse. This is the fate of my lost children. They lacked the will to keep themselves whole, and so when they formed their weapon, they became it. They are now one, and they will not stop, they cannot stop, until there is nothing left for them to use their weapon on."
This is why I believe there's a fundamental difference between the Queen and the Enemy that would make it impossible to use worship. If you mean the creation of new possibilities then we really don't need worship only chaotic allies. This would actually explain why Lyle is a hero character since he's one of the most chaotic people around.
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>>3020376
How "chaotic" a person is has nothing to do with it. Rather the Void shapes something according to belief, like if enough people are believe you are a god you care use that belief to become much stronger. The way it work for the enemy is that ANY belief of them strengthens them.
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>>3020393
Honestly I'm having a hard time understanding how belief and worship function in relation to the void. A fight I can understand since attacking is just a simple act of maximizing the realities where you damage the enemy while minimizing the realities where the enemy avoids damage and defending is the reversal and the creation of those realities through quantum uncertainty. Where does belief and worship fit in? Is a queen capable of influencing the void more the more drones she has?
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>>3020506
No idea. I'm guessing maybe not since drones don't count as "true life" to the hive.
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>>3020560
I believe it is because any action and intent that they have comes straight from another being, the queen, so any thing they do, is psionically caused by the queen , which means that it is the queen that leaves an imprint on the void and has a branching fate.
>>
Guys what if we were to banish Emmerich then build a Psionic Shroud?
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>>3020853
I'd support it though I'd like to build a psionic shroud on a hive ship for mobility.
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>>3020859
We'd need one for the space city until Seiner returns and I'm pretty certain we can't build one on a Hive ship.
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>>3020874
I mean there isn't a listed price for it in the space city either.
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>>3020887
I imagine there's enough space.
>>
We really need a better way to categorize and create new drones, ships and fleets.
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>>3020859
>Psionic Shroud on a Hive Ship
That's pretty fucking brilliant, actually.

If we can't do it on a Hive Ship, maybe we can persuade Theseus to allow us to do it on a Server Ship. In fact, maybe that should be a requirement for our joint research venture into the Silicates.
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>>3020094
Granny is long dead, I have to repeat that if manipulating reality was just so easy we'd've been dead by now too.

A voidcrafter may be a powerful individual, but they're not gods.
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>>3022292
Demi-gods at least with how much influence they have. Especially given how powerful hives are and the fact they can be manipulated or pruned by one.

But a thought occurred to me. if this is was a traditional hivemind, then once we got some egg layers out and a good number of drones then the hive has no real weakpoints. currently our strongest weakness is the queen herself, so in a roundabout why i am asking if there is a way to make it so that the queen is not the primary intelligence guiding the hive, if that function could be spread to multiple locations, thus meaning that if the queen did die, then it wouldn't be game over.

I doubt it, given the fact the old hives died off and they had so much more time to figure out a solution, But its something to think about.
>>
Fucking hell we are dumb.We just got a confirmation that jamming works against scrying.

>"Should we attempt to jam the scrying?" The pale man says. The captain shakes his head.
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>>3022310
See, that's the thing. We have no evidence that /one/ can do something along the lines of manipulating or pruning a whole hive.

In fact, as of right now, /one/ hasn't even managed to kill the heroic researcher unit he went after.
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>>3022321
It's not certain that the psionic jamming we currently have will be effective against void scrying or not.
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>>3022391
consider grandma, if you would bear with me then i would suggest that the first was a Psudo or proto-void crafter.

She has demonstrated the capacity to see into the future that perfectly that she can train someone who's species has not even been conceived yet. Lets assume that she is the apex of power that a void crafter can wield.
We also have that vision of old queens murdering watchers from across the universe with the void.

So if given enough time, preparation and raw power, then i suggest that a void crafter would be more than capable of pruning an entire hive provided they notice them relatively quickly.
With how the red hive is established now? its unlikely that it could be done to us thanks to all of our preperations but what about when we had just turned lee land into a hive world? then we could have been utterly "voided" from reality.
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>>3022423
i think it will because we rolled a 94 for it.
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>>3022436
i wonder if after his trainning is done Seinner gonna start using robes and a weird hat.
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>>3022448
my god i want this so bad.
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>>3022457
Our cheekyness levels will be unstoppable if we unite the Red Queen and Q cheekyness.
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>>3022430
Your premise is accordingly flawed. Time has no meaning in the void so (unless there are rules we are as-yet unaware of) it does not make sense that void-crafters would have more problems dealing with the hive NOW than they would've at the beginning.

There's also something important to note in the example you cite: the Queens gathered together (along with the First) and together they were able to spear the Watchers through the Void. Emphasis on the TOGETHER.

Voidcrafting is not such a clear-cut all powerful art as people are acting like it is right now.
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>>3022537
Point on time, you are probably right. I remember reading "so you are really in the past" at some point from seiner and associating that with precog and recordings.

Secondly, on the "together" business there is a point to be made that we are using a different form of psionics than the queens of old did, so it is not inconceivable that to kill someone a void crafter could do so without much trouble.

This is really my part on "pruning" a hive, Killing the queen. If a teleporting 5th dimensional shadow man who has show to be able to interact with the world and alter its very fabric to a degree can kill a man, then there is nothing to say they can't kill a queen and by extension the hive.

But "pruning" as in wipe from existence? no i don't think that QD would give us something that strong. unless of course voidcrafting can be done in large groups for better results.
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>>3022617
What's different about our psionics than the queens of old?

Also there IS a difference between a 5th dimensional shadow man interacting with the world around a man, and them trying to do so around a Queen. Chiefly, that a Queen casts a much larger/brighter 5th dimensional shadow than a man does. We haven't been directly shafted by Void Fuckery yet, and there's a reason for that even if we haven't got the information to know exactly why right now.
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>>3020859
>>3022279
These are both good ideas, but don't we need a dead void shard to build a pionic shroud? I think we only have the one

LUCKILY, the Union has TWO dead void shards. They just have to agree to turn them over to us...
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>>3022768
We do and it was my reason for wondering if there's a less energetic way to break void shards.
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>>3022768
>>3022775
We also just killed/blowed a lot of Ceph ships over gemmini. Maybe if we roll to loot we can get dome broken shards as well as some still active shards.
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>>3022768
We have a second dead shard from Nowhere. Our first dead shard was from the Builder's hive ship.
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>>3022768
Correct me if i'm wrong, but didn't the fiasco at Nowhere leave a dead void shard?

>>3022666
>>3022617
I've been pondering on this for a while. Perhaps the ability of a void crafter rests on both their relation to their target, how intertwined their spacetime branches and "destiny" are, as well as the latent psionic potential.

Emmerich and Seiner are/were human, which is great for running around the Void unnoticed, but that doesn't give them much in the way raw psionic potential, at least compared to the Queen.
Emmerich also doesn't really have a strong relationship to us, which also helps.

As for how the Queen hasn't been killed in the cradle or here space time branch pruned?
I'm just giving theories at this point but
>We're too far removed that the Void or its current lackeys don't have a intertwined connection with us
>Granny First Queen has been doing everything she can to protect us.
>We haven't been haven't been noticed by the Void until recently after Nowhere. By which point our spacetime branch had become strong and well-established by that point that outright pruning doesn't work. This one is probably the strongest reason IMO.
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>>3022809

I think there has to be a certain level of 'strength' to voidcrafters, I also wouldn't be surprised if human voidcrafters have certain advantages over Queens in doing the sort of voidcrafting they've been doing (subtly influencing things without anyone really noticing). As a contrast they seem to lack the sort of raw power we saw the Queens display in that flashback.

There's also the matter of how actual pseudophysical thought constructs fit into this whole thing.
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>>3022768
>agree
Hah. Anon, you make it sound like they have a choice
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>>3022905
They DO have a choice. I wouldn't refuse if i were then but they can still choose to not give us...if they want their entire civilization whipped out.
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>>3022931
I wouldn't say that their entire civilization would get wiped out. More like "Forced Regime Change due to irresponsible use and possession of weapons of mass destruction."
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>>3023251
They get America'd.
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Amusing. Apparently the Hive Ship has the highest efficiency when it comes to amount of crew per nutrient and metal having a 25% higher efficiency in nutrients and 33% higher efficiency in metal when compared to the runner up corvette.
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>>3023449
so boarding hive ships when?
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>>3023455
Never because it's slow.
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>>3023460
Faster than a worldship.
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>>3023463
Which do you think takes more time? A hive ship's TTK or the time it takes for a hive ship to perform a boarding action.
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>>3023474
Depends.
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>>3023492
You do realize a Worldship will always have a escort fleet and that it would be better to treat it as a planet than as just a ship.
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>>3023500
So would any fleet planning to board it. What's your point? Seriously you're the most autistic motherfucker I've ever encountered not capable of taking even the smallest joke without needing to sperg out.
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>>3023508
>screeching autistically about autism
You do realize it's hard to tell what is a joke and isn't these days. Shit that was joked about years ago I see happening irl unironically so I apologize for not getting the fucking joke.
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>>3023508
So to clearify on what is my point is that it's better to design a fleet with the intent similar to raiding a planet when attempting to steal a worldship. Hell it might be a good idea to ask QD if Drop Pods work well for raiding Worldships. A hive ship would be a poor choice due to its slow speed and being a big gamble over much cheaper and faster sub-capital ships like the corvette, also hive ships have been stated to be intended for more of a supporting/utility/logistics role while corvettes are troop transport and point defense. Now while using hive ship for boarding alone isn't a good idea using a hive ship to support a fleet in such an effort is (since it comes fully equipped with everything needed to produce it's own invasion force for free).
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Uh i didn't remembered that Alder (The secretary lady from the green party) is actually red haired.

Maybe the hive should talk to her more.
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>>3023618
We have boarding pods. They only work if you lower a ships shield and even so they might still miss the target if the ship engines are still working.
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>>3023626
We aren't talking about boarding just any ship though, we're talking about boarding a Worldship. Like how does QD intend on handling it? Does it work like a planetary invasion? Is it like a space city? Or is it just like any other ship?
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>>3023642
Why the fuck wouldn't a boarding pod work? they're literally uparmored drop pods dedicated to breaching ship grade armor.
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>>3023642
I have no idea. That is more a QD question. But it is a worldship so i take that the status if a ship is applied to it.

Maybe it's a slower ship that is focuaed more in having heavy shielding or heavy armour since Scav tech seems to have a focus in ramming, use of grappling and boarding pods.

But without any intel amd QD opinion all i'm saying is no better then guess work. Also i have no idea how a boarding pod would work against a station. I take you would need to just take out the shields?
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>>3023654
Because the shield grade from the worldship m8ght be something that it's really hard to break/lower so a boarding action may happen?

I mean the thing is massive it would be a oversight from the scavs for not having redudant shield generators on the thing.
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>>3023669
That would apply to all attempts to board it and isn't some kind of unique trait of the worldship.
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>>3023673
True still the scav world ship is unknow to us as in we don't know what kind of tech was added to it.

As far as we know she could have reinforced or increased plating to bulk up and stop possible boarding parties.
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>>3023688
Simple. Swipe a plasma lance against the armor and land drones through the still glowing hull breach.
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>>3023654
I'm wonder which is better not arguing Boarding pods don't work. Drop pods can carry larger drones and are faster so it's generally better for large scale invasions like here.
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>>3023699
Large drones generally don't fit in ship corridors though. I'd rather have more drones that can go anywhere.
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>>3023694
Oh yeah plasma lance ignores armour and shield. Just need to get close enough to use it.
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>>3023702
You realize a worldship is meant for building ships and vehicles as well as supporting a massive invasion force right? That means hallways large enough to fit a large drone into. Even if there isn't a large excavation drone could dig holes into it's hull to allow other drones to enter.
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>>3023721
It would not only be stupidly wasteful but compromise both security and structural integrity to build all hallways that large. At best there would be logistics paths around the dockyards and factories. And then you propose using excavation drones to make new paths?
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>>3023734
This is a massive ship. It will require some method of transportation to get around quickly and we don't care about integrity that much if we are attacking (because they might blow it up any way to deny us it). If we want to take it intact we'll have to stick with infiltration.
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>>3023779
Obviously.
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>>3023708
Exactly, and lots of our corvettes have plenty of lances

>>3023734
The Scavs may be pretty arrogant. What was the last time they lost a world-ship, if ever? When has anyone been dumb enough to even try attempting boarding a worldship?

I think a massive boarding attempt against the worldship would potentially have a great chance of being totally unexpected and that the interiors of the worldship might be designed for invasion efficiency rather than for maximum security - which would help us significantly.

It may even make sense to bring the Hive Ship to our attack on the worldship. While we *probably* won't use the Hive Ship for boarding directly, those things can soak up a stupid amount of damage and it would be an absolute magnet for enemy fire if brought into a fight. It by serving as a distraction might allow our other ships (like corvettes and boarding pods) get close. And on the off chance we actually win the space battle it could deploy the many, many, drones inside to help take down whatever interior defenses the world-ship has as well.

>>3023779
>>3023793
With regards to them blowing it up, I think we were going to see if we might be able to infiltrate some Scavs aboard utilizing the Apha and Broodmother in custody. They might be able to counteract any self-destruct mechanism. Again, though, given how long the Scavs have steamrolled any species they came across they might not have incorporated a self-destruct in the worldship since it would be too easy for rival matriarchs to attack their enemies using it and they would not have anticipated any "primitives" to be able to actually take it over in CQC.
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>>3023970
The current plan is to infiltrate the planet, compromise their ground teams and get spinepals in their engineering department. We might even be able to sabotage their shields so we can just boarding pod a few hundred thousand warriors in.
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>>3023979
That's a good plan, but if an opportunity presents itself we may need to/want to act sooner than the infiltration route will take. We also don't know how easy it will be to get to the engineering staff en-mass without being detected. If they send out alarm pheromones whenever one is knocked out, for example, we could be in trouble.

Sill, it's definitely the preferred plan A. If something goes wrong, though, and we need to take over the World Ship the at least in part the hard way, a DISTRACTION Hive Ship may help in the fight.
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>>3023970
>>3023979
How are we even supposed to get any forces into the system when there are 4 moon-sized Silicate bases waiting to fuck up the Hive's day if they get too close?
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>>3024353
Different system
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>>3024361
I get the two scav systems we recently visited mixed up.

But weren't we assaulting the Worldship rather effectively, and then got driven off by the Silicates at the Eye of Wrath?
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>>3018615
That's a stupidly untested hypothesis that we haven't gotten any exposition to support.

We simply cannot risk spreading around knowledge of Emmerich until not only the metaphysics are known, but Seiner himself is available to shape the probabilities so that the outcome is the frankly INCREDIBLY UNLIKELY probability of the humans' reaction to the news being the one that we want.

Of course it's unclear what you'd want that is practical at all. "consider X compromised"? They can't resign or be fired in the middle of both a war and a political push for the king bill, they can't be taken out of power secretly behind closed doors while appearing to be in power in public, and anyone who replaces them in their positions if they did would be no less vulnerable.

There are no upsides to telling them, and a poorly understood but definitely real potential downside.

There is no action they can take that is useful. The only useful thing is us cloning more Void Crafters to counter-craft the probabilities in our favor. You don't politely ask puppets to fight their strings, you take over the strings.
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>>3024364
No the world ship wasn't in the eye of Wrath. The world ship is in the Matron Star system.
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>>3024368
Also wrong. The first worldship is in Old One's Promise.

An uncountable number of other worldships, plural, are interlocked at Matron's Star.
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>>3024365
Emmerich appearing to Elizabeth and the way the first queen guided Seiner clearly point to familiar things being easier to focus on.
>We simply cannot risk spreading around knowledge of Emmerich until not only the metaphysics are known, but Seiner himself is available to shape the probabilities so that the outcome is the frankly INCREDIBLY UNLIKELY probability of the humans' reaction to the news being the one that we want.
What reaction do you imagine the humans to have to "you have a mole in your council that may have been the cause of all or most of your recent setbacks"? It's also quite likely that Seiner will never be able to manipulate probability to the extent you're describing here considering how absolutely devastated our hive would be if that were the case.
>Of course it's unclear what you'd want that is practical at all. "consider X compromised"? They can't resign or be fired in the middle of both a war and a political push for the king bill, they can't be taken out of power secretly behind closed doors while appearing to be in power in public, and anyone who replaces them in their positions if they did would be no less vulnerable.
They can however be quietly stopped from taking any actions while acting as a figurehead.
>There are no upsides to telling them, and a poorly understood but definitely real potential downside.
I can't deny that there is the risk that I'm wrong and that even ex(?)-human voidcrafters can simply appear when spoken of or are known about but it is by no means certain.

>There is no action they can take that is useful. The only useful thing is us cloning more Void Crafters to counter-craft the probabilities in our favor. You don't politely ask puppets to fight their strings, you take over the strings.
Of course there is. Completely shutting down and rejecting all projects is in practice unfeasible but moving these projects to the oversight of the other council members is not nearly as challenging. I also don't believe we will simply be able to clone void crafters or really use them as much more than our eyes.
I suppose the worst case scenario would be that they decide that talking to the voidniggers is a great idea and try to end reality but really what are the chances of that happening? :^)
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>>3024386
>>3024365
We can't clone void crafters as of yet. Seiner is only a voidcrafter because he was influenced by as-yet-not-understood technology the White Queen left behind. He was only a normal clone before that. There are technological prereqs to making human voidcrafters we have not yet unlocked.
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Well skipping a bit the main talk you guys think we should do a press release with the Union media to explaing that it wasn't us shooting their ships?

Although i think some Void cutters de-cloaked you know how human media is.
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>>3024380
I think it's an uncountable number of scav ships generally at Matron's Star. There may be multiple worldships there, but I don't think there's an "uncountable" number of worldships necessarily.
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>>3024481
Sure, a press release about routing a ceph attack isba good idea.
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>>3024532
No shit they are, that's not what you hypothesized. For all you know actively thinking about someone in the present makes an even stronger connection than the mere existence of memories from the past. And even if it's weaker, it's still a gift to the enemy they didn't have before.

"Quietly stopped from taking any action"? There is no one on the council who even has the authority to stop the others from doing their jobs. Not until there's a President presiding over all 4 of them.

And if there was, you are effectively expecting them to completely hamstring one-fourth of their executive branch based on the unsubstantiated whispers of a foreign government that just annexed nearly half their star systems. Why would they do that?

This is a time of one crisis after another smacking them repeatedly in the face. I mean. Windsor starts suspecting hive infiltration, and immediately afterwards the hive says "DO NOT TRUST WHAT THE HUMAN SAYS." Seems legit.

And gotta point out, Seiner did was "go visit the Union" and he had the option of deciding what Windsor would think and what Morgan would think, and what direct connection does he have to Morgan? It isn't just one corrupted seed that can be rooted out and quarantined, it's anyone in government.
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>>3024954
Did you respond to the wrong person?
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>>3024962
Yes, yes I did. >>3024386

Also, in a very literal sense, we can't count the number of world-ships or any kind of ships the Scavengers have at Matron Star. They're all interlocked together.
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My understanding is that there is only one world ship, because it was described as having THE matron, and having THE core that was salvaged from their homeworld.

How do you guys figure there is more than one?
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>>3014123
> due to all of our crazy recent events, this coming sunday will end up not being a new day, but a .2 to help work through some of the many events that have been set in motion, by both you and others.

He usually tweets at least 12 hours before a thread starts to confirm that it's coming. But nothing yet.
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>>3022537
Time has no meaning, except when it does, from a certain point of view.

Branches of possible worldlines get pruned, until there's only one. You could call the fixed line the past or at least the predetermined. The unpruned branches are possible futures.

Once pruned, they can't be unpruned. They're gone forever.

We've had the First Queen pruning worse possibilities out to ensure the existence of the Red Queen for a very long time. If Void Crafting has failed to prune out our possibilities, it's possible you can attribute this survival to our fairy grandmother doing void crafting first.
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>>3025080
>https://twitter.com/HiveQueenQuest
He just updated, thread will start at 7 EST as per usual.
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>>3025113
Now i'm going to always wonder which option that is presented to us if the Queen picking the best timeline or if it's the Void prunning the best result to us.
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>>3025025
There are multiple Matrons and multiple world-ships, but only one “Grand Matron” with the original (first) world-ship and “Old One” tech.

In fact, on a reread, I noticed QD explicitly says the Grand Matron is a mouthpiece for the “Watchers” (one of the original 3 defeated by the Hive in the old war)
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive/2958920/#p2960094
>They always have, and so long as the Scavengers prove their strength, they always will. This, the Grand Matron decrees, for she is the mouthpiece of the watchers. If there is a scavenger alive who would know the darkest secrets of the scavengers' origins, it would be her.
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>>3025025
The fact that it's explicitly stated that there is a Worldship named Hunger and another named Observance or maybe we could go with the fact it's been stated on the wiki that "it is believed that there is a World-ship made for every world that has been looted by their species" and they've looted a lot of worlds, at least 6 from my knowledge.
The one named Hunger is the first worldship and the most important one.
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>tfw that doom cult that was spouting about the four horsemen of the apocalypse comming was right. Scavs are Famine, OQ is Pestilence, Cephs is War and the Void is Death.
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>>3025365
No, they specifically linked the hive queens with the riders. We were explicitly labeled as the Red Horseman, rather fitting given our warlike nature and penchant for investing in ridiculously heavily armed and armored ships, at least by the standards of our own kind.
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>>3025388
No they didn't are you high? I'm talking about the cult that was sprouting about running to the expanse to escape the end of days.
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>>3025400
Yes the cyclists, or something similar right? The ones who believe that the prophecies in the bible repeat themselves throughout time. Think about how major a role the Queens have played in marking the epochs of the galaxy, and the qualities of all the Queens in recent history. They correlate to the qualities ascribed to the horseman so well it's a little spooky.

The White Horse was associated with conquest, while the White Queen was arguably the best empire builder of this age. She outlasted the assaults of the void longer than anyone else, her hive endured longer than other sane queen, and she had the most long term plan and vision of the future of anyone since the first.

The Black Horseman is always linked to death, and the Obsidian/Black Queen has proven herself to think of little else. This is the queen that indiscriminately showers every planet she reaches with creep, and has become so absorbed by the void she thinks of nothing but destroying any and all life she encounters.

The Red Horseman is consistently linked to the concept of war and violent conflict, which I find highly relevant to us. We were born into a conflict far more active than other queens, to the point we were essentially orphaned. Even when the first looks at our path in the void, she sees a tree who's bark is covered in blood red scars signifying the conflicts we've endured as a hive. And if we look to the implied technological development of past hives we come across as far more effectively geared for war.

The Pale Horseman is far more opaque (lol) in it's significance in theology, often described as representing famine, pestilence, or other forms of wasting sickness. If that's true the Scarred Queen can be seen as very accurate stand in for the pale rider, as she was the one who was left almost completely crippled for millennia after the war. For most of her life she has been the hive equivalent of deaf, blind, and barren, which is a huge deal for a hive queen.

So yeah, the four most prominent hive queens in this quest correlate to the four horseman of the apocalypse with unnerving accuracy.
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>>3025506
I don't think the doom cult in the expanse are the ciclyst. The ciclyst are the ones growing in activity in Talgo (Union Space).

They may do that associatiin you are speaking if though if Emmerich ever manages to get the hears of Richardson.

I was talking about another cult one that was speaking about "running to the mountains" and by that they meant the expanse and they were making a compound on it.
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>>3023618
Technically drop pods would be able to board any ship, the problem is that they are unguided and slow, and thus easy to evade without disabling or harpooning the enemy ship, or firing on a ship that cannot evade for some other reason.

You would still need to disable the ship's shields, and the drop pods would also be very, very vulnerable to point defence auxiliary weapons.
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>>3023642
I have them starred up similar to space cities in my notes, actually. They are of a similar size, with most being a bit smaller than the average space city.
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>>3025791
>>3025797
Cool to know that.
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>>3025797
What are the rules for boarding a space city?
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>>3025935
Same as boarding a ship that can't move and is really, really, really big.
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>>3025945
So pretty much like that time we boarded the OQ's Hiveship?
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>>3025956
Sorta, yea.

Also new thread's up!
>>3025957





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