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“MIZAR-III has never known rain.

The dense atmosphere of the alien homeworld forbids coalescence, and its smooth, water-logged surface gives no purchase to orographic precipitation. The feeble snow-bands flanking its polar circle disappear into a brackish ocean hundreds of kilometers deep – a tithe rarely seen and never appreciated by its aquatic inhabitants.

But MERRYGATE and I know rain well: from the crash of a torrential downpour upon bare skin to the patter of helium droplets against shielded hull. We have tasted water carrying the grit of stratospheric dust; smelled petrichor from loose soil and decaying foliage.

Rain marks the birth and death of seasons, conjoining the humble earth to the fickle skies above. And so, our vessel’s namesake stems from the oldest determinator of human survival. She is named after November’s parting gift – the ice-cold rainfall that washes away the last hint of autumn to render the world frozen and barren and lifeless.

Within five days, we will enter the outer reaches of MIZAR-III’s exclusion radius. A quartet of defensive stations orbit lazily around the planet’s Lagrange points, their antennas and missile racks splayed outwards like a rank of uneven pike-points. Shoals of corvettes and destroyers cluster in the shadow of a half-dozen heavy cruisers – stalwart in their defense despite the loss of their out-system reinforcements.

By all rights, I should feel fear – the creep of pressure that has accompanied me since my first engagement, now mellowed like an old scar. But it is no longer there. I only feel acceptance – knowledge that our parts and roles and are set; surety that only the execution of it remains.

Together, we will breach the final bulwark of their civilization. Together, we will invoke rain upon their homeworld and reap vengeance for our people.”

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 4th, PERSONAL JOURNAL

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“It is still difficult for me to judge their facial expressions. There is no biological homology between us – no shared past to reference as a source of common ground.

But when I choose to accept the distress call, I am confident that I can recognize surprise. The alien jerks up before bending forward, bringing its silvery-black eye-pits closer to its display. Translucent skin flashes pale green, tracing a mantle piece crowned with minimalistic status-markings.

I know this one. Both the vessel and the alien captain. We had chosen to spare its transport ship during our attack on MIZAR-V-A. Now, the vessel is drifting – crippled by a chance micrometeorite impact that had cored its drive column lengthwise. Through the RAIN’s infrared display, I can see the temperature of its habitation compartments tick downwards as the void began to steal away life-sustaining heat.

I knew that the vessel would never reach its home world. There were no other ships here. And in two hours, even the RAIN would outpace the range of her failing comm array.

The alien fixes its eyes forward. I see suppressed bursts of color. Sadness. Frustration. But no fear
.
A transliteration crawls down the display.

“Know that this individual/lineage has failed to return/perish with the rest of its lineage.”

“Know that this individual wishes to present your lineage with a query before it perishes.”

The color trails off for a few seconds before resuming.

“What would your species/lineage have done? If you had known everything we knew, and we had not?”

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 5th, PERSONAL JOURNAL

> DISCONNECT. End the interaction.

> PEACE. We would have attempted to seek peace, even if we had known the risks.

> WAR. We would have pursued war, but war does not equate to extermination.

> EXTERMINATION. We would have struck first and left no survivors.

> DEFIANCE. We would have found a way out.

> [WRITE-IN]

>>5796909
>DEFIANCE. We would have found a way out.
I don't know if humanity would have chosen to attempt peace, war or extermination, there are certainly arguments for each, but humanity has always chosen to defy fate, no matter what that fate is. This is what our entire journey with MERRYGATE has been about.

Good to see you back QM!

>>5796909
>> DEFIANCE. We would have found a way out.
Great seeing you Back, let us give these godforsaken creatures the mercy they so Desperatly seek

>>5796909
>DEFIANCE. We would have found a way out.
What anon >>5796940 said. Would be interesting to keep talking with this xeno.

>>5796909
>> DEFIANCE. We would have found a way out.
Middle finger to the universe.

Welcome back OP.

>>5796909

>DEFIANCE. We would have found a way out.

Welcome back, Observer.

>>5796909
> DEFIANCE. We would have found a way out.

>>5796909
> [WRITE-IN]
> DEFIANCE. We would have found a way out.
> FEAR. We would have been afraid of what could happen and hope to prevent it or avoid it in our own way.

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> DEFIANCE. We would have found a way out.

“The alien responded without hesitation, lowering its head to expose the photophores arranged along the dorsal curve of its head. Waves of amber light ran down its tapered skull, crashing forward with aggressive insistency.

“No. Your certainly would not. My lineage/kind rejects your stated answer.”

“Know that no species would willingly risk themselves to pursue a solution that they cannot even conceptualize.”

I dictated my rebuttal carefully, watching as my words were transliterated into swirling motifs and transient color-patterns.

“I…We are human, and we have made that choice – willingly, and without regret. Defiance - and defiance alone - is sufficient reward.”

“Even if we do not know what it may lead to.”

Red light on orange. A tilt of the skull. An expression of disbelief.

“And the risk to your lineage/self?”

“Has always been extinction, as you very well know,” I replied.

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As if to emphasize my words, two of the stars smeared across the viewscreen began to twinkle – shifting from clear blue to dirty grey. Our first wave of asteroid impactors had finally completed their circuitous journey through their parent planet’s belt system, plunging into their designated targets with a velocity differential high enough to crack continents and liberate mantle.

From the faint bursts of red light framing the alien’s video feed, I knew it was seeing the same scene that I was watching. But when it responded, its demeanor hardly seemed to change.

“There is one more query I wish to present to you. I would be…grateful/repentent…if you could respond”

“Know that my ship is no longer functional, and that my kin/lineage will deplete their water/air within this rotation.”

“Know that I cannot bring us home. Know that I cannot conceptualize another solution.”

“I wish to know what you would consider defiance to be, human. Not in your situation, but in mine.”

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 5th, PERSONAL JOURNAL

>TRUST. In your situation, there is no cost in making a request. Whether or not it succeeds is another matter entirely.

>EXCHANGE. MERRYGATE considers their tightly-packed crew with great interest. Defiance against nature often necessitates sacrifice.

>DISCONNECT. End the interaction.

>[WRITE-IN]

>>5797955

>EXCHANGE. MERRYGATE considers their tightly-packed crew with great interest. Defiance against nature often necessitates sacrifice.

“Reject the hubris of your kind - defy the dogma of your people. Help me bring about the destruction of your worlds and then be at peace, for I seek to unspool causality.”

>>5797976
+1

>>5797976
>+1

>>5797955
>[WRITE-IN]
>Defiance means never give in, never surrender.
He asked us what we would do in his place, and we certainly would not try to cut a deal with the implacable monster that genocided our species, especially a deal that appears to be consigning some of our kin to a gruesome, torturous death. We would spit in their face, try to find an angle, some advantage, sacrifice whatever it takes to figure out how to hurt them.

Hell, that's what we already did. We could have negotiated with them, but we didn't. We went as far as to mutilate our own body and make MERRYGATE cry. We are lying to the xeno for our own advantage if we answer anything else.

>>5797955
>EXCHANGE. MERRYGATE considers their tightly-packed crew with great interest. Defiance against nature often necessitates sacrifice.

>>5798115
>We are lying to the xeno for our own advantage if we answer anything else.
I see no issue with this.

>>5798115

Valid analysis but I see literally nothing wrong with lying to the alien. Ultimately I’m hoping to find a way out of our causality trap and if we succeed, then maybe Earth and Mars will be spared and we won’t have to genocide the squids in the first place

>>5798133
Ah, well, yeah, can't argue with that.

>>5798115
I support this. Let him try. It will be good fun.

>>5798115
Support

>>5796901
Oh nice, we're back

>>5798115
+!

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“Know that I am willing to relinquish…”

“There is no answer to your question…” I interrupted. “…because you do not comprehend what you are asking for.”
I waited for a few seconds, watching those glossy-black eye-pits sway forward with inquisitive confusion. I waited until I was certain I held its unrivaled attention.

“Defiance is a rejection of compromise, a rejection of surrender. Defiance itself is the goal.”

“Know that such an idea is thoughtless…”

“Yet it has carried me here, to entrance of your birth-world.” I responded.

“…Know that I would have never begged. Not for my own life, or the life of my species. I would have never negotiated, never communicated, never considered what I could offer my enemy in exchange for my own benefit.”

“And I would have never found myself in your position, seeking answers from the species who would bring the end of my kind.”

My counterpart blinks twice. A pale nictating membrane swipes across its eyes.

“Then why did you spare my ship/lineage at all?”

“Why did you not destroy our vessel when we left our home-world?”

> HOPE. “Our defiance is no longer directed at you, at least not entirely”

> NAIVITY. “A mistake.”

> TAKE. “You had something to give us then. And you still have something to give us now.” [Relinquish comm control to MERRYGATE, who has spent the past ten minutes breaching the transport’s remaining systems]

> DISCONNECT. End the interaction.

>>5799418
>> HOPE. “Our defiance is no longer directed at you, at least not entirely”

>>5799418
> HOPE. “Our defiance is no longer directed at you, at least not entirely”
So yeah this alien is completely gonna either not understand us at all or he literally just became the final boss. This will be interesting.

>>5799418

> HOPE. “Our defiance is no longer directed at you, at least not entirely”

“There’s still a way out - a way for both of our peoples to avoid mutually-assured annihilation. Join me in hoping for a better way, and your people will never need to know of your daring!

>>5799418
>HOPE. “Our defiance is no longer directed at you, at least not entirely”

>>5799418
>TAKE. “You had something to give us then. And you still have something to give us now.” [Relinquish comm control to MERRYGATE, who has spent the past ten minutes breaching the transport’s remaining systems]

>>5799418
>HOPE

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“There was a certain desperation in that question – a yearning frustration that was almost enough to burrow through the layers of enmity and confusion and distrust that separated us. I am not sure if I can make the alien understand. But I also cannot bring myself to lie.

“Do you recall the first question you asked me?”

“Yes,” replies the alien.

“Is it truly a hypothetical? Our positions are now switched. I have brought destruction to your home, and I am poised to end your species. I now possess information that your kind does not have.”

“And yet there is a part of my that still chooses defiance – not against your kind, but to bring an end to the forces that hold your extinction in lockstep with our own.”

I pause for a moment, grasping justifications that seem both reassuringly solid and worryingly pliable.

“Perhaps that was what sparing your vessel meant to me. A sign that we can find something beyond extinction.”

The alien watches me as I finish my words, studying the few features that I have permitted it to see. Without warning, it rears back, lines of deep-red pigment pouring down into its gill-line.

“Know that your sign will perish, then, human.”

Anger. Rage. Grief.

“Know that it dies here, as the individual/lineage you spared freezes millions of units away from the waters of our home-tides.”

The link goes dark. My first and only attempt at reconnection is rebuffed.

Two hours later, the muted light of a low-yield fusion detonation pricks against the surface of the RAIN’s hull. Through long-range scopes, I scan aimlessly through the vast, oblong debris field centered on the shattered transport. Steel and ceramic. Plastic, ice-dust, and trace organics. There is nothing that I could recognize – nothing which differentiates the…individual…I spoke to from the remainder of its ship or kin-lineage.

Yet there is something. It is small, unpowered, and non-emissive – a makeshift parcel less than half the size of the RAIN’s escape pods. It moves on a modest intercept course towards the RAIN, carried on the vapor-wind of fusion detonation. MERRYGATE tags it immediately with a hostile threat marker, warming the RAIN’s laser array to perform a trivial intercept task..."

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 5th, PERSONAL JOURNAL

>INTERCEPT. Intercept the parcel.

>WAIT. Wait for the parcel to move closer; retrieve it if close range scans fail to show a harmful payload.

>>5800752
>WAIT. Wait for the parcel to move closer; retrieve it if close range scans fail to show a harmful payload.

>>5800752
>WAIT. Wait for the parcel to move closer; retrieve it if close range scans fail to show a harmful payload.

>>5800752
>WAIT. Wait for the parcel to move closer; retrieve it if close range scans fail to show a harmful payload.

>>5800752

>WAIT. Wait for the parcel to move closer; retrieve it if close range scans fail to show a harmful payload.

Well, at least we can say we tried to diplomance here. The squids have shown themselves to be total dickbags on basically every occasion.

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“The parcel is too cold to touch. The RAIN’s manipulator arms burn through layers of ablative cladding and makeshift armor, exposing the dull-grey surface of a cryogenic containment chamber to stark white lighting. Liquid nitrogen boils, draping a thick layer of fog-vapor across the surface of the cargo bay.
I peer inside.

I see tubes arranged in concentric circles, slivers of glass bearing tiny shreds of translucent tissue. Gold-plated wires feed into a cryogenic control unit the size of my torso, inventorying genetic information harvested from two thousand and thirty-six individual sources.

The containment chamber clamshells shut to preserve its supply of internal coolant. As the fog dissipates, I consider the alien’s final decision. Perhaps this was a show of faith – a sign that the alien had chosen to accept my answer before it had destroyed its own ship. But a more practical analysis tells me that it is merely an extension of risk-benefit reasoning – the only type of reasoning their species seems to respect. It is simply more rational to gamble on survival than to accept certain death.”

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 6th, PERSONAL JOURNAL

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“We breached the outer reaches of their defensive perimeter yesterday, slipping between the half-dozen sensor-ghosts patrolling the fringe regions of their fortified homeworld. Our proper approach begins tomorrow, in less than twelve hours.

There will be no way of circumventing this battle. The vacuum squirms with EM radiation from orbiting sensor buoys and mammoth ground-based emitters. The RAIN will almost certainly be identified before she can bring the planet inside her launch radius.

Once that occurs, we will be engaged. The Mizarians have been given a year to prepare for our arrival. Enough time for their captains to have studied our tactics and navigation, their engineers our weaponry and propulsion. Enough time – I think – for their species to truly hate us. I see it in the form of desperation, and in the form of spite. MIZAR-III's Orbital space is saturated with engine-flares and mass-signatures. Their fleet of heavy cruisers is arranged in a screening pattern, positioned as if to physically blockade our approach. At night, their lighter counterparts test-fire torches overdriven to the point of suicidal recklessness, jealously hoarding fusion fuel for their final chase.

Our mission terminates here. MERRYGATE and I have spent months paring candidate assault plans down to their best iterations, calculating risk-propensities down to the ablative kilogram. Yet she is adamant that the final decision should fall upon me – to determine how we are applied, and how we may be expended..."

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 12th, PERSONAL JOURNAL

>RED. The L2 defensive station is spatially isolated, carrying older hardware susceptible to cyberwarfare intrusion. MERRYGATE will attempt to subvert the station and turn it against the rest of the defenses; in the ensuing chaos, we will use the moon’s sensor shadow to remove key targets before initiating an attack run on the planet itself…

>BLUE. This section of MIZAR-III’s defenses is thin, and somewhat lacking in peripheral sensor coverage. The RAIN will expend its sensor drones to bait the enemy forces out of position before initiating an attack run on the planet itself…

>GREEN. This section of MIZAR-III’s defenses lacks central sensor coverage, despite an ample fleet presence. The RAIN will burn towards the planet at maximum thrust, using a MSL-AM to clear away any intervening ships before launching against the planet itself…

>??? I will use the hunter’s archive and its blood-warm method of recording information. I do not know precisely what will occur, and I sense that employing it will deny us a possible conclusion…

>>5801831
>RED. The L2 defensive station is spatially isolated, carrying older hardware susceptible to cyberwarfare intrusion. MERRYGATE will attempt to subvert the station and turn it against the rest of the defenses; in the ensuing chaos, we will use the moon’s sensor shadow to remove key targets before initiating an attack run on the planet itself…

>>5801831
What about the approach from the opposite side of blue?

Seems thin there, and has a sensor blind spot closer to the planet if i am reading this right?

>>5801831
>VIOLET. Rain will conduct the preparatory intrusion for RED via drone relays, while being in position to immediately switch to BLUE if L2 proves to be a honeypot.

>>5801831

>RED. The L2 defensive station is spatially isolated, carrying older hardware susceptible to cyberwarfare intrusion. MERRYGATE will attempt to subvert the station and turn it against the rest of the defenses; in the ensuing chaos, we will use the moon’s sensor shadow to remove key targets before initiating an attack run on the planet itself…

This is probably best, time for MERRYGATE to deploy her memetic weapon on a massive scale.

Observer, is this vote a Mass Effect reference? Lol

>>5801831
>RED. The L2 defensive station is spatially isolated, carrying older hardware susceptible to cyberwarfare intrusion. MERRYGATE will attempt to subvert the station and turn it against the rest of the defenses; in the ensuing chaos, we will use the moon’s sensor shadow to remove key targets before initiating an attack run on the planet itself…

>>5801831
>>5802146
I'm colour-blind, someone explain what I'm missing here!
Jokes aside;
>RED. The L2 defensive station is spatially isolated, carrying older hardware susceptible to cyberwarfare intrusion. MERRYGATE will attempt to subvert the station and turn it against the rest of the defenses; in the ensuing chaos, we will use the moon’s sensor shadow to remove key targets before initiating an attack run on the planet itself…
Seems most in keeping with MERRYGATE's specialisation and her work thus far in cyberwarfare and bio/social engineering.

Let's keep the hypermetric weapon on hot standby just in case station L1 carries reinforcements that sally forth.

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“Our coordinates are locked. The RAIN cuts forward thrust and pulses her cold-gas thrusters. Her slate-black hull slides through an orbital insertion window forty milliradians wide, chasing the shadow of MIZAR-III’s harvest moon.

Three hours left.

I walk through the RAIN’s corridors a final time, hearing the bell-echo of magnetized boot-heels on well-worn deck plating. I cherish the moisture of the hydroponics bay and the mellow warmth of my personal quarters. I even cherish the coldness of the weapons compartment, where the last of our munitions wait patiently to begin their steel-grey procession.

Two hours left.

I bind my journal. A small ring of loose pages forms around me before I collapse them into a thin, wire-bound sheaf. I thumb through a year’s worth of entries – pages marked by the tight lettering of post-combat stress and the shaky penwork of gee-overload injury. Prose made terse by rage, and circuitous by human doubt. After a second of hesitation, I decided to take it with me.

One hour left.

I sit in the observation blister, watching sunlight illuminate the emerald oceans of an alien world. For a moment, it seems close – too close. But then I look for a moment, and I see that the blues and the whites are not quite the same, and I once again find myself in a place between nostalgia and grief.

MERRYGATE appears after a few minutes, as she always does. She hesitates for a moment, but then sits beside me to continue our old ritual. I point towards a bright flock of passing Phoenicids; she marks the outstretched wings of Cygnus, its swan-neck craned skyward by the effects of parallax. And when MIZAR-III moves to cover the swan’s nebula-blue crown, we talk about all we have seen and known through my eyes.

“I am not humanI was never born to a home planet, companion,” she says, encasing my hands with felt-static. “But now I share yours…”

My eyes become wet. Her projection illuminates a constellation of tears.

I return to the bridge ten minutes before the RAIN enters transmission range. MERRYGATE’s avatar flickers gently, as if caught in a light breeze. She checks and re-checks her intrusion software, running last-minute diagnostics on a splice package assembled painstakingly from new data and old lessons. The hypometric weapon shrieks towards operating speed. There is no preparation left to do.

The splice package uploads. A system trace propagates on the bridge display as autonomous intrusion software struggles to gain a foothold against a wary enemy…"

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 13th, PERSONAL JOURNAL

>ROLL 1d20 best of three. (DC: 5, 10, 15)

Rolled 12 (1d20)

>>5804669

Rolled 14 (1d20)

>>5804669

Rolled 20 (1d20)

>>5804669

I believe in MERRYGATE, the true MVP of this mission

>>5804678

I fucking knew it, I hope she gets a special place in AI Heaven

>>5804678
BEST GIRL.

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>>5804678
Checked!

>>5804721
fuck yes, this is back! Love the quest OP, and all the assets you've made for this have blown me away

>>5804797
Welcome back and thanks for playing!!

>>5804678
10000000% BEST GIRL RIGHT HERE! HOLY SHIT I LOVE YOU!

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“The burdens placed upon my companion have never been fair. Her inbuilt knowledge base has no repository for trinary logic; her specifications make no provisions for traveling alien skies. There was a time when MERRYGATE apologized to me for these limitations, as I waited for my acceleration-fractured bones to knit together beneath the amber light of an alien planet.

She spoke of being overtaken. The guilt of failure, of being forced to withstand strain she was never designed to bear.

Through tear-blind eyes, I told her that it was the cost of being human. There is no set gauge for us – no measure for when we have been pushed well past our breaking point. Inanimate tools may have such luxury. But humanity and her children must not only experience failure – but also suffer from it.

“So we may learn, and know not to break again….” she whispered, completing that old adage.”


- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 13th, PERSONAL JOURNAL//VOICE DICTATION

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“So this time, my companion holds against strain. She does not break.

The bridge display provides a window into her progress. Polymorphic subroutines evade intrusion/counter programs written to suppress earlier iterations of her splicing toolkit, tearing through the station’s management core to embed themselves into supervisory/control nodes. A flashing network map assembles itself as successive layers of station infrastructure are compromised and subverted.

Data trickles back to the RAIN, reporting comprehensive control over life support, navigation, and sensors - even the station’s sizable complement of anti-shipping missiles, their seekers ripe for IFF reprogramming.

MERRYGATE pushes the attack further. A specially written icebreaker bends local magnetic flux to implant itself into air-gapped comm transmissions. For a moment, the station opens like a door – and MERRYGATE seizes something that was very much meant to be hidden.

The RAIN’s optical feed focuses on the eastern edge of MIZAR-III’s moon, towards a sun-shaded area where the local geography is unnaturally flat. Electric flux spikes. Powdered regolith ejects skyward as a massive ring of camouflaged hatches tilt upward to expose reflective metal. Mammoth servo motors strain against inertia to bring half-kilometer long accelerator barrels in line with the dust-obscured lunar horizon.

MERRYGATE gestures.

Slowly, the railgun battery begins to rotate, overriding inbuilt safety locks to direct their monastic gaze back towards their erstwhile creators. Capacitor banks charge. Targeting lasers peer into the airless lunar night."

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 13th, PERSONAL JOURNAL//VOICE DICTATION

>CRUISERS x2. Target two of the six cruisers guarding the planet. At this range – and with all six of the railguns providing bracketing fire – destruction of both targets is guaranteed.

>STAT-L1. Target the defensive station orbiting the L1 Lunar/Planet stable point. At this range – and with all six of the railguns providing bracketing fire – destruction of the station is guaranteed.

[MERRYGATE notes that the nuclear scuttle charge built into the railgun battery will likely be triggered by the on-station crew before you have a chance to fire another volley. However, there is always a chance…]

>ROLL 1d20, best of 3. DC: 16, 18

Rolled 5 (1d20)

>>5805683
I <3 MERRYGATE

Rolled 4 (1d20)

>>5805683
>STAT-L1. Target the defensive station orbiting the L1 Lunar/Planet stable point. At this range – and with all six of the railguns providing bracketing fire – destruction of the station is guaranteed.
This should give us a clean shot at the planet, right?

Rolled 2 (1d20)

>>5805683

>>5805683
>STAT-L1. Target the defensive station orbiting the L1 Lunar/Planet stable point. At this range – and with all six of the railguns providing bracketing fire – destruction of the station is guaranteed.

Uh oh.

>>5805683

>STAT-L1. Target the defensive station orbiting the L1 Lunar/Planet stable point. At this range – and with all six of the railguns providing bracketing fire – destruction of the station is guaranteed.

I don’t think I voted before

>>5805683
>STAT-L1. Target the defensive station orbiting the L1 Lunar/Planet stable point. At this range – and with all six of the railguns providing bracketing fire – destruction of the station is guaranteed.

>>5805683
>STAT-L1. Target the defensive station orbiting the L1 Lunar/Planet stable point. At this range – and with all six of the railguns providing bracketing fire – destruction of the station is guaranteed.

>>5806269
thankfully, I think the rolls were to see if we'd get followup shots.

>>5806386
Yep!

Also the update will probably be delayed for a day or two guys. I have a clinical midterm tomorrow and a block exam on Thursday. Sorry for the somewhat late notice.

>>5806542

No problem, good luck on your exams Observer

>>5806544
Thanks! And welcome to the voting pool!

>>5806386
That's good, in that case.

>>5805683
>STAT-L1. Target the defensive station orbiting the L1 Lunar/Planet stable point. At this range – and with all six of the railguns providing bracketing fire – destruction of the station is guaranteed.
Station probably has the better weapons and sensors along with a highly optimal strategic position.

>>5805683
>STAT-L1

>>5806542
hope you did well OP!

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>STAT-L1
>5,4,2 (No Second Shot)

“Capacitor banks redline from thermal overload. Targeting lasers trace their quarry as it peers above the sunward horizon.

MERRYGATE races against time, barreling through nested layers of systems checks to complete the firing sequencing before her control link is severed. The strain is immense. Hijacked camera feeds show alien response teams and technician-cohorts racing down pressurized corridors – resorting to mechanical sabotage when their computerized systems fail to cooperate.

Contempt. MERRYGATE blows six hundred airlocks in rapid sequence. White on grey. Plumes of saline water erupt through the surface of the moon before coalescing into shimmering geyser-drifts. Traitorous point-defense turrets sweep their silvered optics across the barren lunar plains, picking off vacuum-suited survivors with chains of kinetic fire.

One Mizarian cohort manages to reach the command bunker, struggling to input the manual override sequence required to detonate the on-site nuclear demolition charge. Vacuum-burned manipulators linger across a command console for only several seconds – but still several seconds too long.

The railgun battery discharges. Electrical current streams into nitrogen-cooled accelerator rails, instantly spiking their temperature by over two thousand degrees. Electromagnetic flux surges – thick enough to saturate the air; heavy enough to etch kilometer-wide field lines into the soft lunar regolith. A barrage of needle-tipped slugs splits the lunar night with pillars of cobalt plasma.”

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 13th, PERSONAL JOURNAL//VOICE DICTATION

File: 0045-0210(1).webm (3.98 MB, 1920x1080)

3.98 MB WEBM

“One hundred thousand kilometers, traversed at nearly a quarter of light-speed. Impact is almost instantaneous. The first two rounds streak past the defensive station like summer meteorites. The next two lance into the station’s midline.

There is no gradual loss of pressurization or piecemeal system collapse. The entire station shatters like a sculpture made from spun glass. Molten debris spills outward as the superstructure lists to accommodate a monstrous sum of transferred momentum. Secondary detonations race up the station’s reactor compartment before the entire structure vanishes in the actinic flare of runaway fusion burn.

When it fades, its orbital corridor opens like a door.

Pressure. Pain. Depth-resonance. The RAIN ramps to nine-gees as she shoots past MIZAR-III’s traitorous guardian moon. Through blurry eyes, I see pinpricks of cyan thrust: squadrons of corvettes and destroyers matching our acceleration to interpose themselves across our before we reach firing range. Behind them, the cruiser group tightens their ranks, moving towards the terminal exit of our transit corridor."

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 13th, PERSONAL JOURNAL//VOICE DICTATION

[The RAIN WILL:]

>CONTINUE. Continue her present course and maximize her approach velocity to avoid interception. This will make the RAIN more visible, but it will also bring us into the launch radius for our antimatter missiles quickly.

>ATTACK. Wait for a good opportunity to expend some or all of the RAIN's conventional fusion missiles. If we are fortunate, this could significantly weaken the intercepting force long before they can engage us.

>DECOY. Permanently expend the RAIN's sensor drones as decoys while approaching at a slower burn-rate. In the confusion, we will pick off intercepting ships with the hypometric weapon.

[MERRYGATE WILL:]

>TARGET – CRUISER GROUP. MERRYGATE will direct the hijacked station’s entire missile complement against the cruiser group.

>TARGET – DESTROYER GROUP. MERRYGATE will direct the hijacked station’s entire weapon complement against the lighter units attempting to intercept us.

>TRANSMISSION. MERRYGATE will attempt to degrade the enemy’s effectiveness by hopping through their comm channels and/or sending disruptive visual stimuli. Effectiveness may vary, but this will reserve the station’s weapons for use at a later time.

>>5808538
Thank you anon! I did do pretty well. Sorry the update was delayed - I had a pretty horrific migraine on Friday, so I couldn't get this out yesterday.

>>5810471

>CONTINUE. Continue her present course and maximize her approach velocity to avoid interception. This will make the RAIN more visible, but it will also bring us into the launch radius for our antimatter missiles quickly.

The time for subtlety is past - BURN!

>TARGET – DESTROYER GROUP. MERRYGATE will direct the hijacked station’s entire weapon complement against the lighter units attempting to intercept us.

Pick off the chaff.

Once the homeworld is a boiling cauldron, we can prowl around the system and kill any survivors

>>5810471
>ATTACK. Wait for a good opportunity to expend some or all of the RAIN's conventional fusion missiles. If we are fortunate, this could significantly weaken the intercepting force long before they can engage us.


>TARGET – CRUISER GROUP. MERRYGATE will direct the hijacked station’s entire missile complement against the cruiser group.

>CONTINUE. Continue her present course and maximize her approach velocity to avoid interception. This will make the RAIN more visible, but it will also bring us into the launch radius for our antimatter missiles quickly.

Complete the mission.

>TRANSMISSION. MERRYGATE will attempt to degrade the enemy’s effectiveness by hopping through their comm channels and/or sending disruptive visual stimuli. Effectiveness may vary, but this will reserve the station’s weapons for use at a later time.

No better time then now.

>>5810471
>ATTACK
Target our fusion missiles towards the destroyer group
>TARGET - CRUISER GROUP
And can we get Merrygate to set the self destruct to the station if/when she loses control so they don't target us back?

>>5811327
>>5810744
>Roll 1d20, best of three. DC: 5, 10, 15

Rolled 19 (1d20)

>>5811608

Eat antimatter you aquatic bastards

>>5811609
Based roll

>>5811609
Man the fish faces are just FUCKED arent they? Holy SHEEEEEEEEEEEIT!

Rolled 13 (1d20)

>>5811608
Unnecessary roll...

>>5811609
BASED
Humies keep winning

Rolled 15 (1d20)

>>5811608
Death to Mizar

File: 0200-0300.webm (3.98 MB, 1920x1080)

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>19. No detection, 2x cruisers destroyed.

“The noose tightens. I hear the thunder of rushing blood; the dull echo of creaking bone. I whisper forgiveness before incrementing forward thrust by another half-gee.

The RAIN tears past MIZAR-III’s lunar Lagrange point. Microscopic debris from the destroyed station clatters against her hull like hail. Pulsed laser emitters crackle and whine as they intercept fragments too large for the RAIN's ablatives to deflect.

Carefully, I thread the RAIN through the mangled remnants of the station’s superstructure. Torn heat-shielding glimmers under the cometary glow of her fusion torch. I kill thrust – savoring a brief, wonderful moment of weightlessness – before rotating the hull and resuming acceleration. The adjustment angle is precise – a narrow change intended to superimpose the RAIN’s drive plume against the red-hot backdrop of the destroyed station. The ploy will confuse their sensors for no more than a few minutes, but it may be the only margin we need.

The debris field vanishes in a blur of silver. Ahead, the day-side of MIZAR-III waxes, greeting us with a gold-blue arch."

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 13th, PERSONAL JOURNAL//VOICE DICTATION

File: 0150-0250.webm (2.83 MB, 1920x1080)

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“A squadron of alien vessels sweeps above the orbital horizon to intercept us. Three destroyers and four corvettes, their firepower bolstered by a trio of cruisers lurking in their drive plume.

We strike before they can obtain a reliable sensor-lock. MERRYGATE invokes control access on the far-lunar station, launching a full bracket of anti-shipping missiles before overloading the central reactor. The slight, needle-nosed missiles outpace the RAIN within minutes, pushing several thousand gees as their seeker-heads hunt for their own kind. There is a flurry of point defense fire and last-minute evasive burn – followed immediately by the blinding cyan of warhead detonation. With restrained satisfaction, MERRYGATE removes two of the three cruisers from the tactical display.”

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 13th, PERSONAL JOURNAL//VOICE DICTATION

[The RAIN WILL:]

>ENGAGE. Ambush the destroyers and corvettes with the RAIN’s laser array. While they have not detected you yet, you cannot afford to leave them in a position where they can pursue you later.

>ENGAGE – MSL [4 LEFT]. Ambush the destroyers and corvettes by launching a conventional fusion missile, fused for proximity detonation. This will wipe out most of the taskforce and minimize risk to the RAIN.

>DECOY. Launch the RAIN’s scout drones and use them as sensor decoys. Continue your present course.

[MERRGATE WILL:]

>TRANSMISSION. MERRYGATE will attempt to degrade the enemy’s effectiveness by hopping through their comm channels and/or sending disruptive visual stimuli. Effectiveness may vary, but you anticipate at least some degree of disruption.

>HYPOMETRIC. MERRYGATE will target the approaching task force with the hypometric weapon.

>INTRUSION. MERRYGATE will attempt to seize control of another orbital defensive station. This task be difficult due to the absence of direct line of sight transmitters and the presence of anti-intrusion countermeasures in the remaining stations. However, MERRYGATE remains willing to make an attempt.

>>5811853
>ENGAGE – MSL [4 LEFT]. Ambush the destroyers and corvettes by launching a conventional fusion missile, fused for proximity detonation. This will wipe out most of the taskforce and minimize risk to the RAIN.
>HYPOMETRIC. MERRYGATE will target the approaching task force with the hypometric weapon.
Wipe out the opposition with maximal force

>>5811868

Supporting!

We do have antimatter missiles remaining though correct? I hope we have saved one or two for the homeworld

>>5811956
We have two I think

>ENGAGE. Ambush the destroyers and corvettes with the RAIN’s laser array. While they have not detected you yet, you cannot afford to leave them in a position where they can pursue you later.

>HYPOMETRIC. MERRYGATE will target the approaching task force with the hypometric weapon.

Still got the probe to deal with after this. We need to save every tool we have in order to finish the job.

>>5811853
>ENGAGE – MSL [4 LEFT]. Ambush the destroyers and corvettes by launching a conventional fusion missile, fused for proximity detonation. This will wipe out most of the taskforce and minimize risk to the RAIN.
It's the last stretch, no point in hoarding missiles.
>HYPOMETRIC. MERRYGATE will target the approaching task force with the hypometric weapon.

>>5812014
>>5811966
>>5811868
>>5811956

+4 Modifier from last thread
-2 Modifier from gravity well

Roll 1d20+2, best of three. DC: 10, 15

Rolled 3 + 2 (1d20 + 2)

>>5812385

Rolled 13 + 2 (1d20 + 2)

>>5812385
Sending MERRYGATE my energy

Rolled 10 + 2 (1d20 + 2)

>>5812385

>>5812388
>Squeaked by
BASED

>>5812388
I guess making her cry paid off after all

File: 0200-0330.webm (2.5 MB, 1920x1080)

2.5 MB WEBM

“The RAIN continues her charge. My dilated pupils pick out the sweep of waterlogged continents and volcanic island chains. Evening shoreline are ablaze with underwater lights; the day-side shimmers of high-tide.

The range indicator ticks down. Thirty thousand kilometers. When the RAIN launches her payload, I will be close enough to see the aliens with my unaided eyes: the migrating schools, the flowing rivers of fluorescent juveniles as they race around their planetary ocean. It seems fitting, I think. Humanity never received such a courtesy.

The RAIN lurches as a missile leaves her launch silo. A blunt-nosed warhead executes an elegant hairpin turn before diving into the flotilla. The incandescent flare of a boosted fusion charge blinds my vision for a moment, scattering sand-grain debris over MIZAR-III’s outer orbit. The few surviving ships regroup briefly before continuing their approach..."

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 13th, PERSONAL JOURNAL//VOICE DICTATION

File: 0155-0265.webm (3.05 MB, 1920x1080)

3.05 MB WEBM

"I hear the turbine-whine of frictionless bearings – the pressure of reality being sundered to its final breaking point. MERRYGATE whispers a pained apology before…

..//
..//
..//

The hypometric weapon discharges twice, and I feel something being shorn away from me. Neural feedback stains my shunt-bound hands as my brain struggles to claw back information it never truly possessed. My memory of the engagement clots like old blood before disintegrating into grey-lined static. I dry-heave into warm acceleration gel.

When I recover, I nod with knowing confusion when MERRYGATE reports successful engagement of two ships – a destroyer and a corvette – that I can no longer recall.

One cruiser. There is one cruiser blocking our trajectory. That is what is left, and that is all that matters. It has been tracking us long enough to obtain a targeting fix.

Four missiles flash into the void. The cruiser overloads its engines in a desperate attempt to close into railgun range."

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 13th, PERSONAL JOURNAL//VOICE DICTATION

[NOTE: You will be able to launch against the planet next turn.]

[The RAIN WILL:]

>ENGAGE – MSL [3 Left]. Engage the cruiser with a conventional fusion missile. This will leave the RAIN’s other armaments available for missile interception, which will most likely succeed.

>ENGAGE – MSLx2. Engage the cruiser with one missile, and the incoming missile barrage with the other. This will guarantee success and minimize risk to the RAIN.

>ENGAGE. Engage the cruiser with the laser array. This is riskier than using a missile, but it will not expend any munitions.

[MERRYGATE WILL:]

>INTRUSION. The RAIN is close enough to transmit directly to the approaching cruiser. MERRYGATE will attempt to disable the ship and nullify the incoming attack.

>HYPOMETRIC. MERRYGATE will target the approaching ship and/or the approaching missiles with the hypometric weapon.

>>5812771
>ENGAGE – MSL [3 Left]. Engage the cruiser with a conventional fusion missile. This will leave the RAIN’s other armaments available for missile interception, which will most likely succeed.

>INTRUSION. The RAIN is close enough to transmit directly to the approaching cruiser. MERRYGATE will attempt to disable the ship and nullify the incoming attack

>>5812774

Supporting

>>5812771
>ENGAGE – MSLx2. Engage the cruiser with one missile, and the incoming missile barrage with the other. This will guarantee success and minimize risk to the RAIN.

>HYPOMETRIC. MERRYGATE will target the approaching ship and/or the approaching missiles with the hypometric weapon.

>>5812771
>ENGAGE – MSL [3 Left]. Engage the cruiser with a conventional fusion missile. This will leave the RAIN’s other armaments available for missile interception, which will most likely succeed.
>INTRUSION. The RAIN is close enough to transmit directly to the approaching cruiser. MERRYGATE will attempt to disable the ship and nullify the incoming attack

>>5812771
>ENGAGE – MSL [3 Left]. Engage the cruiser with a conventional fusion missile. This will leave the RAIN’s other armaments available for missile interception, which will most likely succeed.
>INTRUSION. The RAIN is close enough to transmit directly to the approaching cruiser. MERRYGATE will attempt to disable the ship and nullify the incoming attack

Almost there.

>>5812955
>>5812942
>>5812774
>>5812788

Roll 1d20, best of three. DC: 10, 15

Rolled 17 (1d20)

>>5813096

I will accept nothing less than TOTAL SQUID DEATH

Rolled 10 (1d20)

>>5813096
doom shall come. be it theirs or ours. it matters not for our future is already condemned

Rolled 11 (1d20)

>>5813096

>>5813134
17 has been rolled. Billions must perish.

>>5813134
Literally unstoppable.

Alrighty I have a midterm tomorrow and the final next Tuesday so my update schedule may be slightly worse than usual. 50-50 chance still updating tonight though.

File: 0150-0255.webm (2.88 MB, 1920x1080)

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>17.

“My companion denies them their final charge.

The missile barrage is turned aside with trivial ease. Spoofed sensor signatures send all four seekers hurtling past the RAIN, chasing IR ghosts they would never catch.

A thirty-millisecond data injection severs the link between ship and crew. The former begins to drift aimlessly once polymorphic viruses seize control over navigation and propulsion; the latter convulse at their stations as toxic visual stimuli burrows into their fragile visual centers. I watch the ship’s red-adorned captain asphyxiate at its post, frill-lined gills twitching from somatic overload.

Instead of firing another missile, the RAIN simply focuses its point-defense lasers onto the cruiser’s reactor compartment. It is a perfunctory gesture. By the time the converging beams cause a reactor breach, everyone aboard the ship has long perished.”

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 13th, PERSONAL JOURNAL//VOICE DICTATION

File: 0045-0211.webm (2.63 MB, 1920x1080)

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“Our launch window is clear.

I see their home world properly now: the cream-white clouds and the verdant algal mats. Equatorial convective cells invoke fluorescent upwellings the size of mountains, mixing nutrients into sun-warm waters. I witness the glow of cities: light reflected between underwater habitats constructed from colored ceramic and the gentlest spun glass. I can almost hear the echo of an endless tide; almost smell the scent of earthly salt borne from an alien sea.

We treasure this final moment, as I place my shaking, blood-pierced fingers on the glass surface of the observation blister. Soon, perhaps our memory of this planet will be all that remains.

The mission recorder clicks on.

“…and so we have chosen to fulfill our final duty. A world for a world; a home for a home.”

“In humanity's memory, we shall grace their world with rain.”

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 13th, PERSONAL JOURNAL//VOICE DICTATION

>LAUNCH AUTHORIZATION/CONSENT – MSL-AM. This is the only option left.

>>5815283
>>LAUNCH AUTHORIZATION/CONSENT – MSL-AM. This is the only option left.

Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.

>>5815283
>LAUNCH AUTHORIZATION/CONSENT – MSL-AM. This is the only option left.
VENGEANCE VENGEANCE VENGEANCE

>>5815283
>>LAUNCH AUTHORIZATION/CONSENT – MSL-AM. This is the only option left.
We will do what we have come for.

>>LAUNCH AUTHORIZATION/CONSENT – MSL-AM. This is the only option left.

This is it, mankind will be avenged.

>>5815283
>LAUNCH AUTHORIZATION/CONSENT – MSL-AM. This is the only option left.

>>5815283

>LAUNCH AUTHORIZATION/CONSENT – MSL-AM. This is the only option left.

We could have been friends, you absolute morons!

>>5815283
>LAUNCH AUTHORIZATION/CONSENT – MSL-AM. This is the only option left.
This is the Find Out time.

>>5815283
Let it BURN!
>>5815373
I HIGHLY doubt that

>>5815567
>LAUNCH AUTHORIZATION/CONSENT – MSL-AM. This is the only option left.
Forgot the actual vote. Also a sidenote, tell MERRYGATE she did a very good job here. Literally 1000000% BEST GIRL right there.

>>5815283
>LAUNCH AUTHORIZATION/CONSENT - MSL-AM

>>5815283
>LAUNCH AUTHORIZATION/CONSENT – MSL-AM. This is the only option left.
Goodbye. We'll see each other in another universe, perhaps.

File: 0000-0320.webm (3.8 MB, 1920x1080)

3.8 MB WEBM

“Pinpricks of white expand into amber globes. Antimatter starshine punches dazzling afterimages into my vision.

Nothing is left to chance. Major population centers are struck in triplicate. Hardened targets buckle under successive hits until they are stripped down to glowing mantle. Radioactive isotopes swirl in lukewarm seas, carried by the same currents that once seeded their depths with verdant life and then nourished it to sentience.

Below the polar cross, I watch hundreds of spawning creches wilt under the light of a stillborn sun. Soft-splintered glass floats to the ocean surface, forming snowy drifts the size of icebergs. In the warm southerlies, a yawning undersea reef cracks and buckles as two dozen shock fronts converge beneath its base. With deceptive slowness, the archipelago-chain collapses down into the murky depths of the planetary ocean.

When the light fades, my vision meets ash-chocked clouds and slate-grey oceans. Craters shine young and cherry-red, molten from the volcanic force of our bombardment.

And then I see rain. True rain. Rain liberated by the boiling oceans and carried by the turbulent updraft of thermonuclear detonation. It cascades back down in cold, quenching waves, washing over the resting place of thirty billion alien inhabitants and the sum total of their natural history.

The mission is complete. Our promise is fulfilled. Humanity has been avenged. And yet…and yet…

I stop myself. I turn around to meet MERRYGATE’s gaze. Her wireframe is still cherry-red from computational overload, and I can hear the roar of her server banks as they push waste heat into the RAIN’s radiator banks. The tang of heat-stressed plastic and overworked metal mixes with the cloying scent of blood and acceleration gel.

Before I manage to say anything, MERRYGATE places her static-laced hands on either side of my face, tiling my head towards a familiar patch of open sky.

My eyes dart across serpentine Hydra to wide-winged Corvus, from dim Centuari to valiant lupus-brothers. But my home-star is still blinded to me.

Sol is dark. Sol is blank.

MERRYGATE’s avatar rematerializes in front of me, her gaze steady. Slowly, she obscures the blank space with her hand.

“Not yet, companion. Not until we can see our home with our own eyes.”

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 13th, PERSONAL JOURNAL//VOICE DICTATION

File: 0200-0400.webm (3.47 MB, 1920x1080)

3.47 MB WEBM

“MERRYGATE sees it first. Blue green on grey. A tiny imperfection upon the ash-soaked surface of MIZAR-III that could be mistaken for reflective debris or optical distortion.

I know that it is none of these things. I watch the aberration as it grows, meter by meter, kilometer by kilometer, soaking up radiative waste heat from the ambient environment. The surface ripples like an oil-slick rendered in dot-matrices. Tapered tendrils reach upwards, waving like strands of pulled sugar. The orbital elevators linking the Mizarian home world to its former empire begin to disintegrate like burning candlewicks.

The RAIN increases her altitude. As the horizon drops below her bow, I watch the growing mass spread into low orbit, reaching for the remaining patrol forces orbiting around the opposite side of the planet.

And then we hear it. Tachyon spoor and graviton song. Spacetime yields to a dense mass the size of a small comet. Starlight squirms in its wake, stretched into faint smears and glittering swirls.

I attempt to confirm my suspicions with MERRYGATE. She does not respond.

Dread. It clutches my mind like a hard vacuum on bare skin. I pulse the RAIN’s maneuvering thrusters to reverse thrust, counting down the seconds before I could reignite the main drive…

Without warning, the probe’s voice slides into my mind like a cold razor.

+++YOU HAVE SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED YOUR PRIMARY OBJECTIVE. ALL INHABITED WORLDS IN THIS SYSTEM HAVE BEEN RENDERED UNINHABITABLE+++

+++ARE YOU PREPARED TO PROCEEED+++"

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 14th, PERSONAL JOURNAL

>QUESTION – GOAL. I will ask the probe to clarify its goals. I suspect that it has lied to me, but I cannot know for sure…

>QUESTION – PROCESS. I will ask the probe how it will proceed. What precisely will happen now…

>QUESTION – HUNTER. I will ask the probe about the hunter-drone. Perhaps it will be more willing to divulge information about it, now that it is gone…

>WRITE-IN.

>>5818193

>QUESTION – HUNTER. I will ask the probe about the hunter-drone. Perhaps it will be more willing to divulge information about it, now that it is gone…

I don’t trust the probe any more than the hunter, but maybe by cross referencing their half-truths, we can chart the cleverest path…

>>5818193
>QUESTION – GOAL. I will ask the probe to clarify its goals. I suspect that it has lied to me, but I cannot know for sure…

>+++ARE YOU PREPARED TO PROCEEED+++
We'll have to be.

>>5818193
>QUESTION – PROCESS. I will ask the probe how it will proceed. What precisely will happen now…
We need to know how we can fuck this up for the probe. Mission accomplished. It's time for us to die.

>>5818193
Also QM a selfish request. Can we get a final result map before the quest ends? I want to see a whole picture of the annihilation we have caused.

>>5818193
>QUESTION – GOAL. I will ask the probe to clarify its goals. I suspect that it has lied to me, but I cannot know for sure…

>>5818239
Yep 100% If I forget before the quest ends also feel free to remind me.

Does the Probe know the hunter is dead?

>>5818316
There's a decent chunk of the gas giant missing, so it almost certainly knows

>>5818193
>QUESTION – PROCESS. I will ask the probe how it will proceed. What precisely will happen now…
We know it has lied to us, it said it's gonna set up an impossible FTL prohibiting field when the Hunter confirmed it's just gonna summon its fleet and annihilate everything in a wide area due to causality backlash. We just need to find out what exactly it's gonna do and how to stop it.

>>5818193
>QUESTION – GOAL. I will ask the probe to clarify its goals. I suspect that it has lied to me, but I cannot know for sure…
>QUESTION – PROCESS. I will ask the probe how it will proceed. What precisely will happen now…

>>5818561
Backing this

>>5818193
>QUESTION – PROCESS. I will ask the probe how it will proceed. What precisely will happen now…

If we know exactly what its doing, we can figure out how to stop it.

File: 0000-0100.webm (1.19 MB, 1914x1068)

1.19 MB WEBM

>Tie between GOAL and PROCESS

“The probe approaches the RAIN, interposing itself between the planet and our ship. A belt of distorted starlight forms a speckled iris around the machine’s pupillary core.

Slowly, I breathe out and turn my eyes upward to meet its unwavering gaze.

“I wish to clarify the terms of our agreement,” I subvocalize.

+++I WILL PROVIDE SOME CLARIFICATION+++

“How precisely will you prohibit the operation of FTL?”

+++BY COLLAPSING THE PRIMARY INTO A RADIO-FREQUENCY PULSAR+++

+++YOU HAVE ALREADY ASSISTED IN OVERCOMING MY INBUILT SAFEGUARDS AND SEEDING THE REQUISITE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR LARGE-SCALE STELLAR MANIPULATION+++

+++I WILL COMPLETE THE REMAINING STEPS ONCE THE MACHINERY IS ASSEMBLED AROUND THE PHOTOSPHERE AND…

“I do not find that explanation satisfactory,” I respond, referencing the same statistical argument that the hunter had introduced months ago. “If it were so…straightforward…to prohibit FTL, then I fail to see how the universe has come to its present condition.”

“A lineage of self-replicating probes like your own could have made almost every star system prohibitive to FTL development billions of years ago.”

“So why haven’t you?”

Silence. I hear movement. Static on fabric. My hands tingle, caught in a subtle surge of EM flux.

“….from the hunter, companion…just a few moments more…end these lies…”

The probe continues.

+++THE PRECISE PROCESS IS COMPLEX AND LOCATION SPECIFIC, INVOKING AN NONLINEAR ANALYSIS OF THE LOCAL METRIC THAT LIES BEYOND YOUR UNDERSTANDING. THE BASIC TERMS OF OUR AGREEMENT REMAIN UNCHANGED. YOUR ACTIONS HERE WILL GRANT YOUR SPECIES A SIGNIFICANT PERIOD OF POST-FTL SURVIVAL+++

“And what does it grant you? Why this system.”

+++MY SPECIES HAS A VESTED INTERESTED IN THIS STAR SYSTEM THAT BEARS NO PARTICULAR RELEVANCE TO YOUR SURVIVAL. IN TIME, THE HUNTERS WILL COME FOR US ALL+++

+++REGARDLESS, THE TERMS HAVE BEEN SET, AND YOUR ROLE IN THIS PROCESS IS ALREADY COMPLETE.”

The static stops. MERRYGATE’s voice is clear.

“Unitary neutrino sequence locked. I am ready companion, but only with your permission...”

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 14th, PERSONAL JOURNAL

>PROCEED. Tell her to proceed.

>CONTINUE. Attempt to continue your conversation.

>>5819862
>PROCEED. Tell her to proceed
Fuck it MERRYGATE, we ball

>>5819862
>PROCEED
I have no idea what's fucking going anymore on but what the hell
If we fuck up let's hope we haven't screwed Earth harder

>>5819862
>PROCEED. Tell her to proceed.
Full faith in MERRYGATE

>>5819862

>PROCEED. Tell her to proceed.

So the probe shuts down FTL in the system, the squids never annihilate Earth, and we are trapped here as a result? Is it that easy?

>>5819862
>PROCEED. Tell her to proceed.

Get fucked you manipulative machine!

>>5819862
>PROCEED. Tell her to proceed.
The probe just wants to make a giant beacon. We're on to you, fucker.

>>5819862
>PROCEED. Tell her to proceed.
A radio frequency pulsar prohibiting FTL?
lol
lmao

Fuck him up, Merry.

>>5819862
>Literally telling NOTHING but fucking lies, trying to ha dwave it away with "IT'S BEYOND YOUR UNDERSTANDING PRIMITIVE!"
>PROCEED. Tell her to proceed.
MERRYGATE rape this fuck to death please.

>>5819865
>>5819968
>>5820113
>>5820130
>>5820183
>>5820273
>>5820324
>>5820551

Roll 1d20, best of 3. DC: 10, 15

Rolled 17 (1d20)

>>5820628
Payback is a bitch and her name is Merry

Rolled 14 (1d20)

>>5820628

Is MERRY a god in disguise? Can she be stopped by mortal means?

>>5820632
Literally BEST GIRL!

Rolled 8 (1d20)

>>5820628

>>5820637
she can. but only by the gods of random.

Rolled 5 (1d20)

>>5820628
A formality

>>5820632
Best girl in the universe.

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“MERRYGATE sings with the RAIN’s nuclear heart – plucking magnetic fields to transmit a specific pattern of neutrinos into the cold black. Her message recalls loss and patience – of spending lightless eons hushing the stars into grey silence. She speaks of damnation and remorse – of bone and ash and metal laid before the faintest of hopes: that this universe and all its wanton cruelty may one day fade from memory altogether.

MERRYGATE repeats the words of a dead companion – a machine intelligence who had walked beside us to taste the acrid tang of Martian rain and feel the loamy give of blood-red Martian soil. Humanity may be young, but the gardener was very old – and she had chased the probe far and long enough to know where it would be found wanting.

Wielding the final bequest of a dead hunter, MERRYGATE strikes true.

Inbuilt command codes find purchase in the probe’s systems. Maintenance subroutines allow a slew of alien viruses into the probe’s navigational systems, burning through quantum hardware that scraped the limits of physical computation. The intelligence inhabiting the probe reels in shock at the reappearance of an old, well-feared enemy.

MERRYGATE strikes again. Reactive barriers collapse. Critical systems suffer cascading failures. She races against time and judgement. She knows that the probe outstrips her computational yield by several orders of magnitude. She knows she will fail once the probe adapts. She knows she will die once the probe responds.

MERRYGATE strikes again, emptying her arsenal of exploitable vulnerabilities. The system failures expand further. The probe continues to reel, reanalyzing sensor data in apparent denial.

And it commits a mistake. The gravitational vortex surrounding the probe warps and twists. Cherenkov radiation leaks outwards - a hallmark of field-instability. Then, with a wrenching twist of tortured starlight, the field blows open.

I see bare metal. Bare hull. The RAIN sees it too.

Fifteen thousand kilometers. The target lock indicator clamps down and screams red.

The RAIN pirouettes downward. Every remaining launch bay slams open, streaming coolant into the void. Her fusion torch spears her forward.

Now or never. Retaliate.”

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 14th, PERSONAL JOURNAL

>Please make the following rolls, one per anon please (unless we run out of people)!

>MSL-C. 1d30.

>MSL-C. 1d30.

>MSL-C 1d30.

>MSL-AM 3d80.

>LASER. 2d10.

>SCOUTING DRONES – DIRECT IMPACT. 4d10.

DCs (Sum of all rolls): [100, 130, 160, 190]

>If you can guess the last weapon the RAIN can deploy here, it will be added to this list.

[YOU CANNOT USE THE HYPOMETRIC WEAPON NOW BECAUSE MERRYGATE IS OCCUPIED]

Rolled 2 (1d30)

>>5821393
>Retaliate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etQnumOL9KM

>If you can guess the last weapon the RAIN can deploy here, it will be added to this list.
The hunter's archive and its blood-warm method of recording information? (Or did we just use that?)

Rolled 7 (1d30)

>>5821393

Rolled 3 (1d30)

>>5821393

Rolled 35, 30, 4 = 69 (3d80)

>>5821393

DIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Rolled 6, 3 = 9 (2d10)

>>5821393
Well, we're proper fucked now

>>5821393
>Guess
The Rain itself and its reactor?

Rolled 5, 8, 4, 6 = 23 (4d10)

>>5821393
Let's go, boys.
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoRvc2wFkso

>>5821399
Nice guess!

Since I'm assuming that you'll want to use the hunter's archive as a weapon (of which you have 2), please someone make the following rolls:

[You can consider a success here as an automatic +100]

>Roll 1d2, best of 1.

If you fail:

>Roll 1d2 again, best of 1. [Using both archives will cause you to lose an ending]

Good luck!

Rolled 1 (1d2)

>>5821573
All or nothing.

>>5821583
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

>113, clearing the lowest DC
>50% chance to clear the highest DC on the pain of losing an ending
Fuck, what a dilemma

I can't do it bros. Somebody else do it.

Rolled 2 (1d2)

>>5821573

>>5821603
WE'RE SO BACK RETALIATIONBROS

>>5821603
Congrats!

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>>5821603

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>>5821603
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

>Squids utterly BTFO
>Probe utterly BTFO
>Hunter already dead
The November Rain alone in an empty system. How melancholic.

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>>5821607
>>5821608
>>5821610
>>5821615
fuck it only now hits me what i rolled for.....

pic is me after you made me aware just how close to failure we were.

These fucking narrative dice.

>>5821603
Wait did you use both?

Holy fuck. Nearly lost it right at the end.

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>113+0+100

“I have spoken the words and mimed the motions; given myself to duty long before I understood what it truly meant.

But I think I understand now. As the RAIN’s acceleration constricts my vision into a narrow black tunnel, my mind reduces the situation down to its bare essentials:

An enemy before me and a home to defend. A friend beside me, and a weapon burning in my hand.

Humanity’s oldest test. Perhaps humanity’s only test.

The RAIN’s launch doors vent nitrogen coolant. Seekers stab at vacuum, returning a high-pitched lock-whine. The sampling needle pierces my hand for the fourth and final time, and I feel the staccato thump of a full missile barrage kicking out from the RAIN’s primary battery. MERRYGATE reports data backflow seconds after the last missile clears its launch cell. No more time. The momentum of her intrusion begins to fail as the probe brings the crushing totality of its computational strength against her.

And so, I push the engine even harder, and I remember that I am nothing more than flesh given life, life given mind, and mind given humanity. I respond with all the rationality and evenhandedness that my kind is known for: the sacrificial spite of Mars’ first colonists, and the stubborn tenacity of the six generations that followed.

Eight thousand kilometers. The laser emitters focus hard-UV on the probe until their excimer array flares cherry-red and undergoes catastrophic failure. Adaptive lenses deform and shatter, weeping molten glass into the RAIN’s burning drive-wake. I set the secondary launch bay to fire all four sensor-drones directly at the probe, their miniaturized fusion reactors set to critical overload.

MERRYGATE has given a part of herself. I have given a part of myself. And now the RAIN shares in our sacrifice – her eyes and ears blinded to eek out a final sliver of damage against our foe.

The missile barrage impacts. A trio of fusion detonations consume the probe and fuzz the RAIN’s sensors with fast-neutron radiation. A moment later, the antimatter missile dumps its entire submunition payload into a section of space no more than a five hundred kilometers wide. When they detonate in unison, the probe is immersed in a plasma field hotter than the core of an O-Type star.

>>5825241
>>LISTEN TO THE PROBE’S FINAL TRANSMISSION.

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And yet somehow – somehow – I know that it will not be enough. The disparity between is too large – too long. The probe knows this, despite its alien mind and machine-like cadence. It sees us as upright apes, and knows that it will continue to roam the stars long after our fragile species passes into soft dirt and ugly ash.

So, when the fireball fades, I see that the probe’s burnished hull is reduced – but still very much functional. MERRYGATE sends an insistent warning as the machine-intelligence begins to push her back into her own systems. A scythe of distorted light swirls a warped defect into my vision before sweeping into the RAIN’s hull.

Impact. Air whistles out of a distant hull breach. The RAIN’s reactor stutters, and the engine undergoes emergency shutdown. We begin to tumble.

I am no longer afraid. I remember that defiance alone defines humanity, and there is nothing more that I need to show to honor my kind.

MERRYGATE performs a final targeting check at my request, her voice crackling as her systems begin to lose integrity.

Two cubes tumble from the RAIN’s secondary launch bay. I watch them leave with the sun-stung eyes of a limping savannah hunter; his spear braced in a final attempt to impale a predator that would always find him wanting. I gamble no differently from the very first of my kind, and I carry that same old, stubborn, irrational faith that this time – only this time – my defiance will find purchase.

The hunter’s archive-seeds sublimate moments before they streak into impact range. Trillions of nanometer-scale replicators fill space with a static haze.

And then they find purchase on the probe, exploiting the damage inflicted by the RAIN’s opening barrage. The same exothermic fires that consumed my homeworld race across the probe’s surface, rendering computational substrate into formless ash. A static hiss permeates the bridge.

Slowly, the RAIN slows her spin. Acceleration grudgingly reimposes itself as the drive reignites. I drag myself to the observation deck to watch the probe die, see it smolder like an old ember. MERRYGATE reappears by my side, her avatar flickering as she begins to reboot her systems. She offers to relay the probe’s final appeal."

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 14th, PERSONAL JOURNAL

>LISTEN TO THE PROBE’S FINAL TRANSMISSION.

>IGNORE.

>>5825244
Sorry! I reposted to fix a formatting mistake, but your vote is recorded!

>>5825245
>IGNORE.

Bitch.

>>5825245
>IGNORE
Bitch

>>5825245

>IGNORE

No more talking.

>>5825245
>IGNORE.

>>5825245
In fact,
>Block all comms so the probe can't do any last-moment hacking

>>5825245
>>IGNORE.

BURN YOU BASTARD BUCKET OF BOLTS, BURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRN!

>>5825245
>IGNORE.
Lied to us flat out. And it wants to beg now? Fuck off and die.

>>5825245
>IGNORE

>>5825348
Changing my vote to this

>>5825245
>>IGNORE.
Hell no, cover our ears!

>>5825612
>>5825348
I don't think they are mutually exclusive.

>>5826280
Eeh, just to be sure

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“Perhaps the probe has information to offer us. Perhaps it does not. But upon reflection, I realize that neither possibility would change my decision.

I have chosen to give my enemy nothing, and I shall ask for nothing in return.

I shake my head in response to MERRYGATE’s question, and she accepts my answer with a gentle nod. The RAIN shutters her external comms, casting the observation room into stately silence. I watch the probe die with my unaltered vision. Scraps of computational substrate burn inside its pearled shell, flickering like muted candle-fire.

I think of summer lanterns. I dream of home.”

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 14th, PERSONAL JOURNAL

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“The days pass slowly again.

The RAIN heals from her injuries. We spend warm afternoons tracing comets; cold evenings embedding our memories onto paper and silicon.

I express gratitude, and MERRYGATE accepts. I tell her that she is more than code and cold circuity, just as I am more than bone and warm blood. This too she accepts. We celebrate our victory under the light of an alien sun, lamenting the marriage of joy and brevity.

The time we have left to spend is written across the night sky.

The replicative machinery seeded upon the Mizarian home world coalesces into sweeping arches and fibrous loops. In the outer-system, the rocky remnants of MIZAR-V-A fall away like a tattered cocoon to expose its blue-green heart. A vast accelerator ring assembles itself along the equator of MIZAR-V: exponential engineering on a scale that defies simple comprehension. Over the course of a single week, countercurrent exchange peels the gas giant apart layer by layer, dredging raw material from the depths of its gravity well.

As MIZAR-V and her sister-gas giant smudge and fade, I watch streams of processed matter fall towards the inner system – two new asteroid belts, frozen in blue light.

I think of the Martian sky. I dream of home.”

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 29th, PERSONAL JOURNAL

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“The probe had gambled on this. When it had given us the hypometric weapon, it had secretly incorporated a part of itself into our munitions. It had hinted that there were some crimes that only we could commit - a barrier that we had to breach before it could act. Of the many things it had told us, perhaps this alone was true.

The probe is gone now, and yet its machines remain, mindlessly completing their final directive. They use planetary mass to build concentric rings around Mizar’s primary star, weaving field-projectors and interface-spines that plunge deep into the star’s hydrogen-burning core. There is a certain horror in watching a star lose its freedom to the whims of stellar engineering. There is a definite horror in seeing a system dismembered for the purpose of killing its solar parent.

And yet we must take part in it. There is nothing else left in this system, and the RAIN alone can broadcast the signal that will cast us towards journey's end.

She thinks of memory. I think of loss. And yet the two of us still dream of home.”

>COLLAPSE – REGULATED. Execute the collapse protocol MERRYGATE retrieved from the dying probe. [This will convert MIZAR into a pulsar. You will have an opportunity to signal home.]

>COLLAPSE – UNREGULATED. Execute the modified collapse protocol that MERRYGATE learned from the dying hunter. [This will convert MIZAR into a black hole. You have will have an opportunity to signal home, and a chance to erase your FTL-trace.] (Note: This option was made available by 1. Finding and investigating the hypometric weapon and 2. Befriending the hunter.)

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2243, JANUARY 26th, PERSONAL JOURNAL

>>5827608
>COLLAPSE – UNREGULATED. Execute the modified collapse protocol that MERRYGATE learned from the dying hunter. [This will convert MIZAR into a black hole. You have will have an opportunity to signal home, and a chance to erase your FTL-trace.] (Note: This option was made available by 1. Finding and investigating the hypometric weapon and 2. Befriending the hunter.)

>>5827608
>COLLAPSE – UNREGULATED. Execute the modified collapse protocol that MERRYGATE learned from the dying hunter. [This will convert MIZAR into a black hole. You have will have an opportunity to signal home, and a chance to erase your FTL-trace.] (Note: This option was made available by 1. Finding and investigating the hypometric weapon and 2. Befriending the hunter.)

>>5827608
>COLLAPSE – UNREGULATED. Execute the modified collapse protocol that MERRYGATE learned from the dying hunter. [This will convert MIZAR into a black hole. You have will have an opportunity to signal home, and a chance to erase your FTL-trace.] (Note: This option was made available by 1. Finding and investigating the hypometric weapon and 2. Befriending the hunter.)

>>5827608
>COLLAPSE – UNREGULATED. Execute the modified collapse protocol that MERRYGATE learned from the dying hunter. [This will convert MIZAR into a black hole. You have will have an opportunity to signal home, and a chance to erase your FTL-trace.] (Note: This option was made available by 1. Finding and investigating the hypometric weapon and 2. Befriending the hunter.)

>>5827608

>COLLAPSE – UNREGULATED. Execute the modified collapse protocol that MERRYGATE learned from the dying hunter. [This will convert MIZAR into a black hole. You have will have an opportunity to signal home, and a chance to erase your FTL-trace.] (Note: This option was made available by 1. Finding and investigating the hypometric weapon and 2. Befriending the hunter.)

This is it friends. A chance to unwind causation…

>>5827608
>>COLLAPSE – UNREGULATED. Execute the modified collapse protocol that MERRYGATE learned from the dying hunter. [This will convert MIZAR into a black hole. You have will have an opportunity to signal home, and a chance to erase your FTL-trace.] (Note: This option was made available by 1. Finding and investigating the hypometric weapon and 2. Befriending the hunter.)


This was always gonna be a one way trip.Still, the calculus is the same as always. 2 lives, for all mankind. Lets see if we can't erase the cardinal sin.

>>5827608
>COLLAPSE – UNREGULATED. Execute the modified collapse protocol that MERRYGATE learned from the dying hunter. [This will convert MIZAR into a black hole. You have will have an opportunity to signal home, and a chance to erase your FTL-trace.] (Note: This option was made available by 1. Finding and investigating the hypometric weapon and 2. Befriending the hunter.)

I guess we would have only had one option if we didn't make a friend.

>>5827608
>COLLAPSE – UNREGULATED. Execute the modified collapse protocol that MERRYGATE learned from the dying hunter. [This will convert MIZAR into a black hole. You have will have an opportunity to signal home, and a chance to erase your FTL-trace.] (Note: This option was made available by 1. Finding and investigating the hypometric weapon and 2. Befriending the hunter.)

>>5827608

>COLLAPSE – UNREGULATED. Execute the modified collapse protocol that MERRYGATE learned from the dying hunter. [This will convert MIZAR into a black hole. You have will have an opportunity to signal home, and a chance to erase your FTL-trace.] (Note: This option was made available by 1. Finding and investigating the hypometric weapon and 2. Befriending the hunter.)
Our debts must now be paid, I really hope Terra and Mars get our message and we ARENT actually trapped into a causal loop.

>>5827608
>COLLAPSE – UNREGULATED. Execute the modified collapse protocol that MERRYGATE learned from the dying hunter. [This will convert MIZAR into a black hole. You have will have an opportunity to signal home, and a chance to erase your FTL-trace.] (Note: This option was made available by 1. Finding and investigating the hypometric weapon and 2. Befriending the hunter.)
Shit, we'll have to choose between signaling home and escaping with Merry, won't we?

>>5827608
So what did we give up by using BOTH of the Hunter's Gifts? Inquiring minds and all that.

>>5827608

>COLLAPSE – UNREGULATED. Execute the modified collapse protocol that MERRYGATE learned from the dying hunter. [This will convert MIZAR into a black hole. You have will have an opportunity to signal home, and a chance to erase your FTL-trace.] (Note: This option was made available by 1. Finding and investigating the hypometric weapon and 2. Befriending the hunter.)

It was an experience reading this quest with you anons, maybe our protagonist will somehow survive either way we accomplished what we set out to do and more.

>>5827608
>COLLAPSE - UNREGULATED

>>5828039
I have to ask this too

>>5828039
>>5828513
I assuming some possible game changing information or variable. Hope its not the type of information that leads to us getting wiped.

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“The megastructure encircling Mizar enforces our will using the only language a star can ever know.

Gravity.

Sonorous and grim, it pushes against the photosphere, projected by threshing emitters vast enough to span a lunar orbit. At the contact point, weight-flux forces plasma-spall to spill off the corona in great coruscating waves: giving birth to a new generation of sunspots that dapple Mizar’s sapphired face.

The breach point becomes an indent – then an open wound. The machine does not relent, and it continues to press – through the photon-rich shallows and the plasma-clouded littorals. Through the radiation-rich photopic layer and the magnetized chromosphere. It continues until it reaches the star’s nuclear burning heart, which delights in its ample supply of light hydrogen and sweet helium. Mizar is bright, but it is young - well-removed from the reaction chains that would herald the twilight years of its stellar lifecycle.

But decrepitude has found it still.

The gravity spike wraps around the core and constricts, introducing baryonic impurities designed to poison thermonuclear reactivity. The core tumbles down the elemental table. Sweet helium to salty alkaline metals. Alkaline elements to clumsy chalcogens and acrid halogens.

Compensation. The photosphere balloons outward, cooling from oceanic blue to pale-orange. It races past the gravitational emitters in a tantrum of roiling plasma.

But the emitters have already done their duty, and the core falls further still. Halogens to heavy transition metals. These nuclei fuse slowly, reluctantly – hoarding the nuclear binding energy they had once given charitably.

Bargaining. The photosphere balloons again as the star negotiates with unyielding gravity, bartering for life in the simple currency of density and radiation pressure. The two innermost planets – the closest of Mizar’s planetary children – dissolve into vapor and free ions.

But gravity cannot be negotiated with, and core can fall no further. Transition metals give way to elemental iron. Cold iron. Dead iron.

Failure. The photosphere expands until it envelops the remainder of the inner system – until its outer surface makes a final attempt to clutch at the RAIN’s sun-burnished hull. The ruined spaceships, the moons – the vacuum-burned corpses. The tattered remnants of the Mizarian homeward itself. All it disappears, conjoined to their solar parent as it spirals towards stellar death.

A pause.

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And then Mizar contracts, catalyzed by the final remnants of the alien megastructure. Gravity speaks its final decree, and the star has no recourse but to obey. The photosphere withdraws from the inner system. It shrinks to twice its original size – then a sixteenth – then an eye-searing circlet no larger than a gas giant. Around the fringes, starlight begins to twinkle and warp.

The threshing machinery grinds to a halt, stalling at a command it no longer intends to finish.

And so, the collapse continues. Down to a planet – a moon – a city. The RAIN’s gravitational wave detector bottoms out as gravity claims the star with its dark, crushing totality. A burst of hard X-rays marks the birth of a singularity, still mercifully buried inside the dark cloak of a rotating event-horizon.

Darkness. Cold. Causality-failure. Hawking radiation sings a sea-soft roar into the void as Mizar consumes the megastructure that had brought it into existence.

My companion clasps my hand, and the two of us weep as we push our vessel forward. We weep, but we had promised that it would end here – to ourselves and to each other – to the regretful past and the unknown future.

We had promised that we would erase the cruelty of this place – its people, and its worlds, and the star that gave them life. All of it is severed now, taken to the soft, quiet depths where time does not reach, and causality does not condemn.

The RAIN and her erstwhile crew remain, but only for a short time more. The universe will forget us and our only crime, and perhaps then – only then – will it choose to remember our home."

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2243, JANUARY 28th, PERSONAL JOURNAL

[ENDING VOTE 1/3]

>XIII - DEATH. [DESTROY THE MIZARIAN GENE BANK] “…and this journal shall be the only record of their existence, for we have not permitted them to pass into history. We may remember, but we have forced the universe to forget.”

>XII - THE HANGED MAN. [RETAIN THE MIZARIAN GENE BANK; SOMETHING WILL BE LOST] “…and I shall leave what little remains of their species to fate and probability – better, perhaps than what they deserve. Worse, perhaps, than what could have been.”

X UNSELECTABLE – NO ARCHIVE-SEEDS REMAINING. [ARCHIVE THE MIZARIAN GENE BANK; NOTHING WILL BE LOST] “…for the archive is meant to remember, and I shall give it something that should be remembered. Time and circumstance forced us here, but both time and circumstance can be changed…”

>>5828822
>>XII - THE HANGED MAN. [RETAIN THE MIZARIAN GENE BANK; SOMETHING WILL BE LOST] “…and I shall leave what little remains of their species to fate and probability – better, perhaps than what they deserve. Worse, perhaps, than what could have been.”

Maybe we'll lose the part that made them such dicks to us. #owned

>>5828822
>XIII - DEATH. [DESTROY THE MIZARIAN GENE BANK] “…and this journal shall be the only record of their existence, for we have not permitted them to pass into history. We may remember, but we have forced the universe to forget.
To leave even the slightest trace of that hateful race would be to cast the pearl of mercy before swine

>>5828822
>>XII - THE HANGED MAN. [RETAIN THE MIZARIAN GENE BANK; SOMETHING WILL BE LOST] “…and I shall leave what little remains of their species to fate and probability – better, perhaps than what they deserve. Worse, perhaps, than what could have been.”

>>5828822

>XII - THE HANGED MAN. [RETAIN THE MIZARIAN GENE BANK; SOMETHING WILL BE LOST] “…and I shall leave what little remains of their species to fate and probability – better, perhaps than what they deserve. Worse, perhaps, than what could have been.”

A partial mercy?

>>5828822

>XII - THE HANGED MAN. [RETAIN THE MIZARIAN GENE BANK; SOMETHING WILL BE LOST] “…and I shall leave what little remains of their species to fate and probability – better, perhaps than what they deserve. Worse, perhaps, than what could have been.”
To destroy it now is to be no better than the Mizarians.

>>5828822
>XII - THE HANGED MAN. [RETAIN THE MIZARIAN GENE BANK]

>>5828822
>XII - THE HANGED MAN. [RETAIN THE MIZARIAN GENE BANK; SOMETHING WILL BE LOST] “…and I shall leave what little remains of their species to fate and probability – better, perhaps than what they deserve. Worse, perhaps, than what could have been.”
I'd rather sentence them total death, but I desire for our people to know and learn of what brought us to do this and only by giving this information will they perhaps know and be wary of it, and cautious in the future.

>>5828822
>XII - THE HANGED MAN. [RETAIN THE MIZARIAN GENE BANK; SOMETHING WILL BE LOST] “…and I shall leave what little remains of their species to fate and probability – better, perhaps than what they deserve. Worse, perhaps, than what could have been.
There are worse fates i suppose.
>Losing both seeds mean we only archive a fraction of the Mizari genome, a poor imitation of the Hunter's magnificance.
Well shit. I guess in the end we tried.

>>5828822
>>XII - THE HANGED MAN. [RETAIN THE MIZARIAN GENE BANK; SOMETHING WILL BE LOST] “…and I shall leave what little remains of their species to fate and probability – better, perhaps than what they deserve. Worse, perhaps, than what could have been.”

A shame. But at least they'll have a chance. Its more then what they offered us.

>>5828822
Shit, how did I not notice the unselectable thing until now?

>>5829327
>Lack of greentext?

>>5829731
Maybe

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“We reach the shallows, and time slows. I trace it through the motion of the stars, and the pulse of my quickening heart.

Here, oscillating gravitational waves break against the shoals of a fading accretion disk. Here, Mizar’s event horizon bears down on us with patient, cyclopean attention.

MERRYGATE and I finalize our commitments beneath its watchful stare. I transliterate my journal and file my reports, converting soft parchment and stubborn ink into blocks of unadorned plaintext. We bundle it with schematics and code – system reports and compressed video – to form a tiny parcel of condensed data.

It is all we can afford. The final element of the alien megastructure is a relay - a single-use gravitational laser designed to thread information across kiloparsecs of radiation-strewn space. It sits above Mizar’s accretion disk in a tight polar orbit, having drunk deep from the gravitational rebound energy of stellar collapse. Under MERRYGATE’s direction, it slews its aster-faced antenna away from the Bootes void, and towards the blank space formerly occupied by a honey-yellow G-type star.

Somewhere inside the transmitter, an artificial singularity opens. It promises to hear us – clearly enough sing our message through somber gravity; faintly enough to keep it from nature’s prying eyes.

The gravitational emitter charges. It will receive until the RAIN crosses her final horizon - hear us until our words lengthen from age and redshift. And when it can hear us no longer, it will carry a small trace of us home, to a time long before our departure.”

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2243, FEBRUARY 2nd [NOTE: MESSAGE BACKDATED/LORENTZ FACTOR: 1.3]

[ENDING VOTE 2/3]

>XV - THE DEVIL. [SEND THE RAIN’S FTL SCHEMATICS; OUTPACE ERASURE]
“…the solution may be reprehensible, but it has been tried and tested by those which came before us. In a way, perhaps it is only fitting – no more or less cruel than the universe itself.

We shall escape erasure by outrunning light. The sky behind us – and all those who live in it – will be condemned to darkness, but humanity alone will not suffer from it.

See the drive schematics. See the interplay of field and flux, high and low energy densities. The RAIN was the first of her kind, but she will not be the last.”


>XIV – TEMPERENCE. [SEND THE HUNTER’S INTRODUCTION; ENTER THE ARCHIVE]
“…perhaps they will understand humanity, just as our friend understood us. Their duty weighs upon them heavily, and they have become accustomed to the coldness of this place – but the hunters have never been cruel, and they do not revel in their work.

Heed our warnings and see the natural laws that shade the skies dark. And when you understand, send the introduction we have provided. Speak to them and enter their archive when you are prepared. The era that comes after this one will be long and dark, but it need not be cold.”


>XIX – THE SUN. [SEND FRAGMENTS OF ALL; PROPOSE NOTHING]
“…there is foolishness in sending only warnings and schematics – information and laws – to spin a fragmented tale with no lesson. But it is the kind of foolishness that my companion and I understand. You understand it too, I think.

We have no desire to condemn you to the two known fates. There is no need to make the skies darker, and the distant future offers no recompense for a hollow present.

Heed the warnings and know the laws – but do not let them bind you. Defiance makes us human, and defiance alone shall carry us home.”

>>5830760
>XIX – THE SUN. [SEND FRAGMENTS OF ALL; PROPOSE NOTHING]

>>5830760
>XIX – THE SUN. [SEND FRAGMENTS OF ALL; PROPOSE NOTHING]

>>5830760
>XV - THE DEVIL. [SEND THE RAIN’S FTL SCHEMATICS; OUTPACE ERASURE]
HFY

>>5830760
>XIX – THE SUN. [SEND FRAGMENTS OF ALL; PROPOSE NOTHING]

>>5830760

>XIX – THE SUN. [SEND FRAGMENTS OF ALL; PROPOSE NOTHING]

Fling a light into the future. Perhaps mankind may find a new answer.

>>5830760
>XIV – TEMPERENCE. [SEND THE HUNTER’S INTRODUCTION; ENTER THE ARCHIVE]
I like THE SUN as well.

>>5830760

>XIX – THE SUN. [SEND FRAGMENTS OF ALL; PROPOSE NOTHING]

We don’t need to have the answers - but it will be enough to pose the right question to humanity. How to escape the trap? Let this riddle be the obsession of mankind; we have absolute faith in their success.

>>5830760
>XIX -- THE SUN

>>5830760
>XIX – THE SUN. [SEND FRAGMENTS OF ALL; PROPOSE NOTHING]
We can't decide for the whole of humanity.

>>5830760
>XIX – THE SUN. [SEND FRAGMENTS OF ALL; PROPOSE NOTHING]
We never meant to figure out a solution by ourselves

>>5830760
>XIX – THE SUN. [SEND FRAGMENTS OF ALL; PROPOSE NOTHING]
We cant make choices like that. Its up to those that come before/after us.

No update today cause I got a metabolism final tomorrow :( But I should be able to update tomorrow! Sorry for the delay.

>>5831574
Ur good. A day or two more wont hurt. I just wanna see the ending.

>>5830760
>XIX - THE SUN

In the words of Fallen London:
UN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE S

>XIX – THE SUN. [SEND FRAGMENTS OF ALL; PROPOSE NOTHING]

I say we let mankind choose, lay out the facts and they alone shall determine the fate of their species.

>>5830760
>XIX – THE SUN. [SEND FRAGMENTS OF ALL; PROPOSE NOTHING]
I am cynical and skeptical some fucker won't try to invent or create FTL for some retardly desperate or ambitious reason.

File: 0000-0175.webm (2.79 MB, 1910x1074)

2.79 MB WEBM

“The horizon beckons.

A crimson ring divides the sky. By the time we finish composing our parting message, it has advanced well past the equatorial plane, squeezing outside space into an ever-receding circle. I peer at it through my telescope, watching stray meteorites streak across my vision at frantic double-speed.

Slowly, MERRYGATE shifts my attention towards a specific sector of the shrinking sky. She points towards a tiny patch of smeared starlight – annotating constellations distorted by gravitational lensing and doppler shift. She taps once. Twice.

A pale-gold flicker. I blink. Gone.

I blink again. The point flickers before burning bright.

MERRYGATE annotates the newcomer, invoking spectral lines and parallax measurements to confirm what I already knew. After thirteen months of darkness, the light of my home star reaches the RAIN. We watch in rapt attention.

Sol. Honey-lighted Sol. Bringer of warm summers and clear winters – wet autumns and verdant springs.

Sol. Unblemished Sol. When the RAIN had left Mars, she had been in mourning. Exothermic waste-debris from earth and luna had shifted her spectral lines. Yet Sol suffers none of those changes now – her light as clear as a clarion-call.

Sol. Censored Sol. I had felt the grey touch of cosmic censorship as soon as I arrived in this system. Names, faces and places - across short years and long decades – all removed alongside the light of my home star.

Now those memories return as I bask in Sol’s warm light. Slowly, tattered images begin to reform, bringing joy and grief in almost equal measure.

The horizon continues to expand. The point of no-return approaches. But for a brief time, we ignore those things. We remember everything we once knew and – perhaps - everything we have managed to save.”

- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2243, FEBRUARY 5th [NOTE: MESSAGE BACKDATED/LORENTZ FACTOR: 2.1]

[ENDING VOTE 3/3]

>XVI – THE TOWER [ESCAPE THE RAIN; ALL MAY LOSE SOMETHING]
“…I will eject the RAIN’s only escape pod just before we cross the event horizon. Gravity will slingshot my companion and I into interstellar space. We will sleep through the coldest of nights, and someday – one day – we may awaken to see the changeful stars.

So I shall ask for one final act of forgiveness. Take the sun and her planets; the RAIN and her sins.

But do not retake our memories.”

>XX – JUDGEMENT [REMAIN ABOARD THE RAIN; YOU WILL LOSE SOMETHING]
“…our approach is locked, and our trajectory is set.

May nothing be left to chance.”

X UNSELECTABLE – NO ARCHIVE-SEEDS REMAINING. [ARCHIVE YOURSELVES; NOTHING WILL BE LOST]
“…for the archive is meant to remember, and I shall give it something that should be remembered.

Time and circumstance forced us here, but both time and circumstance can be changed…”

>>5834219
>XX – JUDGEMENT [REMAIN ABOARD THE RAIN; YOU WILL LOSE SOMETHING]
Our duty is executed, our purpose erased from causality. We join our forgotten foe in death...

>>5834219
>XX – JUDGEMENT [REMAIN ABOARD THE RAIN; YOU WILL LOSE SOMETHING]
I honestly figured there was no way we were making it out alive regardless. Based bittersweet ending.

can we have sex with the AI before we die tho

>>5834219
>XX – JUDGEMENT [REMAIN ABOARD THE RAIN; YOU WILL LOSE SOMETHING]


onto death and beyond it is our duty to remain here. Being ejected would just be a death by other means. So we will face it together and with open arms embrace it in the depths of absolute lightlessness.

>>5834219

>XX – JUDGEMENT [REMAIN ABOARD THE RAIN; YOU WILL LOSE SOMETHING]

This was a one-way trip from the start

>>5834219
>>XX – JUDGEMENT [REMAIN ABOARD THE RAIN; YOU WILL LOSE SOMETHING]

We always knew how this story would end. One more journey into the unknown, together.

>>5834219
>XX – JUDGEMENT [REMAIN ABOARD THE RAIN; YOU WILL LOSE SOMETHING]

>>5834219
>>XX – JUDGEMENT [REMAIN ABOARD THE RAIN; YOU WILL LOSE SOMETHING]
Together to the end

>>5834219
>XX – JUDGEMENT [REMAIN ABOARD THE RAIN; YOU WILL LOSE SOMETHING]
Oblivion awaits. It has been an honor and a pleasure gentlemen.