Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
Posted: 2011-10-21 11:26pm
Space Elevator Bank, Nitro Zone, Capital Planet, Sector B10
Roughly 3 Months Ago
The Capital Planet moved through space with no mind headed towards the opinions of its inhabitants, making no special note of today as mattering in the grand scheme of things. Foreign Affairs Clerk Justin Gabriel tended to agree with the general lack of importance as he went through the long and arduous process of securing a place on one of the massive Space Elevators that slowly lifted and landed on the Capital planet, carrying things that people did not want to pass through Knights of Order jurisdiction as they approached the network of habitats the hung around the Capital Planet’s space.
As Gabriel continued through the queues and various security apparatus, human travelers through the Space Elevators were discouraged as they cost more than their weight in cargo to lift, he began working out what exactly the Grandmaster would require of him, he had passed on thinking about this for the exact occurrence he currently dealt with.
By Gabriel’s personal account, he would either be talking about the amount of activity the Kingdom had been up to in recent months or about something that Gabriel couldn’t even comprehend. The dichotomy was something he developed when working with the Knights, they were either entirely predictable of off the wall fucking insane, no middle ground.
As his elevator approached the Loading/Unloading Bay, a Knight whisked him to a private section of the Elevator, leading Gabriel to a private shuttle that took Gabriel to the real seat of power in the Mandate, the Novalith Commandship Ecclesiastes.
Gabriel was led to a briefing room on the Ecclesiastes where the Grand Master, Lucas De Beaumanoir was waiting with two other people. The first was identifiable as the Knight-Commander General, Warmaster Maurice De Bracy, oddly away from his commandship the Prince Regent or Paycheck. The other man was unknown, but he had the air of a contact within the Pius Dei Network, the organization that recruited Gabriel into the Knights of Order.
“Grandmaster, Warmaster, to what do I owe the pleasure?” Gabriel said, knowing that the two would already be a step ahead of him in plotting, and would happily ignore the connection Gabriel had to the conversation and simply charge on without him, “I take it Mr. ,” he allowed the moment to hang, “has something to do with calling me from the planet at this time of emergency.”
“Emergency?” the Grandmaster asked, “What emergency is happening on the surface, ‘rice? Harris?”
“Before the Grandmaster get’s ahead of himself, I am a liaison with the Pius Dei Network, Mr. Harris,” the unknown man, Mr. Harris, said to both the Grandmaster and Gabriel, “Mr. Gabriel refers to the,” Harris paused, “increase in autonomous paramilitary organization by the Kingdom in recent months, as well as the more militantly anti-Knight organizational structure being pushed by King Sheamus. Am I correct?” Harris did not wait for a response, “This is not to say that this is not something that was taken in mind, but forces outside of our control are pushing this to be needed now.”
“And what, pray tell, is ‘this?’”
“I was getting to that Mr. Gabriel,” Harris sounded hurt, “For too long you have been the only connection the Mandate has with the outside world. The Knights are in desperate need of a communication vessel to the outside world, and more importantly are in need of an actual department, division, ministry, what have you. We need your experience in the foreign affairs department to secure us someone to head this directorate, yes, the Directorate of Foreign Involvement. The Pius Dei Network also requires what you believe is needed from the zone of space that will become our embassy and foreign affairs centralized location.”
“Yes,” the Warmaster said, interrupting, “We need to know as soon as possible, so preparations can be made and a location can be chosen.”
“The Pius Dei Network can move quickly Warmaster de Bracy, much more quickly than you realize, Mr. Gabriel, if you could simply provide the needed parameters, the Network can make use of this quickly and have the project well under way.”
“Mr. Harris, Maurice, I will not have this become a pissing contest between organizations. Mr. Harris, the Pius Dei Network, and it’s connections will handle the acquisition and clearing of the location. Not another word of this will be discussed until Mr. Gabriel has laid out the ground parameters.”
“Well, thank you Grandmaster,” Jushin Gabriel said, “The objective of the project, I assume, is to have a useful location to position both defend against and not connect to any of the constituent states. We know that embassies will encourage interaction and interaction includes espionage. The location choice will issue forth an understanding of the Mandate based soley on its location.”
“These parameters, along with logical assumptions made by the Pius Dei Network, have lead to a location to be chose, work begins on clearing it of inhabitants as we speak, which leads to the next portion, Grandmaster.”
“Ah, yes, well, as we plan to have a new Directorate, we will need a Director to lead it, and this is where you come in, we don’t want to lose your status within the Kingdom just yet, so you’re out as a candidate, so we need an idea for who to contact and bring into the fold.”
Jushin Gabriel responded without hesitation, “Jack Abrashroom XIII.”
“Mr. Abrashroom?”
“Mr. Abrashroom comes from a distinguished Nova Terran family, he is sufficient for the needs of the position and he is mercenary enough to work for us. If you want someone closer to home, a Mr. James D. Chadwick, a Tiefling from the Dungeon can be a properly loyal Deputy Director should the need arise.”
“You have given this much more thought than you appear,” the Warmaster said.
“Well, Warmaster, it is a simple question, who would you want to be your boss is a common enough question I ask myself constantly as I have to deal with annoying shit, pardon the language.”
Mr. Harris spoke, “The Network is capable of bringing in Mr. Abrashroom under more or less dubious circumstances as needed, we are willing to burn some influence in the Cradles in exchange for Mr. Abrashroom’s loyalty.”
“As of now that is not necessary, we can take the hit to our budget to hire him under legitimate circumstances. Speaking of which, Eccles, initiate contact with the UN and Mr. Jack Abrashroom XIII, offer him a longstanding position within the Knights of Order as well as lodging et cetera.”
The Shipboard AI said nothing, and the Grandmaster assumed compliance, “So, with this settled, Mr. Gabriel if you have nothing else to discuss, you a free to leave.”
_________________________________________________________
Da Bronks Space Habitat, Sector B10
Slightly Less Than ‘Roughly’ Three Months Ago
Within hours of the decision being made, the Pius Dei Network (really the Knights of Order Paladins) had secured the chosen location for the Knights of Order, burning money to secure the entire real estate of the Space Habitat da Bronks. The habitat was built around the outer edges of system B10003, and was one of the more troublesome locals and host to a rather independently minded and very gruff populace. The decision was made by the Network to send in the elite shock Knights to secure the actual habitat for habitation by the new seat of Foreign affairs.
Crow T. Robot, one of the many soulless abominations chose particularly for that reason to lead the relocation of Da Bronks in habitants would have sighed had he been capable of doing so. The people of Da Bronks had been less than happy when news of the sale of their hunk of habitation was made public, granted this may have had more to do with the large contingent of shock Knights such as Crow than with the fact that their homes were being demolished.
The shock Knights worked their way through the cityscape of Da Bronks, with teams demolishing the buildings they had just cleared of life. The removed citizenry was then shuttled off to transports that took them to places where they would not be in the line of fire of the Knights of Order. Crow, having a clock run down, once again amplified his voice to announce to the public, “Leave da Bronks. This area has been claimed by the Knights of Order, therefore we would like to implore you to Leave da Bronks. Abandon all buildings, they are about to be demolished.”
“If you leave da Bronks we’ll give you fudgicles,” lied Tom Servo, also one of the soulless shock Knights in command, “We have mortgage subsidies if you just move to New New Mexico.”
The mobile command moved through Da Bronks without comment, having had their broadcasted request again ignored by the people who were attempted to loot the habitat. Eventually Servo and Crow came across a man standing in the middle of the street, prompting Crow to say to Servo, “I’m a pretty good judge of people who aren’t going to leave da Bronks, and this guy is one of them.”
Crow stopped the convoy and addressed the man, “Sir, I’m sure by now you’re aware of our leave da Bronks program. So you’re interaction with this convoy is in violation of the Most Holy Legion of the Knights of Order’s”
As Crow spoke an auto-turret swong around and tracked the man.
“Mandate in this area of space, as such. Your life is forfeit.”
The turret fired, killing the man.
The operation continued unabated.
____________________________________________________
Shuttle En Route to former Da Bronks Space Habitat, Sector B10
Two Weeks Ago
The shuttle was ferrying very important personal, at least, if his paycheck was any indication. Jack Abrashroom XIII was being paid very much to be the Director of Foreign Interaction for some fringe organization, the Most Holy Legion of the Knights of Order. It was so backwater that he had actually had to look for it three different times just to discern the location of his new source of income.
He had been contacted by UN officials offering him a post in the edge of civilized space, beyond the Centrality, and nearer to the Commune than he originally felt comfortable. The officials who negotiated his contract had been more than willing to offer him as much money as he could ever want in exchange for his signature, and it hadn’t taken that much, he was only informed post-negotiation that he was much more sought after than he expected. Still, Abrashroom made a lot of money, and he was more than happy to have that money, and a title like Director on his resume.
Unfortunately, Abrashroom ran into a small problem, his Deputy Director, some devilish, not d(a)emonic no sir, looking guy who introduced himself as James D. Chadwick. Chadwick was consistently more informed and better trained than Abrashroom in every fashion, and worked to get Abrashroom to actually be good at his job. During the flight over, one of the many conversations the two had went thusly:
“Look, Deputy Director Chadwick, James, I don’t know why, but the whatever,” “Knights of Order,” “Right, Knights of Something, hired me to run this joint, when it should be you. Why?”
“Well, I don’t know Director, you have the lineage, the training, the connections, but none of the knowledge, which I guess is what I’m going to provide. But most of all, I’m awful at making decisions sir, central to this is the name of our new location, as it’s currently an unnamed facility.”
“So we get to name it ourselves huh, excellent, tell me when we can see it visually from the shuttle.”
“Conveniently, we can actually see it now.”
“A few proposals currently exist, including the Hotel something, there is some debate amongst the construction crews as to wheter it should be California or Mario.”
“No need, there is only one name I can think of for that barren piece of real-estate, the Schoolhouse Rock. “
Schoolhouse Rock, Sector B10
Present Day
Two weeks with James had been perfect for Director Abrashroom’s work ethic, it might also have been a part of the fact that he was now at the fringe of civilization, closer to the Commune and the Centrality than home, that spurned him to be the best he could be. The Directorate was taking shape, with people being imported from various locals that Abrashroom could name and know offhand where they were.
The barren ‘cityscape’ of the Schoolhouse Rock proved to be the biggest depressant on the habitat, no one working on project was willing to put up prefabricated buildings that would just be pulled down to make room for the embassies located on the Schoolhouse Rock upon completion of the project. This combined with the clearing of Da Bronks involving demolishing the entire skyline result in the the scant few buildings were posts for the Knights of Order to base things out of and the actual equipment to build the centers.
As the project proved to shape up admirably, the Directorate drew up the final piece of the project that could be done without a bit of flexibility, the drafting of the intergalactic notice of diplomatic openness. The end result was broadcast by paying the Most Serene Republic of Newslyvania a small fee to broadcast it, and send it to automated repeating stations used by other news sources to allow it to hijack them for total galactic coverage.
Message From the Director of Foreign Interaction:
Roughly 3 Months Ago
The Capital Planet moved through space with no mind headed towards the opinions of its inhabitants, making no special note of today as mattering in the grand scheme of things. Foreign Affairs Clerk Justin Gabriel tended to agree with the general lack of importance as he went through the long and arduous process of securing a place on one of the massive Space Elevators that slowly lifted and landed on the Capital planet, carrying things that people did not want to pass through Knights of Order jurisdiction as they approached the network of habitats the hung around the Capital Planet’s space.
As Gabriel continued through the queues and various security apparatus, human travelers through the Space Elevators were discouraged as they cost more than their weight in cargo to lift, he began working out what exactly the Grandmaster would require of him, he had passed on thinking about this for the exact occurrence he currently dealt with.
By Gabriel’s personal account, he would either be talking about the amount of activity the Kingdom had been up to in recent months or about something that Gabriel couldn’t even comprehend. The dichotomy was something he developed when working with the Knights, they were either entirely predictable of off the wall fucking insane, no middle ground.
As his elevator approached the Loading/Unloading Bay, a Knight whisked him to a private section of the Elevator, leading Gabriel to a private shuttle that took Gabriel to the real seat of power in the Mandate, the Novalith Commandship Ecclesiastes.
Gabriel was led to a briefing room on the Ecclesiastes where the Grand Master, Lucas De Beaumanoir was waiting with two other people. The first was identifiable as the Knight-Commander General, Warmaster Maurice De Bracy, oddly away from his commandship the Prince Regent or Paycheck. The other man was unknown, but he had the air of a contact within the Pius Dei Network, the organization that recruited Gabriel into the Knights of Order.
“Grandmaster, Warmaster, to what do I owe the pleasure?” Gabriel said, knowing that the two would already be a step ahead of him in plotting, and would happily ignore the connection Gabriel had to the conversation and simply charge on without him, “I take it Mr. ,” he allowed the moment to hang, “has something to do with calling me from the planet at this time of emergency.”
“Emergency?” the Grandmaster asked, “What emergency is happening on the surface, ‘rice? Harris?”
“Before the Grandmaster get’s ahead of himself, I am a liaison with the Pius Dei Network, Mr. Harris,” the unknown man, Mr. Harris, said to both the Grandmaster and Gabriel, “Mr. Gabriel refers to the,” Harris paused, “increase in autonomous paramilitary organization by the Kingdom in recent months, as well as the more militantly anti-Knight organizational structure being pushed by King Sheamus. Am I correct?” Harris did not wait for a response, “This is not to say that this is not something that was taken in mind, but forces outside of our control are pushing this to be needed now.”
“And what, pray tell, is ‘this?’”
“I was getting to that Mr. Gabriel,” Harris sounded hurt, “For too long you have been the only connection the Mandate has with the outside world. The Knights are in desperate need of a communication vessel to the outside world, and more importantly are in need of an actual department, division, ministry, what have you. We need your experience in the foreign affairs department to secure us someone to head this directorate, yes, the Directorate of Foreign Involvement. The Pius Dei Network also requires what you believe is needed from the zone of space that will become our embassy and foreign affairs centralized location.”
“Yes,” the Warmaster said, interrupting, “We need to know as soon as possible, so preparations can be made and a location can be chosen.”
“The Pius Dei Network can move quickly Warmaster de Bracy, much more quickly than you realize, Mr. Gabriel, if you could simply provide the needed parameters, the Network can make use of this quickly and have the project well under way.”
“Mr. Harris, Maurice, I will not have this become a pissing contest between organizations. Mr. Harris, the Pius Dei Network, and it’s connections will handle the acquisition and clearing of the location. Not another word of this will be discussed until Mr. Gabriel has laid out the ground parameters.”
“Well, thank you Grandmaster,” Jushin Gabriel said, “The objective of the project, I assume, is to have a useful location to position both defend against and not connect to any of the constituent states. We know that embassies will encourage interaction and interaction includes espionage. The location choice will issue forth an understanding of the Mandate based soley on its location.”
“These parameters, along with logical assumptions made by the Pius Dei Network, have lead to a location to be chose, work begins on clearing it of inhabitants as we speak, which leads to the next portion, Grandmaster.”
“Ah, yes, well, as we plan to have a new Directorate, we will need a Director to lead it, and this is where you come in, we don’t want to lose your status within the Kingdom just yet, so you’re out as a candidate, so we need an idea for who to contact and bring into the fold.”
Jushin Gabriel responded without hesitation, “Jack Abrashroom XIII.”
“Mr. Abrashroom?”
“Mr. Abrashroom comes from a distinguished Nova Terran family, he is sufficient for the needs of the position and he is mercenary enough to work for us. If you want someone closer to home, a Mr. James D. Chadwick, a Tiefling from the Dungeon can be a properly loyal Deputy Director should the need arise.”
“You have given this much more thought than you appear,” the Warmaster said.
“Well, Warmaster, it is a simple question, who would you want to be your boss is a common enough question I ask myself constantly as I have to deal with annoying shit, pardon the language.”
Mr. Harris spoke, “The Network is capable of bringing in Mr. Abrashroom under more or less dubious circumstances as needed, we are willing to burn some influence in the Cradles in exchange for Mr. Abrashroom’s loyalty.”
“As of now that is not necessary, we can take the hit to our budget to hire him under legitimate circumstances. Speaking of which, Eccles, initiate contact with the UN and Mr. Jack Abrashroom XIII, offer him a longstanding position within the Knights of Order as well as lodging et cetera.”
The Shipboard AI said nothing, and the Grandmaster assumed compliance, “So, with this settled, Mr. Gabriel if you have nothing else to discuss, you a free to leave.”
_________________________________________________________
Da Bronks Space Habitat, Sector B10
Slightly Less Than ‘Roughly’ Three Months Ago
Within hours of the decision being made, the Pius Dei Network (really the Knights of Order Paladins) had secured the chosen location for the Knights of Order, burning money to secure the entire real estate of the Space Habitat da Bronks. The habitat was built around the outer edges of system B10003, and was one of the more troublesome locals and host to a rather independently minded and very gruff populace. The decision was made by the Network to send in the elite shock Knights to secure the actual habitat for habitation by the new seat of Foreign affairs.
Crow T. Robot, one of the many soulless abominations chose particularly for that reason to lead the relocation of Da Bronks in habitants would have sighed had he been capable of doing so. The people of Da Bronks had been less than happy when news of the sale of their hunk of habitation was made public, granted this may have had more to do with the large contingent of shock Knights such as Crow than with the fact that their homes were being demolished.
The shock Knights worked their way through the cityscape of Da Bronks, with teams demolishing the buildings they had just cleared of life. The removed citizenry was then shuttled off to transports that took them to places where they would not be in the line of fire of the Knights of Order. Crow, having a clock run down, once again amplified his voice to announce to the public, “Leave da Bronks. This area has been claimed by the Knights of Order, therefore we would like to implore you to Leave da Bronks. Abandon all buildings, they are about to be demolished.”
“If you leave da Bronks we’ll give you fudgicles,” lied Tom Servo, also one of the soulless shock Knights in command, “We have mortgage subsidies if you just move to New New Mexico.”
The mobile command moved through Da Bronks without comment, having had their broadcasted request again ignored by the people who were attempted to loot the habitat. Eventually Servo and Crow came across a man standing in the middle of the street, prompting Crow to say to Servo, “I’m a pretty good judge of people who aren’t going to leave da Bronks, and this guy is one of them.”
Crow stopped the convoy and addressed the man, “Sir, I’m sure by now you’re aware of our leave da Bronks program. So you’re interaction with this convoy is in violation of the Most Holy Legion of the Knights of Order’s”
As Crow spoke an auto-turret swong around and tracked the man.
“Mandate in this area of space, as such. Your life is forfeit.”
The turret fired, killing the man.
The operation continued unabated.
____________________________________________________
Shuttle En Route to former Da Bronks Space Habitat, Sector B10
Two Weeks Ago
The shuttle was ferrying very important personal, at least, if his paycheck was any indication. Jack Abrashroom XIII was being paid very much to be the Director of Foreign Interaction for some fringe organization, the Most Holy Legion of the Knights of Order. It was so backwater that he had actually had to look for it three different times just to discern the location of his new source of income.
He had been contacted by UN officials offering him a post in the edge of civilized space, beyond the Centrality, and nearer to the Commune than he originally felt comfortable. The officials who negotiated his contract had been more than willing to offer him as much money as he could ever want in exchange for his signature, and it hadn’t taken that much, he was only informed post-negotiation that he was much more sought after than he expected. Still, Abrashroom made a lot of money, and he was more than happy to have that money, and a title like Director on his resume.
Unfortunately, Abrashroom ran into a small problem, his Deputy Director, some devilish, not d(a)emonic no sir, looking guy who introduced himself as James D. Chadwick. Chadwick was consistently more informed and better trained than Abrashroom in every fashion, and worked to get Abrashroom to actually be good at his job. During the flight over, one of the many conversations the two had went thusly:
“Look, Deputy Director Chadwick, James, I don’t know why, but the whatever,” “Knights of Order,” “Right, Knights of Something, hired me to run this joint, when it should be you. Why?”
“Well, I don’t know Director, you have the lineage, the training, the connections, but none of the knowledge, which I guess is what I’m going to provide. But most of all, I’m awful at making decisions sir, central to this is the name of our new location, as it’s currently an unnamed facility.”
“So we get to name it ourselves huh, excellent, tell me when we can see it visually from the shuttle.”
“Conveniently, we can actually see it now.”
“A few proposals currently exist, including the Hotel something, there is some debate amongst the construction crews as to wheter it should be California or Mario.”
“No need, there is only one name I can think of for that barren piece of real-estate, the Schoolhouse Rock. “
Schoolhouse Rock, Sector B10
Present Day
Two weeks with James had been perfect for Director Abrashroom’s work ethic, it might also have been a part of the fact that he was now at the fringe of civilization, closer to the Commune and the Centrality than home, that spurned him to be the best he could be. The Directorate was taking shape, with people being imported from various locals that Abrashroom could name and know offhand where they were.
The barren ‘cityscape’ of the Schoolhouse Rock proved to be the biggest depressant on the habitat, no one working on project was willing to put up prefabricated buildings that would just be pulled down to make room for the embassies located on the Schoolhouse Rock upon completion of the project. This combined with the clearing of Da Bronks involving demolishing the entire skyline result in the the scant few buildings were posts for the Knights of Order to base things out of and the actual equipment to build the centers.
As the project proved to shape up admirably, the Directorate drew up the final piece of the project that could be done without a bit of flexibility, the drafting of the intergalactic notice of diplomatic openness. The end result was broadcast by paying the Most Serene Republic of Newslyvania a small fee to broadcast it, and send it to automated repeating stations used by other news sources to allow it to hijack them for total galactic coverage.
Message From the Director of Foreign Interaction:
Wideband Transmission from the Directorate of Foreign Interaction, Most Holy Legion of the Knights of Order wrote: To the Governments of the Galaxy:
The Most Holy Legion of the Knights of Order have decided that, with the increase in galactic interaction and communication of recent years, the Knights of Order need to join this interaction to assert the sovereignty and place in the international fraternity.
To support this declaration of sovereignty, the Knights of Order shall issue forth an offer of embassy establishement on the newly christened Schoolhouse Rock (Coordinates Enclosed). Contact the Directorate of Foreign Interaction through the channel disclosed.
Any national entities with communications with the constituent governments of the space mandated to the Knights of Order may apply to the Knights of Order for compensation in moving physical personal between locations, as per Article H. III of the Treaty of Constituency (KKoO), Article H III of the Treaty of Constituency (Goblingrad), Article H III of the Treaty of Constituency (Hoblin), Article H III of the Treaty of Constituency (Koboldia), et cetera, the Knights of Order reserve the right to maintain inter-galactic relations for the territories of the Knights of Order Mandate.
Director Jack Abrashroom XIII
Director of Foreign Interaction.