The Open Door (megacrossover)

[LadyTevar]

Cultures usually encounter an Outside Context Problem like a sentence encounters a period.

Full stop.

[Academia Nut]

Actually no, katana's are not modern steel. While the forging is of similar care and technical expertise as Damascus steel, their smelting process is terrible. The starting iron is of far less quality, which is why the had to fold it 800-1000 times, otherwise it wouldn't keep an edge. It left them with a strong, but brittle blade. The blade would snap under a certain amount of side blade force. This is why the techniques emphasize cutting through the opponent, if your blade gets stuck in him it could be snapped. Damascus steel on the other hand started from high quality iron, the blades were folded 300-600 times and were easily as strong, but no where near as brittle. There are cases of Damascus steel rapiers being bent 45 degrees with no harm coming to them. Same with long swords cutting into armor, it just needs to be resharpened later but the blade survives.

No, no, I meant that the blade used in the demonstration wasn't an authentic historical style katana, it was using much stronger modern steels. When you look at the metallurgy, the ability of medieval blacksmiths to actually make quality steel is pathetic. While true that Damascus steel was awesome, that had more to do with the fact that the ores they were using had a bunch of little impurities in them that created some very interesting properties (scientists think that the carbon may have formed diamond-like sheets in the steel). The ability of the smiths to understand, let alone properly control, temperature, carbon-iron ratios, annealing, quenching, tempering and a myriad of other factors was essentially non-existant.

I guess the argument I'm making is that if D&D steels have hardness 10, then even assuming the hardness scale is logarithmic, modern steels should be hardness 15-20.

And yes, the Stiletto has been an OCP for many, but none quite on the scale of the Praxis.

[Deadpan29]

General comments:
1) The mastery of tactical and psychological warfare displayed by Rong is impressive.
2) The glimpse of neoChaos culture provided by the mask dance is artfully done and apreciated.
3) I'm not familiar with the source material, though I did look it up on wiki, but these Praxis people must be truly infuriating if the Colonials are fine with carrying out the attack and subsequent events.
4) I think we're up into the "Bolostomp" range on this one.

There were also instances of a Tzintchian duel ending with the dancer emerging to somehow attack the rival duellist in the audience. Dozens of documented cases ended with death for the unsuspecting target, making the performances all the more exciting as there was real danger to watching the performance. Rong herself had used a war fan to slit the throat of a teacher back in her academy days, thus earning her an automatic pass with top honours in that course.

Is that last item part of standard policy at the neoChaos academy, or just something that applied to that course in particular?

She moved in a field of spinning frames draped with long robes and set with masks and holders for brightly coloured robes and shining swords. The frames were set on rollers as well, so every time she moved one she created an intricate pattern of motion. It was a practical example of chaos theory as the basic Brownian motion of the system was also influenced by the spinning arms colliding with each other, creating impossibly complex patterns.

Saying the frames a draped with robes and then set with holders for brightly coloured robes is somewhat redundant.

With a sudden crash, the carefully constructed chaos of motion Rong had constructed came to a halt as the spinning, moving frames all collided, their carefully tended motions finally coming to an end as they all locked up and some where knocked to the ground. The audience had their horrific conclusion.

I think that should be "some were" rather than "some where".

That ‘assistance’ involved sending over a pair of creepy guys in concealing robes carrying long staffs with weird eight pointed stars made from brass on the tops as ‘sensors and communications experts’, and one ‘close-quarters combat specialist’. The latter was kept in his assigned quarters unless they had a mission as he quite frankly scared everyone who saw him. When he walked his massive boots shook the deck and the human skulls he had tied to his armour clanked and rattled about. If it weren’t for the fact that he kept his helmet off when not in combat he would have easily been mistaken for some sort of Cylon war robot in his blood red mechanical armour.

Saying the space marine "was kept" in his quarters implies that the colonials had some way of keeping him there if he wanted to leave, which is ludicrous. Saying he "stayed" in his quarters and a note that this suited the colonials might be better.

Talking with them was hard as none of them knew any of the Colonial languages and the device they used as a translator was back aboard their ship so they needed to be in radio contact with the Stiletto, but very few actually wanted to talk to them. When not in their assigned quarters, the two robed… creatures… spent most of their time on the bridge inputting targeting data and jump points, while the giant stood protectively over them or, during the two military manoeuvres they had performed so far to shut up the raving lunatics at the listening outpost, he had led the attack.

It's a little unclear which "they" it is that needs to be in radio contact with the Stilletto, or whether "aboard their ship" means on the Stilletto on on the shuttle the Chaos guys came over on. I think you meant the translator is on the Stilletto so the colonials can talk to them, but it took me a couple of passes to reach this conclusion.

The fleet had been hastily assembled, but Praxis standards, in only a few days, elements of the local sector defence split off and merged with a task force deployed from Zanshaa to confront this new occurrence. At first their listen post had reported the discovery of a new space faring species, the worst case scenario for first contact. That alone demanded a reaction, especially since it was initially believed that the enemy was capable of constructing generation or sleeper ships, both of which required technologies banned by the Praxis.

Perhaps that should be "by Praxis standards" instead of "but Praxis standards" and "listening post" instead of "listen post".

Analysis suggested leaving the point defence anti-proton lasers on manual operation as the computers would lock on to the more distant but no longer present images first and thus miss quite spectacularly if allowed to fire automatically. Fortunately it appeared that the enemy did not have the precision to get their end points within better than a half light second, which would give plenty of time to lock on to any missiles fired. The ships were too small to do any damage with anything less than missiles.

I'm not familiar with the source material, and they may call these weapons "anti-proton lasers" in those books, but this bugs me. Lasers are beams of coherent electromagnetic energy. Anti-protons are particles. Therefore and anti-proton beam should be a particle beam, not a laser.

“Analysis suggests antimatter missiles as the only weapon on all but the four largest ships, with anti-proton lasers as point defences on the four biggest ones,” Ichiro reported, his own daemon having gone dormant a day after Arya. He then grimaced and said, “Also, the translator has figured out the names of some of the ships, including the probable flagship. It’s called the Bombardment of Delhi.”

For the reasons stated before, even if the Praxis people call them "anti-proton lasers" I wouldn't expect the Stilleto crew to do so.

There was silence for a long moment before Rong said, “We knew from interrogations that humans were incorporated into this foul Praxis, but that is just crass. Crew?”

Given the Chaos, even the neoChaos, aproach to things, she doesn't have much room to criticize on this point.

“Sir, all missiles and pinnaces destroyed by enemy weapons fire half way to target… weapons used appear to be relativistic particle beams and lasers…” the weapons officer replied in confusion. There was a delay of nearly a minute between firing and impact at that range. It should be impossible to track the tiny, rapidly accelerating missiles at that range with weapons like that. Light didn’t move… that… fast…?

See? They know the difference between a particle beam and a laser.

“Enemy fighters?” The tactical officer asked rhetorically from his computer in confusion. He then reported, “Containment lost for primary starboard anti-proton laser array. Single seat craft armed with kinetic energy weapons are currently ripping apart our defences. They hull hugging us and staying inside our defensive perimeter. We can’t target them.”

"They hull hugging us" should be "They're hull hugging us" or maybe "They're hugging our hull".

The entire flotilla was disintegrating. The abominable enemy ship was capable of moving faster than proper communication would allow, thus turning the tight command structure of all Praxis formations into a chaotic shambled. Captains expectant for orders from their superiors, were panicking and freezing. Helsinki had frozen! They weren’t used to fighting like this!

"shambles" not "shambled", maybe "expecting" rather than "expectant".

Hakim sat quietly in the payload compartment of his assigned Thunderhawk. His squad was assigned to capture the bridge crew, their psychic abilities given them the edge they needed to get living members, while the faster Whips and Reavers would capture the engines and weapons so that no one could be stupid enough to try and cook off the antimatter. The fact that both those chapters were close combat specialists also reduced the danger of a stray round damaging an important containment system.

"gave them the edge" rather than "given them the edge"

The Thunderhawks had been loitering within the debris field around the Praxis installation around the wormhole they had been predicted to exit out of for a day now, the Bearers in their teleport Terminator armour kept in reserve. The enemy truly was arrogant to have not done a thorough sweep of the installation for just this sort of attack, although they seemed focused around warship combat, ignoring what a well placed knife in the back could do.

"around the Praxis installation near the wormhole" might flow better than "around ... around" Either that or "installation's" plural if they do actually surround the wormhole.

Landing on a solid surface, Hakim engaged his boots grapples and stuck down while the rest of his squad landed around him. Raising his wrist mounted storm bolter he destroyed a spidery maintenance robot with a small burst of fire before nodding for his men to find a place to get through the inner hull to the actual crew sections.

"boot grapples" or "boot's grapples"

With precognitively precise aiming, the Heralds cut down anyone carrying anything that could possibly be used as a weapon, spraying hot blood all over the compartment.

I wasn't expecting their precog to work in such a low-energy universe. But this and the two ships with one laser shot from the Stilleto earlier indicate otherwise.

An enormous boot kicked down the dissected door and revealed a creature out of the eldest nightmares of Terran. Three metres tall from the bottom of its boots to the top of its headdress, it was blue and gold and covered in the death cult markings of some ancient Terran emperor. A fully enclosed battle suit, it was the sort of technology that could have only have evolved on the most backwards, brutal of worlds beyond the words of the Shaa and the Praxis. Around its right wrist it had an enormous double barrelled slug thrower, while in its left hand it had a halberd, but there was obviously an immense amount of technology in the melee weapon as its wicked blade glowed with unnatural light.

"Terra" rather than "Terran" or maybe "eldest Terran nightmares".

Chaos was unsustainable, but that was because it kept reinventing itself into new form. That was the truth and the lie within her dance to herself. This would spread chaos far and wide in this universe. Billions would likely die in the infighting, but Rong did not particularly care. They had threatened those under her care repeatedly and then opened fire without demanding an explanation or even asking if the captured crews were still alive. By her books, these hidebound bastards had it coming.

"new forms" rather than "new form".

Smiling her most daemonic smile in her currently diminished state, she said to the camera in the language of the Praxis, “Greetings, I am Rong Xun, captain of the Stiletto, and I would just like to say that I don’t particularly like your Praxis. It’s so very limited. I mean, if you are seeing this now it is showing how pathetic your computer science is. Although I hear that you detest AIs, so perhaps you should destroy whatever is broadcasting this message right now as our little program is a simple AI by our standards. Of course, that will serve my purposes of destroying your culture pretty effectively as you dismantle your own telecommunications networks. So maybe you should keep listening.

Up until this point I was expecting Rong to never talk to the Praxis, as part of keeping herself as the "face" hidden. I'm somewhat surprised she isn't wearing a mask now, unless taking the mask off at the end is an aspect of the performance that wasn't mentioned earlier.

“The Praxis is weak. Your doctrine claims that you already know everything and have forbidden things that you disagree with. Well you know nothing, as evidenced by the fact that your Peer here is at my feet, taken off his ship by our boarding parties. The universe is so much vaster than you comprehend, and its pathetic your pretending at knowledge. You are limited, short sighted, and beneath us. We have other business to tend to, but when we return we will sweep you away, of that I can guarantee. Don’t you agree commodore?” Rong asked, causing Helsinki to lift his head.

"forbids" rather then "have forbidden" flows better with the "claims" earlier in that sentence. "it's pathetic your pretending" rather than "its pathetic"

“My soul to Chaos! All glory to the gods!” Helsinki cried out just before Rong’s daemon sword descended, separating his head from his shoulders. But even as his body slumped to the ground, pumping out spurts of blood as his heart tried to realize that he was dead, his soul remain visible, drawn into the daemon sword.

"remained" rather than "remain" And I do wonder what Helsinki has been through durring his stay, but I'm probably better off not knowing.

Grinning, Rong said, “As you can see, despite the lies you have been fed, there is an afterlife, and we control it. All those Shaa who committed suicide? Yeah, we’re waiting. I hope the few of you still alive remember that next time you think about ending your boredom. Because we’re exciting!”

Modern earth culture would atribute an image along these lines to some sort of special effects. Then again the Praxis may not have special effects as part of their entertainment as that would involve showing the imposible, and they seem to forbid even contemplating the impossible.

[Academia Nut]

Yeah, you caught a couple of typos there. The redundant robes should have read 'fans'.

As to the anti-proton laser, I have no clue what that is, but they use it in the books. There are a few interpretations for how that could actually make sense:

1) It's sort of like a bomb pumped laser in that the energy of the anti-protons annihilating is used to produce a very high frequency laser
2) It's part laser, part particle beam, with the laser possibly having some role in keeping the particle beam coherent

As to the message, Rong is still wearing a mask there. Chaos doesn't particularly care about coming back to this pissant little shithole of a universe, but they're not telling the others that. Rong is playing the role of some devil. Also, they expect refutations of their claims, of Praxis officials discounting such things, although the fictional parts of culture have been pretty thoroughly excised in the Praxis so their FX tech is probably lagging but they would know about it. However, the plan is for the virus to go dormant for a while then hijack all the broadcast equipment on a planet simultaneously, thus meaning that the only way to stop it is to take down a planet's entire telecommunications network, isolate all of the hardware, purge every infected system, and then quarantine the planet from outside communications to prevent reinfection until a physical messenger declares it safe. That could take months to organize and many more to implement, during which time the citizens are cut off from government propoganda denouncing the broadcasts. The Praxis rules through fear and strength. Show its citizens something scarier and stronger than the Praxis... yeah, going to be a disaster.

Plus, Terrans are known for being the most cultish species in the Praxis, and there are still illegal cultists practicing old religions amongst the Terrans. The fact that the enemy claim to be supernatural and are Terran will be terrifying to many as it would seem that humanity was right all along.

[Black Admiral]

There was silence for a long moment before Rong said, “We knew from interrogations that humans were incorporated into this foul Praxis, but that is just crass. Crew?”

Given the Chaos, even the neoChaos, aproach to things, she doesn't have much room to criticize on this point.

I'd say she does - it's one thing to perform such actions as bombarding a city, whether out of need or as terror tactics, it's quite another to at least make the appearance of revelling in it by granting a ship of war that name.

It would for instance be, hmm, less than tactful, shall we say, for a Royal Navy ship to bear the name Bombardment of Dresden, or Bombardment of Quebec.

[Aranfan]

Or how about an American ship named Nuking of Nagasaki or Firebombing of Tokyo, docking in Japanese Port?

[Firethorn]

It's actually worse, guys.

Imagine if we had eventually made Japan have a navy again. And named their ships stuff like that. The majority of the crews are Japanese, etc...

[Beowulf]

Yeah, you caught a couple of typos there. The redundant robes should have read 'fans'.

As to the anti-proton laser, I have no clue what that is, but they use it in the books. There are a few interpretations for how that could actually make sense:

1) It's sort of like a bomb pumped laser in that the energy of the anti-protons annihilating is used to produce a very high frequency laser
2) It's part laser, part particle beam, with the laser possibly having some role in keeping the particle beam coherent

My theory? It exploits wave-particle duality and treats the anti-protons as waves, allowing them to be emitted coherently, resulting in a beam that doesn't expand as much. Something like: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/phys ... laser.html

[Aranfan]

Yeah, you caught a couple of typos there. The redundant robes should have read 'fans'.

As to the anti-proton laser, I have no clue what that is, but they use it in the books. There are a few interpretations for how that could actually make sense:

1) It's sort of like a bomb pumped laser in that the energy of the anti-protons annihilating is used to produce a very high frequency laser
2) It's part laser, part particle beam, with the laser possibly having some role in keeping the particle beam coherent

My theory? It exploits wave-particle duality and treats the anti-protons as waves, allowing them to be emitted coherently, resulting in a beam that doesn't expand as much. Something like: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/phys ... laser.html

I have a friend who says that won't work. His name is Pauli.

[Academia Nut]

You know, I could almost see a universe with the technobabble to say that they've figured out a way to produce anti-helium-2, which would be bosons and thus could, if you squinted, work like what you said Beowulf, but the Praxis basically drew a line in the sand and said, "Nothing worth looking at beyond this point."

Also, to appreciate the level of dickishness of the names for the Bombardment class, imagine if you will the US Navy commissioning an SSBN called The Incineration of Hiroshima, crewing it with ethnic Japanese, and then mooring it in Tokyo Harbour to ensure appropriate behaviour from Japan. Chaos ship names are scary, but they tend to be of the "We'll fuck you up" kind rather than the "We're big men, we bombed your civilization from the top of the gravity well a few decades before you would have had the technology to rip us all new assholes, destroyed your cultures, enslaved the survivors, and we're going to remind you about it by making you crew ships named after the event" sort that the Praxis likes.

Huuuuuge dicks. The only reason they conquer is so that no other species will ever get ahead of them technologically, and they've kept their technology in stasis for two thousand years.

[Setesh]

Huuuuuge dicks. The only reason they conquer is so that no other species will ever get ahead of them technologically, and they've kept their technology in stasis for two thousand years.

Which is the basic weakness of the Praxis, the arrogance of the Shaa permeates the entire society to some level, they've never had to fight an enemy who could really hurt them. If they had come up against a creative enemy who had the capacity to think 'simple but effective' they would have been annihilated. Hell the bird-like lian-own(sp?) nearly did despite not being able to physically withstand the high-g maneuvers needed for space combat. But the lian-own tried to fight the Praxis the way the Praxis fought rather than thinking up a new solution. Hell in the books the rebellion practically wins just because they find a better power source than anti-matter. (Though its hard to tell, 90% of the last book is character build up of the two leads.)

That said, the virus is going to fuck the Praxis leaders so hard the Shaa will rise from the grave with cries of "MY ASS

[rodon]

That said, the virus is going to fuck the Praxis leaders so hard the Shaa will rise from the grave with cries of "MY ASS

What about that sole live Shaa, he/she is going to have a whole new view about committing suicide.

[Jaeger]

In a likely scenario for Praxis, 70-90% of the population will die in the ensuing civil conflict and holy wars, taking decades or maybe centuries to reestablish local planetary cohesion. It’s possible that some of the Praxis survivors will degrade into pre-industrial civilizations (like "Trigun"), which would allow pockets of scientific innovation to emerge.

Either way, the Praxis Empire will be divided into dozens of smaller territories that will inevitably war against each other, similar to post-Imperial Africa after World War One. It’ll take a millennia or two before any stable space-faring military infrastructure remerges, which will be held in check by arms races with neighboring factions.

However, as their society collapses, a few may want to capture the Shaa’s technology as a “lesser evil” to prevent the complete collapse of Praxis, which ironically would cause them to be seem as heretics by the very people they’re trying to save and spark a holy war.

Meanwhile, if the last Shaa doesn’t commit suicide, it’ll either try to rebuild the Praxis Empire or seek revenge against Chaos Undivided, assuming that he/she/it doesn't go insane, isn’t killed by rioters or those after forbidden technology, or forget what happened because of poor short-term memory.

[Firethorn]

Either way, the Praxis Empire will be divided into dozens of smaller territories that will inevitably war against each other, similar to post-Imperial Africa after World War One. It’ll take a millennia or two before any stable space-faring military infrastructure remerges, which will be held in check by arms races with neighboring factions.

And it's that very arms race that will doom the philosophy and rules of the Praxis. One side develops military AI? All the others will have to or be destroyed. Same deal with FTL anything, bioengineering, etc...

[Academia Nut]

Incoming plot!

Chapter Fifty-five: Homecoming

Rong-Arya sat on the edge of their seat, watching the emotionless display count down the time to re-emergence back into real-space. Once they had figured out that when transitioning between universes they tended to slide down the slight distortions in the spatial curvature picked up by their Warp engines in spaces without native Warp activity near intelligent beings, they figured out how to compensate and drop out in the middle of deep space far from any thinking minds.

They still accidentally ran into a fleet of sleeper ships travelling at low relativistic speeds the immediately after transitioning into real-space after the first jump out of that Praxis dominated universe, but by the same strange luck that affected Chaos, the fleet had been fairly spread out and only one ship had actually collided with anything, and that had been prow first with the Stiletto, so no serious damage had been done to the ship.

The other guys… not so much. The crew of the Stiletto had immediately attempted to apologize, but there was so much panic in the aftermath of a ship slamming into another at .5c and only one of them being destroyed that the rest of the foreign fleet had just sort of broken up and scattered, burning their primitive fusion torches as hard as their ships could handle to escape from the strange encounter.

They only stayed for about three days to recharge their drives before jumping out again, watching the ships starting a hard burn to try and regroup after scattering. It would probably take them a month or two to get back in order, and they had burned a lot of reaction mass so they would probably have to take things slower than they had intended. All attempts at contacting them after that had been given up in exasperation. They could easily catch up with the poor bastards, but they seemed terrified and unwilling to reciprocate to attempts at establishing communication protocols. Finally Rong-Arya just dropped off a high powered communication buoy with translation protocols with a sincere apology and some technical data on improved computing, fusion, laser and superconductor technology as a sign of showing that they were sorry. The target was pointed at their most likely destination, a yellow star know quite well to the crew of the Stiletto but that was quite unknown to the Colonials, and kept that way.

After they left, Fleetlord Atvar managed to get his conquest fleet back in order after the rather strange encounter that the few members of the Race awake to witness it had tried to explain. Eventually, once everything was back in order minus the loss of the ship carrying 80% of their explosive metal bombs, it was decided to carry on to Tosev 3. They would need to get there to refuel anyway, and that explosive metal bombs would be unnecessary for the conquest of the Tosevites there.

Ignoring the strange transmission from the location of the collision, they accepted that they would be approximately twenty cycles behind schedule and sent a report to Home in an attempt to explain to the Emperor that something had gone slightly wrong for no explainable reason but that the conquest was still underway.

Meanwhile, on a pale blue orb approximately five light years away, an alien signal was picked up as international tensions began to rise. The eruption of a war took away from much of the research going into figuring out what the repeating signal they kept picking up on their newly invented radios meant, but by the end of it, the two remaining power blocks had started to figure out many of the bits and pieces being sent to them, paranoia and mistrust urging them onward to figure out the secrets being sent to them before their foes could learn the same and gain an advantage. There was also the fear that the things that lurked beyond the stars would show up and have less than benevolent intentions so also turned their attentions outwards.

Thus as the conquest fleet entered the Tosev system they discovered that their braking burns had been noticed and they were being asked to identify themselves immediately.

Rong-Arya, despite being a humanist, would have winced at the long term impact of what happened. The collision had been an accident! The new philosophies of Chaos only called for intentional malevolence against those who deserved it. Trying to conquer Earth in another universe was not call for a crusade. In fact, in balance, it was the worst apology in the multiverse in that most apologies do not arm the enemies of the one being apologized to.

However, Rong-Arya did not know about this as that was still in the future from their perspective, and the more immediate future of actually returning home after a year long mission followed by weeks of slogging through the Doldrums with massive damage to their systems from their initial displacement held their more immediate attention.

The universe folded open, vomiting the Stiletto and her charges back into reality in an achingly familiar star system. Yellow main sequence star, eight planets, a bunch of dwarf planets along with plenty of stellar debris. And radio chatter. It was all coded and unless you had the proper equipment it sounded like background noise, but Lieutenant O’Hare grinned as he began to patch into all sorts of queries.

“Ma’am, Earth has contacted us and sends congratulations on getting home,” O’Hare replied with a grin. That was met with general cheering all throughout the bridge that quickly spread throughout the ship as the rumours and sounds of jubilation spread at the speed of sound.

“Send our thanks and apologizes for a tardy return. We got a little side-tracked,” Rong-Arya replied.

O’Hare nodded before he frowned and said quietly, “They are sending condolences ma’am, in that while they always expected us to return, we’re have ah… twelve years on the mission clock.”

Rong-Arya’s look soured as the cheering died down on the bridge, the guards smart enough to not let this latest batch of news escape into the general population of the ship.

“Fuck…” Rong-Arya noted quietly before they asked, “What are my debriefing protocols for the crew.”

“Well… they say that this level of temporal disjunction was unexpectedly long, but that theoretically the whole crew should have been prepared for a long deployment and everyone volunteered in spite of their family situations. They did also point out that everyone is going to be paid according to the clocks on Earth instead of the ones on the Stiletto, so… yeah,” O’Hare reported weakly, feeling the emotional kick to the gut himself.

Holding the bridge of their nose, Rong-Arya said, “I was expecting to have to only explain things to two out of the three parties involved in the Earth-Stiletto-Colonial interactions, not all three!”


Everyone aboard the Colonial fleet watched with interest as they approached the third planet in the system they had been brought to. The last three jumps had been in the middle of deep space, although there had been that weird collision that had lightly irradiated all the ships in the fleet from the spray of debris, but not enough to get through the radiation shielding already present.

The strange thing was that while the first two jumps had caused the stars to shift radically, the last two showed very little change in the relatively positions. The Stiletto had been quiet about the questions asked, simply replying that the final stages of manoeuvring were “tricky” so to expect little change.

But they seemed to have made good on their promise to bring them to Earth, if the orbital structures around the pale blue orb were any indication.

“Did you ever think things would end like this when we first set out?” Roslin asked while staring out of a view port to the slowly expanding orb that would be their new home.

“Frak no,” Adama replied gruffly. It was so strange to actually be here, on Earth, with the Cylon war left behind. Far behind. As best they could tell the Twelve Colonies were in a dwarf galaxy orbiting the other side of the one they were currently in. No one would ever find them out here.

“So what do we do now?” Roslin asked. They had a whole world to call home now, but they had never really questioned what they would do if they got there and it already had its own inhabitants. The tales had spoken of a Lost Tribe, but they had been so desperate just to find a safe haven that the step between ‘Find Earth’ and ‘Profit’ was filled with question marks.

“We adapt I guess. Hopefully they’ll just leave us and our culture alone,” Adama replied. “They also seem interested in our pilots and shipbuilding, so at least some of us won’t want for jobs.”

Roslin smiled slightly and said, “There’s always a place for old soldiers and builders, even if no one notices them fading away. It’s the politicians who get to go down in a blaze of glory or ignominy.”

“There is that,” Adama agreed, turning his attention back to the blue marble before them.


Rong-Arya strode down the halls of the palace, marvelling at how long it had been since they had last seen this place. The eldritch architecture, the academy students racing through the halls, the government officials going about their business… it was all so comforting and familiar, and yet different. The palace was ever changing, always in a state of flux as Warp energies caused it to shift or endless renovations took place to alter the gigantic complex bit by bit into something different from what it once was. Twelve years had done a lot to change it.

Entering the throne room, Rong-Arya found the thrones of the goddesses vacant, leaving only Tzintchi to lounge, his fingers bridged in front of his chest while his human face wore a blank, slightly amused expression. Rong-Arya considered the almost empty throne room before they asked, “Did we screw up that bad?”

“Nah, it’s just that there were a lot of mothers aboard the Stiletto who were expecting to only a miss a year of their children’s lives, not a decade, so the goddesses have gone to help encourage them. As for the courtiers, they’re better off elsewhere for the moment. Besides, if I wanted to punish you I would make it public,” Tzintchi said amicably before he waved a map of the known multiverse into existence.

“We learned a lot about ship building from the Stiletto, although the ship is now considered a bit big for its class and a bit under-armed for its size. We haven’t built many more ships, and most of them are actually Stiletto-class, but the design was always experimental anyway,” Tzintchi said as he descended from his throne.

“She’s being decommissioned,” Rong-Arya asked with a sinking feeling.

“No, but she is being refit. The Stiletto can’t handle line action, even if as a frigate she was never actually meant to. No, we have other plans for her. While expect a lot of the crew to not sign up for another tour, can’t blame them as it took you guys way longer to get back than expected,” a slight glimmer of what might have been considered guilt flickered over Tzintchi’s face, but with the god of schemes ‘face-value’ had almost no value, “there will be a large contingent that will sign back up, having nothing better to do. And you have some interesting experiences under your belt; in particular your navigators were the first to document the fact that when transitioning to other universes you have a tendency to insert near sentient life unless you are sure to avoid doing that. Very subtle, and we never would have noticed as our other scout ships have been trying to drop out near sentient beings.”

“You have a new mission for us,” Rong-Arya guessed.

“Yes. We do,” Tzintchi said, pointing to the centre of the psychic hologram of the multiverse. “We gods have a set of long term objectives that revolve around this universe.”

“The Central Hub. But that is controlled by some nasty, if enigmatic, entities right now. I’m sure we could take them with a bigger fleet…” Rong-Arya noted before trailing off at Tzintchi waggling a finger.

“We have one objective in that place, but the locals, if indifferent to what happens to it within their domain, will get right pissed if we try and snatch it from them,” Tzintchi said. “This is why we’ve manipulated our ‘cousins’ into heading there.” He then pointed to a dark stain next to their universe.

“The temporal mechanics are a bitch, but right now members of the Imperium and the Eldar are making their way to the Central Hub, and more Imperials will follow in their footsteps. Old school Chaos will surely follow shortly after,” Tzintchi explained, thin filaments of darkness branching off and heading for the point of light that represented the Central Hub.

“The Central Hub will become a battlefield,” Rong-Arya noted.

“It will. The fighting will give us sufficient cover to carry out our operation. Unfortunately, we don’t have the fleet weight to stop our relatives if they decide to send a major force. Thus we need a counterbalance, a force capable of fighting on equal or better footing with them in our stead. To this we have decided to establish a base here,” Tzintchi pointed to a point of light on the opposite side of the Central Hub, “for the purposes of carrying out operations here,” he then pointed out a location somewhat between their own universe and the new base, but closer to the Central Hub, if in a calmer branch of realities.

“The locals of the target universe have access to a wide variety of psychic abilities and high energy resources, making them uniquely suited to fighting factions such as the Imperium or Chaos. Operational goals are to lead them to the Central Hub without leading them to our base of operations or here. If we time it right we can crash them into our psychotic brethren right in time to snatch our objective in the ensuing mayhem,” Tzintchi explained.

“Clever sir, but I get the feeling this is above my pay grade,” Rong-Arya asked.

“It is a touch above your command authority commodore, but there are other factors at work here,” Tzintchi said with a grin.

Nodding, Rong-Arya said, “Of course. I don’t pretend to understand, but I perceive what you mean.”

“Specifically, the biggest reason for telling you this without having anyone else around is that you will be part of the spearhead. The Stiletto will become our primary snatch and grab ship. We can’t remove the pulsar lance, but a lot of the smaller guns will be stripped off and the cargo and landing bays will be expanded. With the technology recovered from the Colonials, especially their FTL, we can move into a system under cover of the Warp, deploy troops to specific missions, and then get out again quickly. I need you informed on the overall strategic necessities as we’re likely to get partially cut off by temporal distortions again. I need someone who doesn’t need their hand held by daddy who can work through adversity and get the job done,” Tzintchi explained.

Rong-Arya was quiet before they asked, “Did you predict our stranding on the far side of the Doldrums?”

“Perhaps,” Tzintchi answered slyly. “And if I didn’t and I am merely exploiting the outcome to its fullest, can you blame me?”

“I would call bullshit on the first part of your statement but be forced to agree with you on the second,” Rong-Arya replied.

Chuckling, Tzintchi said, “If it’s any consolation we managed to briefly make contact with Lars, your communication daemon. He survived and we think he found a Z-Hub. Rough triangulation from the little snippets we got suggests that you may have nearly landed in the opposite Z-Hub yourself when compared to your navigational data. If you had gone in the other direction you probably would have seen it. That makes the ride you took unexpectedly large.”

“Does it now?” Rong-Arya asked coldly.

Sighing, Tzintchi said, “Be angry if you want if you feel I have played with you, but I believed you and your crew strong enough to survive if I engineered the conditions for you to end up deep in the Doldrums. There is much outside my understanding, and much of what I understand is outside your understanding. And you know how your understanding exceeds the majority of your crew. But if you wish it in terms you can tell them, should the topic ever come up; then think of it this way. I am trying to protect us from the C’tan and all of the other horrors lurking out in the wider multiverse we have discovered. I need more information, and I need experienced crews. Your stranding got me both, and more. I might fuck you over to do it, but I’ll at least give you a reach around while doing it. I’m a dick, but at least I’m your dick.”

Frowning, knowing that they were being played by this simple form and words but unable to deny their god, Rong-Arya just shook their head and said, “We know… what now?”

“Once the refit is complete and we have rebuilt your crew you’ll deploy to a quiet universe via the Alpha Hub, and then skip off the Central Hub to your base of operations. It’s a quiet place, the local humans recently blew themselves up along with some aliens and left behind some interesting technology, so we can salvage stuff while there and if we get tracked back no one but us gets hurt. You will then use the Central Hub to hit the objective universe and draw them back to the Central Hub while keeping your own operational universe hidden from all factions. We will be sending scouts to the objective universe over the year or two it will take us to make the Stiletto ready for action, but you may begin operational planning with any approved members of the military and the preliminary scouting data,” Tzintchi explained.

“I will begin as soon as my crew is properly disembarked and debriefed. Also… as the one who brought them here…” Rong-Arya asked.

“The Colonials will get a quiet patch of Western Australia to settle and establish an autonomous enclave. Not the most hospitable of places, but there is literally no one there right now, and we’ll remain in contact while they get on their feet. Their jump drive, if useless for strategic and logistical movement in comparison to Warp travel, would have been worth the destruction of the Stiletto to acquire for tactical purposes. I see no need to force our culture upon the Colonials or maltreat them,” Tzintchi said somewhat dismissively.

“Of course my lord. Thank you,” Rong-Arya said enthusiastically.

“No, thank you. You have served all the gods exceedingly well in the performance of your duty, and you two are to be commended. Now, dismissed,” Tzintchi said while turning back to the display of the multiverse.

Rong-Arya nodded and exited the throne room while Tzintchi grinned like a maniac. This was better than his best possible plans.


The girl wore red clothing of a style that had been out of fashion for centuries and sat quietly in the seat. I could detect hints of motion, but little else. My entire mind felt fuzzy and slow, and it took me several seconds to even notice her.

“Are you awake now?” She asked calmly and patiently while I tried to get my vision to clear properly.

“Vaguely…” I replied in an uncertain voice.

“That’s good. When we found you we didn’t know if you had survived. My friends left me here to make sure you wouldn’t panic while we moved you to a safer place,” the girl, petite young woman really now that I considered her more thoroughly, explained.

“Where are we going?” I asked uncertainly.

“Earth,” she quipped.

“Earth… I know that name. Wasn’t it…?” I asked uncertainly.

“It’s a bit hard to explain to you in your condition, but the Earth where we’re going is in good condition and we hope to patch you back together so you can help us out a bit with a few things,” she said.

“Ah… what’s your name?” I asked, still groggy.

“Vita. Can you remember enough to tell me yours?” She asked.

There was a long silence as I tried to get the memories to flow, and a few circuits opened up as repair routines undid some of the enormous, nearly permanently fatal damage to my personality core, but the hardware patches installed by these unknown yet helpful strangers were already bringing long dormant sections back to life.

“I am XXXIII/L-1823-SCP, ‘Scipio’,” I reply.

“Welcome back to Earth, Scipio,” Vita said brightly.

[EarthScorpion]

Hmm... interesting.

Point the First: The Race always deserves what's coming to them. I'm surprised to find that their universe is such a high energy one, to be that close to Chaosevaverse, however.

Point the Second: So... the universe they want to open up a new force, as a pawn against OldChaos, with is Star Wars, isn't it. Similar energy levels with regards to battle-type power and commonish psychic powers in the form of the Force. That's the only one I can think of that matches that description, and the Warsverse was going to show up at some point.

Point the Third: Ahem. ZOMG BOLO W007!1!!1 End mutilation of the language.

[Academia Nut]

There were two more jumps after the Race, its just that they didn't go anywhere where anything was happening because they figured out why they kept landing in places with sentient life while jumping to quiet despite the fact that space is fucking huge and the statistical probability of that happening once is miniscule without some sort of factor increasing it.

And yes, newChaos is going to launch operations to draw Star Wars to Buffyverse at the same time that canon40k starts showing up in large numbers to turn the whole place into a clusterfuck so they can steal something without anyone noticing.

[Darth Yoshi]

The Powers-That-Suck are in such. Deep. Shit. This is gonna be awesome.

What's newChaos after? The Key?

[Jim Starluck]

*chuckles* Chaotic even when they aren't trying to be...

So the question now... just what point in the Star Wars timeline will nChaos be interacting with? If they're doing so because of a high number of psychics that implies Jedi, so it will have to be either Prequel Trilogy era or around NJO era (either before or after the Vong War would probably work).

But knowing their luck, they're liable to pop up right smack dab in the middle of the Galactic Civil War. Battle of Hoth, perhaps?

And if their snatch-and-grab target is ultimately the Key... if they arrive after it has become Dawn they're going to have to deal with Buffy & the Scoobies, who one of their agents has directly fucked over to further their own ends.



It seems to be becoming a running theme that their core aspect--Chaos--comes back to bite them in the ass as often as it helps them out.

[WillowBee]

Probably. If we're lucky, we'll get 2-3 Buffy chapters before the big guns like LemonCrush and his wolves show up.

Who or what is Scipio?

Depending on how Warp-based energy affects the Force, the Star Wars verse might see their own verse of the Traitor Legions, as a clever Psyker might be able to mentally manipulate and corrupt Force-sensitive individuals from a long-range, similar to how the Stiletto hacked into the Borg collective consciousness. Set up a base on Tatooine near the Lars range or Mos Elspy, and send subliminal messages to poor Luke Skywalker until he's a brainwashed puppet.


For scouts in the Star Wars verse, watch out for the Yuuzhan Vong who grow bio-tech and view machinery as an abomination. In canon, their invasion forces were weakened by the pollen of the Ithorian bafforr tree, so be sure to collect samples of local fauna and flora, as you never know what properties will prove useful later on. Try to capture a few Yuuzhan Vong scientists alive, as their knowledge would greatly compliment the Angelic technology of Chaos Undivided

[MichaelAwesome]

In order for Tzintchi’s plan to work, people of the Star Wars galaxy need the ability to traverse dimensions in order to get to the Central Hub. Any bleeding-edge technology needs a decade or two of R&D before mass production can start, so a good timeline entry point would be near the fall of the Old Republic so that the technology will be at the prototype phase by the time Luke and Leia are in their late teens.

However, Kyon found out that the new Chaos gods can quickly generate vast fortunes of wealth thanks to precognition and corporate espionage via telepathy. By infiltrating the right businesses, Chaos Undivided could subtly introduce new technologies and reinvest most of their resources into R&D, or they could purposely lapse on their patent protections so the company’s data becomes public domain. Keep in mind that Holy Terra went from STL to trans-dimensional within 30 years after the Third Impact, so getting a FTL galactic society "mobilized" shouldn’t take too long.

[Skyfox120]

Scipio is obviously a Bolo

[Enigma]

Scipio is obviously a Bolo

It wasn't until the last line that I realized it was a Bolo.

Academia Nut: Read a Bolo novel to get a feel for how a Bolo acts and thinks.

[Academia Nut]

The Bolo was intentionally written in a way and using language that is not typical of a Bolo. It wasn't meant to sound like a Bolo there. You'll note that it isn't until the third paragraph that it started to take on the diction more indicative of the AI tanks we all know and love to watch blow others up.

[Jim Starluck]

Yeah, it sounds like it was sorta "brain-damaged," which it would have to be. The sense of honor and chivalry that is a core component of most Bolos would make it... tricky... to get one to work with nChaos.