Zeta 2 game starting!

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Grazic, the flavor is nice, but the reading is difficult. perhaps only the first few sentences could be EEEized?

[Baron Grazic]

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:
Grazic, the flavor is nice, but the reading is difficult. perhaps only the first few sentences could be EEEized?

Sorry, I didn't even think of that. I've been roll-playing the EEEvil EEEmpire in a couple of games now, that I actually don't even notice anymore.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Originally posted by Baron Grazic:

quote:

---

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:
Grazic, the flavor is nice, but the reading is difficult. perhaps only the first few sentences could be EEEized?

Sorry, I didn't even think of that. I've been roll-playing the EEEvil EEEmpire in a couple of games now, that I actually don't even notice anymore.

---

The EEE are taking over Grazic's brain!

Are the EEE the new borg?

News at 11!

Newsflash: Borg sueing EEE over copyright infringement!

Newsflash: EEE countersue borg for defamation of character!

[ March 12, 2004, 23:04: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

[AMF]

This is the first Zeta Quadrant game. It is my intention that the Zeta Quadrant game be part of an epic storyline (whether I succeed in this or not, of course, depends on whether people have fun playing the games!)

The background to this storyline will become more and more apparent as the game goes on. While the background won?t matter for game play per se, it is my intention that the ?shape? and ?feel? and special effects of each successive Zeta Quadrant game be partly affected by the actions of the players in the previous game.

With that in mind, I?ll post various tidbits on the background of the Zeta Quadrant universe as I get them down on paper. And, although the larger story and metaphysics of the Zeta Quadrant game are known (at least to me) and have shaped this - the first Zeta Quadrant game - the future of the storyline is not fixed, and is to a certain extent determined by the players.

Having said that, below is the first of a two-part background document. Sometime in the next week I hope to get the second part of it on paper and I?ll post it then. (if there isn?t enough interest, I?ll just shut up and play?)

-------------------------------------

Summary of the Proceedings on the Ancients and their Machine Guardians, circa 2350. (from before the Exodus to the Zeta Quadrant)

In the year 2350, the Galactic Geospatial Society, a foundation for the study of ancient cultures and galactic phenomenon, held a ten week conference to summarize and present the accumulated knowledge of the species of the galaxy regarding the Ancients and their Machine Guardians. Below are some of the more notable excerpts from those meetings.

Over the past two hundred years, the various species of the galaxy have observed, discovered and dealt with a wide variety of Ancient phenomenon as well as the Machine Guardians that are ever-present at said sites. There are some constants in these observations and discoveries that might be relevant as many of the Galactic species now attempt to overcome the threat of Galactic Sterilisation facing them.

This discussion is organized into the following parts:

I. Definitions & General Discussion: what is an Ancient site? What are the Ancients? What are the Machine Guardians? Etc.
II. Some of the more notable Ancient sites, their characteristics, and their impact on some of the species of the Galaxy (this part to follow)

Part One: Definitions & General Discussion

First, we must define the terms we are discussing here. Over the past hundreds of years, a consensus has largely been reached by the Cooperative races on definitions of Ancient sites and related issues. It must be notes at the outset that this is a consensus more on what we do not know rather than what we do know. The study of the Ancients is the study, largely, of unknowns and hypotheses, not hard facts.

So, what are ?Ancient Sites?? First and foremost, they are not ancient artifacts or ruins. The galaxy is old, and before we came along there were clearly a wide variety of other star faring races. These prior races left behind remnants of their technology and civilizations, and these sites have yielded up much archaeological and technological knowledge over the millennia. Such sites are typically ancient cities, underground ruins, derelict star craft, and other similar manufactured items. And, they are from at least, by Last count, over a hundred different long-dead races.

Ancient Sites, per se, are instead something very different. First and foremost they have never been mechanical or decrepit in nature. There have never been found ?Ancient? cities, star craft, or the like. Sites of the ?Ancients? are, instead of a qualitatively different nature. They are sites at which the very stuff of the universe appears to have been ?molded? or changed in some way on a scale unimaginable. For example, the Stellar Clouds of Hyperion, the Rifts, the Abyss, The Ten Sisters, and the Last Man are all undeniable examples of Ancient Sites. The most well known hypothesized Ancient site is, of course, the Great Sign. We do not yet have proof that the Great Sign is an Ancient Site, due to the fact that it is, of course, unreachable with our star craft. However, the data from observations and readings of the Great Sign correlate with other Ancient sites and display the same unique energy signatures. And, while of great topical interest, we have not yet proven to ourselves that the Sphereworld that we believe lies in the Zeta Quadrant is an Ancient Site. We will discuss these in greater detail below.

In each of these cases, what sets them apart from other stellar phenomenon is that they are stellar manipulation on a vast scale. The Clouds of Hyperion, for example, stretch across tens of parsecs and in a manner that is clearly not natural. The Great Sign is the most stunning example. We won?t get into the religious debates that surround the Sign, but suffice it to say that the power and ability required to actually mold and shape multiple galaxies together, so that the Sign is observable across the entire measured universe, is beyond our fathoming.

There are a few other characteristics of Ancient Sites that bear mentioning here.

All Ancient sites have the same unique energy readings. And no known measurement device has been able to effectively tell us what matter or energy yields up those readings. For example, the first human contact with Ancient Sites occurred (luckily for the human race) at a rather minor site at what is known as the Painting of the Gods. In this case, observations from many light years away showed what we are all familiar with: an extremely beautiful and enthralling, almost hypnotic, arrangement of stars and planets in ways that astrophysics could not explain. Gravity dictated that such an arrangement could not exist; yet it appeared to be stable. When human vessels came close their scanners detected a source of energy in the center of the planets and stars that they could not identify with any available means (spectroscopy or otherwise). To date, even after numerous Ancient Sites have been explored, this energy source has remained both constant and totally unexplained.

And, of course, Ancient Sites are characterized by one other constant: the spontaneous presence of ?machine entities.? In contrast to the Ancient Sites themselves, the Machine entities have very different characteristics and are, largely, much less mysterious. At the same time they are quite deadly.

The Machine Entities are unexplained in at least one aspect however: we still, after countless investigations and efforts by multiple civilizations to understand the Machines so as to survive their onslaughts, we still do not know how they appear spontaneously at Ancient Sites.

The general pattern is this: a vessel will arrive at an Ancient Site. If by accident, then they are probably doomed. If they arrived intentionally, then they will be prepared for combat, as most races have learned by now to send well armed task forces when exploring Ancient Sites. Soon after the arrival of the vessels into the vicinity of the Ancient Site, machine entities will coalesce around whatever matter is present and take the form of the race that discovered the Ancient Site. The Machine entities will then begin a process of rapidly evolving taking as a starting point the technological and knowledge base of the race that they are patterned after.

One of the most puzzling and intriguing aspects of all this become known when the Aether government recently de-classified the report of one of its exploration vessels and made the results open to public study. In brief, the story is this: an Aether task force approached the Ancient Site known as The Lords of the Stars. One ship, due to the failure of it propulsion systems, had to make an emergency planet fall on of the planets surrounding the phenomenon. As it?s crew secured the vessels perimeter, some of them noticed a strange coalescing of dust in the air. Acting quickly, the Aether ship tractored and then put into stasis the dust motes that had already begun to form into the shape of a standard Aether male. The ship successfully escaped the area with the proto-machine entity in an isolated stasis box. After years of study in an undisclosed location (during which every scan known to the Cooperative races was employed) the Aether Lords scientists came to the unmistakable conclusion that all they had was dust. Standard, unimpressive, silicate dust. This point bears repeating: the dust that was coalescing into a machine entity was nothing more than that: dust. This means that either something external was making the dust coalesce into some form of machine entity which would somehow become a single minded guardian of the Ancient site OR our sensors have no way of understanding how the dust was different. Current thinking leans toward the latter explanation, but it remains unsolved to this day.

There are four more important aspects of the machine entities that deserve mentioning: First, as mentioned above, there has never been an Ancient Site that has not had Machine Entities guarding it. Second, the machine entities ?play by the same rules? ? they emerge after the discovery of the Ancient Site, they begin their existence at a roughly equivalent technological level as those that discovered them, and they evolve from that point. Third, the Machine Entities are geospatially limited ? they do not travel beyond a certain, unknown, distance from the Ancient Site. This appears to be due to some inherent characteristic of theirs. Such a conclusion is based on the logs of the Kor Task Force 62 five years ago in which they came under attack by a Machine Entity craft, and successfully disabled its maneuver thrusters as they were fleeing it. The Machine Entity craft, unable to turn around, did something very peculiar as it drifted farther and farther from the Ancient Site: it slowly dissolved from metal components into dust until it was just another part of the stellar gasses. The vessel, which had been a mass of particle beams, missile launchers, and machine drones, became, literally, nothing more than stellar gas. Lastly, the Machine Guardians stand in stark contrast to the Ancient Sites in one other way: while it is hard to classify the Ancient sites along any pattern or predictability, the Machine entities are the opposite: they are orderly, regimented, and patterned despite. Their vessels are usually composed of interlocking geometric shapes, their battle formations are highly ordered, and their cities and planets are molded and crafted by them in highly organized ways. They do evolved and grow, but they do so in almost predictable ways.

All of these characteristics of the Machine Guardians have meant that, by and large, most races in the galaxy have long ago stopped exploring Ancient sites since it is known that the Machine Entities will be there to fight them off.

So, what is NOT characteristic of Ancient Sites? Age for one thing. In those cases where the stellar age of Ancient Sites have been measured, there is no pattern nor is there any definable age. Some ancient sites appear to be, literally, as old as the universe itself. Some are only a few hundred thousand years old. Elementary level Astrophysics tells us that the Great Sign must be as old as the Big Bang that created the Universe itself. Yet, the Deep Space array spectroscopy scans indicate it is much younger. We cannot explain this. Most believe such anomalies are related somehow to the mysterious and un-measurable energy source present in all Ancient Sites.

And we feel obliged to mention another aspect of Ancient sites around which consensus is admittedly lacking: their ?usefulness.? There has NEVER been a major technological discovery based on Ancient Sites. In the early days of space travel for most races, one of the primary goals was to investigate a ?nearby? Ancient site. For some species, the hope was that they could plumb the secrets of a long gone race of god-like beings that could manipulate the very stars to do their bidding. It is almost universally agreed that while Ancient sites display amazing powers of stellar manipulation on a grand scale, and are incredibly beautiful and enthralling, they have yet to yield up any secrets to those who plumb their depths.


End part One of the Summary of the Proceedings on the Ancients and their Machine Guardians, circa 2350.

[Sabin]

Grand Master Sabin stood in his bedroom, thinking as "Live from the Yggdrasil" played in the background. He and his staff have recently come to a decision about attempting to make more deals with the Zeta Knights Society, or known as the ZKS in short. Hopefully the ZKS would not be offended by the shorthand term.

The deals, more specifically, had to do with conducting a trade operation based on that the ZKS would send ships loaded with technology to the Space Empire, in exchange for resources. There were also two other agendas, one of which concerned about allowing the proto-type Escort E-Type free passage through ZKS space. The other proposition was an extreamely dangerous topic: Forming a protectorate treaty with the ZKS, as the protected party. T

here were advantages, no doubt, but it may send the wrong message to the ZKS. More specifically, that the Space Empire is so weak, that it can be conquered easily by the ZKS. Which seemed to be true. The Space Empire wished to form such a protectorate, so that it may be under the protection of the ZKS if any hostile races were found, and to cement the relationship of the two empires, possibly making the passage of the technology proposal undeniable.

The discussion of the protectorate treaty was placed on hold for now, however. The Grand Master felt that the measure can be delayed so that the situation can be more clear.

A message about the first two proposals have been already sent. The following is the message:

"The Space Empire wishes to know if the Zeta Knights Society is willing to give ships to the Space Empire in exchange for the following goods: Minerals, Organics, and Gases. If the ZKS is interested, please make a price for the ships. What is desired in the ship composition is primarily examples of technology, that the Space Empire can examine freely."

"Also, permission is requested that a new vessel that the Space Empire recently commisioned, the Escort E-Type, is being constructed. This vessel is unarmed, and is meant for exploring the universe. However, it may need to move through ZKS territorys. The Space Empire is willing to give information about other systems. The Space Empire thanks the ZKS for lending a ear to the proposal."

[Intimidator]

Stardate 2401.1

........ke up, Mother wake up quick.
Were the first words she heard, still overcome with sleep she tried to open her eyes.
She came up right and pressed the small grey button on the comlink. What's the problem Yeeliaa, she asked.

You better come to command at once Mother, we have contact !!!!!!

[Baron Grazic]

### Announcement to the Population of the EEEvil EEEmpire Home World... ###

thEEE EEEmperor Grazic...
wishEEEs to announcEEE a holiday...
to all EEEvil beings...

Last month an EEEvil "big ship" dEEEcted anothEEEr ship...
this month the "big ship" dEEEstroyed it...

dEEEath... dEEEstruction... and EEEradication...
arEEE ours...

thEEE EEEmperor Grazic also wishEEEs to announcEEE that thEEE timEEE of holiday is now ovEEEr...
so gEEEt back to work!!!

[Sabin]

Due to unforseen circumstances, I am forced to be removed from the game. Apologies to all players about this. This can't be altered, since computer use would be unavailable for at least one week.

[AMF]

Sabin,

I can put the game on hold for a week if that's all it is. In fact, I just got asked by another player to put it to ALPU for a week since they are having computer access issues also. Why don't you stay - others might complain, but, well, everyone should get at least one pass, no? And if it is for just a week, that won't kill anyone, eh?

thanks,

alarik

Originally posted by Sabin:
Due to unforseen circumstances, I am forced to be removed from the game. Apologies to all players about this. This can't be altered, since computer use would be unavailable for at least one week.

[Renegade 13]

I don't mind going on hold for a week.