A story I've been working on.
May. 1st, 2008 12:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasSo, nearly two years ago, I came up with an idea for a world in which to set a roleplaying game. I got a group together, eventually, to try to play it, but it never got off the ground, mainly due to everyone's crazy schedules. We got character generation, but we never had enough people there to actually start the PLOT, and the thing ended before it began.
Nonetheless, the universe I created just won't leave me alone. I really rather like it. I just didn't have any characters in it, or any stories in it I particularly wanted to tell.
So I stole the characters that the players created, and am working on stealing plotlines from Westerns or other pulp novels, and I've gotten about a page written.
For the record: the main protagonist was created by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lagaz; the other character that has a significant speaking role is fibro_witch's. The other two characters are an NPC I created, and a character made by temima, although I'm probably going to significantly rewrite that one. I may or may not use a character created by vonbeck, and I'm probably not going to use the characters created by teddywolf and felis_sidus. Of course, the characters I'm writing are only BASED on the characters those folks were going to play -- I'm creating personalities for them that may have nothing to do with how they envisioned them.
So, yeah.
A bullet pinged off the rock Lieutenant Shanti O'Hanahan was crouching behind. Her service pistol was going to be no use at this distance – this was rifle range, and the hillsman knew just where she was. She grimaced. She had no intention of letting this, her first mission as commander, be her last – but it certainly looked like the man who had her pinned had different ideas. It had certainly been an eventful few days, she thought wryly, for all that it had started off normally enough . .
* * *
As soon as O'Hanahan could fight through the wooziness of dropping into realspace enough for her eyes to focus, she quickly scanned the area visible through the observation bubble, just as protocol, and common sense, demanded. It would be a piece of intense bad luck to drop out in front of, say, a group of pirates, but such things had happened before. Fortunately, the sky was clear in all directions, save for a nearby planet, and its star off in the distance. All in all, that was an encouraging sign.
Across the bridge, Sergeant Davis was groggily working the yoke through its paces, feeling for any damage to the controls. Dr Wakefield was still hunched over in a little ball of nauseous misery. It was to be hoped that she'd learn to get used to the transition over time – otherwise, this was going to be a very unpleasant deployment for her.
O'Hanahan heard, through the hull, the creaking as Sergeant Qiu levered the heavy cogwheels out of the dynamo that charged the capacitors which had just kicked them out of foldspace, and the reassuring clunk as they dropped in place to run the realspace drive. The engine-order telegraph lever pinged to “Ready,” as Qiu's voice came through the speaking tube. “Skipper: thrusters are now engaged, and ready for your orders.” In the lighting tracks, the moss appeared to fight off the vegetative version of transit-sickness, and they flickered into luminescence.
“Helm appears responsive, Skipper,” Davis reported, sounding all-but normal by now. O'Hanahan decided that Wakefield had been coddled enough. “Navigation, report, please.”
Wakefield groaned, but snapped the filters in place and looked through her scope. “Spectral signature of the nearby star matches the one on file for S-1523, locally known as 'Kingfield'. The continents appear to match up to the map we have for 'Theama'.” She checked the theodolite and worked her slide rule. “We've dropped out of foldspace within ten thousand klicks of our target. What do you think, Lieutenant? Not bad navigation for a first time out, eh?”
Not bad? That was AMAZING – anything within a million klicks was considered “on target” for a trip of this length -- but O'Hanahan had already learned that, if you let Wakefield get cocky, you'd get no work out of her for the rest of the day. She was most productive if you kept her in a state of constant low-grade annoyance.
So Shanti shrugged. “Continue with your report, Constable.”
Wakefield sighed, but began. “Kingfield is a standard G-class star pretty much just like all the other ones humans colonize. And Theama is a pretty standard Terran-type world, just like all the other ones, with gravity reasonably close to 1 G, and a day length of between twenty and thirty hours. When it was discovered, it already had liquid water, and an oxygen-rich atmosphere at human-friendly pressure. Surveys discovered a well-developed vegetative ecology, but no life with intelligence above 'instinctive', so the world was cleared for colonization. However, large areas of the world were set aside as nature preserves, just in case the initial survey missed something. This turned out to be a good idea, as it was discovered that the local plant life was rich in complex chemical compounds, some of which have proven to be pharmacologically valuable. And you know all of this, because we talked about it for weeks when we were in foldspace on the way here.”
O'Hanahan nodded. Wakefield was almost at her optimum level of annoyance. “A brief refresher before landing is nonetheless useful.”
“Bloody sock. Fine. The human population is almost entirely within a twenty miles of the western coastline of a small continent in the temperate zone of the magnetic south pole, in settlements of various sizes, ranging from individual homesteads to small towns, totaling perhaps five or ten thousand people -- no hard data exist, because nobody cares enough to find out. The largest settlement, and unofficial capital of the planet is called New Andersonville, with a population of under a thousand. A few explorers and researchers for pharmaceutical companies work in the jungles on that continent, and come back to what passes for civilization to re-supply. Our mission, as always, is to land, deliver the mail and news, and to see if there's anything else that they need from the Terran Federation. In addition, since the Federation has classified much of the land as nature preserve, we have to check to make sure that that is being respected. Which means that, if we divide up the work equally, each of us is responsible for something like twelve hundred people and a hundred million square kilometers of planetary surface.”
Shanti nodded. “Sounds about standard. Calculate an insertion orbit and bring us down.”
Nonetheless, the universe I created just won't leave me alone. I really rather like it. I just didn't have any characters in it, or any stories in it I particularly wanted to tell.
So I stole the characters that the players created, and am working on stealing plotlines from Westerns or other pulp novels, and I've gotten about a page written.
For the record: the main protagonist was created by
lagaz; the other character that has a significant speaking role is fibro_witch's. The other two characters are an NPC I created, and a character made by temima, although I'm probably going to significantly rewrite that one. I may or may not use a character created by vonbeck, and I'm probably not going to use the characters created by teddywolf and felis_sidus. Of course, the characters I'm writing are only BASED on the characters those folks were going to play -- I'm creating personalities for them that may have nothing to do with how they envisioned them.So, yeah.
A bullet pinged off the rock Lieutenant Shanti O'Hanahan was crouching behind. Her service pistol was going to be no use at this distance – this was rifle range, and the hillsman knew just where she was. She grimaced. She had no intention of letting this, her first mission as commander, be her last – but it certainly looked like the man who had her pinned had different ideas. It had certainly been an eventful few days, she thought wryly, for all that it had started off normally enough . .
* * *
As soon as O'Hanahan could fight through the wooziness of dropping into realspace enough for her eyes to focus, she quickly scanned the area visible through the observation bubble, just as protocol, and common sense, demanded. It would be a piece of intense bad luck to drop out in front of, say, a group of pirates, but such things had happened before. Fortunately, the sky was clear in all directions, save for a nearby planet, and its star off in the distance. All in all, that was an encouraging sign.
Across the bridge, Sergeant Davis was groggily working the yoke through its paces, feeling for any damage to the controls. Dr Wakefield was still hunched over in a little ball of nauseous misery. It was to be hoped that she'd learn to get used to the transition over time – otherwise, this was going to be a very unpleasant deployment for her.
O'Hanahan heard, through the hull, the creaking as Sergeant Qiu levered the heavy cogwheels out of the dynamo that charged the capacitors which had just kicked them out of foldspace, and the reassuring clunk as they dropped in place to run the realspace drive. The engine-order telegraph lever pinged to “Ready,” as Qiu's voice came through the speaking tube. “Skipper: thrusters are now engaged, and ready for your orders.” In the lighting tracks, the moss appeared to fight off the vegetative version of transit-sickness, and they flickered into luminescence.
“Helm appears responsive, Skipper,” Davis reported, sounding all-but normal by now. O'Hanahan decided that Wakefield had been coddled enough. “Navigation, report, please.”
Wakefield groaned, but snapped the filters in place and looked through her scope. “Spectral signature of the nearby star matches the one on file for S-1523, locally known as 'Kingfield'. The continents appear to match up to the map we have for 'Theama'.” She checked the theodolite and worked her slide rule. “We've dropped out of foldspace within ten thousand klicks of our target. What do you think, Lieutenant? Not bad navigation for a first time out, eh?”
Not bad? That was AMAZING – anything within a million klicks was considered “on target” for a trip of this length -- but O'Hanahan had already learned that, if you let Wakefield get cocky, you'd get no work out of her for the rest of the day. She was most productive if you kept her in a state of constant low-grade annoyance.
So Shanti shrugged. “Continue with your report, Constable.”
Wakefield sighed, but began. “Kingfield is a standard G-class star pretty much just like all the other ones humans colonize. And Theama is a pretty standard Terran-type world, just like all the other ones, with gravity reasonably close to 1 G, and a day length of between twenty and thirty hours. When it was discovered, it already had liquid water, and an oxygen-rich atmosphere at human-friendly pressure. Surveys discovered a well-developed vegetative ecology, but no life with intelligence above 'instinctive', so the world was cleared for colonization. However, large areas of the world were set aside as nature preserves, just in case the initial survey missed something. This turned out to be a good idea, as it was discovered that the local plant life was rich in complex chemical compounds, some of which have proven to be pharmacologically valuable. And you know all of this, because we talked about it for weeks when we were in foldspace on the way here.”
O'Hanahan nodded. Wakefield was almost at her optimum level of annoyance. “A brief refresher before landing is nonetheless useful.”
“Bloody sock. Fine. The human population is almost entirely within a twenty miles of the western coastline of a small continent in the temperate zone of the magnetic south pole, in settlements of various sizes, ranging from individual homesteads to small towns, totaling perhaps five or ten thousand people -- no hard data exist, because nobody cares enough to find out. The largest settlement, and unofficial capital of the planet is called New Andersonville, with a population of under a thousand. A few explorers and researchers for pharmaceutical companies work in the jungles on that continent, and come back to what passes for civilization to re-supply. Our mission, as always, is to land, deliver the mail and news, and to see if there's anything else that they need from the Terran Federation. In addition, since the Federation has classified much of the land as nature preserve, we have to check to make sure that that is being respected. Which means that, if we divide up the work equally, each of us is responsible for something like twelve hundred people and a hundred million square kilometers of planetary surface.”
Shanti nodded. “Sounds about standard. Calculate an insertion orbit and bring us down.”