Intergalactic Summit

Truly fascinating stuff.

Awesome stuff Lady Noh. I appreciate you sharing this with us.


Having spent a good amount of time among noble women who were 150+, I'd say hers is a rather mild fascination.

[AMARR PRIME.

Mid-morning sun blasts a rectangle of broken masonry the size of a large sporting field. Although walled along the western edge, all other sides of the space have been reduced to occasional buttresses. Well-manicured ivy covers those soaring edifices up, up, up to raven nests. A restored gothic arch sheltering a stately wooden door takes up the central third of the eastern edge. The interior of the rectangle sprouts many now-incomplete columns, though a few rise to their full height and some even support the four corners of a surviving vault.

A procession of muscular men in fashionable robes emerges from an arch in the western wall. They carry enormous, closed black-lacquered palanquins to the center of the open rectangle, set down the palanquins, and open them. Each contains several pieces of ornate, heavy wooden furniture. These are arranged with tasteful attention to the ebb and flow of spiritual energy through the pillars.

The CRONE emerges from the arch, flanked by AMATERASU - an unusually large slaver hound, brilliant white with a black wing-like pattern spreading from her nose down her forelegs. CYLINDRICAL KAMEIRA follows closely behind. PRANCE and PREEN burst from the archway in short order, and begin chasing one another and camera drones between the columns.

Overhead, ravens squawk at the lycanthropes.

The CRONE settles on a comfy throne. An underwear model presents a goblet of cinnamon bourbon on a silver tray.]

The contest of narcotic supremacy between Brutor and Nefantar played out on the oceans of Matar. Each of the three maritime civilizations expressed their love for the sea in remarkably different ways.

Let's begin with the naval superpower. Starting at big and moving to biggest, the Neferese saw shipbuilding and commerce as applications of science, to be mastered through study. They did not ask the wood what kind of ship to make, as the Sebiestor did, but dictated the terms. Never wanting for lumber, fielding both their own craftsmen and Sebiestor who traded igloos for brick townhouses in Thames-el-Nefar, the Neferese built maritime castles.

Hulls were massive and strong; rigging intricate, yet efficient; quarters were comfortable and holds expansive. Beyond construction, the Neferese mastered commerce. They matched meticulous nautical maps with astronomical charts and developed cargo loading plans. Few things sank a vessel faster than poorly balanced weight. The Neferese segmented their holds and developed standardized containers to further guard against internal shifting on the waves.

Captains became fabulously wealthy and integrated vertically into giant trading houses. In this, the structure of the Nefantar State resembled That Other State. The Neferese Crown leveraged the constant Krusual threat to good effect, charging a tax in ships for protection of shipyards and ports. Eventually, seven dominant houses emerged; those traded the crown one generation to the next.

Of course, not all of the Neferese prospered.

When a captain had particularly poor luck, the temptation occasionally emerged to make that up by finding someone else's cargo. The first pirates the Neferese faced were themselves. Because ships were the prize, naval combat fixated on causing as little damage to the vessels as possible, while simultaneously ships were produced that were as difficult to damage as possible. Grapple, board, kill, provide replacement crew and sail back to port. Warfare was typically handled by the crown, which expanded its armada through captured vessels. Although warships did support enormous siege engines - ballista, catapult, trebuchet, these were intended for use against land targets.

The Nefantar became undisputed masters of the sea... not counting the far north. There, waves exhibited chaotic interference patterns and the wind was fierce. The great big strong hulls did not shift well under such circumstances and cracked.

Sebiestor approached maritime activity as a religion. They revered trees and waves and birds and navel lint. Sebbie wood tenders picked lumber that spoke to the soul. In this case, the "soul" was the ocean, and the wood chosen bent well. Even the very long long ships, like the Mulgie, were as close to floating trees as one could get without, you know, cutting down a tree and throwing it in the water.

Sebbies made very clever use of insulating materials to give the wood places to go without opening up and letting water in. They developed crude air bladders to keep water out of low places when it inevitably got in. Their boats had shallow drafts and low wind profiles. Sebbie cloud watchers listened to the soul of the storm and broke for shore as soon as things looked dicey. Sebbies could beach their boats almost anywhere, while the Neferese required deep water harbors. Eventually, Sebbie long boats even carried winching mechanisms and hook grapples that allowed them to be pulled across ice.

The primary threat facing a Sebbie (or Krusual) was hypothermia - and a significant threat it was. The two tribes essentially developed waxy hide wet suits and learned how to start fires on frozen beaches with seashells. Like the Neferese, however, warfare for Sebbies was a boarding affair. Boats were sacred. In fact, for the Sebbies, usually it was enough to just show up. They would count out numbers and the side with more won.

Brutor naval project management of the time could be summarized as: if it floats, ship it. Initial Brutor attempts to muscle in on illicit trade went poorly. Very, very poorly. Eventually, however, they would define the Matari M-O all the way up to the present day!

"Madam, someone is at the door."

Oh. Thank you, Gaim. Let's see who it is, then, shall we?

This is no doubt the most informative and fascinating thread currently on the IGS.

My own knowledge of Matari history comes through the teachings of our clan's Khargai. Whilst I totally respect her wisdom, sometimes I'm not sure about the validity of her version of events. I mean, was Matar really ever threatened by a plague-swarm of proboscis-nosed maesties, or was that a result of her inhaling pure viridian cytoserocin? Sometimes I just don't know.

My favourite of her stories is the one about the seven herds of the plains. All of the herds, but one, huddle in a cattle-shed and graze in an enclosed pasture, becoming soft, fat and weak, fit for nothing but sale and slaughter. The single remaining herd continues to roam the plains, growing hardy and strong, never settling, never to be tamed.



Oh Lady Noh! Don't go ruining this wonderful work with oversights like that! Our Tribe built the Grand Caravanserai, which hosted the Tribal Assembly! I actually went to see it last year, one of the rare occasions I've been planet-side. To be honest I didn't really pay much attention to it - being planet-side makes me feel sick, makes me walk funny and gives me headaches so a lot of my time was spent wishing I wasn't there.

Other than that, I'm enjoying this immensely - I hope there's more!

I have absolutely no idea what you are on about. I reread it, but it didn't help.

[ABOVE THE MONASTERY.

Camera drones skitter across les tuiles rouges of a fully restored section of the ancient monastery. Shooting out toward the brilliant blue lake, they tumble and point down. It's a long way to balustrades and balconies, on one of which crouches PRANCE. The thropic Sebiestor spies on the drone spying on him with an antique brass nautical telescope. The drone swoops toward the thropic and through a soaring archway from which glorious crimson and gold damask draperies billow.

Inside, it is a cloistered little nook piled with ancient maritime knick knacks from the layered woven carpets to the distant cathedral ceiling.

The CRONE sits behind a desk, having never been to sea - playing with a priceless astrolabe.]

First order of business, of course, is to apologize once more to the swashbuckling pharmacologist (I do love your look, darling!), and to reiterate that I should not have been so casual in my dismissal of the Thukker. I am prone to outburst. No, really, it's true. To clarify, Thukker did not influence (at least directly, sinister music please, sweetie... thank you) events on Matar during the period in question. They had long before vanished from the island paradise occupied by the Brutor.

It is my belief, for which I have no evidence (beyond lack of evidence), that the Thukker did not originate on Matar; but were, like my own people, on a steeper technology curve visiting from afar (unlike my own people, Thukker were apparently under a directive not to interfere - overly - with the development of indigenous civilizations).

I would love to further investigate Thukker history, but unfortunately that Tribe views me with extreme distaste (no, really, it's true). As a consequence, I would adore hearing more of your experiences Karynn, sweetie, darling!

Next order of business: Brutor.

As previously mentioned, the central tenet of Brutor naval project management was (and remains): if it floats, ship it.

On Coriscantmanir, the Brutor were a fierce, physically aggressive tribe leveraged by the Starkmanir as gladiators and legionnaires. The Starkmanir mastered land combat, and the Brutor learned a great deal from them. Enough, in fact, to strike out on their own. Down in Mioar, Brutor became merry clans of yoho pirates in constant search of that One Piece of additional booty lost somewhere in their island paradise.

Tangent: in this, Brutor resembled swarthy Gallente sailing around their own (much larger) island paradise (already infiltrated, incidentally, by Seulamahak's Sani Sabik survivors from the Takmahl civil war).

The more planets there are, the more there is only one.

Aside from living in an island paradise, however, Brutor were not really interested in naval combat. Boats were, like crunchy bread, delivery vehicles for what mattered: Brutor. Up north, skinny little Sebbie twinks became quite adept with bows and long pointy spears. Scary! Keep away! The Brutor enjoyed kissing their enemies as they crushed the life out of them with their bare hands. You know, more or less - mostly less, the Brutor are into private displays of affection.

Krusual also enjoyed up close and personal killing, of course, albeit from behind - more or less, and mostly more.

But we're talking about the Brutor.

Brutor sailed wooden planks stitched together with palm leaves (early designs of the Reaper being abstractions of these "vessels...") up to other boats, shot at them with their iron booms booms, swarmed aboard, and cut everyone to kibble. This worked quite well against other Brutor and random nautical victims.

Initially, Brutor held very dismissive opinions of the Nefantar. "They spend more time drawing boats than on the sea!"

Close to true, but not quite true.

The initial Brutor strategy of swarm and chop produced losses of ninety to, oh, a hundred percent. Neferese hulls didn't give a damn about Brutor boom booms. Nefantar gleefully allowed Brutor to swarm up (up, up) the sides of their enormous vessels. Although they would occasionally pour nasty materials down, their real goal was to pull the Brutor in and butcher them savagely.

Neferese did up close and personal quite well. After all, they wanted to capture boats at all costs.

When Brutor hung back looking for openings, the Neferese opened up with siege engines of flaming scatter shot, covering the sea with burning sticky fluid (which their boats sailed through just fine). Moreover, Nefantar were culturally acquisitive, and took a liking to Brutor iron boom booms.

The Brutor were hopelessly outclassed... until they started hooking up with Sebbie twinks. For the most part, this relationship began as a form of indentured comfort provision. Sebbie twinks didn't get pregnant, and they were actually extremely skilled mariners.

The Sebbies tightened up Brutor naval construction quite nicely.

Furthermore, you didn't have to be Brutor strong to aim a cannon or point a boom stick. If the Sebbie twinks could handle that, which they could, more Brutor could swarm up the side of Neferese galleons... and get butchered.

As you might imagine, this tended to select for more cautious mixes of Brutor and Sebbie crews.

Finally, Sebbies convinced the Brutor to avoid contact with Neferese ships altogether. Get to the moonshine distilleries before the big heavy boats showed up, loot them, bribe them, whatever, get the booze, get the **** out, get to unsavory Starkmanir ports ahead of the big heavy boats, and sell. In this way, Brutor naval strategy evolved toward speed, detecting the presence of giant Nefantar warships, not being around, and building out criminal networks in key ports.

Yar!

Why any of you are paying attention to the ramblings of this mad old witch (much less being so obsequious to the point of addressing her as "lady") is totally beyond me. She's a troll of the first order, a sociopath, sexual deviant, slaver and mediocre writer.

Please just ignore this troll. Denying her the attention she so desperately craves is a punishment worse than death.

[GLEAMING BLACK-ON-BLACK CALDARI COMMAND SHIP COMMOPS CENTER.

A dozen immaculately coiffed blond Deteis, seated in order of increasing height (a difference of approximately 49 millimeters from one end to the other), monitor derblinkielights and dashummienoises as the huge chamber fills with the projected three dimensional image of our nook in the galaxy.

The CRONE strides towards a glowing sphere at the center of it all.]

Karynn, darling!

Experienced women are always playful, and the Gate is a delightful answer for the origin of the Thukker. Ancient, enigmatic tangle of plasma and artifice, font of the Antediluvian Civilization, and from it - Us!

As they settled these many stars, the Ante did not expand evenly. They colonized worlds at different rates and established industrial and social structures according to different schedules. Charting courses for new stars, they moved not through an existing network of jump gates, of course, but via exploration fleets. Those were crewed by self-sufficient individuals possessing technology intended to allow for extended (indeed, indefinite) deployments.

The Gate blew up.

My understanding of the Ante Gate Network tells me it was not so mundane as ours - not one point to one point, but all to all. Fabulously convenient: every journey was one jump and never 37. Fabulously catastrophic: the extra-spatial tsunami unleashed by the Gate's destruction took out all interstellar transportation in a blink.

Imagine that wormholes simply stopped opening. Gone here, gone in Anookies. As a result, further imagine this severed the weakening of space in such a way that all FTL communications were lost. It happened before and will happen again. A hundred years after such an event, almost all populated Anookie will have fallen into a pit of exacerbated mental illness, technological decay, ruptured clone vats, mobs with pitchforks, and good old fashioned doom.

Much as happened to the Ante.

But although the exploration fleets would have lost all communication with, let's say "Home" for the sake of argument, in them, the Apocalypse would not have triggered mass panic or grabs for power by maniacal nuns with holy lasers. The exploratory detachments existed for the very purpose of being cutoff and alone.

The fleet which had gotten the furthest from "Home..." became the Thukker.

Of course, their technology would inevitably decay. Their crews did not encompass the full compliment of scientific, engineering, and industrial expertise that would have be required to "clone" the Ante completely. But they knew that. Pressed by entropy, they conserved resources, babied their vessels, produced a minimum viable technology for continued interstellar travel, avoided the conflagration behind them, and waited for civilization to turn its dark corner.

Consequently, as your Honored Matriarch teased, the Thukker have in fact "always been wandering." Every now and then, they wandered over to Matar to see how things were going.

And on Matar, we've gotten to that fateful day when drunk Sebbie twinks destroyed pirate funtown Helasbodice!

You may mock, but yoga pants are proof that the universe is a wonderful place in which a man can be truly happy.

[ROTTING SUBTERRANEAN INFRASTRUCTURE.

The CRONE'S lovely face emerges from white noise in a fish eye lens, fades, and emerges again. It appears that the lens is attached to a crudely anthropomorphic mass of scavenged maintenance droids.]

Well! I might not be able to hit the broad side of a Malediction but all those years of industry and science and engineering and electronics and hacking and mechanics and cybernetics do seem to have come in useful at long last! Isn't that right, Iron Golem Gaim?

"y - e - s - - - m - a - d - a - m."

Stupendous! Well. The gunfire back there got my get up and go going, certainly, but I seem to have zigged when I should have zagged.

At the time I thought I was sufficiently familiar with the gestalt of pre-Kingdom Sabik catacombs, and assumed - foolishly in hindsight - that the old "false sarcophagus wall" trick would be a quick way to a discrete exit. It's not that I wasn't correct, it's just that there is now a very much post-Kingdom megacity built over this ancient site - the plunging infrastructure of which discombooberated the arcane floor planning something fierce.

That notwithstanding, we've come at long last to the crushing fate of Helasbodice.

To review, what had become a sprawling pirate haven of moonshine, go go boys, fertile prostitutes and gambling stretched along the southern rocky "beach" of an island off the northwest coast of Murkamurka - in fact, off the northwest coast of the Five Frost Giants, a volcanic chain to the west of Murkamurka. To the east of the Five Frotst Giants runs a stretch of sea now known as "The Murk," previously known as Svartalfvangr - to which we (by which I mean a salvage crew that I have hired) shall journey in the present day.

Back to the past!

Helasbodice, the north sea's premiere pit of scum and villainy. Its island, as you'll recall, consists of two volcanic cones jutting from the sea with a rocky, somewhat alluvial valley between them. Sheets of ice breaking free of the northern cap, not far distant, follow currents toward the island, and run up the northern shore. Depending on average winter temperatures and wind and volcanic activity etc etc etc, the ice sheet pushes up and around the cones for varying distances south.

The first settlers of this inhospitable rock were Krusual hunters, who, by trial and error, learned where not to build their twig huts. Most Sebiestor trespassers learned, more stubbornly, where not to build quaint little twig villages. And in fact Auntie was able to pluck a number of delightful little crushed huts and village from the detritus scooped up by her terraformer.

For the most part, there existed an equilibrium point where rock structures on the island, and the mass of the ice istelf, stopped the sheets at roughly the northern lip of the harbor formed to the south of Hela's cones. When the ice accumulated to that point, more ice coming from the north would generally be shunted to the sides and around the island....

"I hear the witch! Get the witch! Burn her!"

[The CRONE looks off in one direction, then returns her attention to the camera. She holds up one finger."

A moment please, if you would be so kind.

[The camera goes dark. Sometime later, the image returns. The chamber appears to be filled with a noxious green vapor. Many bodies twitch on the ground. The CRONE picks her way through them.]

Now that clears the sinuses! Oh! This one is kind of cute... I wonder if... no. Nope. Hopeless.

Right, then! Helasbodice!

Further south, politically, Neferese sailor boys and Brutor 'Shine runners had felt each other out for many years and the business interests of their captains stabilized into a profitable enterprise for all. Where Nefantar had organized around seven gigantic trading houses, the Brutor situation remained a bit more "fluid." Because of its proximity to the craziest of the Sebbie and, increasingly Krusual, distilleries, Helasbodice was quite a prize for this or that Brutor aspirant.

To protect his interests, the city's Brutor baron of that time installed several boom booms of unusual size around his harbor: the Guns of Helasbodice - a catastrophic mistake.

Although these weapons were built by Brutor, Sebbies installed them, meaning they could swivel a full 360 degrees even though really only about thirty of those mattered. Now, we don't have recordings of what happened exactly, of course, but I've studied the Sebiestor long enough to know how it all went south - so to speak.

One night after naked ice wrestling in the depths of a particularly cold winter, some drunk Sebbie twinks ostensibly on gun duty thought it made sense to swivel their big long boom stick around and shoot the ice looming over the harbor. Immediately after that, of course, another group of drunken idiots across the way thought that was a fabulous idea and swiveled their long boom stick around to shoot, too.

Two things happened next: the ice shifted; and, a mother of all avalanches began on the sides of the cones.

As the avalanche rushed forward, it placed additional pressure on the carefully balanced ice sheet, which slowly ground over the last little bits of rock holding it in place - and then, not so slowly. Liquefaction buried that sinful, sinful place before many a pirate could disengage from his chosen comfort, preserving it and all of its wonderful knickknackery until that day holy laser light shone down from above.