TEST DRIVE MEME #1

[space_aces]

WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD

Your journey only happened because of your benefactor, so it begets that it starts at your benefactor as well. SUPERBIA, which is as much of a location as it is an entity, is where everyone's search for Fortuna begins.

There's not much of a welcome party: shortly after their fateful encounter with SUPERBIA, in which they swore to join the quest to find Fortuna, the new Privateers will find themselves afflicted by a sudden change in perspective. See, teleportation is a tricky process, so from SUPERBIA's point of view, why not make the target destination none other than itself? One highly disconcerting moment later, and the Privateers find themselves inside the belly of the beast.

The vast mega-structure is shockingly lonely, void of anyone other than the Privateers. Those who look off the metal satellite and to The Network for intelligence (or take a skim at the Space Wikipedia article) will find out that the surrounding space is clear for lightyears; rumors have it that the place is cursed. It won't take long to understand why.

1

Overclocked

The innards of SUPERBIA are that of an impossibly scaled up computer, and the Privateers start right in the middle of it. You are the spider living in the dusty PS4. Literal rivers of coolant, transistors the size of mountains, landscapes made entirely of circuitry. The sky, bounded by a distant metal ceiling, is constantly alight with coursing electricity that cracks the sky with lightning storms. It can be assumed that the Privateers are the first living things to set foot here, because such a place is not ever meant to be traversed by delicate, organic, mortals that worry about things such as "temperature" or "voltage". SUPERBIA needs not lifeforms to continue its operations; why design for them? Traversal itself is difficult: unscalable walls and perilous drops are common to encounter. The only company the Privateers will find are oddly adorable maintenance robots, which sadly seem too occupied by their directives of maintaining the massive machine to offer any assistance (or even acknowledgement of their new guests).

It is immediately clear that the most urgent priority is to get the hell out of here. Before your adventure ends at the starting line.

2

Skeletons In The Closet

If one stays inside SUPERBIA, either by getting horribly lost or losing all common sense, one will notice a peculiar pattern emerge as one gets deeper into the bowels of the mega-structure. Passages shrink and become more level, and the incredible hostility and danger of the surroundings fade away, until one comes across areas which were definitely intended for humanoid organisms to use at one point.

The construction of these areas is cramped, unfurnished, and dreary; they are reminiscent of artificial environments meant to handle harsh external conditions like a submarine or bunker, but they are entirely livable. One can eventually find distinct rooms, but everything in them has crumbled to dust and their original purpose is nigh impossible to discern. Deeper investigation may reveal the few items that have stood the test of time. While it is more plausible for life to have existed here, that doesn't seem to be the case now. What happened here?

3

The Shipyard

In the opposite direction, when one finally reaches the outer edges of SUPERBIA, they will be rewarded with the place to pick up a spaceship and a stunningly beautiful view of outer space. The outside of SUPERBIA has no atmosphere to get between you and the stars, and they shine brightly, like a beacon calling one out into the first steps of adventure.

The shipyard is already filled with countless space ships of every size, form, and function, all autonomously constructed by SUPERBIA's factories over the countless years. What's the harm in taking one or twenty out for a spin? Even if one has no intentions of permanent ownership of the vehicle, it's not like SUPERBIA will miss it. For a Privateer with a more specific vision, however, there are kiosks around the yard which will allow one to design their very own space ship down to their exact specifications. When the process is done SUPERBIA's matter printers will have it out and space-ready right before your very eyes.

If a Privateer has a ship, vehicle, or large item that they intended to bring with them, they will also find them here, neatly parked in the Shipyard. Why didn't SUPERBIA extend this courtesy to the pilot's themselves? The answer is revealed as soon as the owner makes a closer inspection: the inner contents have been rearranged, like a whirlwind was unleashed inside and assorted loose items thrown around. Now aren't you glad your transportation was given special attention, and the same didn't happen to your innards?

4

Hot Crewmates in Your Area

But how will a single Privateer man an entire space ship? No worries: when one steps into a ship, the strangely endearing maintenance robots will suddenly take acute interest. The robots will follow inside and immediately start assuming the duties of a spacefarer, eliminating the need for extra hands on deck.

Even still, there's just no eliminating the want for a human touch, though. Thankfully even that dilemma has a contingency plotted by SUPERBIA.

Communication devices are easily available on every space ship. They come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from huge stationary consoles to portable smartphone-like screens. But whenever a Privateer attempts to access the Network, a pop-up will appear, obscuring the whole screen.

Tell me a little about yourself. Are you a LEADER or a FOLLOWER? What is your best feature?
The device will be rendered unusable until one relents to the pop-up's demands and provides answers to its questions. What will these be used for? The mystery will be solved when a social media app mysteriously installs itself on the same device, with profiles preemptively made for every Privateer. Each Privateer's profile consists of their given answers, paired with embarrassingly candid photographs. SUPERBIA has eyes in many places it seems.

Comments

Elle Vianno | ZZ Gundam | OTA

[shangrilady]

1 - Overclocked

Elle wants to just lay down and scream.

She had half expected this to all be a dream - there were a handful of experimental true AIs and frankly Elle wasn't aware enough of any of them to expect one like SUPERBIA. Hey, why the hell would it pick her anyways? Sure, she was cute, kinda smart, a decent pilot, enough to survive a whole war, but that was the limit of it

"How is this place real?!" Well here she was in a structure that made humanity's greatest achievements look like Legos. It was panic-inducingly real if she wasn't so good at keeping her cool, and it looked incredibly deadly.

And that meant... Fortuna might just be real, whatever it exactly is.

And while she maybe wasn't the most worthy of having it maybe that's exactly why she needed to get to it. Every time people who wanted power got it they turned around and whaled on the rest of humanity with it, so maybe, just maybe, she could resist that temptation.

"Now where do I even go...?"

3 - The Shipyard

On a lark, Elle had asked for the Gundam Mk-II. It was a bit behind the times in a lot of ways but it had held up really well, right up until the end when it was probably mostly destroyed, but if she was dreaming then she could have it. And all the accoutrements that were in the manual that hadn't been replaced by the time she started piloting it.

Well. Uh. There it stood in pristine condition. With the Flying Armor atmospheric unit and the hyper bazooka packed right along with it.

There wasn't much to fling around inside of it, but all the manuals and a lot of loose bits still managed to be strewn around, and Elle cursed out loud as she tried to be orderly about gathering the whole mess up.

"This SUPERBIA sure is generous. I wonder if it could cook up more gear for it if it can make ships though." Just idle speculation, haha, she totally wasn't going to just take the thing apart and soup it up a thousand percent.

4 - Hot Crewmates

Well, these cute little phones are convenient. And the fidelity is great!

Tell me a little about yourself.
I'm Elle Vianno from Shangri-La at side 1! I was in the AEUG until recently so anyone who has a problem with that - I quit, please don't fight me :P

Are you a LEADER or a FOLLOWER?
I can take charge when I have to but I'm probably even better at support!

What is your best feature?
I'm spunky AND gritty

[ Ooor drop me a pm and come up with something else? ]

4

[astrogator]

What's the AEUG?

[shangrilady]

You know everyone being from different universes i should've expected that

Anti-Earth Union Group. I missed all the anti-earth stuff though.

[astrogator]

I'm not so certain about that. Different sectors, for sure, but the universe is a very big place. There's no proof yet, one way or the other.

What was wrong with Earth? I don't have a problem with you being part of the group; I genuinely don't know. I'm from a planet called Cardalek.

[shangrilady]

Lots of different people using the same name for their planet then. Too many Earths.

Most people where I'm from live within Earth's orbit but there's been lots of conflict between the people living in space and the government that's all people on Earth.

[astrogator]

There's some sort of translation going on, isn't there? Don't ask me how. Maybe a lot of people have the same word for their planet as they do for the dirt on the ground. Earth.

I hear you. My people fought a war against our first homeworld about a century back. They kept taxing the space colonies, trying to regulate us and steal the products of our labor. It didn't end well for them. Maybe I'd be Anti-Earth, too.

[shangrilady]

Could be. Some details sound similar but if we're all human then humans are really common and my head's just about to explode from that all on its own!

YES you get it though that's the idea. Only the AEUG wasn't really militarized until this special branch of the Federation military called the Titans started cracking down. Like, killing protestors on purpose stuff.

[astrogator]

I don't think everyone here is exactly human, but most are humanoid, at the least. Maybe we are really common, and that says something about the way life evolves - or it says that SUPERBIA thought the human form was the best for this mission, and all the really alien lifeforms are missing out on this. Could be either, right?

That makes perfect sense to me. Everyone wants peace, but if someone's attacking and killing your people, you can't just let that go. It's wrong to initiate aggression, but not to return it.

I'm Lieutenant Tayrey, with the Tradelines. Peace and prosperity to you!

[shangrilady]

Could be a lot of things. I wasn't even sure this was gonna be legit when that thing popped up and now I have to ponder too many big questions.

The AEUG ended up just getting gobbled up by corporations anyways. part of why we bailed.

But hey now I can just find Fortuna and freak out over having too much power :P

Nice to meet you Tayrey.

[astrogator]

Me neither, but I figured that since nobody was asking for any money, if it was a scam I wasn't going to be worse off anyway.

Our companies were integral to winning the Breakaway War. Maybe you could give the corporations a chance?

You too, although I hate to disappoint you by telling you I'm going to be the one to find Fortuna.

[shangrilady]

They're already too tight with the guys that started this whole thing. They voted to disband the Titans and now they're acting like it wasn't their fault in the first place. It's progress but it just sets us back to square one which wasn't exactly good.

I'll spare you a sliver of limitless power if you offer me the same ;)

[astrogator]

Hold there - the Titans were killing protestors, you said. Why wouldn't you want them disbanded? It's impossible to change the past, but you can make the future better.

I suppose I'm opinionated because I was born on a Company-owned world. It wasn't a bad place.

Now that sure sounds like fair contract, but I've got to do my due diligence. What would you do with the power if you had it?

[shangrilady]

It's complicated. They only ever existed because of these guys who've been running the show all along, and it's good that they're gone, but the root cause was a war that happened like ten years ago and the stuff that led to that is still a problem.

I dunno politics isn't my thing but I just have a hard time trusting people with power.

Which is why I think I need to fix things. Without hurting a bunch of people.

3

[sleepfan]

Linhardt still isn't sure how he's going to leave - whether to use one of his designed ships, take one of the pre-built ones, or try to talk his way on to someone else's ship (the pros being that other people are better pilots and any group of people wants a healer, the cons being...other people).

So he does what he always does when he's unsure: He goes to gather more information.

Not all the objects in the shipyard look like ships: Some of them look more like giant people. With legs and arms. Linhardt is stopped in front of one, head tilted to the side as he considers how the 'joints' inside must be put together. Is it similar to the Church's golems at all in construction?

Honestly, he's too lost in his mental world to pay much attention to the woman trying to set the Gundam in order until he hears a rising pitch that indicates some kind of question and looks up for the source.

"You could design a ship with weapons or other additions and then strip them off when it's created to put on this?"

Is that possible? Linhardt isn't sure.

[shangrilady]

Elle's almost certain she needs to talk someone else into letting her tag along; she could go solo, but that sounds boring and she's not much of a captain. What she's good at - piloting a mobile suit, maintenance, haggling - should all be pretty valuable too.

There are a few other mobile suits here, some nothing like she's ever seen; and other people here have no clue what a mobile suit even is.

"I dunno if I can make all the systems compatible. A missile launcher is pretty simple though..." It doesn't need much in the way of power, just targeting. "But I don't wanna break anything either. Hm."

[sleepfan]

"Yes, that is a problem. Are the parts not standardized on these?"

Linhardt gestures around to the row of people-shaped ships. The parts on the ships that SUPERBIA made seemed to be interchangeable. Do these ships use different parts?

"What is a missile?" He didn't read most of the weapons information because Linhardt doesn't want to fight. He looked at ways to flee, the armor options, and so forth, but reading about the weapons too much raises one of those stomach-churning no win dilemmas.

If he knows and returns to Fodlan and they lose because he doesn't make weapons like that, that would be his fault. But if does make them, he's responsible for their consequences and he doesn't want that either. So it was best to just...not read those parts.

"Could you make a very small ship and change it so that one of the hands could hold the entire thing? Or connect the information boxes together?"

By which he means network the computers together and control the ship and its one weapon from within the Gundam. Linhardt understands that the computers can 'talk' to each other, even if he doesn't know any of the details.

He's trying his best. This is a lot of new information.

[shangrilady]

"They oughta be, but I don't wanna do too much work only to find out that they don't fit together." Even with unlimited material resources - which is absolutely bananas - her patience is finite.

"Hey, you're making some astute observations for a guy who doesn't know what a missile is though." Smarty-pants. "It's a projectile with its own propulsion, and it explodes when it gets close to what you wanna blow up. It could have its own power source instead of using the mobile suit's reactor." That and machine guns. Beam weapons are a lot more power to put up with.

"That's an idea too." Outside the box thinking might just be an upside to not knowing anything about what's going on with this. She just needs to mess around with stuff!

[sleepfan]

Linhardt's nose wrinkles up in agreement; doing unnecessary work is terrible.

"I'm glad that they're helpful. I want to see what happens when you put new components on the giant golem-ship." He also has no idea what a Gundam or mech is, so Linhardt is just forced to smush words together to convey his meaning. Then again, is that really any different from 'space ship'?

Unfortunately, Ellie describes missiles well enough that Linhardt's mind, on its own, is already considering how he could build such a thing with magic. The main problem would be getting enough energy into the projectile without setting it off, but if there was a sigil based key - or maybe something Crest based - ? It might work... another problem is activating it from so far away: he's used to magic working in one's immediate area and exploding a missile while he's still in the area sounds like a bad idea.

"I know that things can move without a person in them." Like the golems or the robots he's seen moving around here, "So if you had the information boxes communicate, you could still control the weapons you want without risking damage to the giant-person golem's systems?"

"Or perhaps take the weapons with you and find someone who is better at space ship maintenance and have them help?"

Linhardt doesn't know that is one of her specialties, so 'find an expert' is a valid suggestion from him.

[shangrilady]

"Mine's called a mobile suit, and there are some others like it, but I'm not sure every single one uses that name." She saw some... dog guy? With a smaller thing? What even is up with the animal people? Not that she's gonna treat them poorly it's just wild.

Anyways, there's being good enough at machines to handle a lot of the maintenance, and then there's being An Expert, and Elle's not experienced enough for the latter, even if she's pretty resourceful. "As long as the targeting system can work... then I just need to hope I can power it without weird stuff happening. We did kinda manage to make that Zaku head work once..." A very loose definition of 'working' but still.

"I'm sure there are people who know lots of things I don't around here, so I'll just have to ask around. We mostly don't use mobile suits in really deep space, so if nothing else I might try to whip up a transport to help with range 'n stuff." She looks back at her helpful buddy. "I'm Elle, by the way."

[sleepfan]

"I understand. Because you 'wear' it? Yes?"

"What is the difference between deep space and shallow space?" To Linhardt, all space is equally inaccessible and inhospitable. Why is the mobile suit suitable for shallow space but not deep space? Should he be considering that difference in his own vehicle?

"Weird stuff in what way? How would your targeting system function? Do you target based on heat? Life energy?" He might be able to help with the targeting system: Linhardt is a military mage despite his displeasure over it, and it's relatively easy to target magic based on non-visual information.

Names. Yes. Most people consider those important, don't they? Linhardt holds out a hand, "I'm Linhardt."

[shangrilady]

"...roughly, I guess. I mean, it's a little big to call it something you wear." And she's not from G Gundam so she doesn't know about that mobile trace stuff.

"Deep space... you need a lot of propellant, a lot more supplies. We mostly operate close to a ship, and compared to the rest of space we're never all that far from a colony if we can line up and point ourselves at one. In between planets is scary... there's so much empty space." And people travel as far as Jupiter on a regular basis too.

"Anyways, we mostly use visual and heat, but we've got radar and laser range finders and stuff too." They just have magical space particle pollution that interferes with a lot of stuff, oops. "Nice to meet you, Linhardt. I'm not the best at answering all these questions, but you seem legit curious."

[sleepfan]

"Is it? How big does something have to be until it's no longer wearable?" What if he wore stilts and trousers that were six feet long? That would still be 'wearing' them. (His mind is a bit odd, to say the least.)

"Ah, I understand: The mobile suits aren't made for long distance travel." He nods. Linhardt has to translate the concepts into systems he understands, like ships that can't carry enough food to feed their crew over long ocean journeys, but he can get there, "Hence the need to partner with somebody with a long-distance ship."

Yes?

"I don't know what radar or laser range finders are." Linhardt admits, "I find my targets via their life energy."

Which is actually easier in space. There's much less ambient 'noise' around.

"You're answering them fine. I don't know anything about space travel. I'm starting to believe that Fodlan is... drastically behind."

A nice way of saying that Linhardt is pretty sure his home planet is a backwards shithole. He doesn't like where he's from very much.

[shangrilady]

"Y'know, I don't know where the line stops." Probably somewhere when you aren't directly manipulating the limbs in any way?

"Right. I need a good ship, and we're working in deep space so getting back to a ship from further away is important too." Hence maybe adding extra propellant to the Mk-II or... something. "Anyways, if we're really all from different planets I'm sure there are tons that are way behind you too. Universe is infinite and all that."

That said: "Life energy though?"

[sleepfan]

"I don't either." It turns out the concept of 'wearing' is more complicated than he had thought.

"What advantage does the mobile suit offer to the big ship?" Because there has to be one or else the team up wouldn't work; To be an alliance, they each needed to have something to offer.

"You're right," He says, "I don't know where Fodlan falls on the total scale of possibilities. Still. My disappointment is continually growing."

"Yes?" Linhardt answers her question with a question. Does she not know? He holds up a hand and summons a bit of flame over his palm. Magic. How else would he target it? Visually? (Well, technically warp magic is targeted mathematically but somehow he doesn't think this is the time to talk about that.) "Life energy. Sensing where living things are. It's much easier out here."

[shangrilady]

"The mobile part, mostly. Where I'm from, mobile suits deploy from ships, and if a ship doesn't have mobile suits then yours could just get up close inside of its defenses and blow the whole thing up without any trouble." Like the war that started when she was. Like. Five. And one side had lots of mobile suits, and the other didn't.

...and she's putting that aside the moment he summons a fireball?! "...what. ...uh, okay, dude, you've got something we don't too, that's pretty cool right? Did you just - make that pop up out of nothing?"