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

[braidedwonder]

"Yeah. So is Altron there." Duo tips his head toward the much more flamboyantly colored suit, hoping that Wufei wasn't in earshot to hear and start crowing about his Gundam as well. Yes, he should be allowed to brag about his gundam, just not when Duo is trying to do the same with his own. He thinks that's only fair, as things go.

Deathscythe is well enough recognized in their world by now, the black gundam with black wings that would appear out of nowhere to destroy entire battalions of mobile suits both in space and on Earth. It's more that he doesn't want the specifics of the suit logged, as he'd done more than enough tweaks on his own to make the suit what he wanted it to be, at the end of the day, and didn't want any of that information, or even the beginnings of an idea of them, logged somewhere for people to study or figure out.

"Accounted for? Who exactly is 'accounting for' them?" Suspicious? Very suspicious.

Duo has a moment's pause, looking down to Gaelio's hand and then back to him before he takes it in a firm grip for a shake, still a bit unsure and suspicious but not enough to be blatantly rude just yet, either. "Duo Maxwell."

[retributing]

That one is a Gundam too? Gaelio's finger twitches, just a little, over the tablet at his side, as though he desperately wants to see if Altron is in the data. He'll gallantly restrain himself, though. For now.

"Nice to meet you." Gaelio is friendly, if a tiny bit informal, about his pleasantries.

Although as for who would be documenting them— isn't that obvious? "Gjallarhorn, of course. There were three hundred known at the end of the Calamity War, all their specs were recorded as they were produced. Many of the actual Gundam were destroyed or lost, but the frames would be the same even if recovered and fitted with new parts."

[braidedwonder]

Informal is best for Duo, who only nods in reply. This is… odd for him, if he’s honest, and it’s hard not to be incredibly on guard and unwilling to share any information at all beyond what he already has.

Especially once he hears the name of an organization collecting the information, if he’s honest, brows ticking inward ever so slightly at the information laid out in front of him. Gaelio is friendly enough, but Duo is not a trusting person as things go.

However… three hundred? Three hundred gundams?

Duo pauses for a moment, and then deadpans : “There’re only five gundams. I don’t know what the hell you mean by three hundred.”

[retributing]

{{ooc: so I'm a moron, it's 72 gundams, not 300. The Calamity War was 300 years ago, I think that's what my idiot brain pulled the number out of. Can we pretend I said 72? /facepalm At least it's still way more than 5... }}

Gaelio considers, gaze lifted to the ceiling as he recalls the Gundams still (or at least somewhat recently) in use that he's aware of. "Well... Twenty-six are known to still exist or... have recently, anyway. There's mine, Kimaris—" He points to the black and lavender Gundam standing nearby, "Bael, which belonged to Agnika Kaeru; Barbatos, Flauros, and Gusion which all were piloted by Tekkadan members, which are destroyed now. The other Seven Stars have family suits too. That's more than five already, and doesn't account for yours - or that one." Gaelio nods towards Altron. Deathscythe, while perhaps similar in spirit, doesn't follow the naming scheme of the ones he knows. Neither does Altron. (Then again, that Tekkadan pilot had insisted on calling Flauros 'Ryusei-Go', so.)

He holds up his tablet again, offering it for Duo to look through if he wants. While the other named Gundams can't be accounted for, the Kimaris Vidar is very much present. Something certainly doesn't add up between what either of them know, but Gaelio is telling the truth at least in part.

[braidedwonder]

(ooc: I gotchu! )

“Was it the war of the edgiest name?” Look. Duo was partially raised in a church - he knows demon names if only because he had, of course, taken to looking them up because he liked to be the edgy kid. And it had been fun to shock Sister Helen, at the end of the day.

Anyway, he waves away the tablet, still unsure of why all of that information would need to be stored away in the first place, and happy enough in what he knows of the suits they have in the process.

To avert Gaelio’s attention, or at least attempt, he instead focuses on his gundam enough to prod.

“What’s with the horn on your gundam?”

[retributing]

The Calamity War is not uncommon knowledge, but Gjallarhorn students - and particularly the Seven Star families - were perhaps taught more about the specifics than most. It was three hundred years ago, after all, a long time. This pilot, Gaelio assumes, is from one of the colonies. The Jupiter Sphere, if he had to guess, given that he's unfamiliar with even Barbatos, which had become something of a celebrity on Mars and the Dort Colonies. The original Gundams - named for each demon in the Lesser Key of Solomon - were meant to battle the mobile armors, of which each were named for angels.

And Gaelio is just about to dump a whole lot of exposition about it on Duo (and maybe tease that the 'Deathscythe' pilot is a pot calling the kettle black, but, like any proud pilot, readily takes the bait. Gaelio's bond with the Kimaris, particularly this version of it, is special. He turns to look at it for a moment, his expression undeniably fond.

"The armor, including the horn, is nanolaminate. If forced to fight close quarters, it can do a great deal of damage to sensors in the head, particularly combined with a burst from the secondary Ahab Reactor."

[braidedwonder]

Well he isn't wrong about colonies, though Duo isn't quite so far flung as Jupiter so far as what colony he's from. Thankfully they haven't touched on that one just yet, as Duo may have to wax somewhat proudly about L2, despite every way that the colony has fucked him over in recent memory. It's still home, no matter how shit it tends to be if one looks at it a little too hard.

"So what like.. you use it like a fuckin' rhino horn or something?" Duo is purely interested in the use of such a thing, if he's honest. Their gundams have the vulcans of course, but they shoot things, so it makes some sense to have them so far as Duo can tell.

"You got gundanium at all on the frames?"

[retributing]

"If no other options are available, or if the opportunity presents itself." Weird question. There are decorative elements on the Kimaris, but the horn can (and has been) useful. "The horn is barely a weapon, considering the arsenal it's equipped with, though."

As for Duo's other question... "Well, the frames haven't been made since the Calamity War. Because of the dual Ahab Reactors, the technology required is immense. Nanolaminate made from Mars' halfmetal is the standard for the armor."

{{ ooc: aka, literally nothing exists online that I can find that actually mentions what the frames were made of. Gaelio would probably know the actual answer, given we see people looking at tech specs for the frames in the series, but 🤷 }}

[braidedwonder]

“… I just always figure a prominent feature has to have one use at least.” Deathscythe’s wings were 90% goth aesthetic, but the other 10% the usefulness of being able to blend in the void of space or a dark corner of Earth. And, well. Built in shields of Gundanium of course.

Shields were never incorrect and couldn’t go astray so far as Duo was concerned. Even if he wasn’t Trowa “spray and pray” Barton.

“So it’s metal taken from Mars instead of the Moon. So it’s not gundanium most likely.” Duo chews on that for a moment and then provides, as if by some explanation of why their suits don’t appear on his little info pad :

“Mars isn’t even terraformed yet.”

[retributing]

"With any good design, particularly on a mobile suit," Gaelio agrees.

"...Hah?" He balks at that. But he's met one other from the past now, so that part is understandable. But Gundams were only created at the height of the Calamity War, there were no miscellaneous five floating around prior.

Well. At least not in their records. But 300 years is a long time. Gjallarhorn took meticulous records from their conception on, but they weren't infallible. Gaelio is well aware of that much by now. "What about the moon? Is it inhabited? Space colonies?"

[braidedwonder]

Duo huffs a laugh at that balk. Wufei’s theories about time and the like is feeling more and more likely, but Duo doesn’t want to begin thinking about what that means for him considering what Heero’s already told him.

But colonies and the like are easier to talk about. Less loaded by a mile.

“There’s a lunar base on the moon and, you know. Mines for the gundanium. Colonies L1 through L4 these days since L5 chose explosion.”

[retributing]

Gaelio is just about to ask if they're the Dort Colonies, but considering other differences so far, perhaps L1-L5 (or L4, now, apparently) are just that. He also can't recall learning about any colonies that 'chose explosion,' although there is that massive crater on the eastern side of Australia...

"Your Gundams," he begins, turning the conversation back. "How long since they were created?"

[braidedwonder]

"Your guess is as good as mine about how long they've been around." Duo's shoulders shrug. Could he give an approximate? Sure. But at the moment it hardly seems important to let him know that their Gundams are relatively new. He's happy enough that they don't register on whatever system he has, and all of Deathscythe's data is safe for another day.

Besides, he has no idea how long the idea of them, or even the construction of the five Gundams, had been in development or direct process.

"I was just a stowaway who got picked up to pilot."

[retributing]

Gaelio looks at Duo, as though not entirely sure he'd heard correctly.

"...Hah? You were trained before though, right?" In mobile suit piloting, at least. Right? Duo can't mean a literal random stowaway.

[braidedwonder]

Duo’s shoulders shrug. Yes, he’s had training, but for the most part he’s something of an idiot savant that managed to teach himself a good deal of things on the fly.

For a kid that barely had a formal elementary school education it’s astounding, but Duo wouldn’t be caught dead talking about that.

“Yeah, a little bit. Guess they figured if I could get past their security I could do somethin’.”

[retributing]

This kid has to be joking. Gaelio isn't entirely sure what to do other than stare incredulously. Mikazuki Augus was a gremlin in the shape of a human, but he was at least a damned good pilot, even Gaelio had to admit that.

Speaking of Mikazuki, though, maybe that explains it: "Ah. You have the Alaya-Vijnana?" Human Debris were forced through surgery even for mobile workers to circumvent giving them a proper education, so if Duo was untrained otherwise, surely that was the reason. (Or he's fucking with him. Right? Surely they didn't give him a Gundam just for getting past security.)

[braidedwonder]

He’s sure that some part of him, in some way, wishes he was joking. In some universe he doesn’t get caught stowing away and absconds to some random colony instead of languishing on L2 until something major happens and he dies.

Instead, here he is. Pilot of Gundam Deathscythe Hell who stumbled upon the opportunity accidentally.

Life is funny, isn’t it?

“Well I’m a guy so.. no.” That’s a crass joke and he knows it, face already cracking in to one of those Cheshire grins and shoulders shaking with laughter before he corrects course.

“No idea what that even is. So I doubt I have one.”

[retributing]

Gaelio gives Duo a slightly puzzled look for just a moment. Far more male than female children were given the surgery so wha- oh. His expression shifts to one that is briefly disapproving, but a tightness in the corners of Gaelio's mouth suggests he finds it at least a little funny.

"It's an implant that allows the pilot to connect directly with a mobile suit - anything from a Gundam to a worker - to allow information upload directly to the brain." Maybe it has a different name for Duo's time?

[braidedwonder]

"Yeah uh.. no implants here." Though that may seem a little disingenuous when Duo's immediate uncomfortable habit is to rub at the base of his head just below the base of his braid. He has no way of knowing that the ports generally go in the back, of course, but the thought of an implant directly to the brain?

Sounds a bit like Zero on steroids and immediately brings about an uncomfortable pit in his stomach. Now that they've established that he hasn't been a sticking pig for implants, though -

"That sounds unnecessary, though, if you tune the mobile suit to match the pilot enough."

[retributing]

No implants, either. Gaelio has met a woman who is vaguely familiar with the concept of mobile suits, but not ones like he is familiar with. That is strange on its own, but to meet someone not only with a mobile suit, but a Gundam, yet the similarities end there... He's not entirely sure how to make heads or tails of it.

Gaelio smiles thinly. "The recent use of Alaya-Vijnana is less illustrious than its origins, admittedly, but it is common beyond the Earth Sphere, as mobile suits and mobile workers are rather ubiquitous." He glances to Deathscythe briefly. "Gundams are much less so, however."

A shrug. "Gundams in particular can be fitted to match the pilot-" his own Kimaris Vidar is proof of that. "-but more often the pilot must adjust to the suit's particulars." Such as Bael, and from what he knows, Barbatos, too, to say nothing of hundreds of generic mobile suit units. "With the Alaya-Vijnana that is more intuitive." Though it can still demand a heavy toll. "Without, it takes a skilled pilot."