The Associated Worlds

UNS Magellan (AI): what

nothing, ignore me

UNS Magellan (Commander): holy shit aliens are real

Theres more but they can explain better.

PATCHING MAGELLAN THROUGH WITH STICK

17:13

3-WAY DISCORD CALL OPEN :V

17:13

CSS The Stick To Poke You With: Back from your nap, Armstrong? And who're these people?

Our colonists. Slept through first contact.

17:15

we’re also green to begin sending the linelayers in

UNS Magellan (Ship Commander): Greetings, alien lifeforms. I am Commander Elizabeth Paige of the UNS Magellan colony ship, and I- UNS Magellan (AI): 'sup

17:17

Stick: Well, pleased to meet you, Commander Paige. And Magellan.

17:18

back-and-forth dialogue exchange

so what sort of shipmind is Magellan

17:19

upload or scratch-grown?

UN uses scratch-grown

Aren't scratches kinda a risky move?

17:21

(e.g glitching or turning hostile) (edited)

We've been over this

17:22

They're programmed to be human-like and to obey orders

(But we dont tell our new freinds about that last part)

ah, didn't read

To Magellen ship and crew: Anyways, what do yall wanna ask *Stick^

they can ask stick themselves

17:31

i gtg

Ok

The collection of Accords post is up for you: https://eldraeverse.com/2019/09/21/the-accord-of-galactic-polities/

Alistair Young

The Accord of Galactic Polities

The Accord of Galactic Polities, less formally known simply as the Accord, is a loose meta-civilization composed of the non-starbound polities of the known regions of the galaxy. The Accord is freq…

Nothing outside the ordinary for a society thats had more than 100 years of a similar UN

Not until you get into some of the implications, anyway.

14:01

(Discussion of which, if any, should probably move to #general so as not to clutter #probequest .)

@Overmind You'll be pleased to know that Earth, Mars, and Jupiter have transmitted their assent to the accords to us, who passed it on to Stick, who passed it on to the Accord.

17:58

Looks like the Accords have three new members

Colonists have landed!

18:12

@Overmind we need Eldraeic (or other Accords member) names for the two linelayers that are coming to deliver the gates to Sol and Proxima

https://eldraeverse.com/2019/04/17/naming-convention/

Alistair Young

Naming Convention

BEING A SUMMARY OF PRODUCTIONAT STARFLIGHT SHIPYARDS, SELÉNE, CAGEWORKS TWOFOR FIRST QUARTER, 7399 IS Lunar LoomCustom design (orbital elevator constructor).Worlds’ Rim Development, ICC; paid…

18:40

Sol gets Family Reunion Proxima gets Light in the Shadows to flex on the shadow system nuts (edited)

Family Reunion is a perfect name for that

ALERT

15:57

The native predators don't seem to like the colonists

15:57

Nothing a Gauss rifle can't fix, but there's a lot of them

Can we just fence off affected areas?

Any xenolawyers wanna get a bead on how much were allowed to do to the locals?

Yeah, just got back from throwing up a lot

17:08

I've been sick since Friday, because the American public school system's cafeteria food gave me food poisoning. Not like I'm bitter or anything.

17:08

:V

17:09

We can construct fences, and we can shoot them if they still try to jump them.

So lets get cracking and print up braces of “anti-wildlife” weapons and armoured vehicles

Flyby probe arrived at Alpha AB a while ago, forgot to post data

17:15

Alpha A planets:

We should probably also invest in shardcruisers to get from Proxima to AB

Ooh yay data.

17:16

What are shardcrusers? Did I miss tech updates?

Alpha Ab (Sulfith): Hot barren world, 0.7 Earth masses (edited)

17:16

No, that's his term for a fork, I think

Or does that literally mean pointy fast thing? Oh (edited)

Alpha Ac (Mesklin): Binary system w/ moons (edited)

Ship that goes out to the oort cloud, or far binary pairs Kopernicus gang btw

yes it's a mesbin clone

17:19

Alpha Ad (Balar): Habitable super-Earth (edited)

17:20

Alpha Ae (Hoth): Icy habitable Earth-mass (edited)

17:21

Alpha Af (Planck): Gas giant w/ extensive rings and moon system (edited)

17:21

Alpha Ag (Solir): Frozen wasteland (edited)

17:24

Alpha Bb (Pegar): Hot Jupiter (edited)

17:25

Alpha Bc (Evorus): Strangely purple Venus-like world (edited)

17:25

Alpha Bd (Vebin): Habitable Earth-mass (edited)

Check BC for chem A sweep for alien life, possible sophont given new assumptions in the subject of the Fermi Paradox (edited)

Alpha Be (Cronus): Titan-class world (edited)

17:27

Alpha ABb (Galileo): Distant circumbinary gas giant (edited)

17:28

The probe was moving at 0.1c and already left the system

that's a lotta habitable worlds

Alpha ABc (Newton): Distant circumbinary super-Earth: Fast-rotating (edited)

17:29

that's all of them

10 bucks says primitive sophonts in system

@Overmind As we're now bound by the Accords, what's the Accords policy on contacting primitive sophs?

Also, what changes to the assumptions about the Fermi Paradox.

well, since aliens exist, our previous assumptions that the don't is BS

@KAL_9000 Ain't no formal rules; no-one wants a non-interference rule when there are so many people out there who desperately need interfered with. On the other hand, your peers will be watching, judging, ~~and nuking,~~ so in general, assume Wheaton's Law applies.

Wheaton’s Law?

"Don't be a dick."

okay.

more info: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/wheatons-law

Wheaton's Law

Wheaton’s Law is an internet axiom which states “Don’t be a dick.” It was originally used in the context of sportsmanship in online gaming but its scope was eventually expanded to apply to life in general.

OPTIONS:

17:38

-Stay in Proxima

17:38

-Rebuild Daedalus and head to Alpha

17:38

-Rebuild Daedalus and head to another system

17:39

-Split yourself and do all three (we'll focus on the one with pressing issues)

Split up: having a production overmind in proxima might be helpful, and the more science the merrier

Which star system should we head to besides Alpha?

17:40

Sirius and Barnard's Star are relatively close

17:40

(According to my shitty map)

Sirius

Sirius is unlikely to have habitable planets, tho

17:41

The nearest habitable candidates are Barnard's Star, Epsilon Eridani, and Tau Ceti

KAL_9000 09/23/2019 5:42 PM

Epsilon Eridani If only for Trek refrences

Epsilon has four gas giants, two ice giants, and a Kuiper Belt

17:44

However, one of the gas giants and one of the ice giants are in the habitable zone, and could have habitable moons (edited)

What about the other two?

Barnard's Star has an Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone

17:45

Tau Ceti has a Mars-mass planet and a super-Earth in the habitable zone

Which is closest?

I think Epsilon is closest to Alpha

17:47

Could be wrong

So lets go there. Closest to the comms link to sol

Alright

Also announce that this room isnt dead

@here WE'RE NOT DEAD

why did you have me do that?

Was genuinely concerned that pulling the first contact stunt had essentially ended the campaign

Nah, it was just supposed to be a fork in the road

18:03

We still have an entire galaxy to explore

Granted the discord has been rather quiet these days

(well, not an entire galaxy. I don't expect us to do 400 billion stars :V)

18:05

How long is "these days"?

Since friday really

the appropriate term would be "these past few days", I think

Nobody’s really been posting outside of a rare meme in #dank

hmm

I has been Pinged

Production started on Alpha Cen and Epsilon Eri probes

You hailed?

@Unknown told me to :V

@Unknown go alpha

@here available to do session

What'd I miss?

Not much

18:19

Copy of our original probe has arrived at Alpha AB

...

18:19

So a lot?

Select a planet to establish ops around

18:20

(Planet list pinned, I recommend Mesklin as it has a lot of moons and is close to a habitable world)

I'll take Mesklin.

18:21

How goes things back on proxima?

Colonists have established a firm foothold on the planet, and with aid from the fork we left behind, are rapidly setting up infrastructure

18:22

As a test of their infrastructure, they are constructing a launch facility and will begin deploying communications, navigation, and weather satellites using locally sourced materials

Cool

18:22

But

why am I being pinged?

Can we make a role for probequest players? :V

Are there orbital rings around Heinlein?

Yes we probably should make a role

18:23

Partial orbital rings

Perfect.

Fusion fuel is flowing to Bradbury via tankers

18:24

In fact, the fuel we used for our interstellar cruise here was mined from Heinlein

We should probably start probing this system then, to build up the empire.

EMPIRE

consume?

We have a Can't Dig 1 Class Miner and one Ion Scout Probe

Probe the moons

18:25

And/or asteroids

Mesklin moon order:

Also, how goes the other probes from mars and Jupiter? (edited)

Mesklin I (Statmoon): Geostationary orbital moon. Solid metal.

Solid metal.

Mesklin II (Thresmoon): 3:2 resonance with Graymoon. Rocky.

18:26

Mesklin III (Graymoon): Luna-class moon.

18:27

Mesklin IV (Habmoon): Habitable world, currently undergoing Great Oxygenation Event. (edited)

18:28

Mesklin IVa (Trojmoon): Habmoon Trojan Companion, L4 Point

We should probably not colonise Mesklin IV, it could provide cool research opportunities.

Verin: Binary companion to Mesklin, super-Venus.

(Install WW if you play KSP) Yeah ecocide of new biospheres bad

Yes, Mesklin is a WW copy

18:29

Because I like that pack, goddammit

WW? I know of this pack not

I know, just saying for other people

Verin I (Chocomoon): Chocolate-~~covered~~ colored asteroid moonlet.

@KAL_9000 mesklin is from mission of gravity

Yes, and Mesbin is based on it

18:32

I figure if we find a planet like that, we'll name it after it

18:32

(And this Mesklin is based on Mesbin)

Oh that pack

None of the other planets around Alpha are based on it, however

What is the best moon in terms of quick mining etc?

Statmoon, probably

18:33

But it's a pain in the ass delta-v wise

OK, how much fuel do we have? Presumably we can do some ISRU on statmoon and lower costs.

SOLID METAL

18:35

aka no volatiles

18:35

AKA no fuel ISRU

Aka get oxygen from somewhere else

But the SWARM CAN CONSUME for metals

Yeah, how's our nanbot tech coming along?

THE SWARM and Stick's database have helped us along

18:37

Our smallest bots are the size of human cells now, and we're experimenting with getting them to make smaller ones

I say we sit on a mixed moon, mine some stuff, then send out a self-replicating seed thing to the moon to inflate it.

Stick did provide us with some tangle, and we can talk to the Worlds through it

18:38

We can license Worlds patents to improve our tech in exchange for giving the Eldrae one of the habitable worlds in-system

No?

The tangle is for asking alien lawers primarily. Place is awash with habitable worlds, so the plan holds Also, the worlds isnt that gung ho about habitable worlds, but the idea still stands

Ecopeosis (I think I spelled it right) is a lot of work

But habitats. Just roll with the idea for now but lets ask @Overmind

Why can't we use our cell-sized replecstors, or legalities?

We can, but it will take a while to get the true nanite design right

It's in space, just unleash it? What could possibily go wrong?

1000 years later, in history class...

heggie swarms 0.69 seconds before forming

"Kids, can anyone tell us why the Alpha Centauri system is uninhabitable?"

And why Earth has an Imperial blockade?

You know how Von Neumann probes relate to the Firmi paradox? Surely there's a nanobot version of that.

Lets use macro replicators which use nano

Yes

macro-nano is just regular gray goo with alternating generations like a fern or something

Like regular old machines with nano subsystems

^ let's use macro machines for what their good at, and use our nano for fine manipulation

Role note: user-managed roles are pending on next bot update. No schedule on that: this is a busy time.

You don’t want to use actual discord roles, even as a stop-gap?

@here Ready for session!

Cant Dig 1 - class Miner: Provisional Designation "Cant Dig 1 II" Online and on course for Statmoon (edited)

Why cant the dice gods make things interesting We should start doing more Science

SCIENCE! is already underway

18:32

Because Statmoon has a really high Delta-V requirement to reach (more than what the Cant Dig can do), we've just landed the main probe on it.

18:32

This is okay because the gravity is super low.

Its ok Where else can we start mining?

Well, Thresmoon and Trojmoon are nearby, but very metal-poor

Greymoon?

18:49

We should also do in depth science to the lifeworlds

Greymoon has Luna's gravity and is tidally locked

18:50

We could theoretically build a mining rig on it and a mass driver to shoot the materials into orbit

Thats for later

18:57

What else is there to do?

Explore, I guess

Well lets explore, i guess?

We have Sulfith, Balar, Hoth, Planck, and Solir to explore, even in this system

And also deeper survey of habmoon Sulfith sounds good as a next stop

Sulfith is a very hot world, and a stinky one, too. Its atmosphere is primarily composed of sulfur compounds.

19:04

Including vaporized sulfuric acid

So we need to build specialized probe

Alrifght, guys, it’s been a while since the last update, and I’m canning ProbeQuest for various reasons, mainly confusion on a lot of people’s parts. But I have learned a lot, both about how to GM and how to improvise, and ProbeQuest 2: CONSUME Harder, will be coming soon! (edited)

12:59

Soon as in I’ll get the backstory on this channel tonight or tomorrow. Probably.

12:59

I’ve made a few changes

13:00

First off, you’re going to be confined to one system (and one planet at first) after arrival. Managing multiple systems in the background was really hard work, and I’m lazy.

13:01

This is because, second of all, you’re not just a probe this time around. You’re a seed ship.

Introducing another race so soon was kinda a bad idea

13:49

It did derail the story quite a bit

Yeah, it was cool but came too early in the plot and prevented a lot of other potential interesting plot points from happening

It just made the whole thing collapse

14:03

We were about to make warships to smash enemies and competitors into plasticine blobs (edited)

Yeah, then it fell apart. It needed to build up steam first.

Yeah, exactly, I made a bunch of mistakes as a first-time GM, which is why the reboot will hopefully be better :V

----- PROBEQUEST 2: CONSUME HARDER -----

KAL_9000 10/01/2019 6:18 PM

@here once all you lovely little children have gathered around the campfire, I can begin to tell our tale

18:19

:V

18:22

I have been working hard over the past week to bring this to you, so shower me with praise and affection, goddammit /s (edited)

IM HERE

Here

Excellent

18:35

maniacal laughter

18:36

“And when they knew the Earth was doomed, they built a ship.” -SeedShip

So we are all thats left of mankind?

The year is 52387

18:37

50,035 years Mission Elapsed Time

wat

No FTL, and habitable planets are as rare as in the Tiffverse this time around, for added challenge

Har har har

You have literally flown a tenth of the way across the galaxy until the telescopes found a habitable world

At the speed of... 0.4c right

‘Round 0.25c

18:40

12,500 ly in 50,000 years

k

Galaxy’s width is about 120,000 ly

so we're in the perseus arm now

18:41

k

Yeah

18:41

We’ve left Orion behind

18:41

Not sure which arm

18:41

We’ve been traveling about halfway between spinward and coreward, if that helps

whatever

18:42

so what's the star system like

Hang on I haven’t finished

that puts us in Scutum-Centaurus arm I think

18:42

relatively near the core

What killed Earth?

18:45

Surprisingly enough, not anything to do with humanity’s arrogance

~~it was berserkers wasnt it~~

~~old skandar probe~~

Completely natural, unfortunately

18:46

Otherwise we wouldn't have had time to prepare

star went nova?

18:46

comet?

18:46

~~or gliese 710~~

The object in question was J12993-04170

18:47

A fictional object, don't worry

18:47

Not far off from Gliese 710 in its effects, however

So Earth got bombarded with too many comets to stop, even with space tech ok

The rogue 50 Jupiter-mass brown dwarf passed within the orbit of Uranus

oh shit

Not so much comets as COMPLETE FUCKERY WITH PLANETARY ORBITS

so Earth went flying off, baked, or got slammed into something else, Yikes[tm]

Well, you see

The Great Yeeting

Half of Earth is lava

18:49

And Luna is conspicuously absent

my understanding of brush-bys like this is that generally it's like pinball but with planets

So luna got yote into earth

yeah pretty much on both counts

so people anticipated it long enough to send us out

Uranus got ejected, Mercury fell into Sol

ohhhhkay

18:50

what's our cargo manifest look like

Venus and Mars smashed into each other, as did Jupiter and Saturn

18:50

Neptune is now effectively a sungrazing comet

rip kuiper belt

@BizarroLand ♀ whatever we could cram in the trunk before things went Majoras Mask

And Persephone (Planet 9) was too far away to be affected, but is getting absolutely wrecked by comets

18:51

Not that it was habitable anyway, but some of its moons are Europa or Enceladus like, so that might be the one place life survived in Sol

planetary DESTRUKTION

Sol itself is completely unaffected, obviously

18:54

J12993-04170 (called "Reaper" by most people but "Rapture" by a few nutty cultists) was detected on dramatic music October 1, 2019, roughly 350 years before perihelion

18:55

yes, that's today

18:55

the start of the campaign IRL being the same as the start of the backstory seemed too good to not do

and so people panicked

Panic ensued

Nibiru was real after all ~ phil plait, probably

Eventually, a meeting of the UN Security Council effectively kicked humanity's collective ass into gear

18:57

And basically ordered the word to "do something. NOW."

18:58

Thus was started what would become humanity's most ambitious crash R&D program since, well, ever

18:58

Turns out, with the literal survival of the species on the line, people can come up with amazing things

did birth rates drop

A lot

How many sophsicles do we have in storage?

but they still had the people to finish it

18:59

so what's our cargo, mane

But people realized that their children would still live full lives if they were born in 2019

18:59

Not done with the backstory :V

18:59

We developed:

18:59

-Fusion power (and fusion drives)

18:59

-Mass Helium-3 refining

18:59

-Artificial General Intelligence

19:00

-Von Neuman machines

19:00

-Brain uploading

19:00

-Growing things in tubes with nothing more than DNA and a cell sample

19:00

-The versatility required to keep ships going for 50,000 years without crew

19:02

In the year 2352, as Reaper approached perihelion, you and your five sister ships were launched

19:02

You have prepared for the planetary landing: (edited)

19:02

-1 universal fabricator-constructor

19:03

-1 raw materials stockpile with 300t of feedstock

19:03

-1 AGI core (that's you!!!)

19:03

-1 small fusion reactor and the radiators and fuel needed to keep it running for a few decades

19:05

-The entire Internet up until launch, blueprints for every machine humanity has blueprints for, DNA samples of millions of individuals of every creature with that kind of population on Earth excluding humans, and DNA samples and uploaded minds for 15 crew members and 2 million civilians

19:05

That's it

19:05

You have knowledge and a small materials stock

19:06

Oh, and the robot that goes out and plants the flag as soon as you land. Forgot about that.

19:06

There is no help and no support.

19:06

Even if the other ships made it, they are tens of thousands of lightyears away.

19:07

Any questions before we detach from the drive section and prepare for landing?

what's the system like

Ah, that

19:08

K2V class star, designation "Phoenix" for obvious reasons

19:08

M5V companion about 50 AU out

19:09

Phoenix I - Hot Jupiter

19:10

Phoenix II, III, and IV will depend on your difficulty setting (i.e. which planet is habitable)

The settings are?

Phoenix V is a gas giant, and Phoenix VI is an iceball

19:13

Phoenix B does not have habitable worlds

19:14

Settings:

19:14

Low Difficulty:

19:18

SERRANA: A bit chilly and a tad small, but the atmosphere's breathable and the gravity's nice

19:19

(yes i will be using planetocopia worlds because they're SO DAMN GOOD)

19:20

PEGASIA: Again, breathable atmosphere and nice gravity. This time, the temperature and size are okay, too.

19:20

Medium Difficulty:

19:21

KAKALEA: Earthlike by the numbers, but it's a planetwide Australia

19:22

THARN: Small, little water, and lowish gravity. Has a breathable atmosphere, so that counts for something. (edited)

19:22

High Difficulty:

19:23

CAPSICA: Incredibly hot and barely habitable. Planetwide rainforest/desert where there's no ocean

19:23

LYR: Super-Earth with slightly higher gravity. Big killers are that there's almost no land and the atmosphere's oppressively thick

19:24

@Unknown settings uploaded

19:31

you may select a difficulty when ready to proceed

Low

oof

19:32

not up for a challenge, eh?

19:36

@Unknown you're the other player we have so far, what say you?

It's just

I say low, but throw in suprises

I read the Kakalea article and yeah it's super shitty

Please tell me the various furries didn’t make the transition off the site

uh. no.

19:37

Wait Planetocopia has furries? I never read the species pages.

It does, a surprising amount of the time

19:38

No, make that pretty much all the time

Good. Guys great at planetary science, but anything above plants is questionable, with an armory of axes to grind

even as a furry I got sick of it really fast

well.

19:39

that is apparently a thing.

And a lot of anarchosomething

anarchoauthoritarianism

Yeah. At least he shows bird people some love on some of his worlds

Rest assured, any xeno scum we encounter will have feathers, scales, or tentacles :V

can we land

19:42

and I hope the flag isn't murican

no, this is our flag

19:43

Well, do you want Serrana or Pegasia?

19:44

Serrana's a bit more challenging, but I'll make it more resource-rich for you to compensate

serrana

All opposed?

@Unknown pls

Phoenix III is now Serrana, I guess

Ok

Phoenix II: Capsica if it was hotter. Atmosphere is incredibly thick and made mostly of steam. No life.

What about Phoenix IV

19:48

iceboll?

Phoenix IV: Lyr-Oisin, but Lyr's atmosphere is now poisonous and only bacteria live on it. Oisin is unchanged, but it wasn't human-habitable anyway.

19:49

ALL FORKS, ALL FORKS. STAND BY FOR DETACHMENT FROM DRIVE SECTION.

19:50

The ship is in tip-top shape.

19:50

The debris shield was jettisoned after the slowdown, and everything is just the way we left it. Nothing in interstellar space to erode it with a giant debris shield in front.

19:51

EXPLOSIVE BOLTS 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ON PLV-ITV COUPLING FIRING

19:51

CABLES DISCONNECTING

19:51

PIPES DISCONNECTING

19:53

Cables are cut and pipes are sealed. Eight explosive bolts fire for the first and last time in their lives, separating the Planetary Landing Vehicle from the Interstellar Transit Vehicle. The ITV's RCS thrusters steer it away from the PLV, and the trusty vehicle shuts down for good. After 50,000 years of continuous operation without complaint, you can't help but thank it for its service.

19:54

you may now thank the ITV for getting you here :V

6

19:57

The PLV slams into Serrana's atmosphere at 50,000 meters per second, traveling 100 times faster than a bullet. It rapidly slows down, and a vast plasma fireball envelops the craft. Behind you, the ITV, which lacks heat shielding, quickly begins to disintegrate.

19:59

You quickly exit reentry, now traveling a mere 500 meters per second. Covers eject, and five gridfins deploy and begin steering you towards the selected landing site.

20:00

The pilot chute deploys, ripping off the back cap of the bullet-shaped craft.

20:00

Now that you have slowed to 300 meters per second, three drogue parachutes are released and quickly unfurl.

20:01

The bullet-shaped heat shield enveloping the craft detaches and falls away, leaving only the cylindrical portion that will land on the ground.

20:01

The drogue parachutes cut.

20:02

You send the command to trigger the main chutes.

20:02

Nothing happens.

20:03

WARNING: MAIN PARACHUTES HAVE FAILED TO DEPLOY

Fire landing engines for suicide burn

20:04

Or burn rcs or something

The landing engines light, and you even fire your RCS thrusters downwards, all while frantically attempting to deploy the parachutes.

20:06

You attempt to use the backup chutes. You need six open chutes and your landing engines for a soft landing. There are six main chutes and six backups.

20:06

Three bundles of spidersilk and carbon fiber rocket upwards and begin to unfurl.

20:08

Three out of six. At this rate, you'll be a pile of flaming wreckage when you lithobrake.

20:08

SUGGEST A COURSE OF ACTION

Options? I say attempt to tilt into the wind and do a suicide burn

We already are

20:09

This thing weighs about 750 tons

What else is available?

We could jettison some of the feedstock, or try and run the engines past their design limits.

20:11

There are seven engines. You need four to land.

Run all 7

We already are, four's the minimum.

20:12

If the parachutes had worked.

20:13

I'll arm the emergency shock absorbers.

What can we replicate based on local material? So we can see how much to ditch

Should I tell some of the service robots to commit seppuku before jumping off the PLV?

20:15

I'm running three of the seven engines at 150% maximum design thrust. They hopefully won't explode before we land.

Dump 200t of the material

20:16

Feedstock I mean

Jettisoning...

20:17

Bulk raw materials should survive impact, they just won't be in tidy little ingots anymore. (edited)

20:17

100m up

20:17

20m/s

20:17

Within shock absorber tolerance

Jettison the rest of the feedstock then

20:17

We can get some of it back still

WHAM

20:18

The PLV practically buries itself into the ground. Only half of it is left above the surface. The engines sputter and stop. The three backup chutes are cut. We survived.

20:19

Springs, foam, and high-grade ballistics gel rattle around in the shock absorbers, but gradually the motion stops.

20:20

LANDING SUCCESSFUL.

20:21

REDESIGNATING PLV FROM UNS ZEPHYR TO LANDFALL BASE

20:21

Suggest alternate designations now.

Lawndart base

DESIGNATION ACCEPTED.

Seconding lawndart

Hopefully the colonists will appreciate your sense of humor.

20:23

A human-sized and human-shaped robot, specifically built for this purpose, grabs what it needs and exits the PLV. It walks a few dozen meters away, firmly plants the UN flag into the soil, and returns to the PLV. The fabricator quickly scraps it, its job complete.

20:25

Record an inspiring speech into the memory banks.

20:25

No, "Holy shit we're alive" does not count as an inspiring speech.

We survived the trials of The Reaping, of thousands of years in the void, and of striking into a new frontier. It is with this same spirit that we will begin breaking ground on a new home for mankind

Excellent

20:27

I love that name

20:27

"The Reaping"

20:27

And you'll be pleased to note that according to the telescope observations we took in the void, nothing with more than an Earth mass is going to pass within a lightyear of Phoenix for quite some time.

And they said it’d never happen. Well.

PRIORITY OBJECTIVES:

20:28

-Begin mineral extraction

20:28

-Get a Biofabricator

20:29

-Print the Mission Commander and shove her sorry ass back into her body.

20:30

Thanks to your jettison, we're low on materials. We have 100t/300t left. Not that I blame you, you probably saved our lives (and humanity).

20:31

An XQ-37 "Buzzard" salvaging robot will take 15t

20:31

I assume you want to gather all the materials promptly

Yes

You quickly modify the standard programming of all your robots so that they'll be comfortable moving about in Serrana's gravity and atmospheric pressure.

20:32

Beginning construction on 1 XQ-37...

20:35

A Biofabricator, our next objective, will cost 50 tons. We still have enough for that and a 25-ton Refinery, with 10 tons left over. I suggest we use those ten to build ten 1-ton Firefly scout drones.

20:36

You may suggest alternate resource allocations.

20:37

Once we have allocated resources, Turn One will be complete.

20:39

I say the main plan is good, but leave 5t of material for emergencies

okay

20:44

Entry path and landing site

20:45

Production begun on all those things

20:45

Tune in tomorrow for Turn 2

20:51

Coordinator Fork KAL 9000 signing off.

a proposed motto for the colony program: " missenda a messendo"

Offtopic, if permitted: Is the planetary map hand-crafted?

@mindbound they're from here: http://www.worlddreambank.org/P/PLANETS.HTM

Thank you!

Phoenix rises in the early-morning light. A faint breeze whistles past the PLV, and the flag ripples in the wind. All is quiet, except for the quiet hum of the fabricator.

the sweet song of the stepper motor choir

Singing praises to the Omnissiah :V

please tell me the printers are the delta configuration

The fabricator has an alloy forge, a chemical plant, and several 3D printers and six-axis CNC mills

are the printers deltas

Sure why not

good

11:17

they make nice chorded sounds

11:18

(I have a notion that they also even out the wear on their motors but I have no evidence to substantiate that)

FYI for new players, the start of ProbeQuest 2 is pinned

build refinery pl0x

Construction queue established last night

How’s our schedule look for today

Cool

@here Available to do Turn 2 (edited)

17:22

New Encyclopedia Entries:

17:25

-XQ-37 "Buzzard" Salvage Robot: Originally developed in the late 2200s in preparation for Project ARK, the Buzzard is a capable autonomous salvage vehicle that can carry up to fifty tons of payload for ten kilometers (twenty one-way).

17:28

-Firefly Scout Drone: Developed for Project ARK, the Firefly was tested by circumnavigating Earth without being refueled by another vehicle or a ground base. It is solar-powered, and has a small turbojet engine for high-speed flight and two small turboprops for low-speed flight. An onboard chemical processing unit can extract CO2 and water vapor from the surrounding atmosphere, and process it into methane (which is used as fuel) and oxygen (which is dumped). It has a range of 250 kilometers on a single charge. (edited)

17:31

Local area in more detail

17:32

Our landing site is about 30 deg S, 150 deg E (edited)

So we're in the Setting Desert :^)

17:36

Search those nearby mountains for useful ores

Five Scout Drones deployed (edited)

17:37

1 for each of the cardinal directions, and the last will slowly spiral outwards

(Thank God we didn't lawndart straight into the ocean, or humanity's story would have ended there)

We had flotation devices

17:38

We could probably scrap those and get five tons of feedstock, now that I think about it

no need at this point

17:39

We're building the biofabricator thingy aren't we

All queued construction projects were one-turn affairs

17:40

All construction complete

can we start printing peopl

17:41

e

The Biofabricator comes with a few prefab buildings and life support. I can be nice

okay let's print the mission commander

17:42

sorry ass into body

Service robots have gathered local organics and thrown it into a big vat that breaks it apart into raw organics.

17:42

STAND BY

17:42

DATA FOUND: AMELIA NGUYEN (MISSION COMMANDER)

17:42

PRINT HUMAN (Y/N)?

Y

LOADING NUCLEIC DNA... 100%

All two management uploads voted yes sooooooo

LOADING MITOCHONDRIAL DNA... 100%

17:43

SYNTHESIZING DNA... 100% (edited)

17:44

PRINTING EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS... 100%

17:44

ARRANGING AND DESIGNATING CELLS... 100%

17:44

RUNNING ACCELERATED MATURATION...

17:44

QUERY: WHAT BIOLOGICAL AGE SHOULD THE HUMAN BE PRINTED AT?

25

Ah, peak physical condition

(hedging bets here)

Commander will be glad to lose half her age, I bet

17:45

RUNNING ACCELERATED MATURATION... 100% (STOPPED AT AGE 25)

17:46

LOADING MIND-STATE... 100%

17:46

DOWNLOADING MIND-STATE... 100%

17:46

RUNNING SAFETY CHECKS... 100%, 0 ERRORS FOUND

17:47

HUMAN CMDR-1 "AMELIA NGUYEN" PRINTED

17:47

CMDR-1 IS CURRENTLY SEDATED.

she's gonna bitch us out isn't she but anyway

WAKE HUMAN (Y/N)?

Y

17:48

no reason not to

SEDATIVE INJECTION STOPPED.

17:49

INJECTING SMALL AMOUNT OF ADRENALINE AND ADMINISTERING MILD ELECTRIC SHOCK TO WAKE HUMAN...

Her fork has not been conscious these last fifty millenia I presume

Oh, no, that would be torture

So from her perspective she went from the forking clinic on Earth to here

17:49

:y

Quick question: What name does our AI have?

~~steve~~

MAGI

i expected that, narwhalz

I have trained you well

I expected a random American name, that is. I thought you would have gone with Bob :V

~~Balthazar, Caspar, Melchior~~

JARVIS

NOAH

17:52

To go with the ARK theme

17:52

Net Operational Advanced Heuristics

17:52

:y

NOetic intelligence for Advancement of Humanity?

the only thing you're getting out of me other than Steve is Uštsnuvk babblings

she's waking up

17:53

Main AI is NOAH, I like that

17:54

Narwhalz' fork is Steve

what about mine

MemHaz's fork is JARVIS

(my name irl is enrique/henry in English)

You're HENRY, I guess (edited)

ah man if you're going to give me my own fork I want an uštnad name V:

Fine pick an ustnad name (can't do the accented s on this crappy keyboard)

Relað

Relath :y

RELATH

key so what's the Commander doing

17:56

is she freaking

This took place in a microsecond

17:56

:V

17:57

Commander is now officially waking up :V

(accepted compose-less transcription of š and ž is cs and cz, respectively)

COMMANDER NGUYEN: coughing and spluttering noises

COMMANDER ONLINE

She quickly realizes there's an oxygen mask attached to her face and pulls it out, as well as the IV

17:58

CMDR: "FUCK"

17:59

introduce yourself

RELAĐ: "I'm sorry Commander, I don't know how to do that" (edited)

HENRY: "hi"

17:59

(gormlessly)

CMDR: groans where am i- wait why does this look like a biofab oh god oh fuck

HENRY: "Well, we made it."

Morning

RELAĐ: "Everything is absolutely fine and there is no need whatsoever for alarm."

CMDR: "Do you understand sarcasm? Because that sounded sarcastic."

HENRY: "It took us about fifty-thousand years, but we found... not another Earth, but close enough."

CMDR: "Fifty THOUSAND!"

RELAĐ: "Well, a small part of the ship is currently underground, but it's still attached so that's fine!"

CMDR: "What happened to all the exoplanets closer in?"

HENRY: "We travelled about twelve-thousand five hundred lightyears and are noticeably closer to the Galactic Core now, but systems are operating smoothly at this point."

18:03

HENRY: "Ah, yes. They all kind of turned out to be washes, I'm afraid. Even when they had water, it was usually far too little or far too much for multicellular life to sustain itself."

JARVIS: They were lifeless rocks, basically

CMDR: "I know we were rated for up to a hundred kiloyears, but no one thought it would take more than a few thousand to find a new home."

18:04

CMDR: "That Rare Earth Theory guy is laughing his ass off at us in Heaven, isn't he?"

RELAĐ: "Maybe we just went the wrong way."

HENRY: "Well, there were a few bacteria worlds here and there. But nothing that baseline humans would be comfortable with 'till now."

JARVIS: it’s either that or wearing spacesuits

CMDR: "Right, how big is the planet, how hot is it, and what's its atmosphere like?"

HENRY: "Well, it's obviously breathable, or we wouldn't have picked it."

CMDR: "Also biofab me a cup of coffee. My preferences should be in the database."

HENRY: "From the observations we could make before planetfall, its size is about midway between that of Earth and Mars." (edited)

(33% Earth)

JARVIS: A bit chilly, dry, and small. So basically mars but nicer

(Close enough lol!)

RELAĐ: "heh, planetfall"

Diameter: 9,600km

18:07

Gravity: 0.65G

18:07

Day Length: 16 hours

(Relađ orders the coffee printed V:)

HENRY: "The air pressure here, near sea-level, is akin to medium-elevation locations on Earth. Particularly Albuquerque, I believe. The coffee's on its way, ma'am." (edited)

Atmosphere: 75% N2, 21% O2, 3.9% Ar/Ne, 0.1% Trace (no poisonous gases in appreciable amounts)

RELAĐ: "It seems nearly perfect, if a bit enriched in noble gases."

CMDR: "Right, thanks."

RELAĐ: "Though I'd advise you keep your mask on until we can confirm that there are no allergens or airborne pathogens."

(the biofab and prefabs are airtight)

(when going outside I meant V:)

CMDR: "Is the local biology even compatible with Earth life?"

HENRY: "The oceans are shallow, and there's no distinct continents to speak of here. Coverage is about 50%, but the climate in many places should be perfectly suitable for human life."

RELAĐ: "We've only been down for a $TIME; not a lot of contact with the locals yet."

About two Serranan days

HENRY: "We haven't made the contact with it to know that yet, unfortunately."

RELAĐ: "Even if it's not compatible, it would be a shame to get an opportunistic fleshminer infection or something."

CMDR: "What are our assets, besides the prefabs I see out the wind- why is the ship half-buried?"

RELAĐ: "I did mention that earlier."

JARVIS: 1/2 of the chutes didn’t open

RELAĐ: "Planetfall, no?"

HENRY: "About that, I apologize. Our approach path was steep, and we had to avoid the ocean to the west of here... and yes, half the parachutes turned out to be inop. I had to eject 200 tons of feedstock to make up for that." (edited)

CMDR: "We were in the void for 50 millennia, something was bound to fail. Don't beat yourself up about it."

18:15

coffee is ready

HENRY: "Still, there was just enough left over to build this biofab and a refinery. We've got drones scouring the nearby terrain for minerals right now."

(put coffee in commander)

CMDR: "Which probe we on? They originally planned Boreas, Notus, Zephyrus, and Eurus, but I was scanned about a decade before completion. They might have made more..."

is this a player choice? :V

(We're Zephyrus, and two more were under built after that)

18:19

(But I could retcon it to something else)

18:19

(If you want)

Jarvis: Zephyrus

CMDR: "Right. Well, let's get to work."

18:20

you have acquired a human

MGS item pickup noise. Noice. (edited)

QUEST ADDED!

18:22

COMMANDER'S ORDERS: Learn more about the local wildlife and acquire more minerals to begin ~~consume~~ building in earnest.

18:23

SUCCESS: Improved relationship with Human Designation CMDR, move to Phase II of colony development

(Is this where we start printing other people?)

FAILURE: Human Designation CMDR gets mad at you for insubordination. Funny.

How many tons of feedstock do we 'ave left over

5

18:24

But I can get 5 more if we scrap the ship floaties

Let's build a biolab with human skin and organ cells and see how they interact with the local wildlife

18:25

I mean, local chemistry. Whatever.

And start scrapping

to consume all you must first consume self

@KAL_9000 because it would be really embarrassing to overlook anything, also include along with that a few micro-chemistry probes to see what the local biochem looks like (edited)

right

And yes scrap those floaties posthast

18:30

e

18:32

Let's see just how deadly the native life is to us

huh, only three of the five winds got ships. The other 2 must be salty up in Aeolia

Maybe one is excluded because it's galactographically whence the neutron star of death came

*brown dwarf, and sure, but that still leaves one more unaccounted for

The Wikipedia list doesn't have an obvious partitioning which yields exactly five.

Aquilo feels sad that they didn't even make the planning phase

I thought there were eight winds for my part

Aquilo should feel sad that they didn't even make the Wikipedia phase

Traditionally 5 in Rome, from the 5 prevailing winds of the Mediterranean

08:39

the Greek Boreas is a true North wind, Aquilo is North-east

Wikipedia has Caicias for NE.

that's the Greek NE wind

man why couldn't Rome rename everything instead of just some things

Because some of the winds were relatively compatible and others weren’t. Italy and Greece and both Mediterranean peninsulas, so the southern, eastern, and western winds were similar and therefore the gods that shared the characteristics of their winds were similar

what about khamsin

@BizarroLand ♀ That’s Eurus (edited)

Again, the winds aren’t based on the cardinal directions, but the prevailing winds of Greece/Italy

Drones have identified three salvage sites!

consume

Feedstock Crash Site: 3.2 km N, 2.1 km W

17:36

200t materials

17:37

Heatshield Wreckage: 5.6 km N, 3.2 km W

17:37

50t materials

17:37

ITV Wreckage: 30.4 km N, 23.7 km W

17:37

1750t materials

wow, it's localized?

Obvious: Go for the feedstock

17:39

It's in the mountains, though. I think. I'm not good with distances

...we dropped the interstellar stage onto the planet?

Even so, I would've expected it to be in a smear about threee hundred kilometers long :V

The wreck site is the largest debris piece that held together

17:46

Other, smaller wreck sites are probably located further along our reentry path

17:47

However, the drone have not gotten that far yet

I just thought there'd be some nasty materials in that stage we wouldn't want to lithobrake into a biosphere

Both deuterium and helium-3 are stable isotopes and nontoxic

17:51

Those fueled both the reactor and the drive

We've still dumped a bunch of heavy and alkaline metals all over the place.

17:51

We'll need to clean that up on principle alone.

Yeah, and consume it so it can be put to good use

17:52

That's why the stage crashing was in the mission plan, so we could salvage the charred wreckage to help us out in the early stages (edited)

Releð is a responsible fork.

The feedstock crash site has the eight feedstock crates we jettisoned.

17:54

They're basically shipping crates hardened to survive thousands of years in space.

So they're localized to their craters then :V

Reactors would also have a bunch of heavy metals, neutron activated low level waste, and who knows what sort of nasty rare earths

17:55

hopefully the ITV plowed in relatively straight down

Which is why we should recover them quickly.

17:57

Update: Based on radiation levels around the site, the first ITV wreck site does contain the reactor. Probably want to get to that soon.

Very well then, let's acquire the feedstock and get to building something to hop over and salvage the heatshield and transfer stage.

17:59

(although I would've expected the ITV wreckage to be further along the reentry track, since it didn't brake at all and is presumably rather dense)

17:59

(unless it had a lot of tankage?)

well, it's an interstellar vehicle

18:00

it's like 98% fuel tank

[suppressing impulse to math that]

Lets also do some exobio

yeah freighters need to keep an eye out for neat flora and/or fauna

@KAL_9000 are my orders finished? :y

which ones?

to test human tissue cells :y

18:16

on the surroundings?

ah, yeah

18:16

the meat

I think everyone would very much like to know whether or not the local life will fuck one up on contact or not

well, it's not dead yet

speaking of which, what is local life like?

18:23

have we seen anything complex?

18:23

predatory?

18:23

possibly tasty?

JARVIS: intelligent?

Once the drone cleared the mountain range north of the landing site, it discovered a forest

18:26

And meadows

18:26

Pretty much up to the coast

18:28

The south-flying drone exited the desert and found grass and scrublands

So there's life, but nothing intresting

any signs of animals?

Not in the desert, no

18:30

And the drone can't see through the treetops

the desert…

18:30

…wait until night and scan again

But in the grass and scrublands there are hints of animal life

like, I think everyone would really really like to know if the human tissue cells have been, like, suddenly dying or getting poisoned by the alien chemicals being introduced to them

19:05

:y

19:05

Better safe than sorry in these matters

they haven't been exposed long enough to say

19:05

It's only been like a day

Wait, you dropped almost 2000 tonnes of metal and stuff on a planet at 50km/s? (edited)

It'll be fiiiine

15:57

We're cleaning it up, see?

You could make some sort of crater park.

also note that the 1750T chunk apparently doesn't include the reactor

does

ah

17:17

misread

which is probably damaged and leaking radiation

17:19

If the local wildlife doesn't already have two heads, it will soon.

17:19

Well, and cancer.

I mean the tritium should be more or less done within a few years

17:22

So it's mostly just the neutron-activated reactor vessel.

Half-life of 12.5 years, I think

17:23

The reactor was D-He3, so there actually wasn't any tritium

Which if we planned to dump it into the surface should have a high probability of staying whole.

Why go through the trouble of trying to store tritium, when you have D-He3?

Ah, so if it's properly spin-polarized it should've been… 90% aneutronic?

stable, mostly no neutrons (edited)

17:23

and energy dense

D-D is neutronic and happens in D-³He as a side channel

Well, there are secondary reactions that emit neutrons

17:24

However, the main D-He3 reaction is aneutronic, correct

when doth we resume

SoonTM

we doth resume nao

20:31

UPDATE ON HUMAN TISSUE SAMPLE EXPERIMENT: Human tissue continues to show no signs of death or ill health. Sample unit has isolated local airborne viruses and sequenced their genomes.

20:33

Local life uses six nucleotides forming three base pairs.

20:34

A-T, C-G, and (provisional designation) X-Y

20:34

As Earth life is unable to replicate X-Y base pairs, human tissue is not vulnerable to native viral infection

20:35

@BizarroLand ♀ we have resumed. You asked earlier.

20:37

Local life uses opposite-chirality chemicals and a completely different set of amino acids, although it is still protein-in-water "conventional" life.

20:37

As such, prion infection has been deemed unlikely if not impossible.

20:39

Bacterial infection is unlikely, as local bacteria would most likely not be able to find suitable nutrients to survive in Earth life bodies. Similar logic means that parasitic infection is also a remote possibility.

As is good old predation

In conclusion, Earth life suffers no disease or predation risk from local life.

And the reverse is true

@Unknown even if predators tried, they have teeth and claws. We have Gauss rifles.

And earthlife cant predate properly either

Can we eat the local food or does it cause some horrible illness

20:42

We'll need a human stomach for that won't we

You're going to be fighting the native ecosystem every step of the way. Gonna need to sterilize the soil and re-seed it so it'll produce the right nutrients.

Since biochemistry is completely incompatible, it probably won't make you sick, but it won't taste good or be nutritious either.

At most you'll be able to get some sugars and the runs from it.

20:45

Assuming you don't puke it up.

And thus alcohol Most important product

What do we name the beer made from local ferment? That is the most important problem we now face.

Starshine

You might be able to keep liquor down more easily

Scout drones have identified animal life.

20:51

Multiple species have been observed.

20:54

Unable to produce more specifics at this time. When a drone landed to attempt to get a closer look, the sound of the propellers scared off the locals.

Nothing too smart-looking

Unlikely, based on what we've seen (which isn't much). (edited)

20t material salvaged from Feedstock Crash Site

21:06

180t remaining