With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

[Mr Zoat]

I noticed that this image link is the only one that still doesn't work among the ones I pointed out. What could it even be though? A superhero team that came together after the Justice Society, but before the Justice League, that isn't Infinity Inc.?

Click to shrink...

I don't know what the original was, but I've put in a picture of the League of Ancients.

 

[Michael Vonica]

I might just not be looking hard enough, but is there any general place for recommendations on stories I could go to after catching up on With This Ring? I don't really care about whether it's a fanfic or not, or even the setting, just that it has a similar character and tone. The general idea of the main character recognizing problems in the world and trying to solve or prevent them in a rational way.

 

[Someguy Somewhere]

Well, Discworld gets a few mentions as being some of Zoat's preferred reading material. It's got a ...passing...familiarity with rationality. In that anyone with even the slimiest shred of common sense is horrified of the 'we are flying through space on the the back of 4 elephants atop a turtle' levels of insanity of the place. And each goes about dealing with it in their own ways. These ways may be Running away from terrifying things, getting drunk and arresting things, applying psychological pressures to things so they go away....or being DEATH and just shrugging his shoulder bones at it all as he goes about his job.

 

[Mr Zoat]

25th August 2012
00:40 GMT

The juluuni are an omnivorous species who look a little like oversized pangolins. Their distant forebears were burrowers, but they didn't burrow deeply. According to archival data from before the Reach conquered them they tended to live in shallow subterranean homes and be completely ruthless about adapting their environment to suit them. Even after they developed the technology to detect mineral deposits underground with reasonable precision, they actually preferred to strip mine. By the time they developed faster than light travel their homeworld had no more mountains, a fact which can't be explained by efficiency.

And no one has seen one for about four hundred years, when the last surviving settlement they had away from their homeworld was absorbed by the Reach. Their actual homeworld was absorbed nearly two thousand years ago.

The ships I'm looking at match the general outline of the files we have for their ships. The larger ships are essentially cones, the pointy part covered with guns. Their FTL drives are supposed to be pretty good -precise, if not all that fast- and their sublight manoeuvrability is relatively poor. They never really had anything to do with the Controllers and none of them have ever served in the Darkstars.

I take a look around. Eight battleships, none of which are on record as having existed while they were still autonomous. Twenty cruisers, and about five hundred automated gunships. They use those instead of more conventional fighters, and according to my records are quite happy to just dump them and move the larger ships off without them. They act more like mobile flack than conventional fighters and exhibit only fairly simple behaviour. It's a decent sized force. Unless they've brought Scarab Warriors along then Orange Lanterns could handle it, but a L.E.G.I.O.N. fleet would take casualties. Assuming that they could get into position fast enough. I'm not.. seeing any Reach naval vessels, so I'm not clear where their fleet would be retreating to when we started going after it…

I don't think I can learn any more with passive scans. Originally, none of these ships had anything that could interfere significantly with the effects of a power ring, so let's have a go.

Scans show… Shields, weapons and power all slightly improved. FTL… Altered but not strictly improved. It will allow them to make short FTL journeys more quickly but will fall off in performance if they try to travel longer distances. Which.. means… Aggressive deployment. Not hitting and running. Jump into the area, jump into contact, jump into bombardment position before reinforcements arrive… But if they get caught, they're done. The Reach don't design their own ships to work like that. Their people aren't disposable. Their commanders want the option to pull out and try again another day. These ships don't really have that.

Perhaps more importantly, I have enough information to know that I can destroy this fleet without much difficulty. There's no obvious reason to preserve any of the crew, but genetic samples will allow their species to be resurrected later if we decide to take that route. Grab a few samples for the-

Drives flare and the fleet vanishes.

-l.. ab..?

Where are-? There they are, not too far away. Not sure why they carried out a short jump. Practice? Security? They've left their gunships behind and they're… Patrolling?

They're irrelevant. With stealth less of an imperative now that I'm not leaving a trail back towards my base ship I don't have to move quite so slowly. I mimic the effects of their FTL drives and go after them, appearing within a few metres of the hull of one of the battleships. Their shields… Are designed to block phasing objects, but their launch bays need to drop their shields in order to launch… There they go. And.. through…

Since the launch bay isn't designed for people, it isn't anything like as spacious as normal launch bays. The factory units spit the gunships almost directly out of the mothership, the rest stacked one atop the other off to the side. But the area is accessible by engineering crews, so there's a door… With no anti-phasing shielding. I fly through there and start looking for somewhere to access the internal computer network.

The corridors are fairly roomy, which, again, is a feature their ships used to have. Short range scans pick up scale-fragments and DNA, but I won't actually take physical samples until it's time to act openly. I'm not seeing anything that would easily detect me, but all it would take is one scarab attached to one of the crew and the jig would be up.

Here we go. Maintenance hatch. Locked, but there's no force field and.. no damage detection in the structure of the metal. I take position, phase in and trigger my armour to extrude an exploratory cable, which punches through the hatch and worms its way down and inside. Cable there, carefully interface and link in…

I can't request data. For that I'd need log in details or to interface directly with the central database. But I can monitor data traffic and see what's going on.

And the answer is… Not a lot. Internal monitoring doesn't appear to refer to the central computer on a routine basis, which would be a weakness in some circumstances but doesn't make much difference for me. Gunship production figures are being sent, but only an automatic acknowledgement is being sent back.

Ah, none of this matters. A hundred or a thousand won't make any difference to me. I need to find the crew, examine them and then destroy the ships. Nothing I'm getting identified the crew's location, but empathic vision… There, that'll do.

I withdraw the cable and fly in the direction of what appears to be an engineering workshop. Out of combat these are usually fairly quiet, while in combat they'll be a frantic hub of repair requests and damage control teams. If they're waiting for attack orders then they shouldn't be running drills because the last thing they'd want is to have anyone out of position when the shooting starts, but that doesn't mean that they'll have a full house.

No one in the corridors, but I don't know enough about their fleet doctrine to know how unusual that is. Their shields should block most forms of teleportation so they might well have decided that marine patrols were superfluous, and since this is a warship there wouldn't necessarily be a lot of traffic. Door to the engineering station is through there…

Ah, my first juluuni. It looks like they're working to turn ore into refined metals, but taking a look…

Huh.

Okay, it seems that I was being a bit too harsh on the Reach. Someone deviated from the 'acquiescent, quiescent, obsolescent' paradigm. These people aren't just suppressed, they genuinely don't have desires outside being useful to the Reach any longer. Their neurology has been redesigned… Yes, and their genes as well to ensure that future generations are the same. Their endocrine system has had a bit of a rework…

So. This is what the Reach has planned for us. The propaganda value will be significant if I can grab a few and record their responses to interviews. But there's no point in grabbing these individuals…

Huh. For a moment I'm reminded of what Zauriel said about angels. 'I am uncertain as to whether my mind is truly more limited than that of a deeply devout Human. What do you believe that free will means? What is it that you think that I lack?'

I mean, I haven't seen a Reachian since I got here, and a look out across the fleet shows me no one with their particular desire set-up. Scan instead… Yes, no-

"BLAUGH-IGH! BLAUGH-IGH!"

-sign of them, but that did set off the alarms and flashing warning lights. And-. And that was a jump; the fleet moved again. So they have a way to detect ring scans, and my initial scan may well have been the reason for the last jump. It might be interesting to have Ranx or Mother of Mercy use their rings to do extreme range scans of the entirety of Reach space and see what happens.

Any sense in drawing this out further? No, I don't think so.

I drop stealth, construct spears impaling the engineers in this section. A thick construct cable worms its way into the local computers and begins demanding data, while a crumbler construct punches its way through the multiple decks between me and the computer core. There are all sorts of protocols for wiping computers during boarding actions, but the fact is that if you wipe your own computers every five minutes it's very hard to get anything done. There has to be a delay while a report is confirmed, and it isn't that easy to-.

There's a flare as a fission explosion destroys the computer core. And… We've dropped shields and-. And the room shakes slightly as the rest of the fleet starts shooting at us.

Alright then. If

that's all it

takes, I'll take this ship's computer core into subspace and

then try

this ship's bridge crew.

 

[moralrelativity]

covered with guns Their

Click to shrink...

Needs a full stop.

Their commanders want to option

Click to shrink...

to -> the

The factory units spit the gunships out almost directly out of the mothership

Click to shrink...

spit the gunships out almost directly out of the -> spit out the gunships almost directly out of the

Alright then. If

that's all it

takes, I'll take this ship's computer core into subspace and

then try

this ship's bridge crew.

Click to shrink...

That's an impressive display. I wonder if OL's going to destroy the fleet before he goes?

 

[Ej190]

How monstrous. How... Efficient.

I suppose the Reach ISN'T as stupid evil and we thought they were.

 

[Chojin Patriarch]

24th August 2012
00:40 GMT

The juluuni are an omnivorous species who look a little like oversized pangolins. Their distant forebears were burrowers, but they didn't burrow deeply. According to archival data from before the Reach conquered them they tended to live in shallow subterranean homes and be completely ruthless about adapting their environment to suit them. Even after they developed the technology to detect mineral deposits underground with reasonable precision, they actually preferred to strip mine. By the time they developed faster than light travel their homeworld had no more mountains, a fact which can't be explained by efficiency.

Click to shrink...

...Some sort of religious obligation they felt needed to be done? Rather enthusiastic over-mining? They didn't like the view? Unfortunately, there's none left to ask about it...

Spoiler: Commentary spoilered for length

And no one has seen one for about four hundred years, when the last surviving settlement they had away from their homeworld was absorbed by the Reach. Their actual homeworld was absorbed nearly two thousand years ago.

The ships I'm looking at match the general outline of the files we have for their ships. The larger ships are essentially cones, the pointy part covered with guns Their FTL drives are supposed to be pretty good -precise, if not all that fast- and their sublight manoeuvrability is relatively poor. They never really had anything to do with the Controllers and none of them have ever served in the Darkstars.

Click to shrink...

That suggests a very thorough sort of aggressive combat doctrine. As in: Leave no enemy alive as you pass. And I suppose big conical gunboats wouldn't be all that agile...

I take a look around. Eight battleships, none of which are on record as having existed while they were still autonomous. Twenty cruisers, and about five hundred automated gunships. They use those instead of more conventional fighters, and according to my records are quite happy to just dump them and move the larger ships off without them. They act more like mobile flack than conventional fighters and exhibit only fairly simple behaviour. It's a decent sized force. Unless they've brought Scarab Warriors along Orange Lanterns could handle it, but a L.E.G.I.O.N. fleet would take casualties. Assuming that they could get into position fast enough. I'm not.. seeing any Reach naval vessels, so I'm not clear where they fleet would be retreating to when we started going after it…

Click to shrink...

Hmm... A very drone-focused methodology. Presumably they were very attached to their lives, and refused to risk them in direct assaults... Let's hope there's nothing unexpected to deal with.

I don't think I can learn any more with passive scans. Originally, none of these ships had anything that could interfere significantly with the effects of a power ring, so let's have a go.

Click to shrink...

Problem is what changes the Reach have wrought upon them. Which might not be so obvious.

Scans show… Shields, weapons and power all slightly improved. FTL… Altered but not strictly improved. It will allow them to make short FTL journeys more quickly but will fall off in performance if they try to travel longer distances. Which.. means… Aggressive deployment. Not hitting and running. Jump into the area, jump into contact, jump into bombardment position before reinforcements arrive… But if they get caught, they're done. The Reach don't design their own ships to work like that. Their people aren't disposable. Their commanders want to option to pull out and try again another day. These ships don't really have that.

Click to shrink...

So, cannon-fodder to be thrown at an enemy without concern for their survival. I suspect most of these remnant fleets will be like that...

Perhaps more importantly, I have enough information to know that I can destroy this fleet without much difficulty. There's no obvious reason to preserve any of the crew, but genetic samples will allow their species to be resurrected later if we decide to take that route. Grab a few samples for the-

Drives flare and the fleet vanishes.

Click to shrink...

Just as long as you can identify the Reach-made changes and try to revert them to original specs. That would be a nasty surprise...

-l.. ab..?

Where are-? There they are, not too far away. Not sure why they carried out a short jump. Practice? Security? They've left their gunships behind and they're… Patrolling?

Click to shrink...

A response to the scan? Random drill? Some sort of long-term avoidance routine? Who knows?

They're irrelevant. With stealth less of an imperative now that I'm not leaving a trail back towards my base ship I don't have to move quite so slowly. I mimic the effects of their FTL drives and go after them, appearing within a few metres of the hull of one of the battleships. Their shields… Are designed to block phasing objects, but their launch bays need to drop their shields in order to launch… There they go. And.. through…

Since the launch bay isn't designed for people, it isn't anything like as spacious as normal launch bays. The factory units spit the gunships out almost directly out of the mothership, the rest stacked one atop the other off to the side. But the area is accessible by engineering crews, so there's a door… With no anti-phasing shielding. I fly through there and start looking for somewhere to access the internal computer network.

Click to shrink...

So the drones are basically fabbed and spat out the door in combat? I bet there's a huge stockpile of raw materials sitting in the holds... Still, hardly worth keeping them intact for that...

The corridors are fairly roomy, which, again, is a feature their ships used to have. Short range scans pick up scale-fragments and DNA, but I won't actually take physical samples until it's time to act openly. I'm not seeing anything that would easily detect me, but all it would take is one scarab attached to one of the crew and the jig would be up.

Here we go. Maintenance hatch. Locked, but there's no force field and.. no damage detection in the structure of the metal. I take position, phase in and trigger my armour to extrude an exploratory cable, which punches through the hatch and worms its way down and inside. Cable there, carefully interface and link in…

Click to shrink...

To be fair, a pangolin-like species of humanoid would likely be broadly built. Now, to see how much data security they have...

I can't request data. For that I'd need log in details or to interface directly with the central database. But I can monitor data traffic and see what's going on.

And the answer is… Not a lot. Internal monitoring doesn't appear to refer to the central computer on a routine basis, which would be a weakness in some circumstances but doesn't make much difference for me. Gunship production figures are being sent, but only an automatic acknowledgement is being sent back.

Click to shrink...

And there we have it: Massive data security. Wow. I'm impressed at the level of compartmentalisation.

Ah, none of this matters. A hundred or a thousand won't make any difference to me. I need to find the crew, examine them and then destroy the ships. Nothing I'm getting identified the crew's location, but empathic vision… There, that'll do.

I withdraw the cable and fly in the direction of what appears to be an engineering workshop. Out of combat these are usually fairly quiet, while in combat they'll be a frantic hub of repair requests and damage control teams. If they're waiting for attack orders then they shouldn't be running drills because the last thing they'd want is to have anyone out of position when the shooting starts, but that doesn't mean that they'll have a full house.

Click to shrink...

Not likely to find some juluuni mechanics sitting around shooting the breeze. Especially after a short FTL hop like that.

No one in the corridors, but I don't know enough about their fleet doctrine to know how unusual that is. Their shields should block most forms of teleportation so they might well have decided that marine patrols were superfluous, and since this is a warship there wouldn't necessarily be a lot of traffic. Door to the engineering station is through there…

Ah, my first juluuni. It looks like they're working to turn ore into refined metals, but taking a look…

Click to shrink...

For all we know, they keep individual personnel teams isolated in combat. Would be one way to minimise potential blue-on-blue incidents... Especially not knowing how their instincts affect their combat behaviour.

Huh.

Okay, it seems that I was being a bit too harsh on the Reach. Someone deviated from the 'acquiescent, quiescent, obsolescent' paradigm. These people aren't just suppressed, they genuinely don't have desires outside being useful to the Reach any longer. Their neurology has been redesigned… Yes, and their genes as well to ensure that future generations are the same. Their endocrine system has had a bit of a rework…

Click to shrink...

...So they're little more than meat robots, dutifully carrying out their orders for the Reach masters? That's downright evil in its utilitarianism... Then again, he's only looking at Desires, not their full psyche... I doubt things are much better off for the other lights in them.

So. This is what the Reach has planned for us. The propaganda value will be significant if I can grab a few and record their responses to interviews. But there's no point in grabbing these individuals…

Huh. For a moment I'm reminded of what Zauriel said about angels. 'I am uncertain as to whether my mind is truly more limited than that of a deeply devout Human. What do you believe that free will means? What is it that you think that I lack?'

Click to shrink...

Maybe the higher ranks are more independent? Or at least more able to deal with situations outside their 'programming'?

I mean, I haven't seen a Reachian since I got here, and a look out across the fleet shows me no one with their particular desire set-up. Scan instead… Yes, no-

"BLAUGH-IGH! BLAUGH-IGH!"

Click to shrink...

So they're operated remotely, ordered about via long-range transmissions? Perhaps you can find the system that receives them and learn the specs to give them some bad orders? Also, what an offensive-sounding alarm... Sounds like someone hacking up a lung.

-sign of them, but that did set off the alarms and flashing warning lights. And-. And that was a jump; the fleet moved again. So they have a way to detect ring scans, and my initial scan may well have been the reason for the last jump. It might be interesting to have Ranx or Mother of Mercy to use their rings to do extreme range scans of the entirety of Reach space and see what happens.

Any sense in drawing this out further? No, I don't think so.

Click to shrink...

Heh. Set the remnant fleets scurrying about in pre-programmed responses that leave them wildly out of position? Would be amusing to imagine the frustration of their Reach managers.

I drop stealth, construct spears impaling the engineers in this section. A thick construct cable worms its way into the local computers and begins demanding data, while a crumbler construct punches its way through the multiple decks between me and the computer core. There are all sorts of protocols for wiping computers during boarding actions, but the fact is that if you wipe your own computers every five minutes it's very hard to get anything done. There has to be a delay while a report is confirmed, and it isn't that easy to-.

There's a flare as a fission explosion destroys the computer core. And… We've dropped shields and-. And the room shakes slightly as the rest of the fleet starts shooting at us.

Click to shrink...

Hmm... Looks like a nuke on a deadman's switch? That's one way to clean out boarding parties, especially if it's laden with the nastier radiation bands. We've already got a good idea of what they think of the crew's value...

Alright then. If

that's all it

takes, I'll take this ship's computer core into subspace and

Click to shrink...

Looting time. Yoink!

then try

this ship's bridge crew.

Click to shrink...

See if these ones are any more intelligent. At the least, they'd have to be more capable of reacting to unusual situations.

So, the juluuni have been rendered into little more than cogs in the Reach war machine? What's the bet ships from fleets like these are used as privateers to harass polities the Reach want to scare into an alliance? There'd have to be some reason to not simply render them down for raw materials, after all...

 

[Queshire]

Harry Potter's been on my mind lately. I imagine the process these guys went through could also produce something like what we see with the House Elfs there. SPEW was a joke because house elfs were legitimately happy and enthusiastic about their station. Except for Dobby trying to change things was distressing for them.

Imagine if OL got the interview he wanted but instead of acting like brain chipped drones they act like a house elf would if asked about wizarding society?

 

[Mr Zoat]

Needs a full stop.
to -> the
spit the gunships out almost directly out of the -> spit out the gunships almost directly out of the

Click to shrink...

Thank you, corrected.

 

[Z3r0Sama]

Let's take a moment and appreciate what those two Boxes are doing and the burden of their duty.

One needs to keep a violent man in check, while the other one needs to stay near renegade.

Poor Renegade's MotherBox.

Click to shrink...

Renegade managed to sweet talk his motherbox that genociding the Psions was perfectly acceptable course if action. It might be a waifu at this point.

 

[Darko]

24th August 2012

Click to shrink...

In the spoiler box page there was August 25th written above the link for this chapter.

They never really had anything to do with the Controllers and none of them have ever served in the Darkstars.

Click to shrink...

I think you may want to rewrite this, since that guy that Paul talked to a couple of chapters ago was mentioned as joining the Darkstars.

Most of them chose to enter suspended animation, but Threllian decided to join the Darkstars instead.

Click to shrink...

Unless they've brought Scarab Warriors along Orange Lanterns could handle it

Click to shrink...

maybe 'along, Orange'

so I'm not clear where they fleet would be

Click to shrink...

'their fleet'

There's no obvious reason to preserve any of the crew

Click to shrink...

Except potentially finding a solution on how to break the Reach's indoctrination methods.

Okay, it seems that I was being a bit too harsh on the Reach. Someone deviated from the 'acquiescent, quiescent, obsolescent' paradigm. These people aren't just suppressed, they genuinely don't have desires outside being useful to the Reach any longer. Their neurology has been redesigned… Yes, and their genes as well to ensure that future generations are the same. Their endocrine system has had a bit of a rework…

Click to shrink...

I don't think you're being too harsh on them.

If anything you were too easy on them.

I'm reminded of that scene in DS9 where that young Jem'Hadar bowed to Odo after seeing what he was, even though he tried to attack him moments ago.

It might be interesting to have Ranx or Mother of Mercy to use their rings

Click to shrink...

maybe 'Mercy use their' remove 'to'

 

[Darko]

...Some sort of religious obligation they felt needed to be done? Rather enthusiastic over-mining? They didn't like the view? Unfortunately, there's none left to ask about it...

Click to shrink...

Or just plain old stupidity.

Or greed, if strip-mining was somehow more profitable

Let's hope there's nothing unexpected to deal with.

Click to shrink...

Your hopes won't be met.

So they're operated remotely, ordered about via long-range transmissions? Perhaps you can find the system that receives them and learn the specs to give them some bad orders? Also, what an offensive-sounding alarm... Sounds like someone hacking up a lung.

Click to shrink...

An offensive sounding alarm to alert the crew of a offending party on the ship.

Or who knows, maybe they actually like the sound.

I'm reminded of a Stargate SG1 episode where a bit of alien music is played.

To the humans it sounds horrible, but to the aliens it belonged to it was apparently very pleasing.

So, the juluuni have been rendered into little more than cogs in the Reach war machine? What's the bet ships from fleets like these are used as privateers to harass polities the Reach want to scare into an alliance? There'd have to be some reason to not simply render them down for raw materials, after all...

Click to shrink...

They could also be using them as propaganda to show that they don't exterminate species and that those under them are happy.

 

[Darko]

Renegade managed to sweet talk his motherbox that genociding the Psions was perfectly acceptable course if action. It might be a waifu at this point.

Click to shrink...

I think he said they were like the love child of Granny Goodness and Desaad.

If that's true then it's easy to see why the Box wouldn't be so bothered by the idea.

 

[Mr Zoat]

In the spoiler box page there was August 25th written above the link for this chapter.
maybe 'along, Orange'
'their fleet'
maybe 'Mercy use their' remove 'to'

Click to shrink...

Thank you, corrected.

I think you may want to rewrite this, since that guy that Paul talked to a couple of chapters ago was mentioned as joining the Darkstars.

Click to shrink...

Wrong species. Threllian isn't juluuni.

 

[Rafin]

It might be interesting to have Ranx or Mother of Mercy to use their rings to do extreme range scans of the entirety of Reach space and see what happens.

Click to shrink...

Why would those two be better at doing something like that than the Illustress? It can't be personal computational capacity, because nothing forces you to actually read/absorb all the info you scan for instead of insta-dumping it or even creating a closed data packet on the ring for later use or sharing.

 

[Darko]

Wrong species. Threllian isn't juluuni.

Click to shrink...

Then why was he hopeful if it wasn't his species, it felt like it was?

Did he think that there may be more species the Reach haven't exterminated, even though the only one they know about are the Juluuni?

 

[Darko]

Why would those two be better at doing something like that than the Illustress? It can't be personal computational capacity, because nothing forces you to actually read/absorb all the info you scan for instead of insta-dumping it or even creating a closed data packet on the ring for later use or sharing.

Click to shrink...

Maybe because they're both much, much bigger than Paul and that can somehow affect the outcome.

 

[Agumentic]

Then why was he hopeful if it wasn't his species, it felt like it was?

Did he think that there may be more species the Reach haven't exterminated, even though the only one they know about are the Juluuni?

Click to shrink...

Because they know about more species that Juluuni, including Threllian's.

 

[rkyeun]

There's a flare as a fission explosion destroys the computer core. And… We've dropped shields and-. And the room shakes slightly as the rest of the fleet starts shooting at us.
Alright then. If
that's all it
takes, I'll take this ship's computer core into subspace and
then try
this ship's bridge crew.

Click to shrink...

And then when he takes that ship's computer core back out of subspace, it also registers tampering and nukes.

 

[RichardWhereat]

On another note, anyone know which members of the Light are still alive in the Paragon continuity?

...and, for that matter, how long it's going to be before Paul takes a swing at the rest of them?

Click to shrink...

In this thread, or in Praise of Eros?

 

[Mr Zoat]

Then why was he hopeful if it wasn't his species, it felt like it was?

Did he think that there may be more species the Reach haven't exterminated, even though the only one they know about are the Juluuni?

Click to shrink...

24th August 2012
15:55 GMT

"Looks like you're in, then. We'll be hitting your people's fleet second, just in case there's an overt trap involved. I'll want you on analytics."

"Yes, Illustres."

Click to shrink...

 

[Hell's Razer]

By the time they developed faster than light travel their homeworld had no more mountains, a fact which can't be explained by efficiency.

Click to shrink...

Obligatory MST3K Mantra disclaimer.
That aside, I see two solutions for this to allow them to survive having flattened their homeworld: weather-control tech, or REALLY impressive enclosed habitats. Because the kind of havoc on the weather patterns of a planet this kind of strip mining would cause is something I cant even guess.

That suggests a very thorough sort of aggressive combat doctrine. As in: Leave no enemy alive as you pass. And I suppose big conical gunboats wouldn't be all that agile...

Click to shrink...

... They are DRILLS. Their combat ships are drill shaped. Because they are low depth burrowers so of course the best way to breach a settlement's defenses would be to start digging.

 

[NightmareWarden]

... They are DRILLS. Their combat ships are drill shaped. Because they are low depth burrowers so of course the best way to breach a settlement's defenses would be to start digging.

Click to shrink...

It sounds like The Reach (THOSE FIENDS!) destroyed a Spiral Race.

This mustn't stand!

 

[Rafin]

Maybe because they're both much, much bigger than Paul and that can somehow affect the outcome.

Click to shrink...

That sounds like completely baseless speculation with no indicating priors.

 

[Mr Zoat]

That sounds like completely baseless speculation with no indicating priors.

Click to shrink...

It's not a matter of size. It's a matter of having brains designed for extreme range remote detection.

 

[lars]

I'm currently rereading the story from the start, but has Grayven reconnected with Jade after the falling out In "Last Supper"?

 

[Darko]

I'm currently rereading the story from the start, but has Grayven reconnected with Jade after the falling out In "Last Supper"?

Click to shrink...

He met her again when he and Will, the clone Roy, were looking for the original Roy, and she helped them.

He has her working for him, but I don't think they've really talked all that much.

 

[Michael Vonica]

I was wondering, just how big is reach space? I know it's really, really big, but is it like the size of a space sector big? I think Mr Zoat mentioned this before. And as for the universe as a whole, how big is that? And in DC, is it the case that the source wall surrounds the entire universe? How many galaxies fit in there? Some some things I was wondering.

 

[Someguy Somewhere]

Zoat's Mentioned briefly in the past that The Guardians consider the Milky Way Galaxy and parts of other near by galaxies as their turf, and cover those with assigned space sectors for Green Lanterns. So I'd figure that the old guardians treat the Local Group to be their lawn, and tell folks to get off it.

While they have the 2 Lanterns per sector rule, I don't think Zoat's using the 3600 sectors in total number from some DC lore (I Think the lore idea there was the guardians see the universe as round with Oa at it's center, so just split it by degrees and give everyone a 1 Degree wedge shaped slice of 10 sectors for each of those).

Aside from Sector Lanterns, there are Honour Guard members that have specific duties, such as regions of interest to watch over, or particular jobs to perform on behalf of the corps.

Reach space has been described as increasing in size by several times it's pre Green Lantern War state. Since it seems to take up a patch of at least several space sectors (by what ever scale the Guardians use for determining those) .


As for the size of the DC universe....I think Deathbattle took a crack or 2 at scaling that when calculating speed of some folks (Dr Fate's helm going from one end to the other a few times) . And their number was much larger then the 'best guess' that we have for the Real Life Observable Universe.

 

[Mr Zoat]

25th August 2012
00:44 GMT

Desire suppression and grab.

Juluuni officers fight weakly due to their training, but there's no passion to their actions as they're pulled across the bridge to me and stuck in a construct constraint box. I take a fraction of a second to send an interrogation command to the ship's computer, triggering its self-destruct.

"…of the Restitution, report in. If you do not respond, you-"

Singularity beam.

"-will be considered-"

I swing the beam in a low arc, space distorting as it slices through the ship's interior and out into space. Lights in the lower part flicker and die as I replace the projector with a construct jack and shove the two parts of the ship away from each other like an angry pearl inside a mussel.

Situational awareness, ring. And interdiction field.

Compliance.

The ships are manoeuvring, spreading out and-. Huh, they can eject their gunship production modules. That lets them flush their stores faster, but… They can't make more. And it looks like that's an emergency action that can't be easily reversed, creating a critical weakness in their hull. On the other hand, against most Lanterns it's probably the best thing they can do. There are now a lot of flak turrets out there.

Let's do something about that.

Positron beams, track and rapid fire.

Two weapon constructs appear just in front of me, aiming through the growing gap between hull fragments with their containment vessels glowing purple. Rays leap out, each one existing so briefly that the human eye can't truly see them but firing so quickly that there's a purple haze to the air. The positron beam doesn't convey a lot of antimatter and compared to a true lightspeed weapon it's somewhat slow, but the gunships are unshielded and close enough and predictable enough that every shot is a kill. Really, I'm just trying to lure out any Scarab Warriors who are on-site and feeling-

I feel it as half the fleet tries to jump out. They disengage their drives in good order when they realise that that isn't going to be happening.

-lucky. They aren't used to being weaker than their opponents. It's not just me: in all other encounters with Orange Lanterns where the Lantern has lived to report back, the Scarab Warrior has stubbornly refused to quit the field. Oh, they'll evade an attack or fall back in the face of numbers, but they just refuse to give up. I wonder if it's a programming error?

The battleships turn, accelerating away from me at their best sublight speed. While they do that the cruisers cluster closer, trying to line their guns up through the gap in the hull to get a clear shot at me. Not a terrible idea by any means, though the prow-mounted guns of the battleships mean that they can't add their fire to the attack while moving away from me.

Incoming message.

I reform my singularity beam projector and aim it at one of the more on the ball battleships that is firing at the upper portion of my 'shell' as it turns.

Play it.

I fire, cutting a plane through its main drive and reaction mass reservoir. No explosion, because I'm using a gravity weapon, but as I send a positron beam that way… Yes, there we go. The battleship massing goodness knows how many tonnes jerks in space at the force of the detonation, the hull coming apart from the inside.

"Illustres, you are still alive."

I recognise that voice.

"And you're out of qwa-matter. Good effort, though."

I aim and fire the singularity beam through the hull covering me, cutting through the battleship furthest away from me. I don't want them to think they can escape. I want them to stick around and try fighting me, because if I have to chase after them it'll waste my time. Shots from the cruisers are sporadically hitting my construct armour and the positron beams aren't doing anything to their shields.

"Your construct defences are impressive. I will have to use a bigger bomb next time."

A scything motion from the singularity beam and the cruisers aren't quite so aggressive any more. Given all of the options that a power ring grants its user, I feel that I'm being a little boring here. But… Well, when one form of attack is virtually always superior in effect and there's no way that you can cow the enemy into submission with a more showy attack… It just makes sense.

"No, no, the qwa-matter worked. The problem is that I'm immortal."

Now, do they have enough free will to work out that there must be a reason why I'm staying in one place? Oh, ring, acquire genetic scans of everyone in the region.

Compliance.

"That seems unlikely."

"And yet, here we are."

I replace the jack construct with an oversized clamp construct and push, lifting that half of the ship off me to give myself a better angle. Usually, I'd request an opponent's surrender by now. Or they'd offer it.

"You've got data on qwa-matter explosions and construct defences. You know that there's no way I blocked that."

But there's only so many times you can have someone suicide bomb your prisoner handling units before you learn not to do that. Still, it would be interesting to see how much freedom their admiral has, and the additional biological samples could be useful.

"Orange Lantern Illustres to surviving juluuni vessels. Power down your engines and surrender, or I will destroy you."

The next shot with my singularity beam goes through the bridge of the crippled cruisers. Two lucky effectives in that class left, and a few dozen gunships who dodged behind something.

"True to the Writ we live. True to the Writ-"

Track transmission and fire.

Compliance.

"-we-."

That battleship gets cut in half lengthwise.

"Die, yes. Anyone else?"

Mildly interesting, though. The Reach don't usually perform that sort of indoctrination. Loyalty to the Reach as a political entity, yes, but they don't share their religion with aliens.

The battleships open fire en masse, the ship around me still intact enough to block most of the opening barrage. I swing-.

A small bolt of energy hits me in the faceplate, and I turn to see that… Huh, okay, I'm impressed. A couple of juluuni marines made it this far, breaching the bridge and getting a shot off. My positron beams-.

No.

My railgun shots cripple their arms and legs, then I grab their weapons and destroy them before shoving the marines into my containment unit. They earned that.

But no one's surrendering. And looking at their desires, no one is even considering it.

Singularities all round it is, then.