Of course, why wouldn't it be?



Damnit Alsojames :P, I've got (very likely) better-than-I competition

Saseav wrote:
my idea is fine, no?

Just to clarify, this is what I was talking about when I said of course. :P

In the darkness of space, a lonely barren planet orbits a forgotten star. The planet was once a Terran utopia, and a prosperous civilization once ruled its surface. Their civilization may have ended millenia ago, but one of their creations, made for war but locked away for their own safety, still functions. Beneath the surface of an airless planet, a deep and sinister evil begins to stir, waiting to be released.



The Doom of Humanity: While the Empire continues to call it the Scourge, every species recognizes this terrible devastation as almost certainly a sign of the apocalypse. A terrifying fusion of consuming organism and relentless machine, The Scourge is some kind of semi-virtual virus that has the power to invade minds and the very cells of organisms, and reshape them at will. The virus spreads through the blood, making anyone suspected of being cut by or near one a possible victim of turning, becoming one of the Enraptured. The creatures spawned by The Scourge are relentless and unfeeling, but while they die with their cells, only the burning of anything they come into contact with will truly remove the virus. Any world touched by an invasion is instantly cut off from the rest, and planetwide quarantines are rigorously enforced.



The Scourge was found, oddly enough, by a Sophon exploration team searching a barren world orbiting a star that sat near the fringes of Empire space, but had not been colonized due to its barren nature and the lack of Endless remnants. The Sophons discovered ruins on the planet, and set to categorizing and studying as much as they could from the ancient culture before their curiousity had been sated. In the texts they deciphered, a mysterious warning against the releasing of a weapon came up, time and again. Being Sophons, they traced this warning back to a sealed entrance, locks and several apparent guard posts guarding the way. The door was sealed tightly, but the Sophons set to unsealing the chamber with lasers. Little could they know that the stasis chambers inside had long since broken down from decay, and something evil lay open inside. Upon entering the dark chamber, a small creature launched itself against the leader of the group. The leader was cut, and the beast ripped off and killed. Half of the Sophon team took the leader back to the ship, while the other half continued to scan the room on high alert.



What the half that remained in the chamber found upsetted them deeply. Other bodies lay strewn about several monitors and stasis tanks, but they made a shocking discovery. The bodies had been mutated, and the stasis chambers forcibly ripped open from the inside. The computer monitors were without power, but several ancient notes preserved for millenia within the airless room contained information about "the weapon" that was undergoing testing to see if it could be controlled, but the tests had failed before the project had been canned and the room closed off forever. Low on air, the Sophon team returned to their ship, expecting to share new information with their comrades. Instead, upon opening the doors the crew was attacked and several wounded by one of their team members. The crew was dead, but continued to operate, and against the landscape of a barren world, a lone Sophon ship took off.



First attempt, fire away. I'm thinking the rough timeframe will be about 50 or so years after the Carter's deployment. Just to give us some time to escalate the war, before this shakes things up. I'll make the Operation Snowfall page as soon as I can find the time.

Javarino wrote:
In the darkness of space, a lonely barren planet orbits a forgotten star. The planet was once a Terran utopia, and a prosperous civilization once ruled its surface. Their civilization may have ended millenia ago, but one of their creations, made for war but locked away for their own safety, still functions. Beneath the surface of an airless planet, a deep and sinister evil begins to stir, waiting to be released.



The Doom of Humanity: While the Empire continues to call it the Scourge, every species recognizes this terrible devastation as almost certainly a sign of the apocalypse. A terrifying fusion of consuming organism and relentless machine, The Scourge is some kind of semi-virtual virus that has the power to invade minds and the very cells of organisms, and reshape them at will. The virus spreads through the blood, making anyone suspected of being cut by or near one a possible victim of turning, becoming one of the Enraptured. The creatures spawned by The Scourge are relentless and unfeeling, but while they die with their cells, only the burning of anything they come into contact with will truly remove the virus. Any world touched by an invasion is instantly cut off from the rest, and planetwide quarantines are rigorously enforced.



The Scourge was found, oddly enough, by a Sophon exploration team searching a barren world orbiting a star that sat near the fringes of Empire space, but had not been colonized due to its barren nature and the lack of Endless remnants. The Sophons discovered ruins on the planet, and set to categorizing and studying as much as they could from the ancient culture before their curiousity had been sated. In the texts they deciphered, a mysterious warning against the releasing of a weapon came up, time and again. Being Sophons, they traced this warning back to a sealed entrance, locks and several apparent guard posts guarding the way. The door was sealed tightly, but the Sophons set to unsealing the chamber with lasers. Little could they know that the stasis chambers inside had long since broken down from decay, and something evil lay open inside. Upon entering the dark chamber, a small creature launched itself against the leader of the group. The leader was cut, and the beast ripped off and killed. Half of the Sophon team took the leader back to the ship, while the other half continued to scan the room on high alert.



What the half that remained in the chamber found upsetted them deeply. Other bodies lay strewn about several monitors and stasis tanks, but they made a shocking discovery. The bodies had been mutated, and the stasis chambers forcibly ripped open from the inside. The computer monitors were without power, but several ancient notes preserved for millenia within the airless room contained information about "the weapon" that was undergoing testing to see if it could be controlled, but the tests had failed before the project had been canned and the room closed off forever. Low on air, the Sophon team returned to their ship, expecting to share new information with their comrades. Instead, upon opening the doors the crew was attacked and several wounded by one of their team members. The crew was dead, but continued to operate, and against the landscape of a barren world, a lone Sophon ship took off.



First attempt, fire away. I'm thinking the rough timeframe will be about 50 or so years after the Carter's deployment. Just to give us some time to escalate the war, before this shakes things up. I'll make the Operation Snowfall page as soon as I can find the time.

Prometheans from Halo? haha. The sad part is that (after reading until the 2nd or 3rd sentence of the second para) it actually will work because it might have been one of the virtual Endless devices to convert the organic endless into what they wanted to destroy. Too busy to read the rest for now, I'll try my best asap

Christ, So is this more of a zombie-fying bacteria that you can see infecting ants on earth or is it more like the film Alien?

Igncom1 wrote:
Christ, So is this more of a zombie-fying bacteria that you can see infecting ants on earth or is it more like the film Alien?

A Promethan from Halo 4 using the body of an Predator-Alien Hybrid O_O



Read the rest of it, its a bit short, but very good



Edit: you know what, my idea sounds retarded. Let's just go with Alien

I haven't played Halo 4, so I don even know what they are!

Igncom1 wrote:
I haven't played Halo 4, so I don even know what they are!

They are humans that have had their brains turned robotic so they can inhabit metal and fight as an intelligent but disposable force.



Well I considered them more on par with Halo's Flood, an all consuming pan-galactic organism that converts the flesh of what it captures into a living mind, the Prometheans are more robotic in nature and seem rather metallic, being based on pure information. My idea is almost a mix of both, the organic consumers are run by a virus "program" that can respond to others in a synchronized information web. It can also dissect and analyze data gathered by the host, and share it with others under its influence.



All single programs start out completely oblivious except for the information gleaned from the host's brain (or AI core, the virus doesn't discriminate, though they grow larger through organics and only "possess" automatons) and the program's single directive, which is to encode others with its basic matrix. Once the mind-web is big enough, they begin to "think" of smarter ways to go about accomplishing the program's directive.



Just some clarification. And not Alien, though xenomorphs are awesome they are also unconventional when thinking about infecting entire galaxies.





Edit: Also, I'm not sure if I should make them Endless creations for the Virtual Side, or maybe they were made by a smaller empire trying to compete against the Endless but died before their "weapon" was complete.

That might be a detail best left to the echos of time (I.e. don't tell the reader any origin of this event).



As for the effect, they kinda work like a organic von neumann probe.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Von_Neumann_probes



SO the program could have taken its instructions a little bit too seriously, and used any method to complete the objective.

Igncom1 wrote:
That might be a detail best left to the echos of time (I.e. don't tell the reader any origin of this event).



As for the effect, they kinda work like a organic von neumann probe.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Von_Neumann_probes



SO the program could have taken its instructions a little bit too seriously, and used any method to complete the objective.

Basically 90% of all AI and robots in games, movies and comics

Igncom1 wrote:
That might be a detail best left to the echos of time (I.e. don't tell the reader any origin of this event).



As for the effect, they kinda work like a organic von neumann probe.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Von_Neumann_probes



SO the program could have taken its instructions a little bit too seriously, and used any method to complete the objective.

Gotcha. Read the thing on the probes, but they are more like robotic observers aren't they? Still its a neat comparison. And who needs details anyway? lol



Summary: The Scourge is a semi-organic weapon built for a bygone age, recovered by unaware Sophon explorers, that is unleashed into the center of the galaxy, (did this on purpose, I want them to be inside Empire space but not so that they completely envelop them, and it could make for impromptu alliances when you have to beat back a common foe that is on everyone's doorstep.) and becomes a constant diplomatic modifier from now until we decide what happens to it.



Also: I made it so that The Scourge can only transmit information within a limited range, which is why everyone is rushing to prevent them from discovering the Cravers, who's hivemind strength would be almost overpowering.

Well not necessarily, especially as Von Neumann probes are more likely expert systems then actual AI.



And as more AI in 90% of media working in that fashion, the AI Skynet from the terminator films actively sought humanity's demise in order to protect it's self from death, time travel technology was used to cut the problem off at the head by eliminating the birth of human resistance leaders and the like.



Ultimately failing in the task some how, but yeah, not a system gone specific.



Edit: Sounds good Javarino, can't wait to see how this develops!

That largely solved itself the moment Skynet decided that time-travel assassination was a good thing, clearly it had a logic gate error when it was trying to compute the probability that it would send a random 850 series Model 101 Terminator to the 1980's. By sending the Terminator there, for the purpose of averting its death, it ensured that in every subsequent timeline it would have to send a Terminator there.



No 1980's Terminator, no Sarah Connor Badass. No Sarah Connor Badass, no John Connor dorky rebel. No John Connor dorky rebel, no John Connor post-apocalyptic revolutionary. No John Connor post-apocalyptic revolutionary, no 1980's Terminator.

Damn it, I hate temporal mechanics so god damn much.



I usually think these things through, damn you Waylander, damn you all to hell! lol

Javarino wrote:
which is why everyone is rushing to prevent them from discovering the Cravers, who's hivemind strength would be almost overpowering.

I dunno, I think it could be funny to have a single craver become infected, and then watch as all of his friends next to him pull out their shot guns and just eviscerate his corpse.



And then send a message to the Sophons like "Look, It didn't work the last time people tried it, and it won't work this time." just for the lulz

Igncom1 wrote:
I dunno, I think it could be funny to have a single craver become infected, and then watch as all of his friends next to him pull out their shot guns and just eviscerate his corpse.



And then send a message to the Sophons like "Look, It didn't work the last time people tried it, and it won't work this time." just for the lulz

It feels best if its a Endless experiment, because it's pretty advanced. I don't know, I haven't done much lately so I guess I don't have a say. But it was trapped, and canonically, Endless were the only ones before and they had a "civil" war per sae, even though its was virtual vs organic.

stasik28 wrote:
It feels best if its a Endless experiment, because it's pretty advanced. I don't know, I haven't done much lately so I guess I don't have a say. But it was trapped, and canonically, Endless were the only ones before and they had a "civil" war per sae, even though its was virtual vs organic.

I know about the civil war, but even in the game you find artifacts that are apparently from some random civilization that rose and fell long ago. I'm not sure if those were meant to be Endless or not. If they were than cool, lets say that they have Endless origins that are tied to the Virtual faction.



Don't worry about contributing long stories, I need people like you to dissect what I write. That's what makes it better .

Lol I love the face in the end. What artifacts are from random civilizations? Can you link me one, I'm interested in this backstory! . We all need to dissect what we all make. I kind of wish people dissected my stuff more, I kind of feel that with me its a "post whatever, help whenever" , no offense

uffered. This presented a business opportunity, the Ameoba needed as many ships to fund them to hold their own against the UE and to continue pushing into their old territory against the UE. After 5 years of negotiations and under the final draft the agreements to be signed with the UUR and the Ameoba, requested the Horatio sent over large amounts of engineers, ships, and gold to be repaid with advanced technologies to further enhance the offensive/defensive capabilities of their ships as well as a reimbursement of the gold given after a 100 years.



There was of course no problem in funding them or supplying large amounts of men, this was of course the advantage of cloning and banking. However to supply the ships and transport the men the Horatio promised without grabbing the attention of the UE was the main concern. In June of 3760, the Horatio mobilized their gifts under the pretense of colonizing an uninhabited system. The System of Coerth, was relatively uninhabited as the surface of the only planet had been blasted during a Horatio raid of a pirate fleet centuries ago. Escorted by a 'small fleet' the Horatio claimed a sizable pirate fleet had captured civilian ships, which began to make short jumps towards the UUR who had a small fleet waiting there to aid in the escort of the ships. After a series of short jumps, the combined UUR/pirate fleet firing upon any of the lighter UE ships trying to intercept the 'pirate fleet'. The technology was also traded at Coerth, and by August 3760, the UUR and more specifically the Ameoba had received several hundred smaller manned ships an initial as 20,000 thousand engineers and laborers Who proceeded for the most part to take over in terms of building ships in UUR/Ameoba space.



In Horatio space, the Horatio prepared for a push from the UE and with the technology gained from their agreements, they were able to field top of the line ships to protect their territories..

Saseav wrote:
uffered. This presented a business opportunity, the Ameoba needed as many ships to fund them to hold their own against the UE and to continue pushing into their old territory against the UE. After 5 years of negotiations and under the final draft the agreements to be signed with the UUR and the Ameoba, requested the Horatio sent over large amounts of engineers, ships, and gold to be repaid with advanced technologies to further enhance the offensive/defensive capabilities of their ships as well as a reimbursement of the gold given after a 100 years.



There was of course no problem in funding them or supplying large amounts of men, this was of course the advantage of cloning and banking. However to supply the ships and transport the men the Horatio promised without grabbing the attention of the UE was the main concern. In June of 3760, the Horatio mobilized their gifts under the pretense of colonizing an uninhabited system. The System of Coerth, was relatively uninhabited as the surface of the only planet had been blasted during a Horatio raid of a pirate fleet centuries ago. Escorted by a 'small fleet' the Horatio claimed a sizable pirate fleet had captured civilian ships, which began to make short jumps towards the UUE who had a small fleet waiting there to aid in the escort of the ships. After a series of short jumps, the combined UUR/pirate fleet firing upon any of the lighter UE ships trying to intercept the 'pirate fleet'. The technology was also traded at Coerth, and by August 3760, the UUR and more specifically the Ameoba had received several hundred smaller manned ships an initial as 20,000 thousand engineers and laborers Who proceeded for the most part to take over in terms of building ships in UUR/Ameoba space.



In Horatio space, the Horatio prepared for a push from the UE and with the technology gained from their agreements, they were able to field top of the line ships to protect their territories..

"gold"? :P what. and Horatio engineers and ships... I thought they were beauty over quality? XD Not sure if that's the best idea haha. Horatio raiding pirates? if it's near the UUR, it'll probably be more a UE problem, considering their proximity and the Horatio's distance (at least through Igncom1's map) Make sure you change it to UUR, not UUE But what top of the line technology are we talking about? The UE is one of the most advanced with their MAC gun. The Amoeba's comes with their giant ship, and Sophons haven't had any love yet