Post by Frederic Bourgault-Christie on Mar 29, 2006 4:32:19 GMT -5
If people wish, they can use this thread as a way to post the origin stories of their characters. This can be a single formative event or many. Obviously this takes some time, so don't feel obligated.
Do you have any idea how big space is? How colossal the stretch between any two things? Even the Moon and the Earth are so far apart that moving faster than the greatest airplanes takes time to see any effect.
Across such titanic distances, two ships faced each other. One conjured the pirate ships of myth and lore: Riggings that were in fact cables needed for functions such as inter-ship grappling and emergency power, hidden turret stations with windows that resembled the cannonports of old replete with open-ended weapons firing colossal spherical balls (after all, in space wind resistance is scarcely relevant)... But differences were there: Ports where skirmishers could wear private hyperspatial or rocket sleds to close the distance were everywhere. The whole outside was .covered with segmented armor plates that would help channel the ship's forceshields and would serve to reactively direct force away from the vessel. The “mast”, a battering ram, had a figurehead of an embracing woman of the sea, completing the motif expressed by the ship's title: “Mighty Ocean”. On the other side of this great divide was a cylindrical shape almost like a cigar, resembling submarines of old. “Misshapen Terror” was this ship's moniker. The area around the ships was filled with police vessels of all kinds, awaiting like vultures. For these two adversaries were intergalactic pirate crews headed by pirates who had singlehandedly brought planets to their knees, to whom whole empires encompassing thousands of stars would pay tribute. Yet the two were not equal: The Mighty Ocean brought terror only to the opulent and tyrannical, the other to all without distinction.
In the front of the Mighty Ocean, the motley crue piloting the vessel formed to strategize. The bridge was set up with hundreds of consoles, all facing one viewscreen with one seat facing all of them. Sitting down in it was a man whose sheer bulk seemed to fill the whole cabin, and whose respect filled the entire ship. On his side was a cutlass gleaming with gray flame. His hand had no hook, and covering his eyes were no eyepatch but a pair of sunglasses. Tattooes of a broken ship, a fort both destroyed and standing, and a sea serpent covered his body, brown eyes and brown hair belying a decidedly abnormal personality. A crewmate close to the front, blond haired and eager, called out, “Captain Telesh has closed into sensor range, Captain Swaggard, sir.”
“Do not call him Captain again, lad. A Captain is validated by 'is crew. A Captain honors 'is commitments. A Captain does not stab 'is comrades in the back!” This man, Swaggard, spoke with confidence, control, commitment... His hold over his crew was obvious in its root.
A scintillating green-skinned woman, rumored to have more than an ordinary connection with the Captain, said, “Swaggard, shouldn't we do this... away from the police?”
“They'd find us everywhere, lass”, Swaggard said without betraying any of his feelings. “Nay, this fight must be handled by ourselves. If pirates are going to be free of the law, they must finish their business inside. Telesh was tolerable once. But he lost all claim to protection from us when he threw down his gauntlet.”
The images resonated throughout all of their heads. The annual meeting of the Gemfist Pact, the pirates united by a gauntlet that contained a gem representing their unique skills, the gauntlet passing to the head of every crew (Swaggard's was sapphire for his status as the Pirate of the Seas, while Telesh's was an obsidian diamond as he was the Pirate of Terror), had ended with disaster the last year. Telesh standing and declaring open war on every other member (rumored to be joined by the Pirate of Chattel), Swaggard rising up and telling him to sit down, Telesh challenging him as no member had and throwing down his gauntlet onto the table...
Coming onto the large screen behind them, a blue-haired woman wearing a similarly blue uniform buttoned to the right began to speak. “Swaggard. You know that whoever loses this will be set upon by the police. There's twenty governments here.”
Swaggard turned about. “Elva, you went into the police instead of coming into the pirates. Do you remember what you told me?”
“That preserving order would make people happy, that the law could be a protection.”
“And I promised not to interfere with ye because I knew that that came from yer heart and that ye would do what ye had to. I ask the same. We live without law because we live by our heart. Telesh lives by force. It's not the same. If we let him go, he'll destroy and terrorize trillions!”
There was a silence was wide as the distance between every ship in the sector. “I'll do what I can.”
Swaggard turned about one more time, bringing his full bulk to bear and standing on his legs that could move mountains. “Ye've been loyal to me through raid of convoy, merchant ship, planet and navy. I've demanded and ye've pushed with every power ye have, but I can't let ye come here unless you're certain. Telesh will give no quarter. Our ships will be in flames by the end of this. If any of ye need to live, I will think no less of ye. Follow yer heart: Life is what we all have been living. But sometimes there is that more important than even our lives!”
Far in the back, a very young boy shivered. The thought of losing his whole life, all the dozens of years (more than he had yet lived), scared him. And yet... Telesh couldn't be allowed to get away with this. He stood up and said, “Aye.”
Swaggard looked from side to side, and as if a wave was forming, the confirmation of every crewman began. “To battle stations!” The members scurried to computer terminals, to turrets, to miniature carrier ships...
And then the war began.
Cutting from space to space, as the authorities watched the bloodshed silently, came cannon fire, gouts of flame, bursts and rays of gleaming and scintillating energy. The ships drew closer and made barrel rolls, loop-de-loops, and other wild motions to evade the explosions and projectiles filling even the swaths of vacuum separating them.
In a breath-taking suddenness, crewmembers on both sides in encoiling drill tunnels, close-quarters sleds and miniature rocket ships entangled. Skirmishes erupted.
A young boy, a green woman and a blond man with a bandana, each in hermetically sealed suits, closed to battle. Three hideous and misshapen monsters faced them.
And, in the dead center of all of this, the antithesis of the eye of the storm, Swaggard and his adversary faced each other. Telesh's fair face had until now always been under armor, yet the true visage of the creature was now exposed. Elven features of pale lips, ears pointing into the space above, high cheekbones, slender eyelashes and eyebrows, enrapturing red eyes and fair blonde hair... And yet, the moment one's eyes glanced below the neck, one saw long clawed arms, a body covered with a tapestry of scars... Telesh smiled. His voice was as rich as butter and as vile as curdled milk. “Swaggard. You deserve to see this body. It will kill you. And only after your crew's blood has fed my cauldrons shall I spread terror in a wave across the galaxy. For you see, I can become a chaos god, if only there is enough blood. And when these police cruisers rush in and destroy us, that will be the last component of the ritual.”
Swaggard simply laughed. “Ah, so your predicament has driven you mad, hmm?”, Telesh inquired.
“No, Telesh. Because your lies and half-truths are so old that a child would laugh at them. Because you believe you can prevent your death by making me angry, when you fail to realize that doing so will only insure your demise!” Drawing his great pistol, the Admiral's End, he began to fire at Telesh. Telesh's armor formed out of light and masks, and his multi-cannon responded with webs of slashing destruction.
Below Swaggard, making a beeline of treacherous speed, a creature born from chaos, a feathered beast of green and red, rocketed up. Telesh's face contorted in something that would be a smile were it made by a beast any less foul: He had won.
Rupturing from nothingness came plumes of orange carrying metallic capsules. The creature was thrown away. Opposite it was floating where nothing had been a red and blue beast of brilliant colors with tendrils spreading outwards as if a flower.
“Telesh, you die here.”
“The Gemfist Pact will not survive the death of two of its members!”
“Then it will become a failed experiment, until such time as the states of affairs of this wretched reality has improved such that it will be tenable again. Ye will pay for yer crimes, Telesh.”
Telesh growled and cursed with a viciousness befitting a bloodsoaked animal. He screamed, and his vile power and the energy contained in his armor, Broodna the Mad, formed a psychic aperture of sheer delusion. Swaggard advanced slowly through it, his frame seeming to grow under the pressure. Force built in his every sinew, tendon...
Coming together, like a crab's blow, Swaggard's fist struck Telesh's fair head and his disgusting body, and compressed the two together as if a spring. Telesh bled: he was a gladiator, not a human brick. Telesh's blood spewed in spirals. A red light exploded outwards from him.
Swaggard backed away. As he fell into space, his body seemed to melt into the greatness of the ages, and in his eyes the white of heaven could be seen. And all became silent, as even the vile crew of Telesh could hear the words Swaggard had said when he formed the Gemfist Pact: “The seas of space and water are great indeed, but the sea of the human heart... that is the true frontier.”
Do you have any idea how big space is? How colossal the stretch between any two things? Even the Moon and the Earth are so far apart that moving faster than the greatest airplanes takes time to see any effect.
Across such titanic distances, two ships faced each other. One conjured the pirate ships of myth and lore: Riggings that were in fact cables needed for functions such as inter-ship grappling and emergency power, hidden turret stations with windows that resembled the cannonports of old replete with open-ended weapons firing colossal spherical balls (after all, in space wind resistance is scarcely relevant)... But differences were there: Ports where skirmishers could wear private hyperspatial or rocket sleds to close the distance were everywhere. The whole outside was .covered with segmented armor plates that would help channel the ship's forceshields and would serve to reactively direct force away from the vessel. The “mast”, a battering ram, had a figurehead of an embracing woman of the sea, completing the motif expressed by the ship's title: “Mighty Ocean”. On the other side of this great divide was a cylindrical shape almost like a cigar, resembling submarines of old. “Misshapen Terror” was this ship's moniker. The area around the ships was filled with police vessels of all kinds, awaiting like vultures. For these two adversaries were intergalactic pirate crews headed by pirates who had singlehandedly brought planets to their knees, to whom whole empires encompassing thousands of stars would pay tribute. Yet the two were not equal: The Mighty Ocean brought terror only to the opulent and tyrannical, the other to all without distinction.
In the front of the Mighty Ocean, the motley crue piloting the vessel formed to strategize. The bridge was set up with hundreds of consoles, all facing one viewscreen with one seat facing all of them. Sitting down in it was a man whose sheer bulk seemed to fill the whole cabin, and whose respect filled the entire ship. On his side was a cutlass gleaming with gray flame. His hand had no hook, and covering his eyes were no eyepatch but a pair of sunglasses. Tattooes of a broken ship, a fort both destroyed and standing, and a sea serpent covered his body, brown eyes and brown hair belying a decidedly abnormal personality. A crewmate close to the front, blond haired and eager, called out, “Captain Telesh has closed into sensor range, Captain Swaggard, sir.”
“Do not call him Captain again, lad. A Captain is validated by 'is crew. A Captain honors 'is commitments. A Captain does not stab 'is comrades in the back!” This man, Swaggard, spoke with confidence, control, commitment... His hold over his crew was obvious in its root.
A scintillating green-skinned woman, rumored to have more than an ordinary connection with the Captain, said, “Swaggard, shouldn't we do this... away from the police?”
“They'd find us everywhere, lass”, Swaggard said without betraying any of his feelings. “Nay, this fight must be handled by ourselves. If pirates are going to be free of the law, they must finish their business inside. Telesh was tolerable once. But he lost all claim to protection from us when he threw down his gauntlet.”
The images resonated throughout all of their heads. The annual meeting of the Gemfist Pact, the pirates united by a gauntlet that contained a gem representing their unique skills, the gauntlet passing to the head of every crew (Swaggard's was sapphire for his status as the Pirate of the Seas, while Telesh's was an obsidian diamond as he was the Pirate of Terror), had ended with disaster the last year. Telesh standing and declaring open war on every other member (rumored to be joined by the Pirate of Chattel), Swaggard rising up and telling him to sit down, Telesh challenging him as no member had and throwing down his gauntlet onto the table...
Coming onto the large screen behind them, a blue-haired woman wearing a similarly blue uniform buttoned to the right began to speak. “Swaggard. You know that whoever loses this will be set upon by the police. There's twenty governments here.”
Swaggard turned about. “Elva, you went into the police instead of coming into the pirates. Do you remember what you told me?”
“That preserving order would make people happy, that the law could be a protection.”
“And I promised not to interfere with ye because I knew that that came from yer heart and that ye would do what ye had to. I ask the same. We live without law because we live by our heart. Telesh lives by force. It's not the same. If we let him go, he'll destroy and terrorize trillions!”
There was a silence was wide as the distance between every ship in the sector. “I'll do what I can.”
Swaggard turned about one more time, bringing his full bulk to bear and standing on his legs that could move mountains. “Ye've been loyal to me through raid of convoy, merchant ship, planet and navy. I've demanded and ye've pushed with every power ye have, but I can't let ye come here unless you're certain. Telesh will give no quarter. Our ships will be in flames by the end of this. If any of ye need to live, I will think no less of ye. Follow yer heart: Life is what we all have been living. But sometimes there is that more important than even our lives!”
Far in the back, a very young boy shivered. The thought of losing his whole life, all the dozens of years (more than he had yet lived), scared him. And yet... Telesh couldn't be allowed to get away with this. He stood up and said, “Aye.”
Swaggard looked from side to side, and as if a wave was forming, the confirmation of every crewman began. “To battle stations!” The members scurried to computer terminals, to turrets, to miniature carrier ships...
And then the war began.
Cutting from space to space, as the authorities watched the bloodshed silently, came cannon fire, gouts of flame, bursts and rays of gleaming and scintillating energy. The ships drew closer and made barrel rolls, loop-de-loops, and other wild motions to evade the explosions and projectiles filling even the swaths of vacuum separating them.
In a breath-taking suddenness, crewmembers on both sides in encoiling drill tunnels, close-quarters sleds and miniature rocket ships entangled. Skirmishes erupted.
A young boy, a green woman and a blond man with a bandana, each in hermetically sealed suits, closed to battle. Three hideous and misshapen monsters faced them.
And, in the dead center of all of this, the antithesis of the eye of the storm, Swaggard and his adversary faced each other. Telesh's fair face had until now always been under armor, yet the true visage of the creature was now exposed. Elven features of pale lips, ears pointing into the space above, high cheekbones, slender eyelashes and eyebrows, enrapturing red eyes and fair blonde hair... And yet, the moment one's eyes glanced below the neck, one saw long clawed arms, a body covered with a tapestry of scars... Telesh smiled. His voice was as rich as butter and as vile as curdled milk. “Swaggard. You deserve to see this body. It will kill you. And only after your crew's blood has fed my cauldrons shall I spread terror in a wave across the galaxy. For you see, I can become a chaos god, if only there is enough blood. And when these police cruisers rush in and destroy us, that will be the last component of the ritual.”
Swaggard simply laughed. “Ah, so your predicament has driven you mad, hmm?”, Telesh inquired.
“No, Telesh. Because your lies and half-truths are so old that a child would laugh at them. Because you believe you can prevent your death by making me angry, when you fail to realize that doing so will only insure your demise!” Drawing his great pistol, the Admiral's End, he began to fire at Telesh. Telesh's armor formed out of light and masks, and his multi-cannon responded with webs of slashing destruction.
Below Swaggard, making a beeline of treacherous speed, a creature born from chaos, a feathered beast of green and red, rocketed up. Telesh's face contorted in something that would be a smile were it made by a beast any less foul: He had won.
Rupturing from nothingness came plumes of orange carrying metallic capsules. The creature was thrown away. Opposite it was floating where nothing had been a red and blue beast of brilliant colors with tendrils spreading outwards as if a flower.
“Telesh, you die here.”
“The Gemfist Pact will not survive the death of two of its members!”
“Then it will become a failed experiment, until such time as the states of affairs of this wretched reality has improved such that it will be tenable again. Ye will pay for yer crimes, Telesh.”
Telesh growled and cursed with a viciousness befitting a bloodsoaked animal. He screamed, and his vile power and the energy contained in his armor, Broodna the Mad, formed a psychic aperture of sheer delusion. Swaggard advanced slowly through it, his frame seeming to grow under the pressure. Force built in his every sinew, tendon...
Coming together, like a crab's blow, Swaggard's fist struck Telesh's fair head and his disgusting body, and compressed the two together as if a spring. Telesh bled: he was a gladiator, not a human brick. Telesh's blood spewed in spirals. A red light exploded outwards from him.
Swaggard backed away. As he fell into space, his body seemed to melt into the greatness of the ages, and in his eyes the white of heaven could be seen. And all became silent, as even the vile crew of Telesh could hear the words Swaggard had said when he formed the Gemfist Pact: “The seas of space and water are great indeed, but the sea of the human heart... that is the true frontier.”