Tag: colony

#Lore 24 – Entry #113 – Sci-Fi Month II #22 – Chroniclers of the Codex Infinitum

From the Personal Journal of Seraphino Basara, Chronicler of the Lady Goldeneyes, assigned UEF-04 Maharani Morgiana

My first strange new world!  I probably shouldn’t be getting so excited over the short visit we had in the Charvis system, but I simply can’t help myself.  Seraphina thought I was being a bit too excitable too, but she was just disappointed there weren’t any ruins to explore.  Did the planet or the solar system look particularly different from any of the others we’ve been to?  No, not really.  But it was just knowing that it’s all the way out here, on the frontier, and home to a true frontier colony that made it such a unique experience!  Getting to speak with the colonists, hoping for a successful new life far away from the rest of the world, tempting fate and putting their lives on the line just to see their dreams of free living come true.  It’s such a classic tale!

I recorded as much information as I could into the official records, of course, but still feel the need to say more in my personal journal.  It is one of the tenets of the Goldeneyed Librarian to record one’s own interpretation of experiences along with the facts of the event, after all.  How else can the Codex Infinitum be updated properly?  Oh, there is just so much we don’t know, so much we could know, if we could but glimpse its pages!  I digress, though; sometimes I do tend to ramble…

The colony itself, a pleasant enough little village by the name of Swiftwater Creek, will likely grow into a proper town and likely even larger soon enough.  Our planetary scans indicated that the world is stable, the system itself shouldn’t experience any particularly devastating solar events for the foreseeable future, and raw materials and food were plentiful.  The colonist’s rangers described some of the predators in the area they chose to settle within as comparable to most worlds, not the highly aggressive ‘Demon Sector” variants encountered on some worlds.  It’s entirely likely they are upon this world too, and simply haven’t been encountered yet, but the colony is well defended, and keeps their ships in working order should they need to evacuate in an emergency, or at least, as well as can be expected.  I would assume they’ll have more assistance coming soon, given that A3 have staked claims on several of the asteroids in the belt, and on the moon.  Some of the colonists I spoke to were understandably apprehensive about the coming corporate entities to the system, but others, as much as they wanted to get away from such things, find the idea of aid close by reassuring. 

Perhaps in a few years, once we’ve reached Marchosias, I can return to Charvis and see how things have progressed?  It would certainly make an interesting follow up to this entry, I think!  I’m not the only one, either.  My brother and sister Chroniclers, well, most of them, were just as eager to explore this world as I was, in their own ways.  I’m just now starting to look over all the scans that were done, and while nothing leaps out as amazing, I’m still going to perform my due diligence so that we can properly discuss the colony during our next long jump; I believe it will be another few weeks before we’re due to drop out of hyperspace again.  Some may dislike the slow speeds we’re limited to by the bulk of the Morgiana and her docked support vessels, but I find that it’s absolutely perfect for getting caught up on our collected notes and data; we should easily have it properly processed and catalogued by the time the next courier missile is launched.  I must say, since the Chroniclers adopted these Thought-to-Text and data processing implants, it’s made our jobs much simpler and more efficient.  Having the group discussions in a virtual space took a little getting used to, but I’ve come to enjoy our times in the VR version of the ancient Great Library on Andyllion.  My only real fear is running out of space in our storage matrices, but we should be able to create new ones should we find ourselves with the need for them.

I am curious, though; given that there are only a hundred of the Chroniclers aboard, will we be enough to properly record all that should be saved?  It seems like such a small number, but it is more than the first three expeditions had, and they seem to be getting along fine.  Perhaps I’m just worrying over nothing here, idle thoughts, I suppose.  Anyway, I think I will venture out into the Morgiana now that we’ve returned to hyperspace and get the impressions of some of the other explorers who were along with us.  I am rather curious what the reporter, Seiko Kajira, thought of her interviews with the colonists, and some of the scouts who got to explore some of the different regions of the surface of Charvis VII. 

So much work to do!  So much information to record!  Truly, exciting times!

#Lore 24 – Entry #112 – Sci-Fi Month II #21 – The Most Depressing Place in the Demon Sector (So Far)

From the Personal Journal of Seiko Kajira, Galactic News Gazette reporter, assigned UEF-04 Maharani Morgiana

No, it’s not my cabin on the Morgiana, surprisingly enough.  After two weeks in hyperspace, I was more than ready to do something besides talk to other unfortunates aboard the ship and come up with ideas on exactly which rumors to spread to who, so of course I hopped aboard a transport to the first of the “colony” worlds we’ve encountered to see what life on the frontier was like.  You know, my actual job out here.  Planet looked nice enough from orbit, Charvis VII they called it, outside a big asteroid belt, far away from a very hot sun.  Or at least I think that’s what the nerd I spoke to meant.  I don’t know astrophysics, so whatever, I’ll take the scientist’s word on this or that; it’s in the official report I filed, part of the official interview.

It’s a gods-forsaken shithole is what it is.  They called it a colony, but it’s like a collection of mud huts on some primitive backwater.  Okay, maybe it’s not that bad, just a lot of haphazardly thrown together prefab shelters that are starting to show their age.  Must’ve been maybe two-hundred people there, if that, mostly humans.  I mean, who else would be that stupid, amiright?  No diseases running rampant, thankfully.  They were friendly enough, though, seemed happy working their farms and being away from the rest of the civilized galaxy.  Got a few people to tell me all about it while we were there; it’s in the report.  Reckon the techies from the Morgiana installed some kind of communications equipment on the surface and on one of the moons, some kind of hyperspace relays I think, to help boost transmission quality and relay time back to Aphelion Station.  For the really important communications, the Morgiana uses some kind of “courier missiles” as they called them.  Basically, just hyperspace-capable pods that get shot back to Aphelion ever so often, packed with sensor data and reports and the like.  Much more reliable, apparently.

Anyway, first stop in the depths of the Demon Sector was terrible.  Was I really expecting anything more, though?  I don’t know, I just figured it would be more exciting, I guess.  Like gunfights on the street like in Paradise City on Valefar V or rampaging monsters against the plucky colonists, that kind of thing.  Spent a few days there while some teams from the Morgiana did some proper scans of the system and set up for some resource collection operations in the near future.  Really boring stuff, unless you’re that druid who was really excited about the local wildlife; never seen someone get so excited over what looked like a mutated cow.  Didn’t even seem to be anything too exciting happening within the colony, just “living the good life”, away from the hustle and bustle of the big cities and the megacorps.  Good for them, I guess?  Not the kind of life for me.

FUCK!  I hate this fucking place!  I honestly thought about jumping ship, staying at the colony until the next corpo team comes along and hitching a ride back to Aphelion.  That lasted about two seconds, though.  Who knows how long that’d take?  Just have to stay focused on what I can do here, I guess.  Maybe it’s just going to take me a while to find my grove here.  I mean, I’ve got my burgeoning career as a fiction writer, after all.  Already starting to see a little excitement starting up though; saw a fight break out at VV’s place the other night after one of the rumors I’d started got some tempers fired up.  Maybe I should pace myself a bit, not get things too hot too soon?  It’s a long damn trip after all.

Think I’ve sniffed out a few prospective interesting subjects aboard to focus on next.  Mizutani’s still fun to mess with; he really does get off on being spoken down to.  Makes him squirmy; I can tell he’s getting a hard-on and trying to hide it.  That feradogian he’s taken up with seems a bit intimidating, though; he’s friendly enough, but always has this hungry look on his face when he looks at me.  Positively predatory.  Might try to get to know that female ferakatian scout who was part of the crew who visited the colony, just to see if I can get something stirred up.  Heard fights between ferians are intense; might be fun to watch.  Don’t think security would take too well to it; that security chief doesn’t like me already.  Not that I care, though; can’t stop the free press!