Bright_Ops

Post Apocalypse Drop-In Worldbuilding

And the war begins.

Post Apocalypse Drop-In Worldbuilding

Location - A Series of Events

Foundation of Gibb.

Originally an inland settlement in Western Australia, Gibb became a coastal ruin due to the environmental shift and rising sea levels that caused Western Australia to be abandoned by humanity. It would not stay abandoned however. A tribe of Octopi would move into the region in time and, discovering various written words left behind by the elder race that had originally lived there, opted to retain the name Gibb... at least in writing. They pronounce it very differently then the humans of old did.

In time, the city state of Gibb would start to attract other tribes of Octopi interested in trade... and in time other cities from the south. Octopi explorers, colonists and fortune seekers seeking to discover new lands, establish new homes and discover what resources were out there would from over the Octopi world would gather in Gibb as a staging ground towards the northern part of their known world.

While not the grandest of the Octopi city states, Gibb was a prestigious one and generally well respected among their peers.

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First Contact

The exploration of the Octopi at Gibb was mostly focused along the coast, with a handful of expeditions heading inland. However, one expedition opted to swim out north in order to see what was out there. No one from this expedition returned and the Gibb Octopi took their disappearance as a sign that they should focus their exploration efforts in other directions they were better prepared for.

Unknown to Gibb, the doomed north expedition had actually found land. And a complete new and alien people they had never seen before!

Unfortunately for them, this new land and people they had discovered was one of the southern most islands of Indonesia. The human occupants left none alive and discovered two things that day. The first was that the strange octopus creatures tasted pretty damn tasty. The second was that Australia might not have been such a lifeless waste as was originally believed.

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Bloodshed at Gibb

It took the pirate scouts some time to locate Gibb; While it had become a center for the Octopi in the north of their known world, the Australian coastline was rather big and the logistics of scouting along it required covering a lot of ground. It was via running into an exploration group of Octopi exploring the coast that the scouts started to narrow it down (as well as remain in the field longer due to having new provisions).

The raid on Gibb was a time of firsts for both the attacker and defender. While the humans were raiders by lifestyle and profession, they had never assaulted an Octopi settlement before. For the Octopi... this was the first time one of their settlements had ever been truly assaulted with hostile intent. They had built some defenses in order to help protect them from wild animals from both inland and the water, but until this point there had never been a need for the Octopi to fight amongst each other; This was the first time in their history that an intelligent being capable of thought opted for violent hostility.

The raiders hit hard and fast during the night. The Octopi, many still in the process of waking up scared and confused did not get the opportunity to organize a defense against such a fast, organized assault. Those that tried to fight back were killed or maimed to die slowly. Many were taken by the raiders. The pillaging continued until their boats were full of slaves and whatever seemed worth taking at the time. What they couldn't take, they set fire too.

A third of the population of Gibb were killed or taken in a single night... and their homes on land were burning.

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The start of the First Octo-Human war.

While the majority of Gibb was shell-shocked by what had happened and word began to trickle down to the other city states of what happened, a group of Octopi hunters that had managed to escape into the ocean when the raiders came bravely decided to follow the boats. Their motives for doing so were many and interlinked, ranging from trying to save friends and family to seeking vengeance on the monsters who had attacked them unprovoked, but they followed all the same.

The pursuit lasted for days, with the Octopi opting to go without sleep in order to keep up with the raiders... but not catching up with them until the boats reached land. While the desire to launch an attack right then and there was strong, the hunting party was exhausted and the enemy's numbers had increased as those who had remained on the island appeared to help celebrate the return of an overwhelming successful raid. A frontal assault was suicide, so the party opted to find a hidden location nearby and set up camp.

Once they had rested up and scavenged from what little was available under the waves, the hunting party would sneak onto land under cover of darkness. Their goal was to find and liberate their people. They found their people but... nowhere near as many as had been taken. The traumatized survivors... or at least those still able to talk, told a harrowing tale of what happened to the rest of their people.

While the urge to avenge their murdered and consumed people was strong, the hunters knew that they were the only ones who knew the way back home and that without them, the people they could save wouldn't make it back alive. And they now knew where their vile enemy lived. With vows to return one day to wipe this nest of monsters out to the last, the Octopi focused on getting those they could save home. They would not be taken by surprise like this again.

The pirates for their part were furious when they discovered that some of their recently occupied slave pens were empty and those guarding them were dead, but they still had a few pens deeper in and they now knew where this tasty and ill prepared new source of meat could be located. They had some time to rest and prepare for another raid. Plus they needed to let the stupid creatures pretending to be people a chance to repopulate a bit before the harvest.

Post Apocalypse Drop-In Worldbuilding

I confess the one I just added was somewhat grim but... well, marauding and pillaging tends to become the norm when the land you live on cannot provide what you need to live comfortably... and cannibalism tends to become more normal when stable food supplies aren't happening with a large group of people.

The two tend to go hand in hand a bit, since it's a lot easier to kill and eat someone if the only thing you know about them is that they stabbed Frank in the gut.

Post Apocalypse Drop-In Worldbuilding

Location

The Indonesian Cannibal Pirate Kingdoms

With the rapid changes in ocean level as the ice caps melted, a great deal of the islands that once made up Indonesia have disappeared under the waves. Few of those islands that remain are able to produce resources such as food and overpopulation is common. As such, marauding and piracy has become the standard way of life, since it is one of the only means of gaining enough supplies to survive long term.

While proper food is a priority for these raids, the lack of fertile ground in the region and issues with local sea life due to changing climate and over-fishing has caused a rather dark change to the definition of 'food'. Those killed during these conflicts are generally destined to end up on the menu, while captives taken will often be treated as cattle to help fight the hunger of the victorious band and their respective island.

While their raids and conflicts are often with each other, on occasion one of them will launch a raid or attack outside of the Indonesian area. These raids are viewed by their neighbors with a high degree of dread.

Post Apocalypse Drop-In Worldbuilding

@YouPeople1993

Glad I could surprise you.

Teen Titans: Ouroboros

Bob

Bob was quiet as he stared at one of the hardest challenges he had ever had to face in his life; highschool level algebra. He rather enjoyed the written word and numbers often made sense… but the combination of the two was throwing him for a bit of a loop.

While the difficulties of solving what X represented was generally a challenge that was shared by those Bob’s age, Bob himself was in somewhat… different circumstances than most. For starters, Bob wasn’t in a classroom, or enrolled
At a high school for that matter.

Bob was set up in his room of the titan tower, sitting at a desk that was specially made for his abnormal height and weight, working with a keyboard that had been scaled up for his fingers to properly make use of the keys as he slowly but surely hammered away at the problems on the screen from his online, remedial high school work.

Almost everything in Bob’s room had been specially designed with Bob in mind. It had to be. He was just… too big and bulky for standard equipment. If it wasn’t designed with being durable to his level of strength in mind, it tended to get broken rather quickly. Not because he wanted to break it, but because he simply didn’t have the fine motor control needed not too. He [i]tried[/] to be careful all the time but… well, all it took was a lapse for just a second.

Taking a deep breath as he finally felt confident enough in the current math problem to enter it, he glanced at the time and decided that was enough for now… before he got frustrated. It was time to go and have breakfast.

The residents of the kitchen almost certainly hear Bob’s arrival before they saw him. His bulk caused him to have rather heavy footfalls. When he entered the kitchen, nine feet of genetically altered humanity offered a warm smile as they reached up to carefully adjust their almost comical reading glasses with surprising care.

He was wearing a singlet that easily showed that just about all of the bulk in his body was working muscle and healthy fat. He had opted for a pair of black pants this morning… and on his feet were a pair of giant, fluffy blue rabbit slippers. “Mornin’” he offered in a friendly manner before walking over to the fridge and removing a whole carton of eggs.

Pulling out a large bowl, he started the careful task of cracking each egg open as he worked on his morning scrambled eggs… and tried to keep as much egg shell out of it as possible. Not because he couldn’t eat them, but just for the challenge of it.

Teen Titans: Ouroboros

@Master Crim
Sure, I’ll take a list.

Teen Titans: Ouroboros

@Mistress Dizzy

Oh no, this isn't a 'skim of the top' deal. This is 'The full payment for construction services was paid, but not to the actual company'.

Truth be told, the idea was based on something that actually happened locally where I live. As highschool was doing some construction work and they got an email at around the time they were expecting the bill that appeared to have come from the construction company that had the right amount of money connected to it. Since everything looked correct, they paid it... only to discover later that the account for the transfer connected to the bill wasn't the construction companies.

Pandor has basically done that, only with the added layer that the bill legit came from Mistletoe Construction. Much easier then just trying to create a fake email account or making a fake bill email.

Teen Titans: Ouroboros

Well, Pandor's off to a strong start.

Teen Titans: Ouroboros

While the reopening of Star Labs was somewhat controversial due to safety concerns of its future scientific developments, before it could be reopened at all it needed to be refurnished and rebuilt. While it wasn't exactly dilapidated (Jump City wasn't Gotham after all), the buildings of Star Labs had been empty and abandoned for some time, with most objects of value either being taken by the original owners, sold off when the company shut down, was looted by trespassers during its period of abandonment or simply left to rot and gather dust.

While Lex Corp almost certainly could afford to have construction crews from just about anywhere in the world flown in to handle the labor of being the labs back to structurally sound condition, it was simply cheaper and easier to hire one of the experienced local companies to do the work. The decision was also motivated by a desire for positive public relations; Lex Corp spokesmen being able to say during interviews that they was providing employment and money to local businesses might not have negated the controversy of the Labs and its history, but it did serve the purpose of making the whole situation more palpable to the officials of Jump City and thus more willing to go against the public outcry.

The fact that the company in charge of this construction project, Mistletoe Construction, was distantly owned by Lex Corp via complicated legal arrangements and business transactions was not publicly known. But in the public eye, appearances are important.

And it was the appearance of independence that Pandor was going to take advantage of.

Having slipped into Mistletoe Construction's primary office a few days prior, it had taken him a bit of time to work out exactly whom he needed to be watching; While one would automatically assume that he should have gone for one of the higher ranked members of staff, if not the CEO themself, but the realities of corporate culture meant that the people who actually did the work that allowed the company to function were generally a few rungs down the ladder.

It had taken a bit of searching, but in time he found that his target was a member of the financial department named Karen. Pandor had staked out Karen's computer in the form of a small spider hidden behind her neglected snack tub of mixed nuts from her latest doomed attempt to motivate herself to have a healthier lifestyle in order to learn what passwords he needed to know. Then, when Karen had to leave work early because one of her feral children had bitten another at school, her manager was pleasantly surprised when she came back five minutes later having gotten a call from her husband that he was on his way to the school and she could stay at work.

After that, it was simply a matter of writing out the billing information for the Star Labs job and emailing it to Lex Corp... after making a minor alteration to what account the money was meant to be sent to. The email was sent fifteen minutes before 'Karen' went on her coffee break... and wasn't seen again until the next morning when she came back into work, an event that would be filled with anger and confusion alike.

While Lex himself was regarded as a business genius and in truth might have figured out something strange was afoot that the bill arrived a day or two early, a corporation the size of Lex Corp almost certainly didn't have its CEO bogged down with dealing with what were effectively minor affairs such as dealing with a bill from a subsidiary company. The faceless office drone in question, once they confirmed that the price on the billing email in question lined up with what to expect and appeared to be a legit email from Mistletoe Construction (because it was), simply authorized the payment and went onto the next piece of business.

The payment itself did not go to Mistletoe Construction, but into a dummy account. It would not stay there long. It would go through a ripple exchange to have the fiat currency converted into e-cash and then into bitcoin. The whole transaction would go through a randomized cryptographic extension at the protocol level, then through a two tiered secure laundry service that Pandor knew he could trust. For all intents and purposes, the money disappeared into the ether once it was sent out and trying to trace it would be next to impossible... or at least so expensive and time consuming to do that it would honesty be better to take the loss at face value.

It would need to be, because if there was one thing Pandor had learned in his life, it was that corporations tended to hate losing money... and when they got upset, people tended to disappear.