OfWindAndRain

Post Your Pikcha

@Stormflyx really like that bracelet

From Stardust, to Stardust: The Return(Sci-Fi Fantasy)(Always Accepting)

New Jordun Inner-Territory System
New Jordun High Orbit, Third Fleet Standby Position-- Flagship HMFCV PRIDE'S BREATH

Alarms sang their high-pitched, siren scream as an automated message of clicks and snickers pierced the cacophony, demanding that all active crew were to report to their stations. Hundreds of Taybuse across the ship scampered through tight corridors, some scrambling up ladder-like steps set into walls to reach their consoles and stations. Fighter pilots scrambled into their ships in the launch bay, the low hangar ceiling oppressive and dark as they fit themselves into the bullet-like craft, designed to be fired out launch tubes like a mass accelerator.

Inside the Ready Room adjacent to Command Information Center, or CIC, more commonly known as the Bridge, stood a Tayb with black and white laurels hanging from his shoulders, a hood of similar plain colors draped over the crest expanding from either side of his skull. A rattling hiss emerged from the Tayb's mouth as he received the first sensor scans-- an entire fleet, at first a ghost and then rapidly dropping from cloak-- or warp?-- some distance from New Jordun's orbit, still in interplanetary space.

Unacceptable, hissed his thoughts. Who dares enter Inner-territory without permission? The Vastayans...? All the ships are of unknown design. Not the Vastayans...

Growling in the Tayb's clickity fashion, the Admiral rose from his comfortable seat the same moment a Tayb burst into his Ready Room. Slimmer and more refined, this aristocrat was here for the experience a little else; nonetheless the human equivalent of a midshipman snapped a salute at the sight of the Admiral, quickly hissing his apologies for interrupting, and relaying the XO's request for his presence on the bridge.

Emerging from his Ready Room at the rear of the CIC, he barked out at the assembled bridge crew. They hissed back, affirming that he was taking command. The XO paused, before repeating what the officers had just said, formally transferring command. The Admiral, not bothering to reply, marched forward to where the XO was hastily stepping away from the holographic map and the Commander's Command Console next to it. It was the commander officer's place to stand in front of the assembled bridge crew, unyielding and without need of creature comforts while in command.

With another series of commands, the entire fleet began to re-orient itself. One of the Commonwealth's only major fleet carriers was on the front of a possible offensive, and one of the first commands was the launch starfighters, then bombers.

One Fleet Carrier, a squadron of Heavy and Battle-cruisers, two squadrons of Light Cruisers, and three squadrons of Support Carriers, plus a couple squadrons of Missile Destroyers and multiple Corvette squadrons.

Only a few dozen ships against over ten times our number. Who are they, and what do they want?!

Messages were already being sent back to Fleet Command, untraceable and undetectable. Orders were being received at the same time, and real time communications were being set up for highest level of Admirals and politicians to watch the engagement. However, they were not to overstep their bounds and give the commanding Admiral direct orders; such a thing wasn't a problem only a few years ago, but the reveal of instantaneous communications also brought a bill to be passed-- commanding officers could not be removed or overruled unless in the most dire of circumstances, such as treason or somesuch.

Which meant all decisions were up to the Admiral, who was listening to a message sent to them from a foreign, unmet race.

SAIPri-FCV003-- the name of the Shipboard Artificial Intelligence for Pride's Breath, FCV003-- flickered into being over the holographic display of rapidly updating information. Several patrols around the system began reporting in over the quantum communication link, routed through CentCom, rapidly amounting to another dozen ships out in interplanetary space who could flank the hostile fleet if need be. The floating Tayb head that made the AI's visual studied the display quietly, already following orders given to it to decipher the alien language. It wasn't that the aliens hadn't deciphered their own language- a simple enough process, given that there were thousands of aliens on each of the Free Trade Worlds, where such information could be easily sourced- but rather then phrasing. They put the message into their language, but the syntax was difficult and strange, likely to cause a headache or two in any Tayb that tried to read and understand it as it was written.

From its four launch tubes, the Fleet Carrier began firing starfighters out, spitting them into seemingly random directions as they exited the ship and dropped under cloak. Little more than a cockpit with all its supplies, a drive core and a reactor, plus weapon mounts, the starfighters were easily the weakest and the fastest ships in the Taybusen arsenal. Twenty minutes after the first sensor readings of the foreign fleet, and they were surrounded- or what constitutes for it in the vastness of space. The three torpedoes each starfighter had was locked onto a variety of ships that were identified and targeted by the carrier's active sensors, letting the fighters remain undetected and passive, under cloak, and still be prepared to fight. Shortly afterwards followed bombers-- carrying thrice the load of torpedoes, and not a single plasma weapon between them, instead opting for compact laser turrets-- and then gunboats-- larger ships that barely fit into the launch tubes and could probably wipe out a few Corvettes on their own.

The gunboats were, in many ways, the Taybuse's ace-- they had a capital ship reactor and drive core, with a fully modern and capital ship-sized ECM suit, plus a dozen torpedoes and multiple laser and plasma arrays. They were capable of heavy firepower, fast, and difficult to target because of the sheer amount of ECM that the gunboats had access to.

Like the bombers and fighters before, they didn't go active; almost all the ships in the fleet remained passive-sensors only. They were powering up, and easier to detect, but undoubtedly much harder to detect than the Fleet Carrier and its Heavy Cruisers, sweeping local and distant space with active sensors. It simultaneously made them far easier to detect, and anything nearby easier to detect as well, but it would pull off accurate targeting and fire on the smaller ships to pile it on the ships that could take it.

Torpedo tubes were opening along the hulls of ships, power cells actively charging laser and plasma weapon capacitors, shields flickering into being around the ships.

Some thirty minutes after the Admiral had called battle stations and received the message of non-hostility... from a comparatively massive fleet. If they had a weak defense, and/or underestimated them, they might be able to take them on... but they were aliens. Who knew what tricks they had up their sleeves?

<<A declaration of non-hostility is recognized, attention. Trespassers in system, turn back. Numerically superior force is refused, Admiral AusUel demands majority of fleet is removed. Non-hostility aliens would threaten new friends with large military force capable of numerical conquer. Majority of Fleet is demanded to be removed; deep interstellar space preferred, warp-away preferred. Compliance leads goodwill, refusal demands hostilities. If non-hostilities genuine, fleet leave, representatives stay.>>

It took a while, but a suitable message was sent in reply. The Admiral, after seeing the foreigner's terrible, terrible syntax and understanding of language, wondered if they'd be able to even understand proper Lagsu.

~ Titanfall: Remnants of the Corsair Platoon ~

Interested!

From Stardust, to Stardust: The Return(Sci-Fi Fantasy)(Always Accepting)

@Queen Raidne

Fanart of Overwatch's Mercy in their imagining of a 'Fairy' skin.

From Stardust, to Stardust: The Return(Sci-Fi Fantasy)(Always Accepting)

@DracoLunaris@Alfhedil

there's also the fact that making arks could be considered massively wasteful as well, especially considering how *easy* they'd be to hit, and the massive amount of logistics and architecture that'd be required to make such a massive construct that wouldn't fall apart if a single part of it started moving. After all, a normal starship sitting on the ground would probably tear itself apart, if only for the fact that you only need to build the structure around the center of mass and wherever the propulsion is, versus the entire structural integrity that's required of an aircraft or naval ship, because of the immense pressure that the entire thing receives from *gravity*.

Colonizing planets would be cheaper bro.

Furthermore, you'd have to have some really good defensive measures in place. Something so large, again, would be really easy to hit. A fleet sitting twenty lighthours away could just fire thousands of railguns and mass accelerators. It'd be extremely hard to detect inanimate, unpowered, ballistic projectiles of such small size. The difficulty and cost of setting up a defensive sensor grid to detect and eliminate any such projectiles, natural or fired from a hostile weapon, would be expensive.

I'm no GM, these are just my thoughts on it. This is also soft scifi, so being as realistic as possible isn't a necessity. Just my take on things. You do you bro

From Stardust, to Stardust: The Return(Sci-Fi Fantasy)(Always Accepting)

Barren Source System
Black Hole Research and Exploitation Facility, orbit

With a snap of unseen energy, three warships shocked back into normal space with a small ripple in real-space. A single battlecruiser, flanked seven kilometers to either side by its missile destroyers, slowly spun in space to angle towards an orbital slot around the giant frame that hung in deep space some four million kilometers away. It was standard procedure; every ship was required to warp outside of orbit of any occupied gravitational well, and be challenged and verified before they could approach.

It took a minute or so for the battlstations around the giant frame supporting EM projectors, drive field modules, and the inwards-pointing mirror, to detect the ships; no sensor could detect other ships faster than light, after all. It took another minute more for the challenge to be received by the small patrol fleet, and one more minute in addition to that as the response was beamed back to the battlestations. The code given was verified in the battlestations' networks, and then another challenge was put through the quantum entanglement communication network to Interstellar Fleet Command, back on the homeworld. It verified there, and another challenge was sent from the battlestation through the same network through to the given origin of the patrol fleet. The local fleet base there also confirmed the verification code.

Ten minutes after appearing in-system, the ships received confirmation to approach. They were given authorization to take data from the sensor network that had detected them-- a massive array of hundreds of thousands of small passive-sensor stealth platforms that dotted the three-dimensional space around the black hole and its mortal masters. Missile platforms tracked the warships as they accelerated up to Sublight Cruise Acceleration, the speed that limits wear and tear on the device while still providing the best possible acceleration.

Even as they passed a network of hundreds of thousands of platforms, mass produced things, some of which have been in service for just a couple years, some for decades, the ships themselves didn't actually *spot* any of them. Even though the entire area was seeded with passive sensor arrays and defenses waiting to go active, the ships' sensors weren't powerful enough without going active to detect a single one. It was only the command network that clued them in to their existence.

Halfway to the facility, the ships' drive fields reversed, their constant acceleration switching to a negative value as the ships slowed their journey. They had received orbital slots; from four million kilometers away, they had a route precisely planned to bring them straight there.

Some fifty hours after arriving in their orbital slots after the relatively short trip, the ships were again ready to leave. This time, however, a dozen freighters were in tow. While the freighters each had a much greater size and tonnage, a single destroyer could've taken them all out.

Loaded in the freighters were one of the most prized tool that the Taybuse had created: the powercell. Using a variety of technologies, the stations that orbited the black hole and its EM Sphere that amplified all the EM waves that went in injected massive amounts of power into the power cells. While inefficient as all hell, this construct had been in service for a few decades now, and the energy bouncing around inside the sphere was carefully controlled to be as efficient as possible: the energy cells that these freighters were packed full of, more than a fusion reactor could produce with the freighter filled to the top with the most efficient fuel could produce in its lifespan-- Taybusen fusion reactors had a tendency to run hotter and wear down faster.

So power cells were a fantastic solution, given an energy source that didn't require all that much effort to maintain. Warships loaded powercells into their energy weapons to allow the on-board reactor nodes to focus on powering life support, drive nodes, etc. Plasma might be their most effective energy weapons, but laser turrets worked best for point defense; plasma traveled slower, could miss. Lasers didn't miss, though they took notably longer to kill something. If a warship powered all its energy weapons at once, the reactor wouldn't be able to keep up-- it would handle it for a few hours, maybe, but after that battle was over, it'd have to be completely torn out and replaced. Powercells allowed higher effectiveness.

The small fleet of fifteen ships left the watchful eyes of a dozen battlestations, several squadrons of warships sitting idle, and another shipment coming in.

His Royalty's investment in black holes definitely paid off. Not only did he command the military, he supplied them with one of their most important technologies. Maybe, many a captain and politician had thought, that was the entire reason the Tayb was still in power. At a snap of his fingers... their military fleet's efficiency would drop from one hundred percent... to forty. All the admirals were in his pocket.

From Stardust, to Stardust: The Return(Sci-Fi Fantasy)(Always Accepting)

Dyson spheres are incredibly expensive. There are easier ways to harvest loads of energy.

From Stardust, to Stardust: The Return(Sci-Fi Fantasy)(Always Accepting)

@Willy Vereb
Oh what really? Thats kinda lame.

I still like it but its sorta lame.

From Stardust, to Stardust: The Return(Sci-Fi Fantasy)(Always Accepting)

I also recommend using that notebook.ai website. You can write up your race, government, notable characters, creatures, locations, etc.

From Stardust, to Stardust: The Return(Sci-Fi Fantasy)(Always Accepting)

Recommended that we use Notebook.ai for organiational purposes. I've even created a universe for people to add their stuff to, if they so wish:
notebook.ai/plan/universes/120032

Taybusen Commonwealth

---

---

---

Taybusan Commonwealth of Jordun

---

Race:
Proper terms:
Taybuse [singular]
Taybusen [plural]
Taybusian
Tayb [colloquial, singular]
Taybee [colloquial, plural]

An alien race that externally resembles Earthen reptilians, even though they share characteristics of mammals, reptilians, and amphibians.

NATURAL ATTRIBUTES:
Height: 4' 6" --- 5' 9"
Weight: ~175 --- ~250
Lifespan: ~55 --- ~80
Avg IQ: ~133 --- ~144

Eyes: Slit pupil, any warm color
Skin: Skin is black or darker shades of grey
Scale: Any color with the majority of the saturation pulled out of it; generally just 'grey.' Can be dull or shiny based on diet.
Build: Lean, wiry, dense.
Speed: 26mph average, 38 mph record

Arms: 4 total, individually are slightly weaker than a human's, individual finger strength is superior, clawed
Legs: 2 total, bipedal, designed for longer, strides, awkward during strafing movements

Biology:
Carbon-based lifeform, breathes higher concentrations of oxygen. Cold-blooded, can be kind of sluggish and slow in cooler environments, but grow notably more excited in hotter environments, and in situations that get adrenaline pumping. Very much a race that needs some time to start moving quickly.
Diet:
Requiring sugars, vitamins, proteins, etc., just like humanity, with the added requirement of an increased need for iron or other kinds of metal, and a variety of herbs that are extremely acidic given the right conditions.
Special biology:
Uses local homeworld herbs to produce an extremely powerful acid inside a special stomach; when consuming metals, such as iron, steel, silver, or gold, the Tayb's scale-stomach breaks down the material and uses it to grow scale. Strength, hue, and shine of scale is reliant on the metal consumed.

History, Abbrievated:
The Taybee evolved on a planet that, where humanity saw more skin and fur after the extinction of large-scale reptilian creatures, such an event did not happen. Those dinosaurs that existed on the homeworld of the Taybee, in their high-oxygen environment, were never wiped out. The high oxygen content let such creatures exist easily, though evolution saw the creation of what would eventually because the modern Taybee; given twp thousand years, the Taybee ruled over their planet, and the great psuedo-dinosaurs of their homeworld only survived in reservations, as pets, exhibits, or trained warbeasts.

Given another four thousand years, and the Taybee have created a competitive and capitalistic society, ruled over by a monarchy that was formed some five hundred years earlier from the five largest corporation-governments dissolving into a single, five-branched line of royalty. Surrounded with the upper echelons of lesser royalty- those who are of the ruling families of similarly powerful and large corporations- they compete for power and influence across their planets, moons, asteroids, etc.

Modern-day, these fleet-minded creatures have a heavy reliance on their politics and economy, boasting an extremely robust system for both absorbing independent colonies that left the homeworld and its split governments behind many decades before, and for producing everything from industry to agriculture. Only three branches of the primary monarchy remain, whom compete each generation for their Heir to be King or Queen.

Government:
Oligarchical monarchy. They rule and have rulers based on a 'royalty' and 'nobility,' though these royals and nobles are raised to such status because of their economic prosperity rather than some sort of god-given right, or might-makes-right ideal.

Military:
Powerful, modern ships in moderate amounts. The vast majority of ships are freighters, and only a relative few are warships.

Squadron = 5 ships

Ship type list:
- SDN- Superdreadnought (No ships, schematics) - Superheavy warships boasting the most guns, armor, and fleet control.
- FBB- Battleship (1 squadron) - Massive warships featuring the biggest guns, and some of the heaviest armor.
- FCV- Fleet Carrier (4 ships) - Extremely large warship boasting armor and launch tubes for deploying smallcraft.
- FDN- Dreadnought (4 squadrons)
- ECV- Escort Carrier (2 squadrons)
- FHC- Heavy Cruiser (2 squadrons)
- FBC- Battle Cruiser (6 squadrons)
- FLC- Light Cruiser (8 squadrons)
- FSC- Support Cruiser (20 squadrons)
- FDM- Missile Destroyer (22 squadrons)
- FDE- Escort Destroyer (30 squadrons)
- FCA- Corvette (34 squadrons)

- FFF- Freighters: (Ranging from century-old ships to modern, updated ships-- they have very long lifespans)
- FFH- Heavy/Maxicarry Freighter
- FFS- Medium 'Superspeed' Freighter
- FFM- Medium Freighter
- FFL- Light Freighter
- FFP- Passenger liner
- FFY- Pleasure Yacht

Carrier-launched craft:
- Gunboat (4 squadrons per FCV, 1 squadrons per ECV)
- Plasma Space Fighter (8 squadrons per FCV, 5 squadrons per ECV, 2 squadrons per heavy/superheavy warship)
- Shuttle (3 squadrons per FCV, 2 squadrons per ECV, 2 squadrons per heavy/superheavy warship, 1 squadron per medium warship, 2-4 per light warship)
- Inter-atmospheric Multirole Fighter (3 squadrons per FCV, 1 squadrons per ECV)
- Inter-atmospheric Gunship/Armed Transport (3 squadrons per FCV, 2 squadrons per ECV, 2 squadrons per heavy/superheavy warship)

Religion:
None. They see the concept of faith in something they cannot test anything of to be largely foreign.

Specialization:
Heavy industry: these are resourceful creatures who are intent on competitive, capitalistic expansion. Industry such as cloudscoops in orbit of gas giants, for harvesting helium-3 and other gases, orbital industry nodes for processing asteroids pushed into planetary orbit, industry nodes for constructing basic items, and shipyards are common and used often.
Advanced Manufacturing: If something is hard to produce, requiring long hours of specialized craftsmen, it's going to be these guys that produce it. Given their claws, their four arms, and their thought speed, they work well with delicate processes that require an intelligent touch. Advanced machines and electronics are easier for these creatures, and it shows in their high quality and success rate with such things.
Black Hole Exploitation: With excessive research, these creatures know how to exploit black holes both as a source of energy, or propulsion. They have the specifics down with both theory and experience.

Notable Technologies:
Faster than Light travel:
- Hyperdrive: This is a moderately sized device that is used to accelerate ships on a level above realspace propulsion, such as chemical or electrical propulsion, but definitely only for interplanetary travel. Generally a percentage of lightspeed, or just slightly over c.
- Warpdrive: This is a moderately large device that is used to leave realspace and travel, at extremely high speeds, across a 'compressed' version of realspace. Allows for extremely fast travel, up to several times c.
- Foldingdrive: This is an advanced, delicate, and extremely powerful device which requires a singularity, a very large energy source, and extreme caution. Instantaneous travel, because of its ability to 'fold' realspace and cross immense distances by threading between the fold from one place to another. If unlucky, side effects will trigger: 1-9 hour period of unconsciousness, grogginess, exhaustion, temporary memory loss, shock. While it is instantaneous, it is still dangerous.
Drive Core
- This device is similar to a shield generator and a reactor core at the same time. It projects a field around a ship, and provides propulsion via advanced and difficult technology. Drive Cores, or Drive Nodes, are used instead of thrusters, to accelerate a ship. The downside to them being contained within the hull, without needing to be placed on the rear of a ship, is that they produce more heat, require more energy to operate, and have a certain resonance to each drive node. Ships can be identified by recording this resonance. Furthermore, damage to the ship's reactors can simultaneously damage drive cores-- abrupt power loss, failure, or overcharge can damage delicate systems within Drive Nodes.
Anti-material Pulse Cannon
- This is a somewhat simple combat design, reminiscent of a plasma weapon, with an inner containment field, a special, delicate series of field generators, and a nozzle to project the containment fields' contents out of. Layered far more heavily with armor than anything else on the ships it inhabits, its also designed to project any blast inside of it outwards- outside of its mount, there's usually a secondary shield between the turret and hull of the ship to prevent any cannon malfunctions and detonations from harming the hull. The reasoning is simple: The containment fields are used to fire tiny amounts of antimatter. The containment field briefly extends out a hundred meters from the barrel, and small particle beams arrayed around the barrel itself fire to damage shields and clear space of any stray particles, to allow for the small amount of antimatter to hit its target without detonating prematurely on space debris of any sort.
Quantum Engineering
- The Taybee have become skilled in using quantum mechanics, from instantaneous communication nodes to quantum computing.
Neural Engineering
- The Taybee have designed and specialized tools, both for war and economy, that uses or requires a neural uplink. Due to extensive research, such technology is stable and safe; anywhere from neural implants to allow remote, mentally-commanded access to the datanet to power armor that links with special combat implants to be controlled by the mind, the Taybee have taken great advantage of their psychology-- that is, due to having six limbs, their minds are more accepting of being able to operate more complex machines than a creature that only has four limbs.

@OfWindAndRain