https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=130.58.238.233&feedformat=atomUltronomicon - User contributions [en]2024-03-29T15:25:16ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.35.7https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Talking_Pet_(device)&diff=257Talking Pet (device)2004-09-07T00:38:08Z<p>130.58.238.233: </p>
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<div>The first and last of its race, a new life form created by the Umgah gengineers, perhaps the most dangerous creature in the known galaxy before its death. The Ariloula'leelay observed the crash of a Kzer-Za Dreadnought in the Alpha Pavonis system during the Doctrinal Conflict; seeing that the Dreadnought's self-destruct function had malfunctioned, for unknown reasons they chose to investigate the wreck and salvage it. The starboard warp pod from this wreck was used to build the Portal Spawner they gave to Captain Zelnick, while the only surviving life form from the wreck, the Kzer-Za Lord's Talking Pet, was taken by the Arilou for medical care. Since biology was not their field of expertise, the Arilou decided to take the Talking Pet to their Umgah friends to be treated.<br />
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The Umgah, rather than merely healing the Talking Pet's physical wounds, grew curious about its genetic code, finding long sequences of apparently useful genes that had been deactivated by artificial processes. Not knowing about the process by which the Ur-Quan had enslaved the Dnyarri and devolved them into the Talking Pets, they repaired the Talking Pet's DNA, both reactivating the racial memory system stored naturally in Dnyarri genes and restoring the Talking Pet's full intelligence and use of its psychic powers. Indeed, speculation exists that the Umgah gengineers' work enhanced the creature's psychic range and sensitivity far beyond that of its Dnyarri ancestors, since the original Dnyarri had needed to station themselves one to a planet to maintain their Empire while the neo-Dnyarri was able to exert dominance over the entire Umgah sphere of influence. However, this may have been a difference of subtlety in technique rather than increased power; it did not exert direct psychic control over all entities in the Umgah sphere of influence, since the Vindicator passed through Umgah space during the neo-Dnyarri's reign without its crew becoming possessed. Instead, it seems to have been able to implant post-hypnotic commands in its slaves that persisted for some time upon leaving its psychic field before wearing off; it was able to use this ability to fend off Zelnick's initial investigations by compelling him to fly to the Crateris constellation and attack the Sa-Matra.<br />
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Upon its awakening, the neo-Dnyarri, mentally taking stock of the events of the past 20,000 years, almost immediately embarked on a program of conquest and revenge. It quickly seized control of the Umgah homeworld, then began to send brainwashed Umgah slaves out of its sphere of psychic influence to search for information on the Ur-Quan and how they might be defeated. Unfortunately for its plans, the Umgah proved less than competent at deflecting the attentions of the nascent New Alliance of Free Stars. The human Captain Zelnick, armed with his Taalo Shield and his enormous Precursor starship, was able to fight past all the neo-Dnyarri's defenses. Planning to kill the neo-Dnyarri, he found that the Dnyarri's powerful instinct of self-preservation gave it enough strength to protect itself even with the Shield active, forcing Zelnick to spare its life and take it into his protection on the Vindicator. However, the Shield's power, as well as Zelnick's own strength of will, kept the neo-Dnyarri's powers mostly muzzled during its time on the Vindicator.<br />
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Details about the neo-Dnyarri's nature were hard to come by during its residence on the Vindicator, since it was not above using minor psychic compulsions to turn aside inquiries about itself, particularly its psychology and its psi abilities; initial tests, before the neo-Dnyarri began openly manipulating its testers to falsify results, showed its measured IQ to be far above that of the greatest human geniuses and its personality to be classified in the category labeled "Furtive-Hateful" by human xenologists, due to its antisocial habits and its direct, sadistic desire for others' pain and suffering. Physically it appeared, like all Talking Pets, as a quadruped similar in size to a small dog, with small, atrophied limbs, a grossly bulging cranium, and a human-like face. Capable of communicating either by telepathy or speech as it chose, its recall of both ancient racial memories and of recent events was incredibly detailed, and it was able to learn both Umgah and human language, culture, and mannerisms at a prodigious rate. Its life on board the Vindicator was a constant series of petty demands that its handlers were incapable of refusing, and twisted mind games played by spreading gossip and false rumors based on its telepathic reading of the crew's thoughts. It was well known for repeatedly attempting to deceive humans about the history of the Dnyarri Slave Empire to put itself in a better light; what humans have learned both from the Ur-Quan themselves and more apparently neutral parties like the Melnorme and the Chmmr indicate that almost no historical information obtained from the neo-Dnyarri can be considered reliable.<br />
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Zelnick accepted the neo-Dnyarri's proposed plan for allying to defeat the Ur-Quan, with the knowledge that he must at the same time seek a way to betray and destroy it before it could escape and conquer the galaxy. The neo-Dnyarri, deeply familiar with the thought-patterns of its ancestors' favorite slaves, was able to launch the Ur-Quan defenders of the Sa-Matra into mindless confusion even through the Taalo Shield's influence, allowing Zelnick to advance his bold scheme of using the Vindicator as a suicide bomb against the Sa-Matra. Luckily, it seems like Zelnick was able to confuse his own conscious intentions about the plans for this battle even to himself, putting himself in an fearful emotional state in which he was able to "accidentally forget" to enact any plans to bring the neo-Dnyarri with him on the escape pod before the Vindicator exploded, a fact which the neo-Dnayarri, sneering at Zelnick's scatterbrained anxiety, only realized just before its death.<br />
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The neo-Dnyarri is now presumed dead, though many urge continued vigilance; given the Dnyarri's deep intelligence and natural ability to multi-task and plan for contingencies, there is a possibility it was able to use its psychic abilities to wrangle a way off the Vindicator. If this is so, its vengeful, greedy and sadistic nature are likely to ignite the next great galactic conflict; its propensity toward voyeurism and cruel experimentation with other races indicate this conflict would be unnaturally rich in violence, emotional tension and gratuituous trans-species sexual interaction.</div>130.58.238.233https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Shofixti_Maidens&diff=252Shofixti Maidens2004-09-07T00:36:07Z<p>130.58.238.233: </p>
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<div>The last surviving female members of their race after the Shofixti's heroic self-destruction in the First War, they are a group of sixteen adolescent Shofixti captured by Admiral ZEX of the VUX during the war. These young beauties were kept unresisting, compliant, and preserved forever young despite the by freezing them in cryogenic suspension; ZEX kept them as part of his menagerie of strange, bizarre and dangerous creatures, both sentient and nonsentient. When Captain Zelnick approached ZEX asking to trade for the Shofixti Maidens, ZEX first asked the captain to retrieve the Beast of Linch-Nas-Ploh, then reneged and demanded that Zelnick and his human crew join him in his menagerie, as his primary obsession with the grotesque had always centered on humans. VUX's gambit failed, as after Zelnick had delivered the Beast ZEX's crew proved incapable of controlling it, leading to his menagerie's destruction. Zelnick was thus able to recover the Maidens and offer them as mates to Shofixti survivor Tanaka; Tanaka and his wives then began the process of repopulating the Shofixti species.</div>130.58.238.233https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=QuasiSpace_Portal_Spawner&diff=193QuasiSpace Portal Spawner2004-09-07T00:34:47Z<p>130.58.238.233: </p>
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<div>A device constructed by the Ariloula'leelay for the Precursor Service Vessal as a favor to its human Captain during the Second War. It is a variant on the Arilou's standard QuasiSpace Portal Spawners, devices which use Dimensional Fatigue technology to create a temporary overlap between the dimensions of Hyperspace and QuasiSpace, allowing the Arilou to jump into QuasiSpace without going to the trouble of finding one of the rare, intermittently active natural portals. The process of creating such portals is extremely energy-intensive and dependent on the portal's size; this is probably one of the primary limiting factors leading to the relatively small size of the standard Arilou Skiff. In order to allow Captain Zelnick to use such a Spawner on the much larger Vindicator, the Arilou had to amplify a standard Spawner's power using a Warp Pod scavenged from the wreck of an Ur-Quan Kzer-Za Dreadnought. Zelnick's scientists were unable to divine the internal workings of this Spawner. Of particular concern was the fact that the Spawner's energy source was a black box, and, presumably, whatever exotic form of energy storage was necessary to power the Spawner was unreprodicible by human technology, giving them no way to recharge it when it ran out of power. In the end, the Vindicator was destroyed before its Spawner became nonfunctional. With no way as yet to predict the service lifetime or reliability of such a device in the long term, the possible usefulness of installing large numbers of hybrid Spawners on battleships (even if the Arilou agreed to do so) remains in doubt.</div>130.58.238.233https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Talk:QuasiSpace_Portal_Spawner&diff=2181Talk:QuasiSpace Portal Spawner2004-09-07T00:33:59Z<p>130.58.238.233: </p>
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<div>"this is probably one of the primary limiting factors leading to the relatively small size of the standard Arilou Skiff.", where does this come from? Why is this probable? There can be a million other reasons. "This may be" sounds better to me. [[User:Svdb|SvdB]] 16:18, 5 Sep 2004 (CEST)<br />
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If you're going to use the stupid neutral names, at least use them intelligently; "The Captain" is a description, not a name. It's "the human Captain", not "human captain The Captain". Also, it's spelled "Vessel", not "Vessal". And "The Precursor Vessel" is a stupid term anyway (the Sa-Matra and Mark II are both Precursor vessels); the best neutral term is probably Mark I, though Mark I is a term that follows something (i.e. Vindicator Mark I).</div>130.58.238.233https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Deep_Child_Egg_Case_Fragments&diff=1055Deep Child Egg Case Fragments2004-09-07T00:31:17Z<p>130.58.238.233: </p>
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<div>These strange biological samples were thick mats of organic fibers, similar in structure to that of terrestrial fungi, but far greater in strength and resistance to heat than any structure contained in any other known life form. They were found, bearing signs of huge physical stresses, near unusual volcanic formations on the worlds known as [[Shattered Worlds]], worlds with all the characteristics of Earthlike life-bearing worlds except their unusually high level of tectonic activity, causing an extremely high-temperature, violent climate. These worlds included Syra, the original [[Syreen]] homeworld, changed into a Shattered World after an unusual asteroid collision. They were first discovered by human [[The Captain|Captain Zelnick]]'s crew; based on preliminary observations and on references made by the [[Melnorme]] to the role of the [[Mycon]] "Deep Children" in the destruction of Syra, scientists guessed these egg cases were Mycon in origin, despite the fact that the egg case's curvature indicated an egg at least 25 meters in diameter, much larger than the average Mycon.<br />
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It soon transpired that, in fact, Mycon Deep Children were a Mycon subspecies, enormous organisms genetically programmed to terraform planets; encased in the tough egg cases, the Deep Children collided with the planet's surface and burrowed out into the planet's interior, causing the massive tectonic shifts of a Shattered World. [[The Captain|Zelnick]]'s Deep Child egg fragments were the crucial evidence that convinced the Syreen Commander [[Talana]] of the Mycon's responsibility for the death of Syra, bringing the Syreen into the war on the Alliance side.<br />
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At last report, the [[Druuge]] were willing to pay exorbitant prices to study these egg fragments; the purpose is unknown, but it can be inferred that the ability to synthesize such a resilient, heat-resistant substance would be invaluable in improving the performance of the crude chemical-burning furnaces that power the Druuge's overburdened technological infrastructure.</div>130.58.238.233https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Deep_Child_Egg_Case_Fragments&diff=175Deep Child Egg Case Fragments2004-09-07T00:30:07Z<p>130.58.238.233: </p>
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<div>These strange biological samples were thick mats of organic fibers, similar in structure to that of terrestrial fungi, but far greater in strength and resistance to heat than any structure contained in any other known life form. They were found, bearing signs of huge physical stresses, near unusual volcanic formations on the worlds known as [[Shattered Worlds]], worlds with all the characteristics of Earthlike life-bearing worlds except their unusually high level of tectonic activity, causing an extremely high-temperature, violent climate. These worlds included Syra, the original [[Syreen]] homeworld, changed into a Shattered World after an unusual asteroid collision. They were first discovered by human [[Captain Zelnick||The Captain]]'s crew; based on preliminary observations and on references made by the [[Melnorme]] to the role of the [[Mycon]] "Deep Children" in the destruction of Syra, scientists guessed these egg cases were Mycon in origin, despite the fact that the egg case's curvature indicated an egg at least 25 meters in diameter, much larger than the average Mycon.<br />
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It soon transpired that, in fact, Mycon Deep Children were a Mycon subspecies, enormous organisms genetically programmed to terraform planets; encased in the tough egg cases, the Deep Children collided with the planet's surface and burrowed out into the planet's interior, causing the massive tectonic shifts of a Shattered World. [[Zelnick||The Captain]]'s Deep Child egg fragments were the crucial evidence that convinced the Syreen Commander [[Talana]] of the Mycon's responsibility for the death of Syra, bringing the Syreen into the war on the Alliance side.<br />
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At last report, the [[Druuge]] were willing to pay exorbitant prices to study these egg fragments; the purpose is unknown, but it can be inferred that the ability to synthesize such a resilient, heat-resistant substance would be invaluable in improving the performance of the crude chemical-burning furnaces that power the Druuge's overburdened technological infrastructure.</div>130.58.238.233https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Burvixese_HyperWave_Broadcaster&diff=246Burvixese HyperWave Broadcaster2004-09-07T00:28:58Z<p>130.58.238.233: </p>
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<div>An extremely powerful [[Hyperwave]] transmitter constructed at great expense by the [[Druuge]] in a desperate effort to save themselves from destruction. The Druuge had blanketed their region of space with Hyperwave transmissions advertising and bargaining over their wares for trade, thus making themselves a prime target for the rapidly approaching [[Kohr-Ah]] death fleet. Luckily, the neighboring [[Burvixese]], a kind and altruistic race, had been in communication with the [[Gg]] race, first to be destroyed by the approaching Kohr-Ah. They offered the Druuge the Gg's intelligence data on the Kohr-Ah, including the Kohr-Ah's choice of the Druuge as their next target, as an act of goodwill. The amoral Druuge chose to shut down all Hyperwave transmissions and build an extremely powerful Hyperwave Caster, in secret, on the Burvixese homeworld's satellite, pointed directly antispinward at the Kohr-Ah fleet, tricking them into changing targets. By the time the Burvixese discovered this ruse, it was too late, and the Kohr-Ah homed directly in on them and destroyed them, allowing the Druuge to escape unscathed.<br />
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Though Druuge technology is crude and inefficient compared to Alliance technology, the total resources invested in building it give it a great deal more power and range than a standard Alliance transmitter, allowing it to reach ships traveling nearby through Hyperspace, and allowing it to penetrate thick barriers of matter and energy that block normal transmitters, even to the point of broadcasting, very faintly, through a Kzer-Za slave shield. Upon learning Captain Zelnick had recovered the device, the Druuge attempted to regain it through trade, perhaps because of the innate value of its expensive components or perhaps to cover up evidence of their treachery against the Burvixese.</div>130.58.238.233https://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?title=Aqua_Helix&diff=245Aqua Helix2004-09-07T00:27:24Z<p>130.58.238.233: </p>
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<div>One of a trio of [[Precursor]] artifacts whose mystical link to each other has been sensed by [[Pkunk]] psychics, given simple names based on their color and shape. The Aqua Helix is a crystalline gemstone, composed of a homogeneous substance, that appears to have been naturally grown in the shape of a flat strip twisted in a three-dimensional spiral. It is extremely hard (rated Mohs-13, able to scratch a diamond) and its internal structure remains unknown. The [[Thraddash]] revere it as a holy object,and constructed a shrine for it in a mountainous cave of the continent of Funt on their home planet of Zeta Draconis I. While housed there, the Helix constantly gave off pulses of intensely bright light by an unknown process; control of the shrine and the Helix was regarded as the ultimate symbol of the ruling authority of each successive Culture, and within the shrine was inscribed in ritual hieroglyphics the history of each Culture. This custom has lasted for all 2,000 years of Thraddash history, only briefly challenged by the two-week reign of the heretic Culture Nine. Except for that one exception, the Thraddash dogmatically insist on veneration of the Helix as the one constant factor that keeps their civilization continuous through all the countless wars and power shifts that make up their history, despite the fact that the Thraddash have long forgotten what the original symbolic significance of the Helix is. (Some speculate its helical shape may be related to the Thraddash's conviction that social evolution must come through a cycle of destruction and rebuilding.)<br />
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The ascension of Thraddash Culture Twenty, based around the teachings of the human [[Zelnick|The Captain]], led to an invitation by the Thraddash to allow their new leader to view their most sacred artifact. Having learned something of the Helix's nature from the Pkunk, the Captain allowed his crew to violate the Thraddash shrine and steal the Helix, disturbing its structure and quelling its ancient glow, causing the Thraddash to turn against their great Teacher, throwing Culture Twenty into turmoil. This decision however proved wise, as the Helix proved to be one of the parts necessary to repair the [[Utwig]]'s [[Ultron]].</div>130.58.238.233