Forging Ahead (GURPS Interstellar Wars/Celestial Forge)

[ExquisiteTopHat]

I figured that while liking every story post is good, explaining why I like this story so much is better.
I'm largely unfamiliar with the setting, but cliff has made an engaging atmosphere in this story that doesn't need excessive background knowledge, though I'm sure it would help in some regards. The smooth integration of the technical info and its applications has been delightful as well- I loved the comet based terraforming one.

 

[Leafy503]

I'm largely unfamiliar with the setting, but cliff has made an engaging atmosphere in this story that doesn't need excessive background knowledge, though I'm sure it would help in some regards.

Click to shrink...

I mean so far you only need to know a bit of background.

Terrans - Humans from Earth
Vilani - Like the Imperium from 40k only less wars and more bureaucracy.

And...

Spoiler: Interstellar Wars era

Despite its name, the Interstellar Wars era was not one of constant bloody warfare. The conflict between Terra and the Imperium had a rhythm of its own, one which permitted long periods of relative peace.

The Early Phase
(A.D. 2114-2246)
During the first eight Interstellar Wars, major naval campaigns invariably ended in major naval battles, during which the Terran and Imperial fleets mutually pounded one another into scrap. Even the "winner" of such an engagement usually lost so many ships and men that it could not immediately press its advantage. The Terrans would often have to rebuild their fleet almost from scratch. The Imperial saarpuhii theoretically had more resources to devote to fleet construction, but the Imperial system of governance was too inflexible to permit him to divert those resources quickly.
The necessary time for rebuilding on both sides meant that major naval campaigns could not be fought every year. A more typical interval was three to five years. Each of the first eight wars was defined by a small number of these major naval campaigns, as few as one (the Fourth Interstellar War) or as many as four (the Third and Eighth Interstellar Wars).

Major naval campaigns never lasted for more than a few months, after which main-battle-fleet activity always halted until the next round. During these breathing spaces, both sides worked to rebuild their fleets, while commerce raiders and other detachments skirmished on the frontier. The relatively peaceful intervals were also the main time for ground warfare, if one side or the other had cut off a major world and was prepared to attempt its conquest.

Aside from the abortive attempt at the conquest of Terra in the Third Interstellar War, the early wars were always fought for limited political objectives. Eventually one side or the other would tire, and would offer peace terms to the enemy. Such periods of formal peace were often quite lengthy – during the 132 years of the "early phase," Terra and the Imperium were at open war for only 65 years (less than half of the time).

The Late Phase
(A.D. 2246-2303)
The Ninth Interstellar War changed the entire flavor of the conflict. After 2246, Terra and the Imperium were constantly at war. Formal peace did not return until the Imperial surrender in 2303. The conflict was no longer a matter of limited frontier engagements – it was a battle of conquest that only one side could survive.
However, the military frontier between the two powers was now dozens of parsecs long, and it was rare for hostilities to be going on everywhere along that line at once. As before, any given subsector-sized region of the frontier might see a major naval campaign only every few years. The rest of the time would be taken up by border skirmishing and ground campaigning, while both sides prepared for the next confrontation. Local truces also occurred in some regions, permitting both sides to stand down and enjoy a brief period of near-peace

 

[WaNoMatsuri]

You know, I was never a sci-fi fan, being more into fantasy, probably because I have easier time imagining it but this video started convincing me otherwise.

 

[taovkool]

Quest Granted!
Who Are You?
Objective: Determine the truth of who or what was behind your abduction.
Reward: 600 CP

Quest Granted!
The End And The Beginning
Objective: Destroy 'the Abductor'.
Reward: Celestial Forge Superuser Access

... well. At least that solved that mystery.

Click to shrink...

Hard Mode is on then. Sophia's playing Dark Souls with only one life.

Spoiler

Don't know who this Grandpa person is but a brief visit to the Tv Tropes told me he's some absolutely nasty omnicidal piece of shit with a god complex or three.

 

[Velk]

Hard Mode is on then. Sophia's playing Dark Souls with only one life.

Snip.

Click to shrink...

Please spoiler that second bit, please.

 

[taovkool]

Please spoiler that second bit, please.

Click to shrink...

Whoops. Sorry about that.

 

[marquedb]

Err, what.. did you just jump to the end game? I kinda hate CF and Inspired inventor first that go full ham on action if your mc isn't going to Rambo her way through the setting just stick some interludes of people using her tech.

 

[TroyX]

Wow, swerve out of left field! I like it a lot. This story's already established that it's limiting several things to keep it from being a total power fantasy or instant-win, so having an enemy player who can match wits with the Forge or Sophia actually makes sense when you think about it.

I wonder where she is, and if it's a canon world in Traveler or not. Also, you know the Genius Patrol, etc, are going to be tearing their hair out about what happened to their golden goose.

I am curious what the junked plan was though.

 

[sworded]

My own question is if the story is going to touch on the other GURPS settings.

Admitidly that's because I mostly just want the possibility of cliff writing more Girl Genius fics/cross overs since he does the setting and cast so well. But I'm more than happy to see him develop and teach me about the Traveler setting on its lonesome.

 

[Faralis]

Huh, she got noticed, and "someone" got pissed off about her tech advances.

Poor girl, when she could rest for awhile and then this happens.

Being a protagonist is the worst, that's for sure.

 

[Gregory Crey]

After satisfying myself that there was no immediate danger I took a long, searching look at myself and ran my hand over my head. Someone had cropped my already-short hair down to a buzz cut and trimmed my finger and toenails, so I couldn't tell how much time had elapsed from those cues. I didn't notice any great difference in muscle tone and neither did I have any of the stiffness typical from having been placed into cold-sleep, so my lack of perception of time passing had likely not been from being put into a "low berth". My-

I mildly kicked myself for overlooking the obvious and summoned my Black Supercomputer to me with a thought. Okay, so that still worked. According to it it was June 21st, 2169, or almost eight days since I'd been vacationing in the West Indies-

Click to shrink...

I loved this whole section. The whole abducting her while she is at the beach just in her swimsuit then remove as many ways as you can to tell how much time has passed.

It shows a lot of intelligence from the Abductor, denying as much data and tools from the MC as possible (and still be sfw, she still is wearing a swimsuit but that is very little to work with, so it passes). The Abductor could have put Sophia in a black void or something to even more limit her, but the goal seems to be not to harm her and humans don't do well in that kind of environment, so a world/landscape that she and/or Humanity/Vilani have never seen before.

I also liked that the utterly unhackable and unnoticeable (conditionally) computer that can be summoned and unsummoned was missed by the Abductor and thus she was able to tell how long it has been and have a potent tool anyway. That was a believable failure and to have that be circumvented too would have been too much without a good explanation.

All in all, this scene alone shows how much thought Cliff has put into this, let alone the rest of the very enjoyable chapter.

Thanks for the chapter!

 

[Faralis]

I also liked that the utterly unhackable and unnoticeable (conditionally) computer that can be summoned and unsummoned was missed by the Abductor and thus she was able to tell how long it has been and have a potent tool anyway.

Click to shrink...

The abductor could also read her mind, so he/she/it knows something about her powers... that's kinda scary. Blank was literally a godsend.

 

[TroyX]

I forgot to mention, I also like the historical things in here, like the origin of the Skunk Works and the Pony Express oath. You've sprinkled bits like this into most every chapter, and I enjoy that.

 

[Grimmouse197]

I'm not sure what to think about this. Rather sudden extreme change here.

 

[cliffc999]

I'm not sure what to think about this. Rather sudden extreme change here.

Click to shrink...

It is, but as soon as I decided to use a certain NPC as the end boss at all... well, this is the sort of shit he'd pull.

I am curious what the junked plan was though.

Click to shrink...

Sharik Yangila's spies manage to successfully abduct her and she has to pull a 'Bridge on the River Kwai' to get out, in the process allowing me to get Vilani society on-camera and have Sophia re-examine and/or re-affirm her beliefs in the heart of the enemy.

Then I realized that despite the fact it is canon Yangila had a very good spy network, this simply couldn't happen unless I threw Idiot Balls at Sophia and the Confederation authorities, so I junked it. And while I was vaguely intending for a certain end boss to be the end boss, junking the one fork is what me decide 'Welp, guess we're going for it.'

Of course, sometimes the end boss is foreshadowed early and then there's another mid arc anyway as opposed to fast-forwarding to the end, but that's the part I'm trying to compose right now. We are in flying by the seat of the author's pants territory right now, so let's see what I can think of.

I forgot to mention, I also like the historical things in here, like the origin of the Skunk Works and the Pony Express oath. You've sprinkled bits like this into most every chapter, and I enjoy that.

Click to shrink...

Sophia has total recall and a downloaded dozen-plus PhDs, one of them in history, so its IC for her to play trivia master.

 

[omegasrevenge]

... well. At least that solved that mystery.

Click to shrink...

Oh my god, I want to know how everyone is going to react to her abduction, running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

 

[Anti-No]

Sharik Yangila's spies manage to successfully abduct her and she has to pull a 'Bridge on the River Kwai' to get out, in the process allowing me to get Vilani society on-camera and have Sophia re-examine and/or re-affirm her beliefs in the heart of the enemy.

Then I realized that despite the fact it is canon Yangila had a very good spy network, this simply couldn't happen unless I threw Idiot Balls at Sophia and the Confederation authorities, so I junked it. And while I was vaguely intending for a certain end boss to be the end boss, junking the one fork is what me decide 'Welp, guess we're going for it.'

Of course, sometimes the end boss is foreshadowed early and then there's another mid arc anyway as opposed to fast-forwarding to the end, but that's the part I'm trying to compose right now. We are in flying by the seat of the author's pants territory right now, so let's see what I can think of.

Click to shrink...

Not sure if that is possible anymore, but lampshading it with a notice in the newspaper that makes it obvious if you have enought background information, or a chat over the lunch table in base about "Vilani infiltrators caught trying to get access to base X, network rolled up" at some point would be reasonable.

Sure, it was the wrong hidden science base, but it was A hidden science base. Something like half a year after FTL coms were a thing. Basically, the spies understand something big is ongoing in the Skunkworks, and wants to try to figure out what. That's A LOT easier to figure out than "FTL coms exists, and was invented by scientist y"

 

[Lightwhispers]

*looks at Blank*
Wow. That's... kinda broadly written, in that it could arguably mean "you control all perception of you and your surroundings, by any means updown to and including Mark 1 Eyeball." (It doesn't get more mundane than that.) Which... is probably something that would be needed to deal with [ENDBOSS]. And, more mundanely, surviving on wherever she is now with just a bikini and her Black Computer.

Which will be something entirely new for her, I imagine.

 

[Potato and Chip]

cliffc999 I hope you don't take this the wrong way, you write what you want to write and all that, but this felt like a... not so great turn to me. I'm not saying to re-write this or anything, I'm just getting my thoughts out there. I just have some reservations about this update.

Like the PhD power thing, why was that selected? Why does it matter if the older researchers don't respect her? Wouldn't that just add an interesting conflict? It wouldn't have to be multiple chapters worth, just a few snippets of people looking down on her or doubting her would be enough. Even then she's not dealing with research funds, what she needs is construction funds. The PhD power thing just kind of feels like a power up to make the mc sound great but doesn't actually add anything. She's already impressed everyone with the purse strings. Even if the funds she needs to build her devices costs as much as a military jump drive at this point it really doesn't matter. To the genius patrol all they have to do is grant her the budget she needs or use their connections to get that budget. To the politicians and generals they've already missed out on the last several billion dollar idea. No way they won't try to cash in on the next one.

So the PhD powers stood out to me as very odd and unnecessary.

As for her teleportation.... that kind of... uh... kind of felt like jumping the shark? I get the person who did it is canon and these are within their canon abilities, but shouldn't these things be built up too rather then just dropped on readers in a single paragraph?

Like, okay, imagine if Sophia built her FTL communications device. She's riding high, her name is well known throughout those in the-need-to-know. Her work is so revolutionary that her jump-9 ship is immediately approved. The thing is built. Maybe its done in a single chapter with the chapter being a series of snippets jumping from point to point, to emphasis just how fast things are going and just how good Sophia is feeling about all of this.

(Because my big take away from this update was that you were tired of writing about Sophia building up in the Terran Confederacy, so a fast chapter is likely what you want)

The first jump using her new ship is activated or maybe they already had a test jump, the one that grabbed the "abductor's" attention, making this the first manned jump. That doesn't really matter, what matters is that Sophia is on the ship and then BOOM! the ship "misjumps". There is an instant crash in emotions as all her progress and dreams come to a halt. Sophia knows they haven't misjumped because she has her blackbox computer and the forge to tell her otherwise. She knows everyone is missing eight days of memories, but to everyone else the ship just had a misjump, the drive is completely dead, and they're in obit around an unknown planet with unknown stars.

People possibly resent Sophia as the inventor of the drive that got them in this mess (maybe someone discovers sabotage maybe not) but whatever the case someone has to take command. Perhaps Sophia thinks the current options are idiots or dangerous or maybe she thinks she can do better, whatever the case may be nobody is going to listen to a young women who's only credentials is being the scientist who got them in this mess in the first place. Meaning if Sophia wants to have any sort of say in how things are done or direct this sudden group of castaways she has to "go on adventures" and "get into conflict" in order to earn peoples respect and keep it.

Who knows, maybe she discovers she actually enjoys being an action hero after several firefights and keeps on doing things like this even after its no longer necessary. So that way your character remains an adventure character even after things settle down and her authority is established.

Or maybe everyone dies in the "misjump" and she's the only survivor, meaning she has to survive on her own.

I hope this doesn't come across as me telling you how to write your story. Rather this is me showing an example why this chapter felt so sudden to me. I get what the "adversary" did was abrupt and it was supposed to feel abrupt, but... that still doesn't stop it from feeling unnatural as a point of story progression? As I was reading I could almost see your hand just plucking Sophia out of one story and then dropping her into another one, instead of it feeling like a turning point or twist in the plot.

 

[cliffc999]

Like the PhD power thing, why was that selected? Why does it matter if the older researchers don't respect her? Wouldn't that just add an interesting conflict?

Click to shrink...

Thought about it, decided not to. I've already written the story of a tinker dealing with an uncooperative bureaucracy above her.

As for her teleportation.... that kind of... uh... kind of felt like jumping the shark? I get the person who did it is canon and these are within their canon abilities, but shouldn't these things be built up too rather then just dropped on readers in a single paragraph?

Click to shrink...

The only reason the spoiler confirmed it was to stop umpteen old Traveller grognards who already could guess from spoiling it in-thread without a spoilerbox. Everybody else is intended to be guessing at this point, that's why it's called a mystery.

The first jump using her new ship is activated or maybe they already had a test jump, the one that grabbed the "abductor's" attention, making this the first manned jump. That doesn't really matter, what matters is that Sophia is on the ship and then BOOM! the ship "misjumps".

Click to shrink...

Thought about that as well, but too cliche. Especially given that by that point she'd have gone for a reliability perk on her tech...

 

[Blade4]

Spoiler

So... From wiki walking this grandfather is some grand monster that fortunately usually stays in his house researching not giving a damn about the animals outside. Except Sophia cracked ftl comms and he noticed. Or at least he or his systems/bots noticed the terrans doing something very funky and when he looked into it found her fast. So he grabs her wondering if she is like him and what he can learn. And she upon awakening near instantly shut him out of her head and might crack open psi abilities in earnest. Yeah like to see how she survives this because he has already once decided to off threats to himself and she looks like a threat.

Only thing keeping her alive at this point is he does not know she is a serious threat. Though wondering what earth is doing? Have they realized she is gone yet or did he wipe memory of her from everywhere? Did he just nova bomb earth as a why not? How bad is the confed freaking out their super genius just vanished like that?

 

[ryune]

Hmmm, looks like she is going to need to get herself some actual production equipment and some speed boosters now. Presumably she is not just on a desert island but a deserted planet as well. At the very least she has easy access to the sea so she has a ready supply of almost any resource she could want if she gets something that can filter it.

 

[Jaykko mimmzy]

So Sophia is going to be the Antares Confederation while try to reconnect to Terra?
These Guys

This is an unfair cliffhanger Cliff. The ability to truly see the Forge effect a civilization has never been written before those timelines were lost.

However I also feel sad that Sophia left so little behind for Terra to work on. I had hoped she would have left writings, plans, or other ideas like those I mentioned in my earlier post. But it seems she's back to basics and no cosmic warehouse to help.

But, if Sophia can get more to work on and a people/species she has to bring onto the galactic stage against a great and unknown enemy, is something mythical. So yeah please show us something special!
Here we will Remain, Most Excellently
But Not Here Alone
Let Every Wonder Be Utilized And Every Terror Be Overcome
Forging Miracles In A Field Of Stars

 

[Leafy503]

Spoiler

]Don't know who this Grandpa person is but a brief visit to the Tv Tropes told me he's some absolutely nasty omnicidal piece of shit with a god complex or three.

Click to shrink...

Spoiler

]From wiki walking this grandfather is some grand monster that fortunately usually stays in his house researching not giving a damn about the animals outside.

Click to shrink...

Spoiler

He's basically the reason why there are humans around the galaxy, why aliens are uplifted animals, why so many dangerous artifacts are scattered around, etc.

 

[ranmatoushin]

If Sophia was paranoid.

Captain Li Jiang, took a minute to massage his temples, even though it did nothing to alleviate his headache, the stress of investigating the disappearance of Sophia Nowak having been pushing at everyone in the Genius Patrol.
The idea that she could just disappear from a beach, while under observation just weeks after proving her ideas on FTL communications had been causing conniptions throughout those who had any idea of her worth.

A knocking on the door to his office drew his attention, the interoffice mailman standing in the frame, "Captain Jiang? I have a classified, your eyes only delivery, could you please provide identification and then sign for receipt?

A minute later having taken possession of the package, and locked his office to examine it, he found a data drive and a letter, 'what was the first question you asked me? -Sophia Nowak'.
Headache banished by the adrenaline suddenly pumping though his system, the Captain gabbed an air gapped tablet, plugging in the data drive.

He watched as a program opened up asking for a password, and entering the question he remembered well, it switched to a video of Sophia, "Captain Jiang, If you receive this, something has happened to me, and this contingency message has not been cancelled. I am about to head on vacation, on return I had intended to move on to the next project, the basic plans of which are included within this drive. I'm sorry I won't be there to see them to completion, but I believe that another war is coming and that humanity will need all the options possible."

Jiang watched with a sinking feeling as the video changed to a wireframe design of a starship as Sophia's voice continued. "This is a prototype design that needs the kinks worked out, it has a set of basic plans, and the maths behind it is included. It builds on the work I did for the communication systems, and expands them into a full drive that while it has many theoretical limitations that you will find the upside outweighs it massively. The maths suggest that Jump-9 is reachable. Good Luck."

Wide eyes stared at the tablet as the video was replaced by files that Jiang knew would be beyond him, as the headache came roaring back, the implications of her disappearance having gone from terrifying to apocalyptic.

 

[GAMB42]

Okay talk about abrupt change...

Nothing exactly wrong with the larger narrative, makes sense even if we consider how much of a game changer the tech she already developed is. I mean with FTL comms available then the command and decision loop is very heavily in favor of the Confederacy. As the quest stated Terra is going to win the next war at minimum.

Still feels a bit disjointed from the greater narrative, specially the chapter about the opposing Vilani commander looks superfluos now that the Vilani are no longer even part of the story arc or the main antagonists. Just a suggestion but might want to mark the chapter to extras or something else, since it doesn't really add anything to the story now ?

Also I'm somewhat negative about the fact your story has so few characters on it. We got Sophia as a matter of course but the others are so very rarely recurring that she seems too isolated as it is. Another suggestion from my POV would be to add at least a sidekick or two to Sophia. Maybe now she is not being monitored all the time she should get a support crew ?

 

[Ralyx]

I wonder if this is at all related to the mysterious species that originally kidnapped the Vilani's ancestors.

Actually, speaking of that, it seems... incredibly weird that the Vilani had basically no reaction whatsoever to rediscovering their species' original homeworld.

 

[Vrenze]

Also I'm somewhat negative about the fact your story has so few characters on it. We got Sophia as a matter of course but the others are so very rarely recurring that she seems too isolated as it is. Another suggestion from my POV would be to add at least a sidekick or two to Sophia. Maybe now she is not being monitored all the time she should get a support crew ?

Click to shrink...

That would then present its own issue though. First being whether or not to tell them about the forge. Prior to this chapter that was an option but now it can never happen until effectively Story End because while she is protected from mind stuff, no one else would be. Which leads to the obvious issue of how to write that other character as more than just the flat version of Watson to her Sherlock, i.e. "My goodness Sophia! However did you do that?!" until they just accept that she is magic and can do anything. Cliff did this song and dance pretty neatly in the other CF story but did eventually get an item in play that protected the MCs party atleast decent protection from mind reading (IIRC) but even then situations occurred, but never followup on sadly, that someone found out anyway. I forget exactly what she told her parents but they are now a liability if anyone capable and suspicious attempts to interrogate them. I say interrogate because the assumption that whoever did this to her couldn't simply read her mind whole hog or else they'd have found out everything from her memories. Unless they did, to one degree or another, and put in her current predicament for a purpose other than finding out what's going on with her, either to get her to do something a la G-Man style "right person, right place, right time" or to merely delay her ability to affect things further until a more opportune time.

Not saying it can't be done, clearly I've given an example of it being approached and I trust that Cliff could do it from what I've read.

 

[GeekGod_of_Speed]

I don't really like the fact that the PHD's were added retroactively, I was really enjoying the fact that they were starting to understand that whatever was happening to her was supernatural and this feels like it would've changed things

 

[ShaperV]

I don't really like the fact that the PHD's were added retroactively, I was really enjoying the fact that they were starting to understand that whatever was happening to her was supernatural and this feels like it would've changed things

Click to shrink...

That's the fundamental problem with the Cosmic Forge in any story. It isn't just a collection of cool tech from lots of settings. It's also a collection of overblown fanwank abilities that have no connection to any of the settings it draws on, and are designed in a way that destroys storytelling options by the truckload.

IMO retcons, fiat powers and conceptual abilities are poison to good writing, and should be avoided by any serious author. You might be able to handle one of them, if it's limited in scope and you put some thought into it. But each extra ability of this type makes it exponentially harder to write a decent story, because they contort the plot into implausible shapes while wiping out vast tracts of story options. So if you keep introducing them the story quickly degenerates into a boring wankfest where nothing can ever challenge the MC, because they're protected by a thicket of conceptual fiat retcon bullshit that automatically overrides all logic and reason. That's one reason why even good Celestial Forge stories tend to go downhill rapidly as the MC racks up perks.

In this case the retroactive doctorates aren't too bad - they just cut off a million potential plotlines involving various parties noticing that Sophia is getting information from nowhere, and responding in an interesting way. But Blank is dangerous and hard to write around, because it's intended to completely cut the MC off from a major aspect of reality. Now Sophia can no longer be spied on by anyone, ever, no matter how clever they are or how sophisticated their methods - which means there's now an entire category of plotlines that can no longer be used in her story. Another perk or two like that and it will get really hard to write this story.