dw7thdoctor
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probably stress-related aging
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With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)
- Thread starter Mr Zoat
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- self insert young justice
Stsword
Versed in the lewd.
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Cat is known for using plastic surgery in the comics.
In mainstream comics Supergirl was weirded out by seeing her implants with her X-Ray vision. "Why are their things in her chest?"
In the world of the Crime Syndicate she's basically a young Joan Rivers.
So this would be stress, lack of her usual maintenance routine, and maybe malnutrition.
Starring (part 4)
Mr Zoat
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27th August 2013
Midday
I'm learning.
The people of Syrania understand what 'technology' is. It's the wheels on their carts, the bellows in their forges and the sails on their windmills.
Glowing rings that let their 'god' transform a muddy track into bricks, or fly in the air, or know what an animal on the other side of the world is doing as it does it is not 'technology'. That is 'magic'.
And magic is for gods and their priests.
That's actually useful, as it's an orange power ring and I was a little worried that I'd end up with people fighting me for it. That's what happened to Larfleeze, and he'd had a lot longer to adapt to his ring than I've had to adapt to this one. I'm a reasonably intelligent man who's seen power rings in comics, not some sort of veteran Lantern; I can't guarantee that a sufficiently avaricious person couldn't take it from me.
I've also learned that travelling at faster than light speeds with a power ring is easy and that the whole 'most star systems are the star plus a couple of gas giants' thing isn't an exaggeration. None of the nearby systems have small rocky worlds, let alone inhabitable small rocky worlds with liquid water on the surface. I… Also remember that tectonic activity like the Earth has is a product of our unusually large moon and that it probably wouldn't be replicated in other places, though I don't know if that has any relation to the development of complex lifeforms.
I gave up on finding someone or something by exploring yesterday. Today, I'm in the bowels of the-
"Through there, Divine Mammon."
-underground palace. According to the local priests it used to fly, though I'm not sure if that means 'hovercraft' or 'spaceship'. The general shape is.. trapezoid. Imagine taking a pyramid and slicing the top third off. The pattern of damage is actually nothing like that even, but if I had to guess I'd say that it fell out of the sky while being shot repeatedly in the upper parts of the hull.
And from the priests' descriptions of the death curse on some parts of the structure, I'd guess that something in here is still emitting dangerous amounts of radiation. The priests have devices which can detect 'dangerous magic', but they don't have any way to deal with it. They've actually been talking about evacuating their entire civilisation because they've got no idea how dangerous the magic is.
If I can deal with it -and I should be able to- then that'll do a lot to put their minds at ease.
Ring, I don't know what sort of radiation we're looking for, but have a crack at showing me anything dangerous.
Ah, yes. That's quite a lot of radiation. Seems to be somewhat contained by whatever these walls are made of, but…
"Thank you, Menelik. Return to the surface. I will have to remove some of the-" Uh. "-protective magics in order to access the source of the poison. For you to remain would endanger you, and you will not be able to assist me further."
"My life is yours, Divine Mammon."
I look back at him, trying to affect an expression of paternal concern while looking at a man at least twice my age.
"Then your life is an investment that I will realise only when it is profitable to do so. And that is not now. Go."
He bows and then beats a retreat back towards the entrance tunnel. I've got to try and work out how to ask whether the people who live here are descendants of the crew or if they lived here already, but I can't think of a way to ask without undermining the whole 'god' thing. I wouldn't have thought that a ship this size would have had a crew big enough for a sustainable population, not without a lot more congenital deficiencies that I've seen so far. I'd also have been a bit surprised if there'd been enough women on board, but maybe that's cultural prejudice on my part.
I walk to the access panel which controls the bulkhead door and wait for Menelik to get past the open bulkhead door at the other end of the section. Access, close that one and open this one. Other than the door being open there's no real visible change, the irradiated corridor on the far side looking much the same as the one I'm standing in.
Neutralise radiation.
Orange light strobes out into the area around me. With a radiation source still emitting radiation that won't make the area safe, but if there's a hole in the shielding somewhere it should reduce the leakage.
Would this much radiation damage the ship's computers? From what I could tell, the ship doesn't have an integrated computer system, but I don't know if that's a design feature or a result of the massive damage it took. Why would anyone make a pyramid-shaped ship? Alright, for a dedicated spaceship there are some advantages to a geometric shape. If it isn't supposed to go into an atmosphere and air resistance isn't an issue it wouldn't need to be aerodynamic. And if it didn't use gas thrusters or ion engines but rather… Manipulated gravity or something? Then it wouldn't have to worry about stressing the hull.
Perhaps it was a space station? I'm not sure that the locals would understand the distinction, and if they don't have a separate word for it then I doubt that the ring would translate the two uses differently. More likely they don't know, they just have a vague cultural memory that it used to be something other than a buried wreck.
I turn a corner and… Look at a buckled section of hull. Where the corridor was is now rock and metal. Examining an interior map, it looks like this part of the ship struck the ground first and broke, loose rock and soil filling in the hole after the ship was buried. I could just go around it, but removing sediment and straightening up the walls is well within my abilities.
Ring, any sort of data storage device this way?
Glowing orange arrows appear in my visual field, pointing the way both to the radiation source and… What appears to be an archive of some sort. I'm not totally sure-.
I have no idea at all how the ring designates things like that, but I doubt it's wrong. I'll deal with the radiation source first though, as that's actually dangerous to people and I doubt that any data that's survived this long will be damaged by being exposed for another minute or two.
The radiation source is…
Um.
I assumed that the main engine would be like something out of Star Trek, but between the broken pedestals and the snapped off columns containing yellow crystals in various states of fracturing I've honestly got no idea what any of this does. On the grounds that the crystals are probably supposed to be in one piece I scan their atomic structure and use broken parts to repair broken crystals. Once they're whole again I slot them back into the slots in their columns, the… Circuitry? Within, glowing faintly as local power is restored. Fix the wall, fix the… Uh, Scan the intact columns and use that as the basis for restoring the snapped ones.
Radiation emission is… Lower, but not safe. Scan for radioactive material. Okay, and… I've got no idea what that's supposed to be. Transmute it into something that isn't radioactive, neutralise radiation and then check again.
Safe! Excellent! Now I just have to worry that by repairing the… Batteries? Generator? That the broken parts of the ship are getting power again and the drive is going to activate and tear what's left apart?
Not much I can do about it unless I can find some sort of manual. So that's where I'm going next. Fly.
The corridors zip past and then… A vault door-. A vault door with a powered force field. Shut that down and open the door. The interior walls have thick armour, and I can see where it's slightly deformed from the impacts taken on one side. The interior space consists of armoured shelving units which I guess as designed to survive this sort of event. The rings thinks that one holds a database, so… Open.
And there's a crystal. Small, oval and unlike the engine crystals, orange. Thematically appropriate, I suppose. Alright. Ring, download and give me the highlights. I need to know what I've gotten myself into.
Midday
I'm learning.
The people of Syrania understand what 'technology' is. It's the wheels on their carts, the bellows in their forges and the sails on their windmills.
Glowing rings that let their 'god' transform a muddy track into bricks, or fly in the air, or know what an animal on the other side of the world is doing as it does it is not 'technology'. That is 'magic'.
And magic is for gods and their priests.
That's actually useful, as it's an orange power ring and I was a little worried that I'd end up with people fighting me for it. That's what happened to Larfleeze, and he'd had a lot longer to adapt to his ring than I've had to adapt to this one. I'm a reasonably intelligent man who's seen power rings in comics, not some sort of veteran Lantern; I can't guarantee that a sufficiently avaricious person couldn't take it from me.
I've also learned that travelling at faster than light speeds with a power ring is easy and that the whole 'most star systems are the star plus a couple of gas giants' thing isn't an exaggeration. None of the nearby systems have small rocky worlds, let alone inhabitable small rocky worlds with liquid water on the surface. I… Also remember that tectonic activity like the Earth has is a product of our unusually large moon and that it probably wouldn't be replicated in other places, though I don't know if that has any relation to the development of complex lifeforms.
I gave up on finding someone or something by exploring yesterday. Today, I'm in the bowels of the-
"Through there, Divine Mammon."
-underground palace. According to the local priests it used to fly, though I'm not sure if that means 'hovercraft' or 'spaceship'. The general shape is.. trapezoid. Imagine taking a pyramid and slicing the top third off. The pattern of damage is actually nothing like that even, but if I had to guess I'd say that it fell out of the sky while being shot repeatedly in the upper parts of the hull.
And from the priests' descriptions of the death curse on some parts of the structure, I'd guess that something in here is still emitting dangerous amounts of radiation. The priests have devices which can detect 'dangerous magic', but they don't have any way to deal with it. They've actually been talking about evacuating their entire civilisation because they've got no idea how dangerous the magic is.
If I can deal with it -and I should be able to- then that'll do a lot to put their minds at ease.
Ring, I don't know what sort of radiation we're looking for, but have a crack at showing me anything dangerous.
Ah, yes. That's quite a lot of radiation. Seems to be somewhat contained by whatever these walls are made of, but…
"Thank you, Menelik. Return to the surface. I will have to remove some of the-" Uh. "-protective magics in order to access the source of the poison. For you to remain would endanger you, and you will not be able to assist me further."
"My life is yours, Divine Mammon."
I look back at him, trying to affect an expression of paternal concern while looking at a man at least twice my age.
"Then your life is an investment that I will realise only when it is profitable to do so. And that is not now. Go."
He bows and then beats a retreat back towards the entrance tunnel. I've got to try and work out how to ask whether the people who live here are descendants of the crew or if they lived here already, but I can't think of a way to ask without undermining the whole 'god' thing. I wouldn't have thought that a ship this size would have had a crew big enough for a sustainable population, not without a lot more congenital deficiencies that I've seen so far. I'd also have been a bit surprised if there'd been enough women on board, but maybe that's cultural prejudice on my part.
I walk to the access panel which controls the bulkhead door and wait for Menelik to get past the open bulkhead door at the other end of the section. Access, close that one and open this one. Other than the door being open there's no real visible change, the irradiated corridor on the far side looking much the same as the one I'm standing in.
Neutralise radiation.
Orange light strobes out into the area around me. With a radiation source still emitting radiation that won't make the area safe, but if there's a hole in the shielding somewhere it should reduce the leakage.
Would this much radiation damage the ship's computers? From what I could tell, the ship doesn't have an integrated computer system, but I don't know if that's a design feature or a result of the massive damage it took. Why would anyone make a pyramid-shaped ship? Alright, for a dedicated spaceship there are some advantages to a geometric shape. If it isn't supposed to go into an atmosphere and air resistance isn't an issue it wouldn't need to be aerodynamic. And if it didn't use gas thrusters or ion engines but rather… Manipulated gravity or something? Then it wouldn't have to worry about stressing the hull.
Perhaps it was a space station? I'm not sure that the locals would understand the distinction, and if they don't have a separate word for it then I doubt that the ring would translate the two uses differently. More likely they don't know, they just have a vague cultural memory that it used to be something other than a buried wreck.
I turn a corner and… Look at a buckled section of hull. Where the corridor was is now rock and metal. Examining an interior map, it looks like this part of the ship struck the ground first and broke, loose rock and soil filling in the hole after the ship was buried. I could just go around it, but removing sediment and straightening up the walls is well within my abilities.
Ring, any sort of data storage device this way?
Glowing orange arrows appear in my visual field, pointing the way both to the radiation source and… What appears to be an archive of some sort. I'm not totally sure-.
I have no idea at all how the ring designates things like that, but I doubt it's wrong. I'll deal with the radiation source first though, as that's actually dangerous to people and I doubt that any data that's survived this long will be damaged by being exposed for another minute or two.
The radiation source is…
Um.
I assumed that the main engine would be like something out of Star Trek, but between the broken pedestals and the snapped off columns containing yellow crystals in various states of fracturing I've honestly got no idea what any of this does. On the grounds that the crystals are probably supposed to be in one piece I scan their atomic structure and use broken parts to repair broken crystals. Once they're whole again I slot them back into the slots in their columns, the… Circuitry? Within, glowing faintly as local power is restored. Fix the wall, fix the… Uh, Scan the intact columns and use that as the basis for restoring the snapped ones.
Radiation emission is… Lower, but not safe. Scan for radioactive material. Okay, and… I've got no idea what that's supposed to be. Transmute it into something that isn't radioactive, neutralise radiation and then check again.
Safe! Excellent! Now I just have to worry that by repairing the… Batteries? Generator? That the broken parts of the ship are getting power again and the drive is going to activate and tear what's left apart?
Not much I can do about it unless I can find some sort of manual. So that's where I'm going next. Fly.
The corridors zip past and then… A vault door-. A vault door with a powered force field. Shut that down and open the door. The interior walls have thick armour, and I can see where it's slightly deformed from the impacts taken on one side. The interior space consists of armoured shelving units which I guess as designed to survive this sort of event. The rings thinks that one holds a database, so… Open.
And there's a crystal. Small, oval and unlike the engine crystals, orange. Thematically appropriate, I suppose. Alright. Ring, download and give me the highlights. I need to know what I've gotten myself into.
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AverusBlack
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I'm pretty sure at this point that Paul is on a Ha'tak and 'Divine Mammon' is a dead Goa'uld.
I doubt the stuff he transmuted was naquedah though, because slaves pick the raw ore up no problem and don't immediately die.
I doubt the stuff he transmuted was naquedah though, because slaves pick the raw ore up no problem and don't immediately die.
moralrelativity
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Neutralised -> Neutralise
That -> Then
the -> then
He got a lantern an episode or two ago.
Ngamer11
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When this version of the SI first appeared, he was floating near an alien planet. He used his ring to find a lantern and stole it, before fleeing from the security team which was going to try and kill him.
Chojin Patriarch
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Not a name used in any of the original material, if the Stargate Wiki I have open is anything to go by. But I imagine its history is much like any other Goa'uld world: A large number of humans enslaved and transported off-world for reasons. And then Mammon got killed.
Keeping the reins of power in the hands of those trustworthy or stupid enough not to rebel. Sensible.
Which makes OL all the more atypical, really. Not a lot of the alternates we've seen have gone anywhere as deep into the Spectrum Shaman skill tree as he has.
I suppose Earth is an oddball in more ways than one, then, at least in this universe.
With company, I see. a local guide might be handy, especially if they can translate anything he can't (such as the story behind wall carvings.)
Or the upper portion retracted, as seen in the movie version of the Cheops-class. Odd that they keep using that pyramidal shape, really.
Ah, the old 'This is not a place of honour' problem: How to deal with less-advanced cultures finding harmful materials...
Careful, that's a very broad suggestion. Good thing it's smart enough to get what you mean.
Since radiation poisoning is not a fun way to die.
Now, if more system lords took that view, things might be marginally better for their peoples... Sadly, the worms are too dumb for that.
Still hasn't found a Stargate yet, huh? Since that's a far more efficient way of shipping large tribes off-world. Even with a time-limit on activation, you can move a hell of a lot of people.
Ah, an airlock system. Good safety practice.
Since the walls of the ship, and the shielding plating isn't exactly complex in molecular structure.
Or they just had a pyramid fetish.
And I'm reminded of the classic Blackstone Fortress models: Pyramids with four orthogonal arms, attached flat base to flat base.
Heh. Not even a powerful starship is tougher than a few billion tons of rock when they crash into it. (As in a single mountain, not a whole planet.)
Worst case, the ring can scan the physical storage media and map approximations of the contents. Though that would require at least some idea of the data formatting. An easy thing to acquire on Earth's computers, but there? Much tougher.
Not what you expected? Becoming something of a running theme, I suspect.
That would be this Naquadah stuff, then. Though he's lucky he didn't inadvertently set up some sort of explosive reaction.
Would be kind of awkward if the ship ripped itself in half trying to right itself while stuck underground.
Let me guess: The collective tax records of the System Lords?
Ah, the ultimate hacking tool: a super-computer made by people who climbed so far up the tech tree they had to build more so they could keep climbing. It can probably work out the code structure just from the way the data is laid out.
So, Paul (Should we start calling him Mammon or some Paul-ish variant yet?) now has a partial, and probably slightly out-of-date, collection of Goa'uld information. Wonder if it'll contain things like their tech tree and linguistics, or if it's just bank records. After all, they must have had some reason to go after Mammon
(as Zoat noted why in a spoiler upthread, I'll leave that hint hanging.)Shivanshu
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Grabbing the lantern from some kind of ruin with automated defences was the first thing he did.
KharnTheBrotrayer
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Pretty sure Naquedah is stable and the more potent version Naquadria is VERY radioactive.
Vaermina
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That shouldn't have worked.
Restoring the crystals physical structure wouldn't restore the energy structure lost with their destruction.
AverusBlack
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Yes, but Naquadriah was the result of a Goa'uld experimenting with Naquedah. It isn't naturally occurring and is only found in one place.
EDIT: Correction, created in once place. Apparently it was spread around to a few other Goa'uld testing grounds, so it's possible that Paul ran across it, I suppose.
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Vaermina
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I would remind you that even the Replicator collective didn't have an easy time cracking Goa'uld computer systems.
And they had a lot more processing power at their fingertips then this Paul does.
DAT_NOOB
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Mr Zoat
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Thank you, corrected.
Yes, that's-.
What?
Incidentally, the engine room looks like this. The crystals the SI fixed were part of the regulation system.
AverusBlack
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jaelin910
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Wikia images like that generally don't work unless you remove everything past the .png
Chojin Patriarch
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Broken link. Besides trimming the tail, switch 'static' in the URL with 'vignette'. Fandom tends to block direct linking to their static servers... Something about bandwidth limits, I suppose?
<shrugs>
Mr Zoat
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Okay, try again.
jasonh23761
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In fairness, I suppose there's nothing really ruling out the idea that this particular scenario is effectively Mr Zoat wrote to just take place in the greater universe and not inherently a canon story or planet he's drawing from.
Mr Zoat
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That's deep, man.
DougA
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So, Paul (Should we start calling him Mammon or some Paul-ish variant yet?) now has a partial, and probably slightly out-of-date, collection of Goa'uld information. Wonder if it'll contain things like their tech tree and linguistics, or if it's just bank records. After all, they must have had some reason to go after Mammon (as Zoat noted why in a spoiler upthread, I'll leave that hint hanging.
Paul-mon?
(as Zoat noted why in a spoiler upthread, I'll leave that hint hanging.Paul-mon?
hkim
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Mr Zoat
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Ironically, I don't want to be sued by Palmon.
jasonh23761
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That's what I get for posting while tired, lol
Vaermina
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The Goa'uld dont keep any information of import on their ships computers.So, Paul (Should we start calling him Mammon or some Paul-ish variant yet?) now has a partial, and probably slightly out-of-date, collection of Goa'uld information. Wonder if it'll contain things like their tech tree and linguistics, or if it's just bank records. After all, they must have had some reason to go after Mammon
Paul-mon?
The most he should find are basic blueprints, maybe some really inaccurate star charts to trick the jaffa, and a lot of videos of people being tortured.
Starring (part 5)
Mr Zoat
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27th August 2013
Midday
Uuuuuuuuuuuugh…
Alright. Alright. Organise.
It was a ship, a Cheops class warship. And I also got enough of the technical schematics to know that it's never going to fly again. It would literally be easier to just build a new ship. The upper part contained the bridge and Mammon's private quarters, which is probably why the fire was focused there. It being destroyed means that the controls for the entire ship no longer exist.
Huh.
I could probably run cables from the generators to jump-start an industrial revolution. The power supply is actually designed to be maintained by ignorant peasants and so is heavily idiot-proof-. Idiot-resistant. I mean, the ship got shot out of orbit, slammed into the ground and then got bombarded by something, and the worst that happened was a radiation leak that was contained in the engineering section.
But more to the point, as far as I can tell, the Cheops is an older class of ship that is outclassed by just about everything these days. Mammon put it here because it wasn't worth taking with him on his travels because the other 'gods' he visited had ships that were superior to it but which were inferior to the ships given to him by the 'Supreme God' Ra.
Pyramid ship. Ra.
No, that-.
Glowing eyes.
This is… It's sounding like Stargate.
Ring… Scan for… Scan for large ring structures.
Nothing back.
Okay. In the film Ra just flies to… Ah, whatever that planet was called, and he had those ring teleporters. There probably… No, it's an interstellar civilisation. Logically, every world they're actually using would have a gate, probably in a fortified location surrounded by guns, barricades and force fields somewhere within convenient travelling distance of a city. Except-. The gate activated, stayed open for a few minutes and then… They needed to enter coordinate on their side to open a portal back. That's no use for mass transit. It wouldn't be able to handle enough throughput. So the stargates are just… Convenient for small groups of people? And the one on that mining world was only there because it wasn't worth picking up and moving to somewhere more productive?
Did Ra only turn up because he detected it activating when it wasn't supposed to?
Alright, so having them mine… Whatever they were mining, and then send a ship every few years, that makes more sense. That also matches what Mammon is described as doing: touring Ra's vassals and collecting their tax payments. I've got logs of what he picked up and the locations of those planets… But I don't have anything explaining what those coordinates mean.
There are also a few mentions of people called 'jaffa'. Apparently, most 'gods' use them as soldiers and naval crew, but Ra didn't, preferring to use humans. So when I encounter other gods I'll have no idea what their soldiers look like because all the images on file show humans.
Mammon used human soldiers as well, though that's because he couldn't get something called 'prim'ta' which the 'jaffa' need. Maybe that's what they eat? Or a drug, like ketracel-white? Ra appears to the supplier for most of Mammon's advanced technology, so if it wasn't something he used it would make sense that Mammon couldn't get it. Whatever it is.
There are census records here for the planets Mammon visited, and… These populations seem very low for industrial worlds. Which might just mean that they have a high degree of automation and so don't need manpower?
So what happened to the planet in the film? Did they suffer from some sort of environmental disaster, and Ra decided that it wasn't worth moving them? But… The settlement wasn't that big. It would only have taken a few days at most to move them all, and this census shows that there were plenty of places that could have taken them. Did he… Forget about them? That might explain the lack of technology…
I'm not seeing any mention of Earth by name. References to an original human homeworld mention that there was a rebellion and the gate was cut off, but… There's no reason that I can think of why they couldn't just send a couple of ships to re-establish control. Maybe the fact that they had enough humans to populate their empires already and didn't think it was worth keeping? But then, why turn up for the American military if he'd abandoned the planet?
The picture of Ra on file matches what I remember of the film.
I'm… Disturbed by what that means for me being here.
I mean, is he still alive? Is killing the ruler of an interstellar empire where everyone else is kept in line by him objectively a good thing? I mean, yes, him super-nuking Earth is worse, but not getting into that position in the first place seems best of all.
No. That's a problem for another… Another year.
I still haven't found something that can tell me what the date is. Oh, all these files have dates, but there's nothing to tell me what that relates to. There are images of the planet, and I can tell that some settlements that exist now hadn't been started yet, but an impact like this could have sent enough dust into the atmosphere to cause a year-long winter. That could have caused them to retract-.
Pointless.
Equipment is also a bit of a bust. Since this ship was just supposed to be a glorified space station, Mammon didn't keep much stuff here. And I'm not sure which of the things listed in the manifest are weapons, because the people working with them would just know that and wouldn't need it stated explicitly. The images show the human soldiers carrying staffs and wearing the headdresses I remember from the film, but the staffs could just be ceremonial and the headdress…
Oh, there's actually an analysis of its internal systems here. Looks like it had sophisticated scanners and target assistance built into it, meaning that unlike a Stormtrooper helmet it actually makes it easier to hit the target. Must take a little getting used to-. Oh, and Ra didn't share those upgrades. So most of them-.
Oh.
That suggests… That the gods don't understand their technology either? Or maybe whatever these jaffa are don't need them? I don't see what advantage animal-head helmets have… Except intimidating uneducated peasants, perhaps? But the gods don't wear them… Don't know.
A full search of this ship should be first-. Second on my agenda. First should be letting Menelik know that I've made this part of the ship safe. And take him with me. Watching me open up crushed passages should reinforce the 'god' thing and let me ask some questions without making him suspicious.
And then… Find some of the worlds on this list. Once I know where they are relative to here, I should be able to calculate where the rest are. And see which of them are worth visiting. Is there any point getting a stargate? Even if I could find one, I don't know the symbols I need to go anywhere or to get back. And this world doesn't have anything worth trading yet.
But I'm not qualified to perform an uplift by myself.
How about I start with mapping? Once I know where iron and coal can be found, I can offer to take people there to build… Farms first. I can chip in with a road-. No, a canal-. Or whatever makes most sense. And then a mining settlement can be built. And I can work on building this world's first steam engine, which gets us mine pumps and trains. And steam ships for travelling the world.
And…
And that's not enough for a civilisation, is it? They don't need any of those things. No rivals to out-compete. No predators to kill or diseases to overcome. They're growing because more children are surviving than dying and they need more stuff, but…
Why hasn't another god added this world to their domain? I'd guess because there's nothing here apart from a crashed ship so it isn't worth the effort. Before I try changing things here, I need to see some of these worlds. I need to find out what their autocracy looks like, how they treat their people and how those people live. Once I know that, and I know more about how their society works… Then I can work out what I can do to improve this world.
Midday
Uuuuuuuuuuuugh…
Alright. Alright. Organise.
It was a ship, a Cheops class warship. And I also got enough of the technical schematics to know that it's never going to fly again. It would literally be easier to just build a new ship. The upper part contained the bridge and Mammon's private quarters, which is probably why the fire was focused there. It being destroyed means that the controls for the entire ship no longer exist.
Huh.
I could probably run cables from the generators to jump-start an industrial revolution. The power supply is actually designed to be maintained by ignorant peasants and so is heavily idiot-proof-. Idiot-resistant. I mean, the ship got shot out of orbit, slammed into the ground and then got bombarded by something, and the worst that happened was a radiation leak that was contained in the engineering section.
But more to the point, as far as I can tell, the Cheops is an older class of ship that is outclassed by just about everything these days. Mammon put it here because it wasn't worth taking with him on his travels because the other 'gods' he visited had ships that were superior to it but which were inferior to the ships given to him by the 'Supreme God' Ra.
Pyramid ship. Ra.
No, that-.
Glowing eyes.
This is… It's sounding like Stargate.
Ring… Scan for… Scan for large ring structures.
Nothing back.
Okay. In the film Ra just flies to… Ah, whatever that planet was called, and he had those ring teleporters. There probably… No, it's an interstellar civilisation. Logically, every world they're actually using would have a gate, probably in a fortified location surrounded by guns, barricades and force fields somewhere within convenient travelling distance of a city. Except-. The gate activated, stayed open for a few minutes and then… They needed to enter coordinate on their side to open a portal back. That's no use for mass transit. It wouldn't be able to handle enough throughput. So the stargates are just… Convenient for small groups of people? And the one on that mining world was only there because it wasn't worth picking up and moving to somewhere more productive?
Did Ra only turn up because he detected it activating when it wasn't supposed to?
Alright, so having them mine… Whatever they were mining, and then send a ship every few years, that makes more sense. That also matches what Mammon is described as doing: touring Ra's vassals and collecting their tax payments. I've got logs of what he picked up and the locations of those planets… But I don't have anything explaining what those coordinates mean.
There are also a few mentions of people called 'jaffa'. Apparently, most 'gods' use them as soldiers and naval crew, but Ra didn't, preferring to use humans. So when I encounter other gods I'll have no idea what their soldiers look like because all the images on file show humans.
Mammon used human soldiers as well, though that's because he couldn't get something called 'prim'ta' which the 'jaffa' need. Maybe that's what they eat? Or a drug, like ketracel-white? Ra appears to the supplier for most of Mammon's advanced technology, so if it wasn't something he used it would make sense that Mammon couldn't get it. Whatever it is.
There are census records here for the planets Mammon visited, and… These populations seem very low for industrial worlds. Which might just mean that they have a high degree of automation and so don't need manpower?
So what happened to the planet in the film? Did they suffer from some sort of environmental disaster, and Ra decided that it wasn't worth moving them? But… The settlement wasn't that big. It would only have taken a few days at most to move them all, and this census shows that there were plenty of places that could have taken them. Did he… Forget about them? That might explain the lack of technology…
I'm not seeing any mention of Earth by name. References to an original human homeworld mention that there was a rebellion and the gate was cut off, but… There's no reason that I can think of why they couldn't just send a couple of ships to re-establish control. Maybe the fact that they had enough humans to populate their empires already and didn't think it was worth keeping? But then, why turn up for the American military if he'd abandoned the planet?
The picture of Ra on file matches what I remember of the film.
I'm… Disturbed by what that means for me being here.
I mean, is he still alive? Is killing the ruler of an interstellar empire where everyone else is kept in line by him objectively a good thing? I mean, yes, him super-nuking Earth is worse, but not getting into that position in the first place seems best of all.
No. That's a problem for another… Another year.
I still haven't found something that can tell me what the date is. Oh, all these files have dates, but there's nothing to tell me what that relates to. There are images of the planet, and I can tell that some settlements that exist now hadn't been started yet, but an impact like this could have sent enough dust into the atmosphere to cause a year-long winter. That could have caused them to retract-.
Pointless.
Equipment is also a bit of a bust. Since this ship was just supposed to be a glorified space station, Mammon didn't keep much stuff here. And I'm not sure which of the things listed in the manifest are weapons, because the people working with them would just know that and wouldn't need it stated explicitly. The images show the human soldiers carrying staffs and wearing the headdresses I remember from the film, but the staffs could just be ceremonial and the headdress…
Oh, there's actually an analysis of its internal systems here. Looks like it had sophisticated scanners and target assistance built into it, meaning that unlike a Stormtrooper helmet it actually makes it easier to hit the target. Must take a little getting used to-. Oh, and Ra didn't share those upgrades. So most of them-.
Oh.
That suggests… That the gods don't understand their technology either? Or maybe whatever these jaffa are don't need them? I don't see what advantage animal-head helmets have… Except intimidating uneducated peasants, perhaps? But the gods don't wear them… Don't know.
A full search of this ship should be first-. Second on my agenda. First should be letting Menelik know that I've made this part of the ship safe. And take him with me. Watching me open up crushed passages should reinforce the 'god' thing and let me ask some questions without making him suspicious.
And then… Find some of the worlds on this list. Once I know where they are relative to here, I should be able to calculate where the rest are. And see which of them are worth visiting. Is there any point getting a stargate? Even if I could find one, I don't know the symbols I need to go anywhere or to get back. And this world doesn't have anything worth trading yet.
But I'm not qualified to perform an uplift by myself.
How about I start with mapping? Once I know where iron and coal can be found, I can offer to take people there to build… Farms first. I can chip in with a road-. No, a canal-. Or whatever makes most sense. And then a mining settlement can be built. And I can work on building this world's first steam engine, which gets us mine pumps and trains. And steam ships for travelling the world.
And…
And that's not enough for a civilisation, is it? They don't need any of those things. No rivals to out-compete. No predators to kill or diseases to overcome. They're growing because more children are surviving than dying and they need more stuff, but…
Why hasn't another god added this world to their domain? I'd guess because there's nothing here apart from a crashed ship so it isn't worth the effort. Before I try changing things here, I need to see some of these worlds. I need to find out what their autocracy looks like, how they treat their people and how those people live. Once I know that, and I know more about how their society works… Then I can work out what I can do to improve this world.
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Vaermina
Well worn.
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Nope, he was doing the big "tour his holdings" thing.
The gods do.
The Jaffa don't.
Armor and intimidation, remember they were bullet proof.
The gods do on fact wear them at times. But they also have Kara'kesh, which can do about half of what your Power Ring can.
Sockmonkey
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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One rather clever setup used in the show was having the gate on a gimbal to hold it horizontally so they could just dump the grain cargo through to a hopper on the planet they were sending it to.
Gates can stay open for 38 minutes at a time, which is enough to send a lot of cargo through.
If he can find a gate with an intact dial, the ring should be able to access the stellar maps. Those things do regular system updates and would have lists of valid addresses.