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The Benefactor's Reach, Pt 3
Taloren Prime, Throne System, Imperial Domain of the Boundless Drogar
Night had fallen on Sudorath City, yet another of the massive domed floating cities that dominated Taloren Prime’s ocean surface. Unlike most, Sudorath was hyper specialized and was focused almost exclusively on industry.
The city was dotted with massive manufactories, fabrication bays, machine printers, materials recyclers, and so on. Its coral buildings and streets and skyways were much dirtier than other cities’ buildings. Their normally bright facades were coated in thin layers of soot and filth and grease and dust.
All this was especially true the closer one got to the ground level. It was as though the city’s finest residues settled down there in countless unyielding layers.
In the daytime, the edges
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Ravens of Eternity The Benefactor's Reach, Pt 4
Unregistered Orbital Station, Unnamed Planet, Unlisted System, Great House de JardinThe last of the Einherjar flashed into the incoming port beacon at the unregistered orbital station.Though it had taken them a great deal of time, they had been able to escape whoever or whatever had attacked them. Of course, the fleet was far larger than the station could handle, but there was no other choice.Their emergency practically demanded it.And it certainly wouldn’t have been bad if it was just the Einherjar.But they brought with them whatever remained of Hegemony Replenishment Facility 114, including lifeboats, defensive ships, cargo cruisers, passenger liners, everything.And no m
Ravens of Eternity The Benefactor's Reach, Pt 5
Helios Megastation, Sol System, Sol FederationThe shop’s door chime rang out melodically. It wafted down the aisles and swept across the old Toymaker’s ears. They let him know that he had visitors.More specifically, they let him know to listen to the footsteps of whoever just came in. And it took him a moment to place those footsteps, but it came to him soon enough.A wide smile spread across his face as he looked up at his guest, but then was set aback at what he was seeing - both Freya and Raijin.“I only heard Freya’s footsteps,” he said. “How’re you…”Raijin answered moments after he trailed off.“Walking is so bothersome, sometim
Ravens of Eternity The Center of the Galaxy, Pt 1
Galactic Center of the Milky WaySpinning all around the bright glowing center was a massive cloud of dust and debris. It swirled around the center itself, and engulfed countless solar systems and star clusters within itself. More than that, the cloud helped obscure the glow from those countless stars.Its brightness was truly blinding. Perhaps painfully so.Entire stars orbited in long ellipses around the very center, a few with incredible speeds exceeding 20 million meters per second. Their combined glow absolutely illuminated everything all around them. Their combined heat obliterated everything else.Except, of course, for the very center itself.Instead, the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* at the center of the galaxy absorbed all of th
Ravens of Eternity The Center of the Galaxy, Pt 2
Thanatos joined the other drogar ships and lobbed numerous disintegration mortars at their enemies. They flung streams of mortar fire down at the incoming enemy ships with reckless abandon - even if they missed, they still struck the station far below.Those that didn’t miss slammed into the incoming devastators with relative ease.The orange energies that encased them swept outward and completely shorted out any repair circuits near the point of impact. Then, the dark nuclei burst all over the armor plating where countless nanites began to eat through the armor itself.They chewed through every metallic element in their path greedily, and reduced the enemy devastators’ exterior defenses moot. Each of them had massive gaping holes that revealed far more fragile components inside.
Ravens of Eternity The Center of the Galaxy, Pt 3
Just as Freya was coming to the realization that their fight was nigh insurmountable and that they only held a very slim chance of winning, everything turned for the worse.To her horror, the station’s surface began to shift and move and flow, almost like quicksand.Every crater and scar began to fill back up and cover each of the wreckages and detritus inside of them. The station’s surface swallowed up the broken, destroyed ships that were dotted all over bit by bit as the moments passed.As it did so, the nanite pool dissolved everything it touched. Large swaths of torn armor or chitin plating, exoframes and internal structures, modules and systems, flesh and bone. All were consumed by the station’s nanites and broken down to their finer elements.
Ravens of Eternity The Center of the Galaxy, Pt 4
After many minutes of traveling through the planet-sized station, Thanatos eventually reached the inner core. It passed through the atmospheric shielding and pierced through to the inside.But it wasn’t quite hollow like Freya thought. It was yet another layer of nanite soup, much like the surface. She watched as a fully-formed hangar bay materialized all around her, as the soup created a hangar bay just for this occasion.It dawned on her that deep in here, they could be overwhelmed with nanites and turned into soup in mere moments. But they weren’t already, which meant there was some sliver of trust to be had.She docked Thanatos at the only docking collar protruding from the far wall. And as she neared the walls, they protruded outward and filled the space between. It made Thanatos fit snugly in
Ravens of Eternity The Center of the Galaxy, Pt 5
“How can the solution possibly be… whatever you’re doing?” protested Freya. “Do you honestly believe that constant conflict makes us stronger? That’s ridiculous!” “You of all people should understand how bodies work,” Anki retorted. “Our physical bodies are constantly at war with the galaxy around them. Simply look at your biological responses to viruses and bacteria. “Your bodies only improve and defend themselves through this constant conflict. Through the constant influx of stronger, more potent phages and antiphages. You can extrapolate this fact across every level and dimension of life. “It is the only way most organisms in the galaxy can survive. Without these base defense mechanisms, violent as they are, none of you would exist.” “That’s a false equivalence!” Claire cried out. “The drogar aren’t viruses or bacteria, and humans aren’t a separate organism from them at all! We’re the same organism, all living in the same cell! “It’s more like our antibodies can’t even tell t
Ravens of Eternity The Roots of Yggdrasil
Raijin sank down into the vast sea of circuits that ran the entire station. Her nanite swarm spread all throughout the core as her own consciousness mingled with and reviewed the various intelligences that ran it. And although this was all something she had done hundreds, if not thousands of times before, this seemed a wholly new experience for her.The station’s complexity and advanced technology certainly helped in making her feel this way. Mostly, it was because she was analyzing code that had lasted for tens of thousands of years.The entire system’s operational core was certainly antiquated, but it allowed the more complex self-healing, self-repairing, self-learning Administrator to grow around it. She was able to patch over most of the old code and modernize it. Most would see that as its only saving grace, but Raijin saw a bit more in i
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