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Hello everyone,

I posted here a year or so ago about my IG, the Antigans. The story was.... let's be nice and say 'ok'. This one, I think, is much better, but disclaimer: this is all rough draft.

Please please please give me C&C. It's why I posted it here. If it's bad, tear it apart!

And I'll check this a few times a day to answer any questions or comments you guys might have.

If anyone here frequents Dark Lord Potter(reknown for their cruel but true remarks), I will post it there in a few days as well.

This is what I have so far. I know the AI bit is similiar to Halo 4, but I swear to you THEY stole MY plans, not vice versa! Here goes, and I hope you enjoy!


Antigan History, Rough, Part I:

Earth. The birthplace of humanity. Now known to history as Holy Terra, much of what passed on that planet has been forgotten, lost to time and war. However, fragments still remain. Before the Imperium, indeed, before even the Dark Age, Earth was on the brink of nuclear devestation. Several factions vied for power, and each was willing to use nuclear weapons to attain it. Two factions, known as the Jermanic Empire and Ahmuricun Confederation, were slowly losing the war against the combined might of Rusa and Chyna. Facing nuclear holocaust, Ahmurica and Germenee loaded down a top secret shuttle with the best and brightest their world had to offer, along with everything from Earth's long recorded history, and sent them off into space. Locked in cryogenic sleeper cells, the crew had no control over the ship, named the Destiny. An AI program was built for the express purpose of navigating the dangers of space and delivering the survivors of Earth to a new home.

With no Warp travel, the ship putted along in normal space, taking decades to cross a single solar system. The AI's first choice was Alpha Centauri, the closest habitable planet, and long on Earth's list of potential colony worlds. But behind them, Earth had not been destroyed. Indeed, it entered into a period of exploration unparalelled even by modern Imperial efforts.. When the Destiny arrived on the outskirts of Alpha Centauri's solar system some 100 years later, it immediatedly detected the presence of human populations on the surface. Rather than land, the AI regarded these humans as a threat to its cargo, and moved on, slowly powering farther and farther away from Earth.
Numerous unexplained sightings have been reported in Imperial Annals of mysterious ships, appearing on the edge of habitable systems and disappearing before an intercept could be organized. Several times ships arrived close by this mystery cruiser, only to have it disappear completely off the scanners. Local rumors abounded that it was the work of Chaos (The Imperials only having recently regained control after the Horus Heresy), and many an Imperial starship was sent looking for her. In the end, with no hard evidence to warrant a continued search, it was decided that the ship was merely an illusion brought on by panic-striken civilians and faulty scanning equipment.

The Destiny had, in fact, been deliberately hiding. Many Imperials have no knowledge of AI behavior with the Imperial-wide ban on such creations, but AI's rarely served for more than a century. After that, not only did the equipment the AI was stored in begin to degrade, but the AI itself began to split into several different 'personas' to handle the increased memory load of constantly attaining new data. The Destiny's AI had degraded to the point that any sentient life was classified as a threat to its cargo. Left alone for centuries, it had become paranoid, and was actively seeking a home far removed from any sentient beings, and it had already crossed half of the Milky Way galaxy in this endeavor. Unfortunately for the Destiny, the discovery of Warp technology created a cheap and reliable way to colonize new worlds, and Imperial colony ships were outpacing the decrepit ship from Old Earth. Every system the Destiny visited already had years of human infrastructure in place, forcing the ship to move on.

At the outset of the 40th Millenium, the Destiny was in trouble. Almost all the fuel reserves had been spent, and with the robotic helpers and solar panels either broken or malfunctioning, the Destiny's AI knew it was reaching the end of its options. A few more planets were potentially habitable, but the AI's copies bickered for weeks as to which planet they should try first. Eventually, the original AI mastered itself long enough to select a planet and begin a timer that would wake the humans, who had spent millenia in stasis, awaiting their new homes. With a course set and the timer counting down, the AI purged itself from the computers, lest its copies attempt to divert the ship and squander precious fuel. The AI was so entrenched into the ship's systems that the purge took most of the ship's library with it, and many of the command subsystems.
With no commander, the Destiny powered on through space, arriving some decades later. But a combination of ancient technology neglected for centuries and the AI's purge had scrambled or destroyed the ships command systems, and instead of placing itself in orbit, the ship slipped into the planet's gravity well and crash landed across a sparse forested region, scattering pieces for miles. The cryo sleepers were well-made, and many survived the crash to begin waking up their occupants. The first human to wake was a doctor, Mical Kotver. His first thought was to record what he saw in the journal he had kept in his coat pocket. This excerpt is all that remains of that journal:

"Something has gone horribly wrong with the Destiny. I can see smoke coming from the forest all around me, and I fear the debris may have started a wildfire. We have landed on what is clearly an alien planet, yet it looks almost like home. Pine trees that are not pine trees, grey mountains capped with snow, and golden fields, but not of wheat... I will write more later, my duty for now is to find any survivors there may be."


That's it so far, when I have some comments here I'll put up the next part after I fix this one. Or would you rather have me post up both to make it more immersive? You decide Dakka Dakka!

To clarify a few points my friends have made about the story so far:

I don't want to follow the Imperium, Antiga will be independent. (Sorry Imperials, there's no such things as machine ghosts!)

Antiga is located within the Tau borders thanks to their latest expansion(which is how it took so very very long to get there)

The main conflict on this planet will be with Imperial colonists. The people on the Destiny will be regarded as an indigenous people simply because they'll be there long before the Imperials.

My Imperial guard have American/Russian/Roman/German themes in them, that I am trying to combine into a unique culture. That's why I threw in Germany and America for the historical origin. And when you see the models, I have to point out again, Halo 4 stole some things from my mind. Ah!



If you guys have better ideas( you don't mind me stealing) or any questions feel free to ask! I'm excited to see what will come up.


Cheers all,
DaBestest

I like it though I would like you to post up the next bit so I can get a better feel of your story please.

The only bit I'd like to change is near the start when you say lost to time and war, I would put - Lost to the depths of time and the flames of it's many wars - but it's up to you if you want to change it.

I also liked the A.I and the way you talked about it's slow slip into madness and paranoya

My only gripe is ho the frack did the Destiny have enough fuel to last over 30,000?

@manwithplan:

The destiny was powered by solar panels feeding ion engines, and i don't have a name for them, but the robotic workers are very similar to Wall-E. they can fix each other and the ship systems but eventually they will break down and parts became scarce. So for a long while, the robots fixed any problems in the ship, and scrapped each other one by one for parts to fix themselves. It's space, so you don't need a ton of fuel, once you're up there.

I'm glad you liked the AI! It is my personal favorite part of my IG world. And I will definitely post up the next phase as soon as I'm done writing it. Expect it later today good sir.

I posted this on DLP as well, infamously cruel reviewers, and they said I should change the ship name, which I agree with. Any suggestions?


Cheers all,
DaBestest

(A note, when this story is done, I'll post up pictures of the world itself and the troops, see if my descriptions put the same kind of world in your imagination)

Yes it does sound a bit stargate universe lol, maybe - the seeker, yu-lis-ces(dislexic), the wondering star, the phenix, the last eagle or something like that that says this is the first time we're guna go to another solar system and this is all that's left of our culture.

Oh I understand it how they did it now, those those poor, poor robots bo hoo

NEXT CHAPTER MORTAL, BEFORE MY BLADE THIRSTS FOR YOUR BLOOD!

Translation - would you mind posting the next chapter, there's a good fellow. LOL

I liked the ship name, It brings the meaning of the ship fourth very well. I also like the concept for this story, well done.

Calm yourself oh great God! I am writing as we speak, but I am only one man!

*translation: I will throw up another bit in a few hours. Tantalizing, I know!*


trond: Thanks man, I'm glad you like it. Stick around because this story gets a whole lot crazier. You haven't even arrived at the first twist!


Cheers all,
DaBestest

No problem, praise is given when its earned.

Hey all, just a quick word, finally got my computer back up and running, I'm finishing up the next part as we speak. Sorry for the wait, stupid ISP.

No worries, I am sure it will be worth the wait

Alright everyone, unfortunately I've been seconded to assist in a potluck(darn conscription notices!). But, as promised, I'm posting up more of the story. It's about halfway through the general concept, I'd say, but it needs a lot of work.

Here you are, and I've addressed the formatting issues so this one shouldn't hurt your eyes!


Earth; birthplace of humanity. Now known to history as Holy Terra, much of what has passed on this planet has been lost, scattered by war and the constantly moving sands of time. However, fragments, more often legend than fact, do still remain. Before the Imperium of Man, indeed, before even the Dark Age, Earth was on the brink of nuclear annihilation. Four major factions vied for power. What is thought to be the last remnants of democracy; the Merican Coalition and Jermanee, were being pushed back, continent after continent, by the combined might of the Russan Empire and Cina, who may very well have been the template of the Imperium's government. Facing nuclear holocaust, the Merican and Jermanee governments built the first recorded colony ship, sending thousands of their very best and brightest into cryogenic sleeper tubes, in the hopes that they could continue the human race on another world. Packed into the storage areas was enough food and supplies for years, along with medical and scientific equipment; and stored in the computers, Earth's long recorded history. An AI unit was expressly designed to navigate the dangers of space and deliver its human cargo safely to a habitable planet. According to legend and scraps of information pulled from the computers long after these events had passed, it is believed that the ship took off even as the defenders fought to the last man at the base of the launch pad.

Warp travel would not be invented for millennia to come, and so the colony ship, dubbed Consequence, chugged along at sub-light speeds, slowly pulling away from the burning husk of Earth, taking a decade or more to cross a single solar system. The AI's first choice was Alpha Centauri, the closest habitable world, and long on Earth's list of eventual colony worlds. But behind them, Earth had not been destroyed. Many claim this is the first instance of the God-Emperor's work, as Earth rebuilt and entered into a period of exploration unparalleled even by modern Imperial efforts. When Consequence arrived at the edge of the Alpha Centauri system some 100 years later, its scanners detected a vast human presence on the planet below. Convinced their enemies had followed them, the AI was quick to evade the planet and continue its search elsewhere, slowly moving farther away from humanity's home, into the unexplored regions of the Milky Way.

Numerous unexplained sightings have been recorded in Imperial Annals for centuries of a mysterious ship, appearing on the edge of colonized systems just long enough to scan the planet, and then disappearing back into the vastness of space before an intercept could be organized. On several occasions, ships came near enough to detect its human construction, before it disappeared off the scanners entirely. With the Horus Heresy winding down, and Imperial law just being restored to many planets, local rumors abounded that it was the work of Chaos, and any system visited by the lone ship would soon fall to the Chaos legions. Many an Imperial starship was sent out to hunt for her, but with a lack of hard evidence to warrant a continued search, and with sightings becoming rarer as Consequence moved towards the Imperial border, the search was called off. Officially, it was a ghost ship, an illusion brought on by panic-stricken civilians and faulty scanning equipment.

The Consequence had in fact, been deliberately hiding itself. Many Imperials have no knowledge of AI systems, due to the Imperium-wide ban on such creations, but AI's rarely served for more than a century. After 100 years of accumulating data, the AI began to copy itself to handle the increased memory load. The side effect was that copying such a complex program is hardly foolproof, and data is always lost in the transition. The Consequence's AI had degraded into a paranoid guardian, classifying anything sentient as a Russan threat to its cargo. The copies didn't help, each one bickering with the others as to the best course of action. Over time, this stresses the equipment as well as the original AI, who must consider each request on top of the data it has already collected. In effect, an AI will eventually, inevitably, work itself to death. Having already crossed half the Milky Way galaxy, the AI continued on doggedly, its only goal to attain a home for its cargo. Unfortunately for Consequence, Warp travel had been discovered long before, creating a cheap and reliable way for humanity to spread to each and every system worth inhabiting. Each system the decrepit Old Earth ship visited already had decades of human infrastructure in place, forcing the ship to move on.

At the outset of the 40th Millennium, the Consequence was dying a slow death. It had originally been equipped with a few dozen robotic helper units under the AI's control, used to fix eroding systems and smashed solar panels. But the years had taken their toll, and the halls of the ship were littered with the remains of the helpers, gutted for parts to keep the ever-decreasing number of functional helpers working. Now, with the last few helpers swept away in a freak asteroid accident, the AI was truly alone. Many solar panels that had powered the ship through its long journey were inoperable, and the lack of fuel severely constricted how much farther the AI could push the ailing ship. The AI copies bickered for weeks as to the best course of action. Eventually, the original AI mastered itself long enough to set course to one more planet, and began a timer that would wake the humans after the Consequence established orbit. With that task done, the AI began a total systems purge of itself, ensuring that, in death, it could not harm its cargo, nor would its copies divert the ship and squander precious fuel. The humans, who had spent millenniums longer in cryo than anyone in history, were very close to the end of their sleep, and their first glance at a new home. However, nothing as complex as an AI unit can be wrenched from the systems without some damage, and the purge that destroyed the AI also wiped most of the library, and crippled the ships command systems.

Running on a plotted course, the captain-less Consequence powered on, arriving several decades later with almost no fuel reserve left. The combination of lack of fuel, engine failures, and the AI's purge had crippled the ship, and it could not hold itself in orbit. It began a slow descent to the planet's surface, sucked in by a magnetic field, many times stronger than Earth's. The Consequence had been designed for planetary travel, and so held together through the atmosphere, but broke up as its tail section slammed into a mountain of snow, which acted as a slide for the rest of the ship, depositing the forward half(or the parts of it that remained intact) in the valley at the base of the mountains. Before leaving Earth, the builders had installed protective gel layers around each cryo tube, and that foresight likely saved everyone from an unsightly end on the side of a mountain. Rather than smash apart, the cryo tubes that spilled out of the wrecked ship simply slid along snow and ice, or tumbled down into the equatorial forest regions. The wreck burned for days before the cryo tube timers beeped softly and began to wake their inhabitants.

The first human to wake was a doctor, Mikal Kotver. His first thought was to record what he saw in his personal audio journal. This excerpt is all that remains:

"Something has gone very wrong with the ship... I'm in a forest, smoke all around... debris may have started a wildfire... so hard to remember... we must have been shot down, but this looks like nowhere..ah.. nowhere on Earth I've ever been. Pine trees that look to be made of stone, white mountains capped with snow... my head hurts, perhaps a concussion?... takes so much to remember...I was...with people.... people! I have to find the others... I will record more later..."

Dr. Kotver set up a camp in the forest along with a few survivors and organized a search-and-rescue, using the smoke plumes as guidance. Much of Consequence's medical and scientific supplies had been kept in the tail section, now a tiny speck of smoke amid the vast white of the mountain towering above them, but crates of foodstuffs and more importantly, weapons, were scattered all along the 20-mile crash site. There had been a large container of scientific equipment to weed out the inevitable alien diseases present on new worlds, but the survivors were much more concerned with gathering the supplies around them, testing local water sources for toxins, and dealing with the aftermath of the AI's purge.

While the AI's selfless actions undoubtedly saved the human cargo from its own bloated intelligence, it had several unintentional and very serious side effects. When the AI released a power spike to root out its copies, it had lost control and allowed some of it to enter the cryo bays, effectively electrocuting the people inside for several minutes before it managed to cut the flow. In that time, the electrical storm fused the delicate circuits of the cryo tubes, and while there was not enough energy to kill, or to cripple the tube itself, most survivors awoke with little or no memories of their homes, or even who they were. Some barely remembered their native language, and several dozen had lost the use of limbs. Struggling to assist the apparent stroke victims, Dr. Kotver, now the unofficial leader of the largest survivor camp, was completely unprepared to the mass of people who couldn't remember who they were, or why they had been placed on the ship in the first place. Some of the more resistant, brilliant or lucky among them did retain their memories, and they became pillars of knowledge in the new culture that was forming. Those who could still speak were by and large not bilingual, and with the gutted remnants of the library, there was little hope of translating properly.

Records from this period are incomplete, and most of what is loosely taken as fact comes from personal recordings, censuses or medical reports. During this time, the planet was given the name Antiga, which is thought to be an Old Earth word for 'old' or 'original', perhaps referring to the similar topography and flora. Records and journals indicate that well over 1,000 people elected to follow Kotver towards the nearby sea in search of food and shelter. Other, smaller bands of survivors settled in the foothills or forests, but no recorded group ever dared the barren mountain heights, not even to scavenge the treasure trove of equipment the tail section held.

With no technology save a few precious relics, the fledgling camps had little hope of stopping some of the more fearsome local predators. The survivors adopted a nomadic lifestyle, originally moving from one smoke plume to the next, but as the generations wore on, they expanded their reach all along the plainland and forest regions. To combat the predators, many of whom could mangle a man with one casual swipe, weapons and defenses were created. Sharpened logs were built in sections and deployed around the camp as night fell, and pulled up as the camp moved. A local version of the bow was invented; taller than a man, and fired from a sitting position, the meter-long arrow was enough to scare off individual predators. Even with these new weapons, whole camps were wiped out by the predator species, who learned to operate in packs instead of singly. And when the food from the ship ran out, and the survivors were forced to eat locally, a new problem was discovered.

Antiga's most precious resource is also its deadliest. Trizurnium, a lightweight metal found quite literally everywhere, was present in almost everything. And while cooking or boiling was quickly discovered to negate the toxins, hundreds died from eating raw berries or plants. The Antigan 'tribes' (as they were later classified by Imperial colonists), began to equate raw flora with poison. Cooked meat and alcoholic drinks(which by definition had been boiled and refined) were equated with safety and happiness. A language had evolved from the two original languages of Jermanee and Merican, relying on Merican words with Jermanee sounds. The tribes rarely fought one another, so hard was it to survive day to day without resorting to warfare. Indeed, most tribes welcomed each other with open arms, and trade flourished where two tribes met.

Centuries passed, and the while the tribes sunk ever further towards a new stone age, the Imperium had set upon a warpath. All around Antiga, planets were being seized by an empire determined to reclaim its lost territory and wipe out other sentient life. Where humans were found, they were incorporated into the Imperial fold, with any resistance being crushed by the might of the Imperial Guard. As a reward for hard fighting, many Guard regiments were given colonizing rights on the world they had conquered, to help speed up the colonizing process(and more importantly, to speed up the tithes owed to the Imperium). One such regiment was sent to Antiga, and when the scanners picked up the first images, cheering rebounded throughout the ship.

Many habitable planets are only technically 'inhabitable', with a colonists' life spent inside a sealed colony module, toiling away for the Imperium's benefit. Antiga was a rare jewel by galactic standards, and with 685 million square kilometers of surface area, Antiga dwarfed most so-called 'paradise' worlds. Set against the stark blackness of space, Antiga was a brilliant white, with deep green forests and sapphire blue waters. The planet looked to once have been made up completely of mountain ranges, and the majority of the world was still covered in titanic mountain ranges covered in deep, constantly falling snow. A massive valley around the equatorial zone was several thousand meters lower in elevation than even the valleys between mountains. It looked as if a continental glacier had made its way around the equator, shoving the mountains to either side as a ship's bow breaks through the ocean. Indeed, many mountains tilted slightly towards the nearest polar cap, and they grew larger as they reached the cap itself. The middle, massive valley, nicknamed the 'Belt' was filled with golden fields stretching for miles, broken up by thick forests of what appeared to be pine trees. From the mountain tops, a steep slope, almost unbroken across the entire planet, went down to the Belt's floor, which consisted of valleys, plainland and forests. Three oceans could be seen along the surface, fed by massive bodies of water stored in a cavern system that honeycombed the entire mantle of Antiga. The air, while high in metallic particles, was perfectly breathable, and the oceans were freshwater, teeming with aquatic life.


BOOM. Four pages, and now my fingers hurt. Let me know what you think! Challenge the concepts, etc etc etc.


Cheers everyone,

DaBestest

It was an engrossing read, I hope to read more from Antiga soon, well maybe after your finger tips regain some feeling again lol. Is their conflict brewing with the inhabitants and the colonists I wonder. Keep it up

@manwithplan: Oh, you'll have to wait and see. bwa ha. bwa ha ha. MWA HA HA HA HA HA!! erm.. ahem. excuse me.

I'll have more posted tonight.


Cheers,

DaBestest

EDIT: And what's better, this history will feed into the unveiling of my Antigan army(well, armies, as you'll see soon enough!) as well as my Orks.

I promise you guys I'm working on it. My internet's been spotty lately, curse you century link!

I'm actually writing this from work. Rest assured, within a few days, the rest will be up. Hopefully.

Cheers all!

DaBestest

Your second posting lost me.

Stone age tribes vs the imperial guard?

I was hoping for retention of old earth technology and some rich interplay between newly arrived imperials and old earth colonists not sure how to deal with the bleak reality of the imperium.

Wow! To any potential internet users, avoid century link! They shut down my internet for almost a week for no reason!

@Aurora: If you could give me an idea of what you mean by your last sentence, I can see about adding it in. Though, to clear things up, the tribes won't be facing the imperial guard as an organization.

Think Jamestown. yes, the settlers had guns, but there were only a few hundred, where the indians had thousands. Had they wanted, they could have slaughtered the settlers long before any help could be sent. It will be in the same vein as that.

Cheers, and I will post up the rest of the story either tomorrow or the next day. Sorry it's taken so long, been busy on the phone with qwest...er... century link.


DaBestest