As it says, I'm new to fenspace. I first came across it in CitD on the
spacebattles forums, read through the wiki and decided that I should at
least attempt to write a story in this setting. First character has been
mostly fleshed out, comments and advice are encouraged.
Ganti:
An unfocused collage student when the 'wave hit. Panicked he found out
that the grey thing that made his truck run without gas was illegal, so
he finished 'waving it, grabbed his stuff, including his pet cat, and
left. Thankfully, he wasn't quite panicked enough to leave without food,
but it was a close thing. He currently answers to a handle he used on
various forums and IRCs.
Appearance:
6'0" tall
Brown hair
Blue eyes,
180ish pounds.
Notable Mundane Attributes:
Jack of Many trades: Talented in a number of fields, including
electrical engineering, welding, ceramics, writing, engine maintenance,
electrical maintenance, and general tinkering. Is by no means an expert
at any of these, but with effort, he could be. He seems to be allergic
to effort, however...
Random Trivia: He's got lots of it. This often includes quotes applicable for the situation or odd facts that might help.
Handwavium Abilities:
None yet.
Quirks:
Scottish, by way of America: Self-Identifies as a Scot, despite being
born in the US. Listens to bagpipe music. Eats haggis occasionally. Even
speaks a little Gaelic.
Not without my Cat!: Rarely goes anywhere without his cat. Gets more
then a little twitchy when separated from her, who he took with him when
he went into space, for extended periods of time. Oddly, his cat seems
to react the same way.
Give me that Old Time Rock and Roll: Fan of classic rock. Can identify a
large number of classic rock songs from just their opening bars. Is
almost guaranteed to end up at a Kansas concert one of these days, never
mind the legal difficulties.
Faction:
Pirates, with Gearhead and Warsie leanings.
Hera: Ganti's cat. Pretty typical Main Coon Silver Tabby, except for the
fact she got into his 'Wavium. She's now about twice the size of a
standard one, and has received a large intelligence boost. Ganti hopes
for an extended lifespan also being part of her mod.
Handwavium Abilities:
Big Cat: Pretty much what it says on the tin. She's now a very big cat.
She was already larger then some (Very Small) Dogs before the biomod.
The Cat who walks through Walls: She can get to where she wants to be
despite the intervening distance, locked doors or walls. About the only
thing that actually stops her is vacuum. This only functions when people
aren't watching her or the destination.
Quirks:
My Human!: Doesn't respond well to the presence of other pets near Ganti.
Where are you?: The counterpart to 'Not without my cat!'. She gets twitchy if separated from Ganti for long periods of time.
Bully: A bit of an extension to 'My Human!'. She doesn't like dogs. At
all. More then that, she will go out of her way to make life hard for them. As there are very few dogs in Fenspace, this probably won't be showing up much.
Hah! It'll be hilarious if Hera ever met Oliver. It'd be the rivalry of the century.
Could be interesting...
Now, all you need to do is get the cat a collar that acts as a space suit, and a speed drive, and she could go anywhere! [grin]
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind
Oliver? Rivalry? Wait until she meets Tristan. A waved cat twice the normal size plus a waved dog, er, twice the normal size, plus the wave standard abilty to follow common plotlines, do not make a stable combination...
Though it may be an hilarious combinarion for any bystander that is not the owner...
How old is Ganti when he heads for space?
And when does he head Up? Is he First Fen (Up before mid-2009)?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Rakhasa Wrote:Oliver? Rivalry? Wait until she meets Tristan. A waved cat twice the normal size plus a waved dog, er, twice the normal size, plus the wave standard abilty to follow common plotlines, do not make a stable combination...
You have seen his wiki entry, right?
http://www.fenspace.net/index.php5?title=Oliver
blackaeronaut Wrote:Rakhasa Wrote:Oliver? Rivalry? Wait until she meets Tristan. A waved cat twice the normal size plus a waved dog, er, twice the normal size, plus the wave standard abilty to follow common plotlines, do not make a stable combination...
You have seen his wiki entry, right?
http://www.fenspace.net/index.php5?title=Oliver
Now I have... This does not bode well. The hellhound, the ghost cat and the unstopable hacker corgie.
(together, they fight crime)
I find it amusing that people are spending more time on the cat then the character, but whatever. I can probably make a couple of stories focused on her if that's what you want.
@Hrogge: He's 18 or 19. This is just the second or third draft, so nothing is nailed down quite yet.
@robkelk: Well, he goes up some time between mid 2008 and 2009. I don't think that makes him first fen... (According to the wiki, mid 2008 is the cutoff point for first fen. This time is based on my best guess as to when handwavium becomes illegal in the states.)
Gantithoren Wrote:@robkelk: Well, he goes up some time between mid 2008 and 2009. I don't think that makes him first fen... (According to the wiki, mid 2008 is the cutoff point for first fen. This time is based on my best guess as to when handwavium becomes illegal in the states.)
Right - trust the wiki on this one.
So Ganti isn't going into a nearly-empty Solar System - there are plenty of places where he can land and get a sandwich and a shower. What does he want to do now that he's in space?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
robkelk Wrote:Gantithoren Wrote:@robkelk: Well, he goes up some time between mid 2008 and 2009. I don't think that makes him first fen... (According to the wiki, mid 2008 is the cutoff point for first fen. This time is based on my best guess as to when handwavium becomes illegal in the states.)
Right - trust the wiki on this one.
So Ganti isn't going into a nearly-empty Solar System - there are plenty of places where he can land and get a sandwich and a shower. What does he want to do now that he's in space?
Hm. He probably has three major priorities.
1) Getting food. He has some, but dried fruits, meat and water bottles will only get you so far. And you don't want to be eating those all the time. He also needs food for his much bigger cat. All told, this probably means getting a job. As he's got a truck, which has decent carrying capacity, he can haul stuff to cover that.
2) Getting a bigger ship. His truck is nice and all, but it's not precisely roomy. My first thought was something from Skies of Arcadia, but the more I think about it, the more I realize what I really want is a zeppelin or a submarine. Not sure if either of those would even be available, though. And he needs the room. Again, his cat. (... She's probably going to be one of the major driving forces for him. I'm currently playing with the idea that he has a biomod and doesn't know it. Said biomod's power: Empathic link with his cat. I'd prefer something more dramatic, though. Idealy, something to do with electricity.)
3) Explore. He's in space. The final frontier. Full of great wonders and mysteries. ETC. I mean really, who wouldn't want to explore that?
Food: Earth-Luna L5 is the best place to look for food and getting his fenspace feet wet so to speak. Even early on L5 was populated.
Bigger ship: Again L5 or Luna. Depending on when exactly John Henry is opened, he may be able to get/build himself a bigger ship there, if he is willing to pull his weight.
Explore: Nicely ties into the Bigger Ship thing. If he manages to get a Trekkie sensor system, he might be able to go exploring the belt and act as propspector, selling the orbital elements of interesting asteroids to miners to make money and eventually buying a larger ship.
Thanks to some chatting with Mal on the IRC, I decided to re-work Ganti's timeline. Not sure if it's going to be acceptable, but I thought I should run what I have past you lot.
Timeline:
Mid/late 2007: Ganti finds an odd chunk of an unknown substance during one of his nature hikes. He takes it home and uses it as a paperweight when he'd normally throw things like that into the trash. It promptly eats his notes on electrical engineering.
Later, still 2007: Ganti determines that his 'paperweight' has grown in size many times. Hera has been spending time with it. A small chunk of it breaks off, leaving him with two units of handwavium, one small, and one much bigger. He has Minor Blue Hair Day and looses a weekend somewhere. When he's done, he has a bunch of spare parts for his truck, which apparently no longer needs refueling.
Very late 2007/early 2008: Ganti Acquires 'The Cat Who Walks Through Walls', by Robert Heinlein. His paperweight eats it, and spits out another small chunk of handwavium, which lands in the glass of water he had nearby. Massively confused, he decides to go look this up on the internet, which he realizes he should have done much earlier, at which point his cat drinks the 'wavium in the glass. On the whole, he's not too displeased with the results. He begins feeding the wavium with lots of information about electricity, including various comic books and short stories that feature characters with electrical powers. On a whim, he includes as much information about Nikola Tesla as he could.
Early 2008: He deliberately re-creates the wavium/water solution, and applies it to his computer. It runs much, much better, not to mention Windows programs despite being a Mac, but he gets the feeling that something else has also happened. He's proven right when Teosag starts asking questions. After a bit of very poor communication via a text editor, Ganti buys and hooks up a microphone and webcam, easing communication massively.
Early/mid 2008: The group finds out about a decommissioned WW2 sub going on sale that was built in scotland. Via unanimous agreement of Human, AI, and super intelligent cat, it is decided that they MUST purchase it. How quickly becomes a question, as they lack the funds. It is eventually decided that they will siphon funds from a number of companies, including most of the big oil ones, Wells Fargo, and every single political party in the US.
Mid/late 2008: Reality intrudes on the dream, as they prepare to purchase the sub, they realize that they do not live near the ocean, and it is being sold in a different country. They have the funds, however. It is debated whether or not to keep acquiring funds and go for a Zeppelin or to just buy the sub and work around the difficulties.
I think you are slowly moving from "I need stuff X" to working on an interesting story... keep up the work!
Thanks. I'd like to think that while I do tend to start off from "I want X" I generally end up with an interesting story that is somewhat self sustaining. Of course, it's entirely possible that's just my ego speaking.
As I can't get any sleep, more timeline!
Mid/late 2008: It's eventually decided that they will go ahead with the submarine. With Teosag expediting the trip and smoothing over the background checks, purchasing the submarine is quick and painless. Unfortunately, purchasing a WW2 submarine, even one that's been somewhat decommissioned, draws attention.
A number of groups put two and two together and get five. About half of them are convinced that Ganti's a front for a criminal group after a drug smuggling submarine. The other half decide he's a rich idiot who didn't think it all the way through. (The second group is much, much closer to correct.) A group of investigators from one of the big oil companies track down where there missing funds went just a little too late and realize that they're not the only ones who have been loosing funds to this mysterious entity. The gang has to decide what to do with their shiny (well okay, kinda battered) new (Old. Really old.) submarine. None of them had thought that far in advance. They briefly toss about using it to explore the ocean, but decide it's completely unsuited for that.
Things begin to degrade as each drifts off to do their own thing. (Note to self: write a story segment covering this section and the following. There's gotta be at least a chapter or two in there...)
Late 2008/early 2009: Teosag gets bored and starts riffling through classified material, attracting some unwelcome attention, so he returns to the group and begins covering his tracks like mad. Ganti and Hera welcome him back, mostly. The welcome is quite a bit warmer when he gives Ganti some high end theories on electricity, sparking the most impressive Blue Hair Day(Weeks or Months, really) Ganti's ever undergone, massively reworking the submarine, which he dubs the Cura. With it receiving a complete 'wave overhaul, he ends up with a pile of stuff on the dock, mostly the diesel engines, which had been replaced by... something that looked like Tesla would have made it.
While not exactly a free energy device, it was much, much better then the old diesel engines, and more then capable of powering the entire submarine almost indefinitely (I figure this gives them two or three years to figure out what it is and what in needs to run before they need to fix it). The most obvious change to the submarine, however, is the deck. One of the 57mm deck guns had been replaced with... something else. Whatever it is, it's big. Really big. And looks like a weapon of some sort. A large number of cables ran from it into the hull semi-seamlessly, leaving the hull airtight. No-one really wanted to find out what it was or what it could do. Thankfully, it was tied into a great big red button that was under a cover that needed to be unlocked, so it wouldn't be pushed accidentally. (... I suspect I'm beginning to drift back into 'I want x' here. If so, I can always edit that out.)
This sort of activity does draw attention, so while they're trying to figure out how the hell any of this works, they're having a lot of people look awfully closely at them, probably including a number of fen.
Edit: broke a bunch of stuff up into paragraphs. This might confuse the timeline a little, but should make it much more readable.
Edit 2: I was told that it might be a good idea to be specific about what the Big Gun does. I'm willing to do so, but this section is VERY meta. the characters have no clue what it does, and they're more then a little worried about it, so they won't be testing it any time soon. As I'm currently making this up as I go along, this is not set in stone, but A) Said giant gun is very heavily handwaved, so the slapstick effect is in full force here, and B) The current theme seems to be 'electricity' so it's essentially a massive lightning gun, sorta like CnC's Tesla Tanks. Combined with the slapstick effect, it should only really short out other ships, at most, but you could make an argument about it setting off whatever ammo they have, if it's explosive. That's much, much later, if I ever get to it.
Gantithoren Wrote:Edit 2: I was told that it might be a good idea to be specific about what the Big Gun does. I'm willing to do so, but this section is VERY meta. the characters have no clue what it does, and they're more then a little worried about it, so they won't be testing it any time soon. As I'm currently making this up as I go along, this is not set in stone, but A) Said giant gun is very heavily handwaved, so the slapstick effect is in full force here, and B) The current theme seems to be 'electricity' so it's essentially a massive lightning gun, sorta like CnC's Tesla Tanks. Combined with the slapstick effect, it should only really short out other ships, at most, but you could make an argument about it setting off whatever ammo they have, if it's explosive. That's much, much later, if I ever get to it.
This is a possible story tie-in to some of the established Fenspace characters...
Ganti, Hera, and Teosag have no idea what this weapon is, but they've heard rumours about a weapons specialist in L5...
http://www.fenspace.net/index.php5?title=Kohran_Li]Kohran is more a "steam" Mad than an "electricity" Mad, but she's in the right place at the right time, and she does understand weapons systems – she should be able to at least help your team figure out what your new weapon does.
Once your crew knows Kohran, she can introduce them to the rest of the Stellvians, and to the local Warsies. The Stellvians can introduce your people to the Senshi. That provides connections to two of the big six factions... although being known to be friendly with the Warsies might make it difficult to get that Trekkie sensor suite you want.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
here's a possible plot twist: You said that the firing button for the new gun is locked down, now the 'crew' just need to figure out where the key is. 8)
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin
Hmm. Thanks guys. That gives me some ideas to work with.
Early 2009: All the issues the somewhat overworked crew have been juggling come crashing down. A massive, multi-sided shootout occurs, involving at least three criminal organizations who don't want Ganti butting in on their territory, a section of the police sent to investigate him on rumors of drug smuggling, another group of law enforcement attempting to arrest him for siphoning all that money, and a group of black ops agents sent to subdue Teosag because of the classified material he acquired. Fortunately, they had been loading supplies into the Cura since Ganti's Blue Hair Month(s), and were capable of casting off and escaping with minimal injuries. As the crew was renting the location where the brouhaha went down, they revived a 'possible terrorist' ID.
The crew discovers Cura's "Scotland the Brave" quirk. (... Note to self: Stat out the Cura. And Teosag.) Ganti joins a gaming IRC, but keeps quiet about his... 'adventures'. Captain Nemo approaches them about joining forces, leading to the creation of the Submariners faction. It's very small, with only two major submarines, the Nautilus and the Cura.
Early/Mid 2009: Hyuuint, one of Ganti's friends on IRC acquires some 'wavium. His flair for 'Wavium involves spiders and robots. The UK gets an extradition order for Ganti, forcing him to find somewhere else to resupply, and forcing him away from Scotland. He is less then pleased about the latter. The crew discovers the Cura's "But mark the Rustic, Haggis fed" quirk. They're not entirely certain what to think about it. Hyuuint builds his first repair spiderbot. Ganti figures out the basics of the new power plant he installed and dubs it the 'Tesla Reactor'. Héléne Aronnax joins the Submariners. Hyuuint finds out that his spiderbots can build more spiderbots and has a Blue Hair Day, ending up with a large swarm of spiderbots of various configurations.
Mid/Late 2009: Ganti has to avoid all European nations, as they all have extradition orders for him. Hyuuint (... I should stat him, too.) decides there are too many people around his current location for him. Countries start receiving extradition orders before Ganti can gather supplies there. Fortunately, he has been buying more then he thinks he needs and restocking often. The crew find a key lying on the deck in the engine room. It is quickly determined that it is they key to the RBG (Really Big Gun), mostly because nothing else on the ship uses a key. It keeps disappearing, despite their efforts to keep an eye on it. It is eventually determined that this is the 'Key Gnomes' quirk. On the IRC Hyuuint asks if the IRC group know of anywhere with minimal people. Ganti jokingly offers a place in the Cura's crew, only to find out a number of them are actually interested, if disbelieving.
December 2009: The vast majority of countries have extradition orders for Ganti, and those that don't either lack the ability to resupply the Cura or maintain the sort of policies that makes Ganti avoid them. Running low on supplies, the now-larger crew decides to visit the L-5 point as they've been hearing that it's the place to go for supplies for the fen. Spending some time there, they hear rumors of a weapons expert, so curious about the RBG they go and track her down. First encounter with Kohran Li.
Okay, not entirely certain if I should start a new thread for the story bit I've got or just toss it up here. As I've got Mal's ok on the Cura, I though I'd post it as well.
SS Cura:
Length: 240 feet (75 meters)
Depth: 16 feet (4.9 meters)
Breadth: 21 feet (6.4 Meters)
Drive type: Speed
Max speed: .06c
Armaments: 6x 533 mm torpedo tubes, 4 bow, 2 stern. 1x 57 mm deck gun stern. 1x Tesla Cannon, bow. The deck gun and Tesla Cannon are waved enough the slapstick effect takes place.
Quirks:
Scotland the Brave: The Cura works best when Scottish music is playing in the engine room. Bagpipe music is preferred, but pretty much any songs played or written by a Scot work.
But mark the Rustic, Haggis fed: The waste recycling system spits out a Haggis every few months. This is pretty handwavium heavy, so don't eat it if you don't have or want a biomod. On the other hand, the Haggis is really tasty.
Key Gnomes: The key to the Tesla Cannon keeps changing it's position. Thankfully, it seems to have some favored locations. It's like a schroedinger equation. As soon as their state becomes non-deterministic, they move. But only around midnight, ships time.
Quote:Okay, not entirely certain if I should start a new thread for the story bit I've got or just toss it up here.
Either way works.
Looking good...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Thanks. I've got most of chapter one finished, but it's from the point of view of the 'danes, not Ganti and crew. It covers a bunch of police trying to figure out what the HELL just happened down at dock 47. (... Number pulled out of my rear, and does not show up in the story. I should find a way to work it in.) I'm currently a bit low on ideas, but I suppose doing a perspective switch and flashback to Ganti's point of view when the mess is going down would open up some opportunities.