Emerging from the Shell (2200-2210)
Debate about what to do with the newly proven hyperdrive system was omnipresent on the the Network, a referendum that became synonymous with the 2200 election. Shellbounds insisted that any use of it could draw hostile extraterrestrial attention, while the more optimistic countered that learning about the rest of the galaxy would be the only way to learn more about and survive such threats, making liberal use of the old cliche, “You have to know the quorlfish’s camouflage pattern before you can avoid her.” Finally, the more adventurous won out in the argument and vote, leaving newly elected First Speaker Paggro to execute it.
Paggro was actually an archaeologist by trade, starting on excavations of the ancient city of Shugg during her late maledom. When she transitioned she was appointed project lead. Her efficiency in the role would lead to the discovery that Shugg’s rulers had actually used their volcanic rift’s heat for metal forging (a technique previously thought to have been developed much later), catapulting her into fame, which she parlayed into regional and then global office on a platform of institutional reform and governmental efficiency. Paggro actually had strong personal reservations about exploring with the hyperdrive, but resolved to execute the will of the Consensus.
More vocally supportive was Shusk, who volunteered to travel on the first exploratory ship herself with her entire harem. While opponents scoffed at it as a publicity stunt, the endorsement of key astronomers willing to join any team she led, ended up making it a reality when the referendum passed.
The images sent back by that first team to explore Maasym were inspiringly beautiful, even if economic forecasts about the value of the system would later prove over-optimistic. The resulting enthusiasm led to the Hrakk region funding their own expedition led by favorite daughter Glabonsch.
To Shusk’s eternal chagrin, Glabonsch would actually be the first one to discover proof of alien life, when her time found the greenery of algae on Rixim Prime, and the strange patterns that this algae formed across Rixim’s oceans. Just four months later, Shusk would find an abandoned cargo pod orbiting a gas giant in the Maasym system and be the first to prove the existence of alien intelligence when she opened it and found a cache of what appeared to be jewelry, but even then, but even that would be undercut when Glabonsch found that the algae network had actually been constructed as a massive biological computer.
When the Consensus voted to station a permanent research outpost on Rixim, rather than on Maasym as Shusk insisted, she melancholically took it as confirmation that she had lost her place in history by those narrow few months, driving her to over-ingestion of chloride, which would develop into an addiction. Yet, her greatest triumph would come not even a year later while exploring the Iflore system. Shusk’s team came across what appeared to to be another ship, initially taking it to be an abandoned wreck like the cargo pod they had discovered the previous year. In fact, it was still active (if damaged), and being operated by a sentient arthropodal species which called themselves the Screk. After establishing a mutual system of communication through reference to mathematical principles over the course of a few months, Shusk learned that their ship had been stranded for months after a malfunctioning hyperdrive sent them far from their intended coordinates. Their supplies and food were running low, with nutritional deficiencies so dire that they were experiencing an outbreak of neurological parasites. After intense debate, Shusk agreed to let them onboard in a sealed environment geared towards their survivable environment (they weren’t aquatic to the Spiruponderans' surprise.)
The rescued crew was quarantined in the research station orbiting Chiblosch, where their communication methods (consisting primarily of pointed clicks and antennae flicks) was further decoded. Eventually, the crew explained to the researchers how to contact their homeworld of Baccotri, which they said was ruled by a united democratic government similar to the Consensus. The public debate on whether to do so was even more fierce than that for the use of the hyperdrive (after all, alien intelligence had only been hypothetical then), but eventually those in favor won out.
Fortunately, the United Screk Union was grateful to the Consensus for rescuing their scientists and quickly agreed to mutual non-aggression. With celebrations of this diplomatic victory punctuated by observations of a beautiful comet seen from Cyggia, the ideological optimists took the opportunity to confidently argue that the Spiruponderans had little to fear from alien life in general, that only peaceful life could achieve the technological strength to reach the stars. Even after evidence of an ancient xenocidal race of cyborgs was unearthed, such naive views would reach their apex as the Union agreed to collaborative research (though the improbably apparent similarity between the Union’s technological development and the Consensus’s fueled cynical suspicions that the Union was hiding their true technological capabilities), and the discovery of both collectable dark matter available and a mysterious gate around Abaddon’s Demnse. In this giddy atmosphere, the last few independent states on Cyggia voted to join the Consensus, unifying the planet for the first time in its history.
The idealism came to an end the year after Unification, when Shusk came across what appeared to be a massive, scarred fleet of unidentified warships illuminated in the harsh red light of the Zedran system. When they fired upon her, she fled. Only several months later did the Consensus learn that these “Gargaxton Free Warriors” were abominable monsters who delighted in violence--a truly shocking and alien notion for Spiruponderan mind.
Withdrawing, a deeply rattled Shusk found a strange pulsing of a the star Afrmyke on her ship’s sensors. When a member of her harem said that it might just be a sensor malfunction, an addled Shusk rumbled furiously “I’ve found two alien civilizations. How many have you found? That’s right: none, because no one else has ever found any but me. We’re heading to Afrmyke.” Grumbled considerations of declaring her unfit for command due to regressive male-like behavior dissipated when they came across an unidentified alien craft surveying planets in a nearby system AND in Afrmyke itself.
These would turn out to be scout ships for a strange, mystical-commercial organization calling itself the Cuddlesnux Warm Huggerate. They were small, creatures who had elevated their huddling together for warmth on their cold homeworld into a spiritual doctrine of loving embrace, which they were determined to spread to the stars, along with commerce. This baffled the Spiruponderans on several levels, but they seemed relatively benign, and would later agree to peaceful coexistence with the Consensus.
The fact that Afrmyke’s apparent strange pulsing would indeed turn out to be a sensory malfunction as Shusk’s critics had suggested would be largely forgotten, especially after the star system turned out to be host to an industrialized civilization, meaning Shusk had discovered four out of the four known living alien cultures. Her subsequent election to First Speakerhood in 2210 was practically foreordained.
2210 Political Map.
Clockwise from the north are the Gargaxton Free Warriors, the Spiruponderan Consensus (us), the United Screk Union, the Cuddlesnux Warm Huggerate
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Welcome to my first AAR, the tale of peaceful snail scientists trying to survive in a (probably) violent galaxy.
Debate about what to do with the newly proven hyperdrive system was omnipresent on the the Network, a referendum that became synonymous with the 2200 election. Shellbounds insisted that any use of it could draw hostile extraterrestrial attention, while the more optimistic countered that learning about the rest of the galaxy would be the only way to learn more about and survive such threats, making liberal use of the old cliche, “You have to know the quorlfish’s camouflage pattern before you can avoid her.” Finally, the more adventurous won out in the argument and vote, leaving newly elected First Speaker Paggro to execute it.
Paggro was actually an archaeologist by trade, starting on excavations of the ancient city of Shugg during her late maledom. When she transitioned she was appointed project lead. Her efficiency in the role would lead to the discovery that Shugg’s rulers had actually used their volcanic rift’s heat for metal forging (a technique previously thought to have been developed much later), catapulting her into fame, which she parlayed into regional and then global office on a platform of institutional reform and governmental efficiency. Paggro actually had strong personal reservations about exploring with the hyperdrive, but resolved to execute the will of the Consensus.
More vocally supportive was Shusk, who volunteered to travel on the first exploratory ship herself with her entire harem. While opponents scoffed at it as a publicity stunt, the endorsement of key astronomers willing to join any team she led, ended up making it a reality when the referendum passed.
The images sent back by that first team to explore Maasym were inspiringly beautiful, even if economic forecasts about the value of the system would later prove over-optimistic. The resulting enthusiasm led to the Hrakk region funding their own expedition led by favorite daughter Glabonsch.
To Shusk’s eternal chagrin, Glabonsch would actually be the first one to discover proof of alien life, when her time found the greenery of algae on Rixim Prime, and the strange patterns that this algae formed across Rixim’s oceans. Just four months later, Shusk would find an abandoned cargo pod orbiting a gas giant in the Maasym system and be the first to prove the existence of alien intelligence when she opened it and found a cache of what appeared to be jewelry, but even then, but even that would be undercut when Glabonsch found that the algae network had actually been constructed as a massive biological computer.
When the Consensus voted to station a permanent research outpost on Rixim, rather than on Maasym as Shusk insisted, she melancholically took it as confirmation that she had lost her place in history by those narrow few months, driving her to over-ingestion of chloride, which would develop into an addiction. Yet, her greatest triumph would come not even a year later while exploring the Iflore system. Shusk’s team came across what appeared to to be another ship, initially taking it to be an abandoned wreck like the cargo pod they had discovered the previous year. In fact, it was still active (if damaged), and being operated by a sentient arthropodal species which called themselves the Screk. After establishing a mutual system of communication through reference to mathematical principles over the course of a few months, Shusk learned that their ship had been stranded for months after a malfunctioning hyperdrive sent them far from their intended coordinates. Their supplies and food were running low, with nutritional deficiencies so dire that they were experiencing an outbreak of neurological parasites. After intense debate, Shusk agreed to let them onboard in a sealed environment geared towards their survivable environment (they weren’t aquatic to the Spiruponderans' surprise.)
The rescued crew was quarantined in the research station orbiting Chiblosch, where their communication methods (consisting primarily of pointed clicks and antennae flicks) was further decoded. Eventually, the crew explained to the researchers how to contact their homeworld of Baccotri, which they said was ruled by a united democratic government similar to the Consensus. The public debate on whether to do so was even more fierce than that for the use of the hyperdrive (after all, alien intelligence had only been hypothetical then), but eventually those in favor won out.
Fortunately, the United Screk Union was grateful to the Consensus for rescuing their scientists and quickly agreed to mutual non-aggression. With celebrations of this diplomatic victory punctuated by observations of a beautiful comet seen from Cyggia, the ideological optimists took the opportunity to confidently argue that the Spiruponderans had little to fear from alien life in general, that only peaceful life could achieve the technological strength to reach the stars. Even after evidence of an ancient xenocidal race of cyborgs was unearthed, such naive views would reach their apex as the Union agreed to collaborative research (though the improbably apparent similarity between the Union’s technological development and the Consensus’s fueled cynical suspicions that the Union was hiding their true technological capabilities), and the discovery of both collectable dark matter available and a mysterious gate around Abaddon’s Demnse. In this giddy atmosphere, the last few independent states on Cyggia voted to join the Consensus, unifying the planet for the first time in its history.
The idealism came to an end the year after Unification, when Shusk came across what appeared to be a massive, scarred fleet of unidentified warships illuminated in the harsh red light of the Zedran system. When they fired upon her, she fled. Only several months later did the Consensus learn that these “Gargaxton Free Warriors” were abominable monsters who delighted in violence--a truly shocking and alien notion for Spiruponderan mind.
Withdrawing, a deeply rattled Shusk found a strange pulsing of a the star Afrmyke on her ship’s sensors. When a member of her harem said that it might just be a sensor malfunction, an addled Shusk rumbled furiously “I’ve found two alien civilizations. How many have you found? That’s right: none, because no one else has ever found any but me. We’re heading to Afrmyke.” Grumbled considerations of declaring her unfit for command due to regressive male-like behavior dissipated when they came across an unidentified alien craft surveying planets in a nearby system AND in Afrmyke itself.
These would turn out to be scout ships for a strange, mystical-commercial organization calling itself the Cuddlesnux Warm Huggerate. They were small, creatures who had elevated their huddling together for warmth on their cold homeworld into a spiritual doctrine of loving embrace, which they were determined to spread to the stars, along with commerce. This baffled the Spiruponderans on several levels, but they seemed relatively benign, and would later agree to peaceful coexistence with the Consensus.
The fact that Afrmyke’s apparent strange pulsing would indeed turn out to be a sensory malfunction as Shusk’s critics had suggested would be largely forgotten, especially after the star system turned out to be host to an industrialized civilization, meaning Shusk had discovered four out of the four known living alien cultures. Her subsequent election to First Speakerhood in 2210 was practically foreordained.
2210 Political Map.
Clockwise from the north are the Gargaxton Free Warriors, the Spiruponderan Consensus (us), the United Screk Union, the Cuddlesnux Warm Huggerate
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Welcome to my first AAR, the tale of peaceful snail scientists trying to survive in a (probably) violent galaxy.
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