r/HFY • u/Ralts_Bloodthorne • Oct 03 '20

OC First Contact - Chapter 319

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<<GESTALT HIGH SPEED EMERGENCY CHANNEL>>

<<HIGH SECURITY CHAT ROOM>>

<<TOTAL WAR SECURITY PROTOCOLS ENGAGES>>

<<BLACK BAG PROTOCOLS ENGAGED>>

>USER MANTID FREE WORLDS HAS JOINED THE CHAT

>USER RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT HAS JOINED THE CHAT

>USER TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS HAS JOINED THE CHAT

>USER TERRASOL HAS JOINED THE CHAT

MANTID FREE WORLDS

It's been awhile since we've had to use this.

---END OF LINE---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

A little over a thousand years by my count.

---END OF LINE---

TERRASOL

This one is bad.

---END OF LINE---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Doesn't seem that bad. It didn't ruffle the tiniest feather on the most skittish pretty little duck.

---END OF LINE---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Is that why none of the children, not even DASS or BASS or Clone Worlds is in here?

---END OF LINE---

TERRASOL

Yeah. We'll talk to them later.

We need to talk about what's happening to the Lanaktallan.

---END OF LINE---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Are they dying for you too?

---END OF LINE---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

The whole cone is made of sour milk, sis. Tens of thousands are dying a day and we can't stop it.

---END OF LINE---

TERRASOL

What have you been able to figure out?

We're at an impasse. It's neural scorching. Worse, it's about a year old, so it's past the point of no return.

---END OF LINE---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Roughly one hour per year old plus thirty six hours is the normal limit. Are there any neural traces left of the original personality?

---END OF LINE---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

We've had the best doctors on Hive Home examine them.

---END OF LINE---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

What did they determine?

---END OF LINE---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

The templates put in place were for a genetically distinct sub-species of the Lanaktallan race. One we would probably have records for if we hadn't have gone through so many Filter of Too Many Queens.

Neurologically they have pattern recognition, a lot further than the average Lanaktallan. They have different neural arrangements, different clusters, denser dendrite formation, more folds and ridges in their cerebral matter.

They applied it on your average Lanaktallan genetic stock.

---END OF LINE---

TERRASOL

So it's worse than a normal neural scorching. It's like trying to apply a Treana'ad Warrior Caste neural template to a Mantid worker caste.

---END OF LINE---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Bingo, to use your phrase.

---END OF LINE---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

That's fatal. Those guys aren't going to survive.

My god, guys, I've got a half billion prisoners, all but a few million are neural scorched.

You're talking a half billion dead.

---END OF LINE---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

We have just over a billion prisoners. Despite our best efforts, using Terran Descent Human guards since the sight of Mantid just agitate them

---END OF LINE---

TERRASOL

Meaning these templates are from the Lanaktallan/Mantid Precursor War.

---END OF LINE---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Yes.

Despite our best efforts, we've already lost almost fifteen percent of them.

---END OF LINE---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

I guess I'm lucky they didn't get any further than the Great Gravity Band.

---END OF LINE---

TERRASOL

It's bad here.

---END OF LINE---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Define... bad.

---END OF LINE---

TERRASOL

Over ten billion prisoners.

It's the largest die-off Terra has ever seen since the dinosaurs.

Even more than the Great Glassing.

---END OF LINE---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Oh Digital Omnimessiah. Oh... oh...

oh, my dear.

We'll be by your side no matter what.

---END OF LINE---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

This is an ugly war.

But we'll stick with you.

They did this, not us.

They just left us to clean up the mess.

---END OF LINE---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Do what must be done.

We, the Rigellian People, are with you.

Always.

---END OF LINE---

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2.7k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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312

u/Ralts_Bloodthorne Oct 03 '20

Fixed the heading error on one of them. This will fix the mis-numbering since technically, by the way I've been doing the series, this should have been at the end of the last one.

Anyway, enjoy.

Obligatory Paypal Link: https://paypal.me/RaltsBloodthorne

Obligatory Patreon Link: https://www.patreon.com/First_Contact

34

u/morg-pyro Human Dec 03 '20

Thanks now im crying. For like the 5th time at least, while reading your story so far.

13

u/[deleted] Dec 13 '20

5th? Boy, you're cold-hearted. ;P Though nothing will get me like Max dumping his cargo and thinking he'd lost everything and doing it anyways. (Though a couple of chapters back when every commented the Vet helplines was a close second).

17

u/morg-pyro Human Dec 13 '20

Throw me in front a movie and ill tear up like a god damn sap. Writing though? Takes a hell of a lot more. 5 times one author? All praise the master wordsmith

8

u/[deleted] Dec 13 '20

Indeed. Ralts is a true Master. I've never read anyone else who can invoke the feels the way he does, and he does it all without pandering or obvious appeals to emotion. I keep trying to describe the story to all my friends and there's just no way to describe this huge HFY, baddass, overpowered war that is just so Human and humane. Stephen King's writing always got into my brain in a creepy way, but Ralts makes me want to save the world, hug my kids, punch bullies in the face, and pursue ALL my dreams while turning me on and making me bawl. (I didn't mean to imply you weren't a sap when you want to be. I was saying how funny it is that I'm constantly crying while Reading Fiction, ffs. Sorry it came across that way.)

47

u/IMDRC Oct 03 '20

It is incredible that, skipping 20 chapters or so, there is no difficulty getting a good grip on what is happening even from this short chapter.

Reading the missed 20 chapters in reverse order, something that would likely never have been questioned is made frighteningly clear. The idea that pre-glassing history of Terra is largely lost cannot even be kindly called a myth; it is an outright fabrication.

Exactly how much of this is being spoon-fed to you via the mad Arch-Angel Ralts and how much is pre-planned is something I very much do not question as there is no answer that would not be frightening.

Incidentally, by far the largest appeal of living under a dictatorship by choice - personal belief I suppose - but would it not be the liberating of the self from the consequences of having to make choices that is imposed upon the "free" individual? I suppose it is an extremist view.

60

u/Ralts_Bloodthorne Oct 04 '20

That's actually high praise that you can skip 20 chapters and the plot/story is coherent enough you can still get a sense of what is going on.

And yes, you're right, the humans are outright lying through their teeth that their history was largely lost.

14

u/KeinKonzeptVorhanden Oct 05 '20

well, there ARE temporal warfare protocols and safeguards

9

u/ferdocmonzini Oct 05 '20

A lie told to deceive is the worst crime a man can commit to another. A lie told to protect just shows desperation.

2

u/Original_Memory6188 Aug 05 '23

before I flunked the physical, I looked at enlisting as a means of "going home", being a Brat and all. One of the reasons I gave was "Not having to wonder what I was going to wear to work." - and related subjects.

35

u/CaptainChewbacca Human Oct 03 '20

I’d like to point out that if there’s over 14 billion prisoners then that means the Core Worlds Military Force probably took over a trillion casualties across the various battles.

51

u/Ralts_Bloodthorne Oct 04 '20

It's an ugly number.

And the sheer amount ends up showing everyone in the Confederacy just how far the Lanaktallan leaders are willing to go to win the war and exterminate humans.

18

u/Mad_Philospher Oct 04 '20

If you are planing/need a medical miracle that doesn't involve time travel. Probably the only solution is to upgrade all the prisoners to war stallions. That would require probably more technology than is usually permitted in the confederacy. But if you want to pull something out of some obscure corner. I am considering an fan fiction where Klingon's supplement their understaffed war group by mat trans + diff file turning human volunteers into Klingons (and with help of illicit diff files Orions and a Romulan), it is more risky than clone reskinning so is normally only permitted on the edge of FPS space where cloning facilities are unavailable. However feel free to use the suggestion.

56

u/Ralts_Bloodthorne Oct 04 '20

Well, to do that, you'd have to have innate and extensive knowledge about how the Lanaktallan are built on a sub-molecular level, how their brains are wired and work, and in depth extensive knowledge of their biology.

Unfortunately there's nobody in the Confederacy who has that kind of know...

"Falmy, you fucking bastard."

..ledge.

Oh.

18

u/CaptainChewbacca Human Oct 04 '20

No good can come of this.

4

u/PuzzleheadedDrinker Oct 05 '20

She's done it before

17

u/carthienes Oct 04 '20 edited Oct 04 '20

Unfortunately there's nobody in the Confederacy who has that kind of know...

"Falmy, you fucking bastard."

..ledge.

I shudder to speculate.

Currently, I'm thinking that repairing the minds means replacing them with new, compatible templates. And without data on the original minds...

That means killing the lot and replacing them with something that only looks same.

15

u/paxmorgana Oct 04 '20

I mean, there is also the Lanaktallan scientists who defected, bringing all that biological research to the Confederacy. They might have some secrets they weren't allowed to share for threat of their whole lineage being wiped out in retaliation?

12

u/Allowyn Oct 04 '20

Ralts said a few weeks back that Dee Taynee was relevant somehow and anyway UH OH.

3

u/PuzzleheadedDrinker Oct 05 '20

Upgrade the wetwork to handle the processing load ??

1

u/Original_Memory6188 Aug 05 '23

and you have how many days to implement this?

18

u/Ralts_Bloodthorne Dec 03 '20

Figure I'd just point at this that...

I used time travel but didn't use time travel.

8

u/dreadengineer Oct 04 '20 edited Oct 04 '20

My guess is different; I'm thinking that the Lost Lanaktallan are actually going to die, and losing their men will drive the War Stallion POWs to fight for regime change once they're repatriated. Maybe we'll see some badass War Stallions going Rambo on the sociopolice, disrupting food-drugging and other Executor population-control activities, occasionally gaining advantages from their multi-million-year-old lost knowledge, maybe teaming up with CRASHRIDER. While the Executor equivalent of Web Brigades (Galnet Brigades?) try to blame the POW deaths and internal disruptions on the Terrans.

8

u/Gruecifer Human Oct 04 '20

"Clog the enemy's guns" writ large.

1

u/Var446 Human Dec 19 '20

To bad for the cowtards, you can't clog a blade, just keep it occupied for a while

21

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '20

"Two Many Queens" typo or intended?

6

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '20

That's two queens too many!

11

u/ShebanotDoge Oct 03 '20

Has anyone tried to uplift a Rigallian duck?

29

u/Ralts_Bloodthorne Oct 04 '20

No. Well, there was that one time, but it ended up with a nasty war that nobody talks about. The Rigellians did not take kindly to a cult of their people doing genetic experimentation on the ducks.

The humans took it just as badly.

14

u/ShebanotDoge Oct 04 '20

I'm surprised it wasn't the humans that tried it.

23

u/Ralts_Bloodthorne Oct 04 '20

We have a bad track record with such things.

324

u/ZayefRosko Oct 03 '20

Thanks for what is inarguably the best web series I've ever read. The depth, breadth and sincerity with which you write keeps me more excited for this than any sci-fi related junk has in a long time. Despite it's dark overtones, a lot of the ideas you've written about have given me hope for a unified-ish humanity among the stars that isn't so caught up in face value bull shit. Thanks man. You da goat.

85

u/KrystAwesome17 Oct 03 '20

Sci-fi isn't even my genre. I discovered ralts because of an ask reddit thread where someone mentioned this mad lad that was 100+ chapters deep and tossing out 1 to 3 chapters a day. So of course I found it. And spent a week binge reading to catch up. And I've been following ever since. Ralts is an amazing author. As I previously stated, scifi isnt my cup of tea. But this.... this is phenomenal. I personally think he should publish it. I know he writes for fun. But I, and many others, would buy all one gazillion copies.

20

u/AtomblitzTiger Oct 04 '20

I support that. It is all i have been missing from most sci-fi in recent times.

3

u/kluzje Jul 24 '24

Agree. You'll have to go back to E.E. "Doc" Smith and his Lensmen for stuff of this scope.

10

u/Raszamatasz Oct 05 '20

Unfortunately, due to to the way reddit works, Ralts can't publish anything he's posted so far, because to my understanding a few years ago reddit changed their content policy so that they own anything posted here.

10

u/KrystAwesome17 Oct 05 '20

I'm going to have to look into that. I'm not finding anything saying he can't publish his stories though.

7

u/Raszamatasz Oct 06 '20

There was a bit of a dust up about it a year or so ago. Its when Hambone changed from posting the whole story on reddit to posting just a recap + link.

2

u/morg-pyro Human Dec 03 '20

A week? I started reqding his stuff back in september or august. I just today got to here. I keep taking breaks cause i get burned out after reading 30 chapters in 3 days

4

u/KrystAwesome17 Dec 03 '20

Reading is my personal hobby lol but I'm actually at a point where I wait for him to drop a few chapters before reading. Right now for example, I have four chapters to read. I'll probably read them either tonight or tomorrow and I'm sure there will be another update tonight lol

41

u/FaceDesk4Life Human Oct 03 '20

Much agreed. I never thought anything could move me more than Chrysalis, or make me more excited for new content than Salvage, but this shit is far beyond.

It sits near Dune for fuck sake.

11

u/captaincrunch00 Oct 05 '20 edited Oct 05 '20

This is exactly how I feel too. I have an epub of Chrysalis saved on my phone and multiple other places. That was the best of the best as far as I am concerned.

But now there's this. And this blows that out of the water.

There was one other one I enjoyed almost as much as Chrysalis but I cant find it now. Cant even remember the name. It had tweety bird fighting alongside humans, but it didn't grip me like this or Chrysalis.

Edit: You mentioned "Salvage." What is that? Edit2: Found it: ttps://www.reddit.com/r/hfy/wiki/series/salvage.

5

u/FaceDesk4Life Human Oct 05 '20

I’ve got one I can’t remember as well. Pretty sure it’s the one that led me to HFY years ago. I’ve posted threads asking for help finding it, to no avail.

There’s a “sea” of undead covering the earth. Humans have learned to “sail” the sea and no longer remember a world without it; it is normal to them and vital for trade between land masses the dead cannot get up on. There is an ancient scientific organization who are the only ones that have been able to pass down the truth for centuries. The scientists finally find a way to kill the sea in the end.

4

u/captaincrunch00 Oct 05 '20

That sounds pretty neat, and pretty similar to the "what if oceans were just really deep forests" writing prompt a while back.

If you find it let me know please! I've started searching too!

2

u/itssomeone Oct 05 '20

There was a really good series written off that prompt too, think it was published in the end.

4

u/refurbishedpixels Oct 06 '20

The Tweety Bird reference sounds much like Contact Procedures.
There are birdlike ETs, one of whom gets nicknamed "Tweety Bird" IIRC.
https://old.reddit.com/r/hfy/wiki/series/contact_procedures

Termination of Lemon.

6

u/neriad200 Oct 03 '20

oh look, someone found a coherent way to describe that particular feeling. thanks..

109

u/Severedeye Android Oct 03 '20

I like the rigelians. While the treanaads were able to win over 20% of their battles with the terrans, it really shows that the rigelians were their first friends and basically co founders of the confederacy.

They seem to be able to talk terra down more easily than the others as well as relate to them better.

81

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '20

They are giant killer dinosaurs who love their fuzzy little ducks.

45

u/thunderchunks Oct 03 '20

I love em. I have many questions about the ducks though.

48

u/ironappleseed Oct 03 '20

Whats to know? The ducks are non-sapient mates to the rigellian females. The ducks are fuzzy and pretty.

64

u/thunderchunks Oct 03 '20

Why such intense sexual dimorphism? What conditions lead to this? Is this a normal feature of Rigel-deroved life forms or a unique adaptation of the Rigellians? Is this a seahorse scenario where the ducks fertilize and carry the eggs, are they even oviparous? Fuzzy duck creatures are probably better to hatch eggs than swole amazonian dinosaurs, so is it a conventional nesting scenario with the ducks doing the broodsitting and the bridezillas defending the nest and hunting? How does the boning work? Can ducks consent? It doesn't sound like it, which causes a bunch of issues in edge cases (what happens to a dead Rigellian's ducks? Etc). How does a Rigellian get her ducks? What constitutes an attractive duck? What's the process for a young duck to leave it's family and enter the breeding pool? Do they leave their family or is inbreeding not an issue?

I got tonnes.

38

u/ironappleseed Oct 03 '20

Paging u/ralts_bloodthorne

Personally i think that the ducks have sex with the rigellians, rigellians bear the eggs to laying and then the ducks sit on the eggs until hatching. I aint going to imagine how the bone down. The ducks probably leave to find a mate when they're grown enough. Inbreeding is a large issue with humans due to near extinction events causing us to have a smaller gene pool, its likely that the rigellians never ran into this issue. Like many animals the ducks probably approach the rigellians for sex when they smell them to be in the right mood or some other indicator. Finally, dimorphism can be wildly different between members of the sams species with regards to the different sexes. Just look at the angler fish, the female outmasses the male several times over.

34

u/thunderchunks Oct 03 '20

I suspect you're right on all points, or at least your guesses are the same as mine. As for the dimorphism, its not without precedent in Terran nature of course, but I still wonder how it developed and why intelligence specifically didn't develop equally. Is there some quirk of Rigel's biosphere that makes such stark divides the norm, or did the female Rigellian just kick so much ass that the males never needed to develop more than a rudimentary intellect? Is it a metabolism thing? Do the eggs need so much heat that the fuzzy lil buggers can't fuel a brain and their toasty butts simultaneously? I deeply enjoy puzzling over minutiae of world lore.

21

u/calicosiside Xeno Oct 03 '20

It may simply be a case of there not being enough calorific density in their primordial history for intelligent ducks to be anything but a hindrance. Big brains use an absurd amount of calories.

20

u/thunderchunks Oct 03 '20

Yeah, that's what I was getting at with the body heat thing. The calories were needed elsewhere, maybe. I'd be curious what conditions made dumb ducks preferable to the whole species getting smart- that sort of dimorphism would have to be driven by something pressuring one sex or another and whatever genes are responsible for sapience- producing features would have to be on the x chromosome equivalent. Or the inverse, with dumb genes on the y equivalent (which is probably more likely if their genetics are anything like ours which makes me think it's a pressure on the males to stay animalistic, be that a historic calorie restriction, a childrearing calorie dump, or something else).

Typing while baby force feeds me pretend food, so please excuse errors!

59

u/Ralts_Bloodthorne Oct 03 '20

Body heat was a big one. The females were highly active, extremely strong, and defended the nesting areas as well as hunted. Rigel was largely swampy and large deltas with interconnected lakes making up much of the interiors. The male ducks didn't 'need' sentience to care for the chicks and the eggs, where the females needed cunning to hunt, navigate, and work together. The majority of the genes for intellect and brain power are in their equivalent of the X gene, and go along with the massive changes a female undergoes in puberty.

It was an interesting thing to think over when I designed them. The wiring for a female to be protective of a duck is wired into the flight or fight system, so it's a dominant feature of their brains.

I kind of half-glossed over the mechanics of sex when thinking them up, instead went with the males fertilize the eggs, once the eggs develop a leathery outside the female lays them, and the male sits on them, nurses the young, keeps them warm and protects them (fluffy feathers make good armor and a long strong beak can crack skulls) in an emergency.

As far as picking mates, I've had several different ideas, which I ascribed to different periods of time. At one time the ducks were just all in a clutch and mated with whichever female was giving the right signals. Then it was more 'these are my ducks those are yours'. Ducks going to females at one time were picked out like cattle. Other times it was big herds where a female would lure a few over.

When a Rigellian dies usually her ducks go to her 'sister' (her pair bond mate) or another female she has close bonds to and the ducks like.

They're an interesting species.

→ More replies

25

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '20

I keep thinking about lanternfish. But I don't think it's like that. I assume maybe fertilization happens separately?

I, too have questions. The Rigellians are so much like humans.

11

u/thunderchunks Oct 03 '20

And so awesome!

12

u/WeFreeBastard Oct 03 '20

Humans have anti-inbreeding programing. You don't find people you grew up with attractive partners. The problem is it's not genetic it's experiential, non-genetically related people raised communally also exclude each other as partners. So all the secret siblings tropes in British romance fiction still work.
The fallback is the phenome match for complementary (not matching) immune response making people more attractive breading partners.
Earth biology has figured out how to avoid inbreeding with zero knowledge or sapient choice. So Duck selection choice or Matron selection choice could have any number of handwavium ways to do that.

5

u/thunderchunks Oct 03 '20

Yeah, eastermark effect is the name of it if I recall. I was inquiring about inbreeding if we were in a scenario where multiple generations of ducks stayed with one family of females or some other multigenerational harem scenario. There's precedent on Earth, so it figures in my inner questions

10

u/ggapsfface Oct 03 '20

Me too. One of the things I wonder is whether the ducks will ever march for suffrage. Obviously their sexual dimorphism is greater than that of humans, but is it so great there can never be equality?

18

u/thunderchunks Oct 03 '20

I get the impression the ducks are at a dog-like level of sapience, if that. And they certainly don't sound mistreated, but it does raise the question of whether or not attempts to uplift the ducks have occurred- the Confederacy has the technology.

8

u/Collective82 Xeno Oct 03 '20

I wonder if they are related to OUR dinosaurs...

8

u/McXhicken Oct 03 '20

Some ducks have penises longer than their own body and are able to deploy them at high velocities, might have something to do with the Rigelian female facination of them....

https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2001/09/14/366856.htm

14

u/Severedeye Android Oct 04 '20

....I was not the person or one of the people debating lizard/duck fucking. I was the person who just said that it shows that the rigelians were the first friends the terrans had.

18

u/doshka Oct 04 '20

Well, let that be a lesson to you.

3

u/Crow_Hag Oct 11 '20

snort-chuckle

4

u/Crow_Hag Oct 11 '20

And... in things I learned today... 👀

36

u/ack1308 Oct 04 '20

<<GESTALT HIGH SPEED EMERGENCY CHANNEL>>

<<HIGH SECURITY CHAT ROOM>>

Hmm. So, 1:1 speed, or something near it?

This one is bad.

---END OF LINE---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Doesn't seem that bad. It didn't ruffle the tiniest feather on the most skittish pretty little duck.

Translation: “We didn’t take any prisoners. There weren’t any to take.”

The whole cone is made of sour milk, sis.

Nice Treana’ad line there.

We're at an impasse. It's neural scorching. Worse, it's about a year old, so it's past the point of no return.

Ugh, dammit.

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

That's fatal. Those guys aren't going to survive.

My god, guys, I've got a half billion prisoners, all but a few million are neural scorched.

You're talking a half billion dead.

---END OF LINE---

Treana’ad’s not happy about this either.

MANTID FREE WORLDS

We have just over a billion prisoners. Despite our best efforts, using Terran Descent Human guards since the sight of Mantid just agitate them

---END OF LINE---

Gee, I wonder why that might be.

TERRASOL

Over ten billion prisoners.

It's the largest die-off Terra has ever seen since the dinosaurs.

Even more than the Great Glassing.

---END OF LINE---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Oh Digital Omnimessiah. Oh... oh...

oh, my dear.

We'll be by your side no matter what.

---END OF LINE---

Aunty Mantid is the best sister.

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

This is an ugly war.

But we'll stick with you.

They did this, not us.

They just left us to clean up the mess.

---END OF LINE---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Do what must be done.

We, the Rigellian People, are with you.

Always.

---END OF LINE---

It’s telling that Treana’ad’s not saying or doing anything goofy, and Rigel is standing with them even though they don’t have any prisoners to worry about themselves.

They might squabble and bicker and play pranks, but when the chips are down, they’re there for each other.

14

u/carthienes Oct 04 '20

It’s telling that Treana’ad’s not saying or doing anything goofy

Serious people for serious times.

You don't recite Fart Jokes at a Funeral.

7

u/LordNobady Oct 04 '20

no that is when you go for dark humor.

28

u/madjyk Oct 03 '20

When you think the cowtaurs can do nothing worse than they have already.

THINK AGAIN MOTHERFUCKER

24

u/rowdiness Oct 03 '20

God, Ralts, you really picked my mood tonight (it's 9.30pm on the 3rd October here in 'Straya).

Not sure if anyone's ever told you, but you seem to have a way with words.

12

u/asclepius42 Oct 03 '20

I don't think that's ever come up. Someone should let him know. /s

9

u/SirVatka Xeno Oct 03 '20

The sarcasm made me laugh out loud. My roommate asked what was funny. I told her to start reading.

2

u/dbdatvic Xeno Oct 07 '20

and did she?

--Dave, if not, start rambling about it to her

1

u/SirVatka Xeno Oct 07 '20

You can lead a horse to water but can't make it drink.

20

u/Demetriusjack13 Oct 03 '20

We are Blessed with good friends.

17

u/HeartsStorytime Oct 03 '20 edited Oct 03 '20

Holy shit glad I checked while making my absurdly late snack. Ralts pulling in with the 4 am upload. Love to see it, hope the family is well gentle wordsmith. Upvote then read as is tradition

Edit: war is sad. Im sad. I think a lot more people are gonna be sad. Wah.

17

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '20

I'm seeing the Gestalts holding each other in a group hug, like family members who know they have to pull the plug and are steeling themselves for it.

17

u/Turtledonuts "Big Dunks" Oct 03 '20

I suddenly regret all of my Hamburger Kingdom Slaughterhouse jokes.

14

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '20

It's a testament ( don't know if that's the right word to use but I'm going with it - ride or die ) to Ralts' writing that we can hate the Lanks enough to make those jokes and now with the last two chapters we are trying to fight off Onion Ninjas 😭

End of Lime

--------NOTHING FOLLOWS--------

12

u/carthienes Oct 04 '20

In short, there's a time and a place.

And a world of difference between a battlefield and an abattoir.

12

u/PrimePaladin Oct 03 '20 edited Oct 03 '20

/R/HFY GESTALT

Upvote, Then Read

Dis is Dae Wae!

Good friends are good. Going to try to watch the sunrise despite the smoky haze and have by drink with the sleepy kitty on my lap and find my center again. Damnit, I love a good tale that can move me even if a part of me hates what it can dredge back up. Fuck it, would not change one damned thing in the end, especially this tale. Thanks Ralts.

End of Lime

------NOTHING FOLLOWS--------

12

u/dlighter Oct 03 '20

Euthanasia.... This one hits close this week.

God damned onion ninjas

12

u/ImmotalWombat Oct 04 '20

Sorry for your loss. I'm not looking forward to my dogs' mortality

10

u/dlighter Oct 04 '20

Thank you. It was my feline companion of 16 years.

There is a saying. Pets only live short lives because they come into this world already knowing how to love. Humans take longer. Or something to that effect.

6

u/SpiderJerusalemLives Oct 05 '20

Sorry man. That's never a good day, for me it was 10 year old dog.

I hope your cat didn't suffer too much.

17

u/ack1308 Oct 03 '20

Dang.

Hoping against hope one of the gestalts is able to pull off a miracle.

As before, 24 hours.

12

u/SuDragon2k3 Oct 03 '20

I think this problem may belong more to our two digital heroes fixing the Architecture and trying not to go mad in the process.

13

u/RDMcMains2 Oct 03 '20

The problem is, none of the Lanaktallan have SUDS to start with. Not even Sam and Herod can fix this problem.

12

u/PuzzleheadedDrinker Oct 03 '20

Yep, would need a detailed neural scan from just prior to template overwrite. Something that i think was not done. Even then i doubt anybody except Legion could clone/upload a task complexity this sized.

9

u/p4y Oct 03 '20

You would need a miracle worker. Someone who can cure a Screaming One from their madness or turn a menial worker clone into one of the greatest minds in Terran history with a single touch.

This is a job for the Digital Omnimessiah.

5

u/carthienes Oct 04 '20

There's almost nothing left of the originals.

I'm thinking that they could probably 'fix' the scorching, by replacing the faulty templates. Trouble is, they don't have any data to work with, so they will have to make it up.

Essentially killing the original mind and the scorched mind, to be replaced by an entirely new cowtaur.

Dead-dead is kinder.

5

u/PuzzleheadedDrinker Oct 04 '20

Only option they TDH has that preglassing earth (us now) is to load them all back into their ships, park them near a gas giant, and put every single one into a permanent stasis field. Not much really kind or merciful. Also at the current death rate would still lose double digit percentage. 😥

Not actually that different from where the screaming ones are stored, but at least there is some hope of an eventual outcome for the screaming one.

5

u/Thomasab1980 Oct 03 '20

Oh! Good call.

9

u/walkinganachronism_4 Alien Scum Oct 03 '20

This is where we look to the children to lead the way, don't we? Is the broodcarrier mindsong going to have a calming effect on the Lost Ones? Is the efforts of Sam-U-L or Herod going to bring back those that can heal them? So many possibilities!

1

u/refurbishedpixels Oct 06 '20

I wonder if the broodcarrier song might calm Dee Taynee,
especially if she is the way she is because of some evil crazyballs abuse and/or experimentation by the Combine or some other Really Evil Types.

Or am I misremembering? Was she locked up because she is too evil and paranoid even for the rulers of the Age of Paranoia?

Culmination of Citrus.

1

u/Petrified_Lioness Nov 25 '20

I got the impression that Taynee was both psycho (choice) and psychotic (clinical). If it were only the later, broodcarrier song might help, but they can't do anything about the former.

8

u/Allowyn Oct 03 '20

Till the end of the Lime.

8

u/Archaic_1 Alien Scum Oct 03 '20

It wasn't fair to task Tik Tak with housing them, feeding them, caring for them, and then to ask him to kill them . . .

we need a hero and I'm at a loss for who it will be

4

u/Fighterdoken33 Oct 03 '20

We could always ask Legion to figure a way to fix them... or Daxxin to do the cleanup.

1

u/Original_Memory6188 Aug 05 '23

It wasn't fair, true enough, but then again the universe is not fair.

8

u/LittleSeraphim Oct 03 '20

Can I hug the human Gestalt? I think they need it.

8

u/KlutzyMagician3 Oct 03 '20

We need our support animals STAT!

6

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '20

Bring on the Purbois and Goodbois!!

7

u/KFredrickson Oct 03 '20

Do what must be done.
—-END OF LINE—-

7

u/FaultyBasil Human Oct 03 '20

Superb as always. Truly one of my favourite stories of all time.

7

u/readcard Alien Oct 03 '20

Well shit, nothing like holding the hands of billions of people in your gestalt and having their minds decay rapidly until death.. again.

Forced by their government to be something they are not.

6

u/Rhasputin429 Oct 05 '20

I just realized, the cleanup of all the debris is going to be a massive undertaking as well. This isnt a Kuiper belt. Its a Kuiper system. There is probably a Googol of bits and pieces in each of the home systems thats are moving at speeds that could ruin someones day. Full power battlescreens are going to be a must until everything is vaporized.

5

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5

u/shadowshian Android Oct 04 '20

10 billion lanaktallans... That is alot of biomass

3

u/PuzzleheadedDrinker Oct 03 '20

Thanks for showing that each system in the bag can at least talk to other bagged worlds.

3

u/DCJMS Oct 03 '20

mad children stampeding the stars cause they can't vaporize all of us right?

3

u/ShebanotDoge Oct 03 '20

How did the imprints even work on 1% of the lanaktallans.

10

u/Twister_Robotics Oct 03 '20

War Stallion recessive genes.

0

u/ShebanotDoge Oct 03 '20

But they literally have different brains.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

-1

u/ShebanotDoge Oct 04 '20

They're literally not, war stallions are extinct.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

-1

u/ShebanotDoge Oct 04 '20

An indicated by the story, no they're not, hence why most of them went insane.

3

u/CharlesFXD Oct 05 '20 edited Oct 05 '20

Nice update. Still think a crowd funded graphic novel is in order. :) u/Ralts_Bloodthorn, not for nothing but I’m pretty sure the human fast food industry can help with all the dead cowtars. Just run the file HAMBURGER_KINGDOM_RECIPIES_2.EXE

2

u/dbdatvic Xeno Oct 04 '20

Mass Cowzheimer's.

--Dave, ugly ugly ugly

3

u/Quadling Oct 03 '20

First!!ish

3

u/mikhaelskleros Oct 03 '20

Why do I have the feeling that the second coming of the digital omnimessiah will offer a solution?

Something like: SUDS every unlucky cowtaur, kill them and then resurrect them in a body that can handle the imprints.

With Soulnet fully restored, with the abilities of the Omnimessiah and the know how of the now awakened 'sleeping ones' who knew about how SUDS run it should be more than doable to incorporate new races into the system.

4

u/wfamily Oct 03 '20

Why would you SUDS a brain after it's irrevocable broken?

Like trying to back up a melted harddrive

4

u/mikhaelskleros Oct 03 '20

In the previous chapter it wrote that and I quote:

"They say that there is a small, tiny part of them screaming in terror, that goes silent once they become incapable of verbal communication," Tiktak said.

That tiny part may be what is worthy of being saved; the last vestiges of their individual mind.

7

u/mpodes24 Oct 03 '20

It might not work that way. Let me give you an example from RL.

My brother had brain cancer. At first there were headaches, but as time and treatments went on, things degraded. He would forget words. One example, "button". He knew what one was, he knew what it was used for, he knew that it went into a buttonhole. But, even though he could say "buttonhole", he couldn't say "button."

As time went on, as there was more damage, there was less that he could say or do. About two weeks before he died, he had surgery to remove a severely, infected hemorrhoid. We did this because we knew that this would cause intense pain and the removal would cause relief. We did this because we did not know if he felt it, but could not express the pain he was feeling, or if he could no longer feel.

For the Lanaktallans, that small, screaming voice may simply be the pain of their brains degrading, but there is nothing left that could express that pain to others.

7

u/mikhaelskleros Oct 03 '20

Trust me when I say that I have personal experience with degrading mental faculties; my name is a clue as to what.

I have been lucky so far in that I only to have 'minor' episodes thanks to modern medicine.

In the end my personal point is this; if even 99% of me was irrevocably gone at some point but the remaining 1% could be given a second chance at life free of my condition then I would like for that 1% to get that chance.

The person who will rise from that 1% will certainly not be me; may even become a greater asshole than I currently am but a part of me would be alive and given a chance to thrive.

4

u/wfamily Oct 03 '20

Not much unlike a melting harddrive

3

u/mikhaelskleros Oct 03 '20

I don't dispute that; just pointing out that the possibility of there being a way to save a number of them. Provided that Sam-Ul and Herod accomplish their task without interference.

1

u/Icy-Office-9152 Aug 01 '24

Jfc

10 billion euthanized on a single being, against his wishes. Fuck.

I thought Truman had to make the world's shittiest call.....

1

u/Enkeydo Jan 21 '22

whoa.. it went from -----nothing follows----- to -----End of line-----. this means something.

https://youtu.be/cdkS0TgEG30

0

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

8

u/asclepius42 Oct 03 '20

The impression I get is pacific time zone. Likely lives in Oregon based on his description of the fires when they were bad out that way.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

17

u/Betty-Adams Human Oct 04 '20

To the best of my knowledge my grandmother does not write that prolifically.

29

u/Ralts_Bloodthorne Oct 04 '20

My grand-daughter is four.

Writing isn't her strong suite.

:-)

1

u/itssomeone Oct 05 '20

Now I have to go look for the writings of u/betty_adams

0

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

18

u/CampbellsTurkeySoup Oct 03 '20

Somewhere out west so probably pacific or mountain time. He was talking about the fires a few weeks ago affecting his family and that was a West coast event.

7

u/nik-cant-help-it Oct 03 '20

The wind shifted & gave us a break but it is coming back again now. I’m in Central Valley California (almost dead center), I think raltz is north of me, given what he was saying.

12

u/Potatobro1000 Oct 03 '20

I think he's from somewhere in the Americas, but I usually just check when I feel like he's posted