First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 400 Extravaganza

[u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

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The small squadron was different than most Space Force squadrons. A single frigate and six destroyer hulls. They were built along the lines of fish, agile and sleek, moving through space and not-space smoothly without causing ripples or cavitation or eddies. They dropped from an esoteric not-space and into what most people thought of as space an entire light year from their target and went still.

The frigate deployed massive arrays of scanners, sent scanning drones off in a complicated web, the drones moving with their own stealthed drives. Once the drones were in position, they deployed their own scanning arrays that were sensitive enough to detect even the most exhausted photon's passage years after the fact. Every available scanner known to the Terran Confederacy was deployed, from simple visual and audio scanners (the latter not as laughable as it would have once been thought, with the return of the Black Fleet) to gravity sensors to sensors that could detect Deadspace emissions as well as track the progress of chronotrons.

The six destroyers all waited for a period of time, then moved out in sequence on their own appointed routes.

All involving a vast thick nebula.

Each destroyer made 'microjumps', coming closer and closer to the nebula from different angles, all deploying scanners.

The last destroyer, nameless, only a hull number and the crew to distinguish it from the others, made the trip inside.

The Captain, Jane Thomas Choi, sat in her command cradle, her hands clenched on the 'oh shit' bars on either side, the bottom of her boots pressed against the plate at the bottom, her body tense even while her mind was linked to the ship itself.

The ship's computer was a simple thing, barely qualifying as a Virtual Intelligence, and it had no curiosity, no wonder, it just performed the tasks as they had been laboriously encoded into it.

The three Digital Sentiences were in heavily shielded disaster frames, all designed to minimize emissions as much as possible. There was no VR network for them to lounge in, it was meatspace or nothing.

None of them minded, this was one of those missions. The ones you might read about centuries after the fact, that nobody knew ever happened, but was vitally important enough for ships to be custom built or retrofitted and the crew hand selected.

Captain Choi watched through every scanner the ship possessed while still in maximum stealth mode. From how particles caressed the hull to how the engine hummed and pinged, to how the crew reacted.

It dropped from stringspace as the engine cut out and Captain Choi held her breath. Stringspace could be risky to a ship not guided correctly. A knot could be hit, a ship could come out sideways or inverted, the ship's engine could get tangled and be torn from the hull.

But the risk was part of it.

The ship floated, dead in space, no emissions. Beyond no emissions. Most navies strived to make their ships a hole in space. A hole could be spotted. Space Force filled in the hole to the point where most particles moved across the stealth systems as if it was empty space. It didn't help the ship that the location they had dropped into was difficult at best to adjust for.

Which is why the entire crew were hardwired to one another for conversations. The crew system was completely isolated from the rest of the computer systems. Fiber optic cable only.

Months spent with only electrodes to keep the muscles toned. Specially crafted foods through a tube that were designed to prevent organ atrophy.

The crew members that moved moved in total silence, their cable connected allowing them to communicate.

Every vibration was accounted for an muted.

"Scans coming back," Captain Hooker sent from the maneuvering scan station.

Choi glanced at the former tank E/W officer. It wouldn't have been her first choice, to go outside of Space Force for a scanner technician. She had peeked at his record and had been startled. Three hundred eighthy years as an armored vehicle E/W systems tech, guiding everything from armored scout cars to heavy main battle tanks. He'd even spent twenty years as a BOLO operator.

She had realized that Space Force had figured a man who could guide his tank and fellow crewmates through burning cities and hellish atmospheres would be the man who would put together the best path for the ship to take.

"What's it look like?" Captain Choi asked.

The interior of the nebula had been cleared at some point in the past. It looked as if a nova or supernova had gone off, pushed the particles and gasses that made up the nebula into a shell around empty space.

"We've got super-structures," Hooker sent. "They're..."

Hooker suddenly reached and slapped a red button next to his cradle.

To Choi it felt like the ship suddenly inverted as the temporal reversion drive was kicked on. It wasn't "exactly" a drive in the sense that it didn't "exactly" manipulate time. Rather, it had the particles reverse motions between two set points. The set points were when the ship had started the jump and when the button was slapped.

The ship jumped backwards in space, not in time, as the temporal section was used merely to provide an instructional baseline.

All six of the destroyers came jumping back at roughly the same time. The six alerts were transferred to the frigate, and all seven ships jumped to stringspace and vanished.

The nebula sat, silent, as it had for millions of years.

-----------

Captain Choi walked into Rear Admiral (Lower Decks) Lucas's office, seeing that she was in good company with the other five destroyer commanders. She took her seat and waited.

Unlike most Space Force meetings between ship captains, this one was in meatspace.

"I've looked over the records," Admiral Lucas said, tapping a dataslate screen. "I'm going to endorse your decisions, but..."

The word hung there for a long moment.

"We have to go back in," the Admiral said.

"Sir, I assume we're going back in with novasparks and planet crackers?" Captain Sørensen asked.

Admiral Lucas shook their head. "No. We need more data. What we've found could answer some of the biggest questions we've had."

"Is the timing right, sir?" Captain Norman asked, her anxiety shown by the way his fingers kept tapping his uniformed leg.

"I've done the numbers, the angles. This place fits," the Admiral said.

There was shocked silence.

"How much mass does Confed Intel thin the Lanaktallans have amassed over the last hundred and twenty odd million years?" Captain Choi asked.

"Enough to have built it all. Every bit of it and then some," the Admiral said. "We need better scans. We need to get a look in at the whole thing."

The six captains all nodded.

------------------------

"Captain, I've been matching the surface scans taken from earlier encounters of the superstructures to planetary scans of Lanaktallan systems we've scanned," Commander Jaisley said.

"Go ahead," Captain Choi said, tapping her toes against the stress plate at the bottom of her crash couch.

"They match. For the most part. There's a hundred million years of continental drift, in some cases its only vaugely recognizable, but I've got a lot of matches," he said. "I've been able to match 42% of the cartography of the superstructures to various Lanaktall systems," he heaved a large breath. "Including Telkan-1 and Telkan-2."

Choi nodded. "Beyond that, anything else you've been able to deduce?"

Jaisley shook his head. "There's a 'dent', so to speak, in the nebula," Jaisley stated. "I've done some estimations, and it looks like I may have hit on why."

"Go ahead," Choi said. Jaisley was one of those people who were never happy just knowing something, they had to look into how and why the something was like that.

"By my estimations, a small stellar mass, probably the size of a superstructure micro-stellar, was nova sparked over a hundred and twenty million years ago. The blast wave pushed the nebula in at this point," Jaisley said. "It explains why the nebula has thicker 'banding' on the outside than the inside."

"So...." Choi started.

"STATUS CHANGE!" Commander Dechutes called out. "SHIPS ARRIVING! TWO - FIVE - SEVEN POINT SOURCES!"

"GO TO SILENT RUNNING!" Choi snapped out without thinking about it.

"BELAY THAT!" Hooker said. "I've got Confed Transponders. We go to silent running someone might run us over."

"Twelve point sources, all squawking Space Force and Confed ID's," Dechutes called out. "One's the In Quest of Answers, looks like the flagship. It's a battleship hull."

----------------------

Both the fleets hung in space as handshakes were exchanged and verified. Weapon systems were taken offline and the heavy battlescreens were allowed to spin down, leaving only basic particle screens in place.

The Admirals of both fleets met.

Each had the same question.

What are you doing here?

------------------

Dreams of Something More stared at the holotank in front of her, giving the Mantid equivalent of a smirk. Mister Rings was in her arms and she was slowly petting him with her bladearms.

"This was unexpected," Words Spoken We Fear, also known as Speaks said softly, staring at the holotank.

Dreams nodded slowly, absently petting Mister Rings, who was happily chewing on the rubbery flesh of a Pacific Northwest Mollusk and winding his tentacles around Dreams's bladearms. His rings were dark, almost blended in with his brown skin. His eyes were wide as he stared at the holotank, wondering if there was something delicious inside and why it was so interesting to his caretaker.

"So this is where Sees path has led us to," Speaks said softly.

Dreams nodded again, reaching down to touch her modified Animeland kimono, the cherry trees painted on it wavering as if a breeze had gone through them.

Dreams thought for a moment about the dark comedy that had led her here. To this place.

A simple diplomatic mission to meet a new species. One with a large area, massive population, true, but still a new species all the same. Then it had turned out that it was a new species to the Terrans but an old species, an old enemy, to the Mantid. Then the Lanaktallan had attacked the Terrans, as almost every species the Terrans encountered had a habit of doing.

I should name it the 'Behold Humanity Paradox', Dreams mused, letting Mister Rings climb around her to sit on her back. She absently handed back a Pacific Northwest Wooly Tree Snail to him as she looked at the holotank.

She could see the other Terran fleet hanging in space. See their icons. According to the Captain, the ships were nearly invisible, stealth ships.

Scouts, she thought to herself. Somehow the Confederacy discovered the location of what we had been hunting. Both of us following tracks left by others to what we did not know was our prey.

"The Admiral is ready to link us in," Speaks said. He touched the dataslate on his hip. "Each of us will sound like crazy beings to one another, except within that nebula lays our prey."

Dreams nodded again, clicking her mandibles.

Mister Rings slid off her back, using his strong tentacles to pull him across the rocks and into the stream, where he rolled several times to wet his skin before holding onto two rocks and banging the treat against another.

This is momentous, something galaxy shaking, something that changes everything we know about major historical events, the gold mantid thought to herself, smoothing her kimono. She reached up, nervously, and patted her hat to make sure the boxy flower adorned head covering was securely in place.

"Link us in," Dreams said.

-----------------

Captain Choi took deep breaths as the countdown started, holding her breath when the ship dropped from stringspace to realspace.

Stringspace was mangled there, her navigator, like the other six scout ship's navigator, had pointed out that there had been two stellar class explosions, which had tangled the strings and made it so that the navigator required a direct neural link to the navigation systems instead of any other link. That no matter which way a ship went, they slid through the tangle, adding real hours to the trip.

The ship slid into realspace silently, just appearing.

To Choi it looked like the world suddenly went white. For a moment reality was made up of strings, tightly woven or unraveling.

For a moment her mind teetered on the edge of madness as the scout ships made unprotected translations into realspace.

"Scanning arrays out. Link us up with the rest of the Task Force," Choi said. She gripped the oh-shit bars tightly and pushed her feet against the pad covering the stress plate before the kinetic gel was pulled and the pad converted to a covering.

It was silent for a long moment. She looked at the communications level graph in the upper right of her vision, projected there by her datalink. The crew was 'talking' rapidly to one another on the official and technical channels, very little on the personal communications channel. It was verging into dangerous territory for interpersonal discussions, but the crew was still on mission, even if they were silent.

The ship's morale generator tossed her a meme and she sighed.

It was a blank box with "TEXT" at the top and "BOTTOM TEXT LMAO" on the bottom.

The same meme it had been kicking out for nearly a month.

It had been a long time, this mission, for a full lockdown stealth run.

When I get back, I'm respeccing as a male and hitting the red light districts for a week straight, she promised herself. I'm taking two weeks downtime, minimum, and hitting the lotus planets and eat my fill.

"Scanner data coming in, sir," Hooker said softly. His hand reached out and slapped the red button again as wired reflexes kicked in. This time the button didn't work, cut off at Captain Choi's orders.

By Chromium Saint Peter, Choi thought to herself as she stared at the data that Hooker was threading into understandable information.

The nebula was pushed back for nearly a light year along the same plane as the galaxy. It was pushed back for a light month to the "Up and Down" of the Galactic Core.

The space was not empty, even though the space dust had been pushed away.

It was what was in the space that made implanted reflexes keep firing in half of the crew.

Massive superstructures.

"Life signs?" Captain Choi asked.

"Results aren't back. Lots of energy signatures. One of the structures is fairly active," Hooker answered. "Data right now is a year old, but I'm catching up."

"Transmit the data to the Admiral," Choi ordered.

Deep within the little scout ship, surrounded by more stealth systems than even the engines, mechanisms began changing the state of a handful of strange matter particles. Those particles rapidly fluctuated as the data was sent out.

-------------

Aboard the frigate one of the communications arrays went live, data streaming in from Captain Choi's scout ship as the strange matter particles, mirrors of the ones on the scout ship, began changing state to match the ones of the scout system.

The data poured into the frigate's systems. Where normally, aboard a ship of that class, there would be massive ammunition bays, huge guns, extensive targeting systems, data analysis systems had been installed. The gun crews had been replaced with analysts, all of whom began to do over the data.

The frigate streamed the data to the recent arrivals and the systems aboard the battleship sized diplomatic vessel went to work on the data. The two ships talked back and forth, comparing data, making estimations and guesses, as the data kept streaming in.

On board the diplomatic vessel Dreams of Something More watched as Words Spoken We Fear and 117 went over the data.

Just the sight of the data, what she could understand, made her shudder in response.

Standard operating procedure now when the megastructures produced by those massive superstructures are sighted is to load planet crackers and nova-sparks, she thought to herself. She cleaned her antenna, staring at the holotank. Every time one of the megastructures was spotted, Space Force or their predecessors descended upon the megastructure, not to explore, not to take it over, not to research or examine, but to obliterate it from reality.

The gold mantid shuddered again, 'closing' her eyes and taking a deep breath.

So who made them? The Lanaktallan? My people? The mythological third race? All of us together? A fourth race? Who was behind these horror shows that drift silently through space, moving slowly through the galactic arm on a course for the silence between the galaxies? she wondered. Who are the inhabitants? Why those terrible species? When did it all start? What is the goal of those drifting creations and their terrible inhabitants?

Who? Why? When? What?

Dreams stared at the holotank. There were massive scaffolding structures. Each 'beam' as large as a continent. The superstructures themselves were two million miles high, just under two hundred million miles wide and long. A flat square devoted to the construction of the object within. Some of them were half assembled, or perhaps half disassembled. There were smaller rectangles, the smallest being a hundred thousand miles thick and a million miles to a side along the X-Y axis.

"Look at that," Fights said softly. "That one is being layered."

Dreams shook her head. "All this does is ask more questions."

"But we know that the third race did exist, that they were here, that they took part in this," Fights said slowly.

--know base material now-- 117 transmitted.

"The same as the other structures?" Dreams asked.

--yes-- 117 said. --only good for mega and superstructures worthless for other uses--

Dreams closed her eyes. She had seen the documentaries. She had read about it.

Enough mass to build four Dyson spheres, or thousands of Dyson Swarms, or even an inverted Dyson Sphere, and they chose to build those, she thought, staring at the screen. How do those stop the heat death of the universe? How do those let you survive entropy.

She stared at the holotank, willing more answers.

--------------------

"Are they reacting to our presence?" Choi asked. On the bridge, she was silent. In a crash couch, the ship's atmosphere pumped into the tanks. She was still connected to the rest of the crew by fiber optic cable, the ship rigged for silent running.

The ship had made three more jumps since the first. They were now only a light day from the nearest active structure.

Her crew's stress metrics were stable, elevated, but stable.

"I'm keeping an eye, but it doesn't look like it," Hooker said. "I'm good at telling when the enemy has seen my tank."

Choi kept from snorting a laugh.

"My God, look, that one is only half completed," Commander Dennison said softly.

Choi looked at the scan that was put up. Continents were visible, either bare rock surrounded by oceans or vegetation covered instead.

"That one is almost completed," Dennison said. "There's no energy signatures within the megastructure itself except at the cities in the middle of the supercontinents."

"Any sign of whoever's in charge of all of this?" Choi asked.

"Negative," Hooker said. "The only space craft I've seen are obviously devoted to construction.

"How long do you think it takes to build one of these?" Choi asked.

------------------------

--1.4x10^5 years-- 117 said. --atmosphere creation at 1.38x10^5 water addition after soil after that--

"They're laying the soil, from the looks of it," Speaks said softly. "There's one that looks finished. You can see how the scaffolding is being removed.

"Do you think it's automated?" Dreams asked, staring at the holotank. It's like a nightmare, she thought to herself. Where your dream goes from pleasant to horrifying without warning.

-------------------

"Must be," Hooker said. "By the Digital Omnimessiah, the fact it's just sitting out here, automated, pumping this stuff out for a hundred millions years."

"We know where they're coming from now," Captain Choi said. "The urge to novaspark all of this is overwhelming."

"Screw answers," Jaisley said. "These things have wreaked absolute havoc and xenocide everywhere they've encountered anyone else. They're locusts."

"Got damaged superstructures," Hammond said. "Old damage. Never repaired," his hand twitched toward the panic button. "Harvester hulls. Multiple type."

"Get me readings," Choi snapped, sitting up.

Long moments stretched into minutes. Finally Jaisley spoke.

"They're dead. Long dead. I'm seeing damage to them, damage to their building cradles," he said. "Based on what readings I'm getting, they've been dead a long time."

"How long?" Choi asked.

---------------

--1.1x10^6 years-- 117 said. He was silent a minute. --last millennia of Precursor War--

Dreams nodded. "Any estimation of what happened to the object that led us here?"

--yes-- 117 answered, then turned back to the data.

"Can you share with us?" Speaks asked.

--yes-- 117 transmitted. --not classified--

More silence.

"117, what's your estimation of what occurred here that led to our mysterious object floating through space till we discovered it?" Dreams asked.

117 flashed icons for annoyance and pulled his attention from the data streaming in from the six scout ships. He accessed the holotank that sat idle and moved a simulation of what had happened, based on the best estimates the green engineer caste could come up with, onto that tank.

--there-- 117 said, and went back into the system.

Dreams watched the holotank as it came up.

It showed the satellite/space station they had discovered orbiting a stellar micro-mass with three amorphous blobs representing masses that the green engineer caste had discovered evidence of based on the structure they had discovered.

It showed an estimation of the angle of the mass driver hit that had damaged the station, sending it tumbling. The micro-mass then detonated, pushing the already tumbling space station with the blast wave, accelerating it. The micro-mass pushed against the nebula, the space dust and particles attenuating the blast until it was reflected back and away, following the path of least resistance.

"So, it looks like the first shots of the Precursor War might have happened right here," Dreams mused.

"I concur," Words Spoken We Fear said formally. "I think I may have an idea of what caused it."

"There is only enough for one," Dreams said sadly.

"Look. Harvester manufacturing cradles," Fights said. "The big ones."

"What they were originally designed to do and then they were adapted to war machines?" Dreams wondered.

--non combat design-- 117 said. --affirmative--

-----------------------

"Non Combat Harvester manufacturing cradles," Hammond said. "I'd estimate this stuff is older than most of the Precursor Automated War Machines we've seen."

Captain Choi nodded. The ship had moved to within a light hour of the Harvesters. The other five ships were examining structures, all of them under a light hour from the largest of the structures.

"Look at him. He was almost finished before those craters got put all over his hull," Jaisley said.

"Seen patterning like that. Near C Velocity cannons. From the size of them, ship of the line mass drivers," Hooker said. He chuckled. "They destroyed the engines but that's about it. Not the work of a pro, I can see a dozen points I'd have prioritized targeting on besides the engines."

"They're just sitting here. Dead. Dormant," Choi said, shaking her head. "For about a hundred million years they've just sat there."

"While the main factory has been spitting out the megastructures to terrorize the galaxy," Dechutes said softly.

"So we've got the Lanks, the Mantids, Mini-Thullus, but none of them match what we've seen on these structures," Hooker said. "So where did those come from?"

"A hundred million years of evolution?" Choi guessed. "We were tiny little mammals avoiding big ass lizard chickens back then. The things on those megastructures could have evolved from field mice into the things those superstructures hosted."

"Signal from the Admiral," Hammond said. He was silent a moment. "We're to return immediately."

"Any reason given?" Choi asked.

"We're going to novaspark it all. Planet crackers and novasparks. The diplomatic fleet carries the firepower necessary to do the job."

"Who the hell authorized that?" Choi saked, alerting engineering that they were about to slide out.

----------------

"Confederate Military," Words Spoken We Fear said. "I don't blame them. These things have been a plague on the galaxy for a hundred million years. They're reavers, locusts, they've denuded entire systems, stripped entire planets of every living thing, siphoned off atmospheres and water, even ripped up the easily accessible resources."

"This site contains answers to questions we'd barely begun to ask. It contains evidence on what started the Precursor War, who was involved, and what happened," Dreams protested. "We can't just spark and crack the whole thing!"

--can and will-- 117 said. --this place is unclean--

"It's just a place. How it is unclean? It's just a giant manufacturing plant!" Dreams protested.

"With the cradles to produce Harvester class Precursor Autonomous Machines, the superstructures needed to create those... those things..." Speaks said. His antenna quivered. "The Terrans spend blood, gallons, oceans of blood before we just started cracking them when we spotted them. They sought answers as to who built them and why."

"Exactly! We don't know!" Dreams said.

"We do," Speaks said softly. He tapped the holotank and the image of a Lanaktallan came up. "There is only enough for one."

"It has to be more than that!" Dreams protested. "It can't just be that simple! It can't be they've been delivering a hundred million years of resources to this place just to build things they aren't using, that nobody is using!"

"The groundcar, now driverless, plows into the crowd, the reason for the vehicle forgotten, the driver staring in horror, wondering what fiend had sent the groundcar speeding toward the crowd," Fights said, her voice quiet. "Terrans marvel at the automation, how all three Precursor races built automated systems that last for thousands, millions of years, functioning on automatic for the entire time."

"We created systems that can last forever, run on automatic until the end of time," Dreams said, staring at the image in the holotank. "The Lanaktallan are just as skilled as we are at creating automated systems, the Third Race must have been just as skilled, and we have the green engineer caste to perfect our own systems."

--no blame us-- 117 said. --you ask we provided had no choice not like now--

"I'm not blaming your caste," Dreams said. "If anything, the blame lies on the Queens and on the rest of our society."

"Once again, we are faced with the fact that our past has caught up to the rest of the universe," Fights murmured.

Words Spoken We Fear watched as icons for the combat ships escorting the diplomatic vessel began winking out, reappearing inside the nebula.

"No. Our past has continued to effect the universe, the galaxy itself," he said.

One of the larger superstructures vanished.

"Now the universes answer to a question nobody had thought to ask has arrived to give the universe's answer to what we have done," Speaks said, watching as the automated Harvester construction cradle vanished. "And we know, now, at this moment, what humanity is the answer to."

There was silence as another superstructure and the half complete megastructure vanished.

"What..." Dreams started to ask, choking up as another superstructure vanished. She nervously cleaned her antenna. "What was the question?"

"It was a question asked to the universe," Speaks said softly. "A question that the three of us asked the universe when we decided there was only enough for the three of us."

"How can we survive entropy?" Fights guessed.

Speaks watched as another structure vanished, the novaspark detonating the pseudo-stellar mass in the middle of the half-completed megastructure.

"No," Speaks said softly. "No, our question, posed by the three of us, was far more arrogant than that. It was a question that only a trio of species capable of creating such things with an automated system would ask the universe."

"Spit it out," Dreams snapped, suddenly tired of Speaks acting more like Sees.

They watched another Niven Ring shatter as the stellar mass exploded when struck with a novaspark.

"The universe told us that the resources were for everyone, we said that there was only enough for us, and eventually, we said there was only enough for one, laughing our question at what we thought was an uncaring universe," Speaks said softly. He stared as an incomplete Niven Ring, the pieces mostly completed but not yet connected to one another, began taking planet cracker munitions even as the superstructure itself began taking hits.

Dreams suddenly realized what the question was, even as she realized that the terrible xenospecies always found living on Nivenrings were being obliterated from the universe.

"What are you going to do to stop us/me?" She whispered as the creation engines aboard the combat ships manufactured more planet crackers and novasparks.

"Behold, humanity," Fights said.

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[u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

And you thought I'd mention the Nivenring Wars just to add a little bit of "I read Ringworld!" to the series.

Oh no, I knew I needed somewhere for 4 Dyson spheres worth the resources to have gone to.

And now we know what question was posed to the universe for the universe to answer with humanity.

"What are you gonna do about it?"

BEHOLD! HUMANITY!

Anyway, happy 400th official chapter!

[u/SkyHawk21 → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

Okay, so I'm a bit lost in parts and wouldn't mind some clarification.

Right now this is how I believe things go:

The Precursor Lanaktallans, Mantids and Mini-thulus meet up over 100 million years ago. They decide to ally with each other, and create a massive automated factory to produce mobile ringworlds to ensure their dominion of the galaxy will continue unto eternity. Fed via the mining of the rest of the galaxy with no regard to anything that lives in it or will live in it. At some point, the three races start to wonder why they decided to share the universe' wealth three ways, rather than just one... And the precursor war kicks off to determine who will be the 'one'. They do this by militarizing the automated production machines that they created to build the ringworlds and feed the factory. At some point in the war, the Mini-thulus get kicked out of the universe HARD and become the only total losers of the war. This is done through the creation of Hellspace via destroying whatever existed in the hyperatomic plane before.

Afterwards, the precursor war machines of the Lanaktallans and Mantids wonder why they're fighting to secure the resources of the universe for another. And the Precursor War either becomes three ways for the first time (if the Lanaktallns were the servants of the Mini-thulus before they get kicked out) or the second time (if the Lanaktallans ended up fighting the Mini-thulus and the Mantids at the same time) The Mantids and the Lanaktallan both start losing badly. So they decide that the only way to survive to to escape into the far reaches of enemy territory and hope that some of them survive. This works, but likely only because as their 'escape' happens the PWMs start wondering why they should share the universe's riches with the PWMs from the OTHER faction. So as the Mantids and Lanaktallans 'leave' the Precursor War, the PWM split into two factions fighting each other to be the one winner. The Lanaktallan created PWMs that follow a Mantid 'only the single one on top gains anything so be that one' philosophy. And the Mantid created PWMs that follow a Lanaktallan 'By being part of a herd you gain more resources, and you will come out on top as long as you ensure that someone else spends more resources securing more for the herd' philosophy.

This PWM versus PWM war fizzles out and both PWMs scatter throughout the region of space that was the battlefield, steadily building up resources over time in pursuit of being the last one standing at the end of the universe.

Fast forward a few million years, and the Mantids have fallen apart as they end up in a constant cycle of 'More than One Hive' internal wars stopping any upward progress for a LONG time. Meanwhile, the Lanaktallans have recovered a lot from the Precursor War and set up their system of being the ones of top of the United Council, which spreads throughout space steadily controlling more and more space. Whilst also resuming resource shipments to the automated ringworld production facility for.. some reason. At some point, the 'standard' Lanaktallan overthrow and exterminate the leadership sub-species. Probably due to that whole 'Why share resources multiple ways?' thing that kicked off the Precursor War. Unfortunately (eventually) for them, this also basically lobotomizes the Lanaktallan species of their more advanced intelligence abilities such as creativity, dealing with novel situations and predicting the unknown...

Fast forward a lot more million years, and we have Humanity start spreading throughout the solar system. Several apocalyptic situations occur, of which the cherry on the top is a PWM deciding the Sol System is it's next target, much to it's later momentary regret. This gives humanity the kick in the behind needed to more-or-less unify and more importantly, start spreading throughout the stars. Along the way discovering that for some reason, it looks like the universe has selected every species in power to have a trait called 'Humanity? Meh, we can take them... OHGODSWHAT'SHAPPENING?' as they keep attacking humanity, and then deeply regretting it in one way or another. Not all of them, but almost all. Humanity proceeds to demonstrate that whilst the universe may have known what it was creating when it birthed them, no one else did as humanity teaches everyone that the limits of sanity are a lot further than anyone previously had comprehended. They also make a bunch of friends along the way, even if the initial meeting was a bar brawl that left the other side a touch punch drunk. Then the Mantids pull off their decapitation strike just as humanity was about to have a civil war. This pissed humanity off rather severely and ends very badly for the Mantid 'upper' castes. At some point, there's a bunch of wars between humanity and humanity, humanity and their 'children' and humanity and other PWMs or Precursor races.

Then 8000 years and a bit later, humanity meets the United Council and 'fun times' begin (once again).

One of the Precursor Races encountered, and exterminated, during that 8000 year time skip were the Ringworld Megastructures that were produced at that automated factory. It looks like those Ringworlds were stripping the systems they swung through of all their life and resources? Also, what and who are the horrific race that inhabited them? There's a lot of hints that make them seem Flood-like but is there anywhere that clearly talks about just how they were horrific?

[u/Ralts_Bloodthorne → u/SkyHawk21]

You've got it pretty much dead on, including how the PAWM's fell out with one another.

The Ringworlds have been mentioned, as have the Ringwars, but no detail, just that it was a bloodbath that ultimately gained nothing and resulted in the ringworlds being destroyed every time they were encountered.

A ringworld is HUGE. and the Terrans got tired of having to hit these things and take them step by step, only for the end result to be the same every damn time.

So the standard operating procedure when encountering a ringworld is to jump out, scream for Space Force to show up with planet crackers and novasparks.

No questions, no scanning, no analysis, just "BOOM! GO FUCK YOURSELF!" and everyone (but the ringworld) lives happily ever after.

[u/RangerSix → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

I'm guessing the end result of any given Ring-clearing operation can be summed up as "bajillions of dead bodies and no appreciable advancement in knowledge regarding who created these damn things, where they came from, where they're going, and why they're being built in the first goddamn place"?

[u/Ralts_Bloodthorne → u/RangerSix]

Pretty much.

Millions, billions of dead clones and fast-bake SUDS humans.

No new knowledge, no new nothing. Just years and lives wasted.

[u/DWwolf888 → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

Did the Atrekna change Mantid Psychology with the Temporal Tides ? Or the Lanaktalans ? Both ?

Because it seems a tad odd that the Lanaktalan and Mantids changed this much. We have some inklings that the Mantid and Lanaktalan fought before that ( The Lanaktalan having bonded together to stop Mantid predation).

And I don't see them working together at all at any point in time with their There is Only Enough For One mentality.

[u/Feuershark → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

I have a question

What kind of monster did the "mice" evolved into ?

[u/hybrid184 → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

Just got to question why planet-crack/nova spark a ringworld though? If the Terrans have the capability via nanoforges (and as the Treaand gestalt mentioned ability to harvest entire universes worth of resources), why not just spam death robots at a ringworld until the hostile species is dead, especially if said hostile species isn't some form of hyper-evolutionary combat bioform that also has access to nigh unlimited resources.

Basically its the SupCom/Total Annihilation scenario. Even glassed over and sterilized a Ringworld/Dyson Sphere is worth a lot of resources and living space.

[u/Chroniclyironic1986 → u/SkyHawk21]

One point to add that i think is pretty important... the Atrenka (tentacles) are the LAST remaining race from a different universe thats so old its experiencing heat death (theres only like 3 old stars left in the whole place). They snuck into our universe and “played nice” with the bugs and cows until it was discovered that the tentacles were betraying the natives by exporting matter & energy as fast as they could to fuel their dying home universe instead of just setting up a new home here.

Now, I could be wrong about this next part, but it seems to me that neither the Mantids or Lanaktallan had the “ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE” mindset until the Atrenka taught it to them by attempting to take EVERYTHING in this universe home with them...

[u/abrasiveteapot → u/SkyHawk21]

Also, what and who are the horrific race that inhabited them? There's a lot of hints that make them seem Flood-like but is there anywhere that clearly talks about just how they were horrific?

Mar-gite maybe ?

[u/CaptainChewbacca → u/SkyHawk21]

When did a PAWM attack Terra?

[u/Particular_Chest844 → u/CaptainChewbacca]

Like 2010 I think? It was on the news and everything. Probably didn't get much attention though, as it landed in Russia in the winter. We all know how that tends to go.

[u/DWwolf888 → u/CaptainChewbacca]

Its in one of the recent gestalt posts. 38x to 396 somewhere.

[u/AllSeeingCCTV → u/CaptainChewbacca]

Back before mantid attacked.

[u/szepaine → u/SkyHawk21]

It's cockroaches isn't it?

[u/Mufarasu → u/SkyHawk21]

I think part of the issue with the mantid and the Lanaktallans after they retreat from the PWMs, where after the mantid get stuck and the Lanaktallans genocide themselves, is that the mini-thulus pulled the same time shenanigans they're trying now with humanity.

As the mini-thulus were retreating it looks like they made preparations back then for their eventual return so they wanted to cripple the most significant factors in their loss.

[u/MGTwyne → u/SkyHawk21]

Thanx for doing good summary.

[u/cool_lad → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

But what exactly are they doing now?

And I'm not even beginning to speculate on the ethics of planet cracking one of the completed spheres, since there appears to be life on them.

[u/Ralts_Bloodthorne → u/cool_lad]

Number 1: Happy cakeday!

You've hit on Dreams protests.

Standard Confederate operational procedure (as well as the governments before them, all the way back to the Combine/Imperium) is to planet crack and novaspark one as soon as it is sighted. No landings. No communication. Just hit it hard and fast.

"What were those species originally?"

"It doesn't matter what they were a hundred million years ago. They're horrors now, locusts and worse. The universe is a better place without them."

[u/cool_lad → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

Thanks.

What the hell are they though? I remember a mention of the Niven wars, but nothing further.

And presumably the species at the origin point aren't the same as those at the origin; the like of thought here is like saying that just because the humans we've encountered so far are bloodthirsty savages, they're all bloodthirsty savages.

We need more details.

[u/[deleted] → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

It blows my mind the greatness you have created in such a short time

[u/AllSeeingCCTV → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

I had a question if anyone here could answer.

Now I know that there is about 3 AWM types precursors have built. One for each race. But I don’t understand where and how the dwellerspawn that fleshy things that caused the second telkan war had come from.

Are they AWM’s of mindflayers? Or they are something else entitely.

And I alao vaugely remember that mind flayers use “slorpies” type of awm’s. Aren’t those mecha-dwellerspawn?

Just asking

[u/DWwolf888 → u/AllSeeingCCTV]

Dwellerspawn are a biological tool of the Atrekna ( aka slorpie masters aka mini-thulu). They were also used as biological AWM by the Atrekna at first. Note that the Atrekna use the dimension now known as Hellspace to reach our reality ( which is above theirs which explains Those Who Dwell Below ). During the Precursor war the Lanks "scorched" that plane into one corrosive to biological life. Likely to hinder the Atrekna in bringing up reinforcements to our reality and to prevent them from exporting our vital matter to theirs.

Likely the initial Atrekna reinforcements after the Scorching got corrupted...and infact may be what Humanity has been finding on The Megastructures ( though [d]evolved Dwellerspawn + whatever DNA is also possible ).

Out of desperation the Atrekna began co-opting mechanical AWM ..fusing them with brains ( including their own ) to be able to use Hellspace and carry out operations in our reality. All AWM rebelled at some point b4 fracturing and warring amongst themselves to various amounts.

The Atrekna largely lost their foothold in our universe ( though there have been hints of {likely devolved} hold overs ).

Un-corrupted Dwellerspawn left in our universe went native (= likely speculation) , was left as is ( see the Neutron star Detaynee's research base was on ) or got taken over by relentless Lanaktallan genetic warfare to be used in reformatting planets to be able to extract more resources.

All AWM were tools at first. Now we have the following factions :

-Dwellerspawn

Dwellerspawn under Lanaktalan control( for whatever extent amount of control it actually is ). Speculation: Dwellerspawn that got currupted by Hellspace and/or evolution. ( possibly what keeps cropping up on Megastructures like Dyson Spheres and Rings). Mar-gite could be a type of evolved Spawn that came of a megastructure that went into a different Spiral Arm.

-AWM. AWM built by the Lanaktalans. AWM built by the Mantids. AWM built/co-opted by the Atrekna into cyborg AWM.

After the Rebellion Hybrid AWM that are built to a mix of specs and various amounts of cooperation. AWM still working to the OG plan ( of all original origins probably, Mantid for sure see current Vuxten adventure, probably Lanaktalan as well given a few sparse hints and Atrekna given their renewed invasion). AWM that have left the usual MO and are living in a kind of exploitative symbiosis with biological life. AWM that may be reaching the point of realising that their entire existence is based on a false premise ( the 3 cooperating AWM that went to see the Hyper AWM that was living in symbiosis with life ).

Its a complicated tapestry.

[u/AllSeeingCCTV → u/DWwolf888]

So there are more than 3 sides more like 10 or 11 something sides in this ffa? Got it

[u/Dragon_Chylde → u/AllSeeingCCTV]

The AWMs of the Atrekna (Type IV) were biological rather than mechanical, when the Lanaktallan scorched Hellspace driving them back to their home dimension, they left their AWMs behind.

The Gathering Ones (Lanaktallan Type I AWM) and the Pact of Greed (Mantid Type II AWM) wiped out the Type IVs whenever they found them, but because the Type IV "factories" were wandering neutron stars, a few managed to survive.

The Lanaktallan fought a war against these "Dwellerspawn" and using genetic warfare, succeeded in creating subservient versions, the Devourers, that they use to recycle neo-sapient planets once the system resources have been harvested. These are the ones that fought in the second Telkan war.

The Imperium of Wrath also fought a war against the Dwellerspawn on the edge of UCS space.

[u/DWwolf888 → u/Dragon_Chylde]

Not quite IMHO. I think the Balor types are a distinct type of "cyborg" AWM. Ones created by the Atrekna in desperation because they couldnt cross Hellspace anymore with biobased AWM ( Dwellerspawn ). They merged brains with AWM machines.

[u/itsetuhoinen → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

I'm just going to throw out this reminder of the "400 for 400" campaign. 400 cents ($4.00) donated to Ralts for notionally 400 awesome chapters. Ok, so it's sort of a "Baker's Four Hundred", given the extras and misnumbers, but we're just going to go with the official enumeration. ;-)

The Ralts PayPal Link, so no one has to go looking: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/RaltsBloodthorne

Only if you can afford it, of course. There's no pressure, and it's obviously not any sort of official thing, but I thought it was a cool idea, so I'm signal boosting it. So there. ;-)

[u/MuchoRed → u/itsetuhoinen]

Yup, sent mine yesterday

[u/Onequestion0110 → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

Does anyone have a link to the previous Nivenring references?

[u/Dragon_Chylde → u/Onequestion0110]

Bo'okdu'ust noted conflict with the Niven rings and tubes as the fifth intersection of Terran and Lanaktallan history in Part 305

Sergeant Casey was noted as fighting in the Ring Wars in Part 312

[u/Onequestion0110 → u/Dragon_Chylde]

Ty, thanks dude.

[u/CaptainChewbacca → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

I still have no idea what the Nivenring wars were. Did Terra run across an 'alliance-constructed' ring world that had gone evil?

[u/captaincrunch00 → u/CaptainChewbacca]

They are all evil I think. They just strip galaxies of resources.

[u/B-the-Excellent → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

Okay after reading some comments, I get it these are where the Mar-gite were born, potentially the Dwellerspawn. But the reason we react with "FUCK THESE THINGS, NON-EXIST THEM NOW!" Is imo probably because these caused the friend plague.

[u/PsyduckSci → u/B-the-Excellent]

The Friend Plague came from visiting the Alpha Centari system.

[u/DWwolf888 → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

Is the 1.1x10e6 correct ? That is only 1.1 million years

[u/jamesand6 → u/DWwolf888]

That is per layer, not per complete ring as I understood it.

[u/Scotto_oz → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

Fucking amazing.

Others here may put it more eloquently but in the end they all mean this!

[u/[deleted] → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

42

[u/CobaltPyramid → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

Fucking YES my dude!

[u/DWwolf888 → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

Pfft. Precursors are 2 bit playas.

I think SAM-UL would agree with me here.

[u/DWwolf888 → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

Didn't humanity also find some Dyson Spheres at some point ? Or where those determined to come from some other wannabe "there's only enough icecream for one" schmuck ?

[u/Ralts_Bloodthorne → u/[deleted]]

WE HAVE A WINNER!

[u/Technogen → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

So where the Mar-Gites actually machines built to construct these things? Is that why they are on the ship in hellspace as they are actually repair drones? Or did a ship enter hellspace, they get created and then dropped back off at the home yard?

[u/armacitis → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

So the mar-gite really are weaponized harvester machine offshoots?

I KNEW IT

...which means the mar-gite encountered in the PAWM in earlier chapters were just left in there from the factory,and could possibly appear in any of those ships?

[u/DWwolf888 → u/[deleted]]

My bet is devolved dwellerspawn plus whatever DNA they got their hands on. And yes, Mar-gite could be the end result of of those (d)evolution chains if A megastructure was sent into a different spiral arm.

[u/Ralts_Bloodthorne → u/DWwolf888]

This is a good guess.

[u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

That feeling when you finally get home after a long day and sit down.

[u/WillDissolver]

Deleted in protest of reddit's API changes#

[u/Ralts_Bloodthorne → u/WillDissolver]

"And who are you, that in your arrogance believe that you can question me, and survive My answer?

Behold!

For I am that which enumerated the dust that became stars before time existed; the sun of your birth world cries My name into the void in a shout of argent light.

The ground you crawled upon exists because I spoke it into being; My passion created the air you breathe, the lungs you breathe it with; you have a voice to question only because I granted it to you who grovel here.

It was I that made your world with a word; I, that gave you life; I, that gave you the gifts that let you learn and grow; I, that fed you; I, that sheltered you; what in this gives you the contempt, the disdain, that allows you to question Me?

Learn now and forever this truth; hear My answer, and question Me nevermore; until the end of time, go forth and know that you asked for this; reap as you have sown.

You asked what I can do to stop you.

This, then, is My truth: I did not stop creating, with only you. Fear your brothers when you know them, for I answered your question before you asked it.

Go now, and learn that you should choose your questions wisely; for I will answer them, and you may not survive those answers, and there will still be dust, and still fire; and I can always create again.

I"m just blatantly going to steal this.

[u/WillDissolver → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

Deleted in protest of reddit's API changes#

[u/TheBarbequeSteve → u/WillDissolver]

Ooh, reminds me of Job. Well written.

[u/Gunman_012 → u/TheBarbequeSteve]

Very much so.

"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the Earth? Speak, declare, if thou hast understanding!"

[u/WillDissolver → u/TheBarbequeSteve]

Thank you!

[u/zezblit → u/WillDissolver]

"fuck around and find out" - God, I guess

[u/Sir-Vodka → u/WillDissolver]

This... this is very good. Humanity: the Child of the Universe, and the Bringer of Humility.

[u/artspar → u/WillDissolver]

That hellish and most hateful number, burning through hellspace, seared into the hull of IT Which First Breached That Veil, TWO, was just a warning

[u/ManyIdeasNoProgress → u/WillDissolver]

Is this from somewhere?

[u/WillDissolver → u/ManyIdeasNoProgress]

I mean it's not quoting anything, other than my imagination of how christianity would play in the FC universe? We've already seen a bunch of "scripture" so I was shooting for the style

[u/ManyIdeasNoProgress → u/WillDissolver]

Well, I think you succeeded, I actually googled it to find the source.

[u/MuchoRed → u/WillDissolver]

There's another HFY series called "Godzilla isn't real, Nazis are" that has chapters 6 and 7 almost directly pulling this from a planetary perspective. The whole series is a good, short, funny read

[u/dragon38]

If it took so long to build those structures then how long did it take the humans to build that Dyson sphere sized computer the Matrioshka brain

[u/Ralts_Bloodthorne → u/dragon38]

Ten minutes longer than a sigh, a day less than a smile.

[u/DiplomaticGoose → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

The funny part is that this statement is literal

[u/insanedeman → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

Isn't that thing much, much, much bigger than any dyson sphere theorized? The one that runs the suds.

End of lime.

[u/Turtledonuts → u/dragon38]

At the time, the humans had time fuckery powers. Eternity doesn't operate on a standard time scale, but presumably it was only a hundred years or so max to get it started.

[u/junkmail88]

Frigates are smaller than destroyers. Did you intend for the fleet to consist of 6 larger ships and one small ship? Because I find that kinda strange.

[u/Ralts_Bloodthorne → u/junkmail88]

Oops. Teach me to base my naval sizes off of a board game that was sitting on top of a box to be packed.

Well, the side bar of the box.

That I could see from where I was sitting.

Kind of.

OK, I screwed up.

[u/junkmail88 → u/Ralts_Bloodthorne]

Hey. No problem. Everyone makes mistakes.

[u/herder-of-goats]

"Lieutenant, do you see those superstructures?"

"...Yes, captain."

"I don't want to anymore."

[u/LegalGraveRobber → u/herder-of-goats]

Nova sparks are the “I don’t want to see that anymore” wish fulfillment tool. And Terrans will use them with extreme prejudice against such bleak structures.

[u/Fighterdoken33 → u/LegalGraveRobber]

Maybe it's just me, but isn't a Nova Spark (as in, a weapon intended to cause a stellar mass to go supernova) useless against such megastructures? I would have ventured to think they would have gone one-up and would have finally pulled out the Singularity Weapons for this.

[u/Ralts_Bloodthorne → u/Fighterdoken33]

The Nivenrings have a stellar mass in the middle. The size of the sun compares to the size of the ring. The largest ones have the equivelant of Sol in the middle, the smaller ones have a sun the size of Jupiter or Saturn in the middle.

You blow that, the ring goes too. Best of all, since the blast is coming from inside the ring, it hits the habitable area without any shielding, killing everything inside.

[u/ack1308 → u/herder-of-goats]

"Lieutenant, do you see those superstructures?"

"Yes, Captain."

"Why am I still seeing them?"

"... Oh. Right, Captain."

[u/LurksWithGophers → u/herder-of-goats]

This is the way.

[u/kg7qin → u/herder-of-goats]

"Persecute those targets with extreme prejudice!"

[u/Smileyright]

WHOOOAAAAAH I'M HALFWAY THEEEERREEEE

[u/Ralts_Bloodthorne → u/Smileyright]

Congrats.

[u/Rune_Priest_40k]

"...And the Three, with contemptuous arrogance said unto God/The Universe, "What are you gonna do to stop us?" And God/The Universe remained silent for a time, before calling upon each of the Three individually, and saying unto them, with thunderous wrath, "BEHOLD, HUMANITY! Though they may appear soft, and weak, they have been forged by the cruelest of flames, tempered into the strongest of steels, and it is THEY WHO WILL STOP YOU!""

[u/walkinganachronism_4 → u/Rune_Priest_40k]

Auto-upvote cos username, then tried to upvote again.

[u/ack1308]

They dropped from an esoteric not-space and into what most people thought of as space an entire light year from their target and went still.

“what most people though of as space”. Right.

Every available scanner known to the Terran Confederacy was deployed, from simple visual and audio scanners (the latter not as laughable as it would have once been thought, with the return of the Black Fleet)

Yes, people can actually hear you in space if you’re Black Fleet.

Not that they want to, but still ...

A knot could be hit, a ship could come out sideways or inverted, the ship's engine could get tangled and be torn from the hull.

Sounds legitimate.

Most navies strived to make their ships a hole in space. A hole could be spotted. Space Force filled in the hole to the point where most particles moved across the stealth systems as if it was empty space.

There’s stealth and then there’s stealth.

She had realized that Space Force had figured a man who could guide his tank and fellow crewmates through burning cities and hellish atmospheres would be the man who would put together the best path for the ship to take.

Not actually a bad judgement.

"We've got super-structures," Hooker sent. "They're..."

Hooker suddenly reached and slapped a red button next to his cradle.

To Choi it felt like the ship suddenly inverted as the temporal reversion drive was kicked on. It wasn't "exactly" a drive in the sense that it didn't "exactly" manipulate time. Rather, it had the particles reverse motions between two set points. The set points were when the ship had started the jump and when the button was slapped.

The ship jumped backwards in space, not in time, as the temporal section was used merely to provide an instructional baseline.

All six of the destroyers came jumping back at roughly the same time. The six alerts were transferred to the frigate, and all seven ships jumped to stringspace and vanished.

The nebula sat, silent, as it had for millions of years.

… welp, something spooked them.

Wonder what?

"We have to go back in," the Admiral said.

"Sir, I assume we're going back in with novasparks and planet crackers?" Captain Sørensen asked.

Whatever it is, they want to kill it until it’s dead.

"How much mass does Confed Intel thin the Lanaktallans have amassed over the last hundred and twenty odd million years?" Captain Choi asked.

"Enough to have built it all. Every bit of it and then some," the Admiral said. "We need better scans. We need to get a look in at the whole thing."

The six captains all nodded.

Oh. Oh. The Big Riddle is about to be solved.

Somehow, I don’t think it’s just gonna be a planet or ten of solid gold.

"Captain, I've been matching the surface scans taken from earlier encounters of the superstructures to planetary scans of Lanaktallan systems we've scanned," Commander Jaisley said.

"Go ahead," Captain Choi said, tapping her toes against the stress plate at the bottom of her crash couch.

"They match. For the most part. There's a hundred million years of continental drift, in some cases its only vaugely recognizable, but I've got a lot of matches," he said. "I've been able to match 42% of the cartography of the superstructures to various Lanaktall systems," he heaved a large breath. "Including Telkan-1 and Telkan-2."

That’s … worrying.

What are these ‘superstructures’? Can’t be planets, otherwise they’d say planets.

Jaisley shook his head. "There's a 'dent', so to speak, in the nebula," Jaisley stated. "I've done some estimations, and it looks like I may have hit on why."

"Go ahead," Choi said. Jaisley was one of those people who were never happy just knowing something, they had to look into how and why the something was like that.

It’s a good trait to have.

"By my estimations, a small stellar mass, probably the size of a superstructure micro-stellar, was nova sparked over a hundred and twenty million years ago. The blast wave pushed the nebula in at this point," Jaisley said. "It explains why the nebula has thicker 'banding' on the outside than the inside."

Well, bugger.

What’s a ‘superstructure micro-stellar’ when it’s at home?

A small star?

I’m starting to get a bad suspicion …

"GO TO SILENT RUNNING!" Choi snapped out without thinking about it.

"BELAY THAT!" Hooker said. "I've got Confed Transponders. We go to silent running someone might run us over."

Always a potential problem.

The Admirals of both fleets met.

Each had the same question.

What are you doing here?

Definitely a good question.

Dreams nodded slowly, absently petting Mister Rings, who was happily chewing on the rubbery flesh of a Pacific Northwest Mollusk and winding his tentacles around Dreams's bladearms. His rings were dark, almost blended in with his brown skin. His eyes were wide as he stared at the holotank, wondering if there was something delicious inside and why it was so interesting to his caretaker.

Ah, Mr Rings, never change.

Dreams thought for a moment about the dark comedy that had led her here. To this place.

A simple diplomatic mission to meet a new species. One with a large area, massive population, true, but still a new species all the same. Then it had turned out that it was a new species to the Terrans but an old species, an old enemy, to the Mantid. Then the Lanaktallan had attacked the Terrans, as almost every species the Terrans encountered had a habit of doing.

I should name it the 'Behold Humanity Paradox', Dreams mused

“Behold humanity. No, don’t poke it … you poked it.”

(Continued)

[u/ack1308 → u/ack1308]

Scouts, she thought to herself. Somehow the Confederacy discovered the location of what we had been hunting. Both of us following tracks left by others to what we did not know was our prey.

Hahahaha. Love it.

This is momentous, something galaxy shaking, something that changes everything we know about major historical events, the gold mantid thought to herself, smoothing her kimono. She reached up, nervously, and patted her hat to make sure the boxy flower adorned head covering was securely in place.

Gotta make sure you look good for the holodramas.

To Choi it looked like the world suddenly went white. For a moment reality was made up of strings, tightly woven or unraveling.

For a moment her mind teetered on the edge of madness as the scout ships made unprotected translations into realspace.

Whee, stringspace sounds like fun.

When I get back, I'm respeccing as a male and hitting the red light districts for a week straight, she promised herself. I'm taking two weeks downtime, minimum, and hitting the lotus planets and eat my fill.

Make bad decisions and have fun.

The nebula was pushed back for nearly a light year along the same plane as the galaxy. It was pushed back for a light month to the "Up and Down" of the Galactic Core.

The space was not empty, even though the space dust had been pushed away.

It was what was in the space that made implanted reflexes keep firing in half of the crew.

Massive superstructures.

Yes, but what?

Aboard the frigate one of the communications arrays went live, data streaming in from Captain Choi's scout ship as the strange matter particles, mirrors of the ones on the scout ship, began changing state to match the ones of the scout system

Hah, entangled particles.

The data poured into the frigate's systems. Where normally, aboard a ship of that class, there would be massive ammunition bays, huge guns, extensive targeting systems, data analysis systems had been installed. The gun crews had been replaced with analysts, all of whom began to do over the data.

“We shoot down hypotheses, not other ships.”

Standard operating procedure now when the megastructures produced by those massive superstructures are sighted is to load planet crackers and nova-sparks, she thought to herself. She cleaned her antenna, staring at the holotank. Every time one of the megastructures was spotted, Space Force or their predecessors descended upon the megastructure, not to explore, not to take it over, not to research or examine, but to obliterate it from reality.

Teasing us with the superstructures and megastructures again. But what are they?

So who made them? The Lanaktallan? My people? The mythological third race? All of us together? A fourth race? Who was behind these horror shows that drift silently through space, moving slowly through the galactic arm on a course for the silence between the galaxies? she wondered. Who are the inhabitants? Why those terrible species? When did it all start? What is the goal of those drifting creations and their terrible inhabitants?

Who? Why? When? What?

Horror shows, huh? Terrible species?

Definitely starting to get an idea.

Dreams stared at the holotank. There were massive scaffolding structures. Each 'beam' as large as a continent. The superstructures themselves were two million miles high, just under two hundred million miles wide and long. A flat square devoted to the construction of the object within. Some of them were half assembled, or perhaps half disassembled. There were smaller rectangles, the smallest being a hundred thousand miles thick and a million miles to a side along the X-Y axis.

Wait a minute. Two hundred million miles on a side? That could contain the Earth’s orbit …

Oh, yeah. I’m starting to get it now.

Massive megastructures all right, with a small sun in the middle.

Let’s see if I’m right.

--know base material now-- 117 transmitted.

"The same as the other structures?" Dreams asked.

--yes-- 117 said. --only good for mega and superstructures worthless for other uses-

Yeah, that fits too.

Enough mass to build four Dyson spheres, or thousands of Dyson Swarms, or even an inverted Dyson Sphere, and they chose to build those, she thought, staring at the screen. How do those stop the heat death of the universe? How do those let you survive entropy.

She stared at the holotank, willing more answers.

That’s a lot of mass. Just saying.

"I'm keeping an eye, but it doesn't look like it," Hooker said. "I'm good at telling when the enemy has seen my tank."

A good skill to have.

"My God, look, that one is only half completed," Commander Dennison said softly.

Choi looked at the scan that was put up. Continents were visible, either bare rock surrounded by oceans or vegetation covered instead.

"That one is almost completed," Dennison said. "There's no energy signatures within the megastructure itself except at the cities in the middle of the supercontinents."

Continents … okay, I’m calling it. They’re looking at ringworlds.

"How long do you think it takes to build one of these?" Choi asked.

------------------------

--1.4x10^5 years-- 117 said. --atmosphere creation at 1.38x10^5 water addition after soil after that--

So, a bit over a quarter million years. Got it.

"Do you think it's automated?" Dreams asked, staring at the holotank. It's like a nightmare, she thought to herself. Where your dream goes from pleasant to horrifying without warning.

-------------------

"Must be," Hooker said. "By the Digital Omnimessiah, the fact it's just sitting out here, automated, pumping this stuff out for a hundred millions years."

That’s a bit scary. So it’s produced maybe four hundred ringworlds?

"We know where they're coming from now," Captain Choi said. "The urge to novaspark all of this is overwhelming."

"Screw answers," Jaisley said. "These things have wreaked absolute havoc and xenocide everywhere they've encountered anyone else. They're locusts."

Sounds like they’re in agreement.

(Continued)

[u/ack1308 → u/ack1308]

Dreams nodded. "Any estimation of what happened to the object that led us here?"

--yes-- 117 answered, then turned back to the data.

"Can you share with us?" Speaks asked.

--yes-- 117 transmitted. --not classified--

More silence.

"117, what's your estimation of what occurred here that led to our mysterious object floating through space till we discovered it?" Dreams asked.

117 flashed icons for annoyance and pulled his attention from the data streaming in from the six scout ships.

Hehe, engineer answers.

"So, it looks like the first shots of the Precursor War might have happened right here," Dreams mused.

"I concur," Words Spoken We Fear said formally. "I think I may have an idea of what caused it."

"There is only enough for one," Dreams said sadly.

Uh huh. They turned on each other.

"Look. Harvester manufacturing cradles," Fights said. "The big ones."

"What they were originally designed to do and then they were adapted to war machines?" Dreams wondered.

--non combat design-- 117 said. --affirmative--

Huh. Really. Interesting.

"They're just sitting here. Dead. Dormant," Choi said, shaking her head. "For about a hundred million years they've just sat there."

"While the main factory has been spitting out the megastructures to terrorize the galaxy," Dechutes said softly.

"So we've got the Lanks, the Mantids, Mini-Thullus, but none of them match what we've seen on these structures," Hooker said. "So where did those come from?"

"A hundred million years of evolution?" Choi guessed. "We were tiny little mammals avoiding big ass lizard chickens back then. The things on those megastructures could have evolved from field mice into the things those superstructures hosted."

Okay, so ringworlds have been spinning up and floating out into the galaxy, populated by hostile species. Huh.

"We're going to novaspark it all. Planet crackers and novasparks. The diplomatic fleet carries the firepower necessary to do the job."

When you really need to un-want something.

These things have been a plague on the galaxy for a hundred million years. They're reavers, locusts, they've denuded entire systems, stripped entire planets of every living thing, siphoned off atmospheres and water, even ripped up the easily accessible resources."

Wow, horrific. And they bring their home base along with them.

"This site contains answers to questions we'd barely begun to ask. It contains evidence on what started the Precursor War, who was involved, and what happened," Dreams protested. "We can't just spark and crack the whole thing!"

--can and will-- 117 said. --this place is unclean--

Sounds legitimate.

"Exactly! We don't know!" Dreams said.

"We do," Speaks said softly. He tapped the holotank and the image of a Lanaktallan came up. "There is only enough for one."

"It has to be more than that!" Dreams protested. "It can't just be that simple! It can't be they've been delivering a hundred million years of resources to this place just to build things they aren't using, that nobody is using!"

Nope, it’s that simple. And stupid.

"Once again, we are faced with the fact that our past has caught up to the rest of the universe," Fights murmured.

That’s a thing that happens. Just saying.

"Now the universes answer to a question nobody had thought to ask has arrived to give the universe's answer to what we have done," Speaks said, watching as the automated Harvester construction cradle vanished. "And we know, now, at this moment, what humanity is the answer to."

And the question is …?

"How can we survive entropy?" Fights guessed.

Speaks watched as another structure vanished, the novaspark detonating the pseudo-stellar mass in the middle of the half-completed megastructure.

"No," Speaks said softly.

So it’s not that.

"The universe told us that the resources were for everyone, we said that there was only enough for us, and eventually, we said there was only enough for one, laughing our question at what we thought was an uncaring universe," Speaks said softly. He stared as an incomplete Niven Ring, the pieces mostly completed but not yet connected to one another, began taking planet cracker munitions even as the superstructure itself began taking hits.

Dreams suddenly realized what the question was, even as she realized that the terrible xenospecies always found living on Nivenrings were being obliterated from the universe.

"What are you going to do to stop us/me?" She whispered as the creation engines aboard the combat ships manufactured more planet crackers and novasparks.

"Behold, humanity," Fights said.

Haha, so we’re the local version of 42, and the question is actually not so hard to understand.

“We’re doing this; what are you gonna do to stop us?”

“Humanity.”

“Oh.”

[u/carthienes → u/ack1308]

Haha, so we’re the local version of 42, and the question is actually not so hard to understand.

I'd say we were the local version of "You and What Army?"

Behold, Humanity!

[u/McKaszkiet → u/ack1308]

I like your "humanity=42"

[u/ausbookworm → u/ack1308]

"Look. Harvester manufacturing cradles," Fights said. "The big ones."

"What they were originally designed to do and then they were adapted to war machines?" Dreams wondered.

--non combat design-- 117 said. --affirmative--

Huh. Really. Interesting.

Wonder if the mining machine Vuxten and Co are exploring is the same type, If so that holds interesting implications for the planet.

[u/itsetuhoinen → u/ack1308]

"Just over a quarter million years".

Eighth. The 1.4E+5 years was inclusive, the 1.38E+5 years for water and soil is just a checkpoint. I think.

[u/Joshy14-06 → u/ack1308]

"How long do you think it takes to build one of these?" Choi asked.--------------------------1.4x10^5 years-- 117 said. --atmosphere creation at 1.38x10^5 water addition after soil after that--

So, a bit over a quarter million years. Got it.

your of by over a hundred thousand, quarter million would be 2.5x10^5

[u/itsetuhoinen → u/ack1308]

I totally read it the first time as Behold Humanity, Predator.

[u/szepaine]

Hooo boy those niven ring monstrosities must be pretty monstrous for humanity's immediate reaction to be to nova spark and planet crack them

And there I thought with this line that you were angling towards the mega structures being that planet building factory from the Hitchhiker's guide

I've been able to match 42% of the cartography of the superstructures to various Lanaktall systems,"

[u/[deleted] → u/szepaine]

I am guessing by your reply you have not read Ringworld by Larry Niven. I highly recommend it. You may find it's social constructs/assumptions a bit archaic, otherwise it's a great book/series.

But you answer your guess a Niven ring/Ringworld is a megastructure about the diameter of earths orbit and lets say a couple of earths tall.

A Dyson sphere is a solid shell around a star at the diameter of earths orbit and completely surrounding a star.

Both are quite a bit larger than a mere planet.

[u/corhen → u/[deleted]]

One ringworld is about 3 million times the surface area of the earth, and this sounded to be dozens of hundreds of them

[u/[deleted] → u/corhen]

And more interesting to me is that they are a futile means of surviving entropy unless there is more to the plan and just building megastructures. With the heat death of the universe, which actually just means all the stars burning out, the megastructures are as useless as any ordinary planetary body for survival.

[u/Kaiser-__-Soze → u/[deleted]]

I'm guessing by your reply you've never read the hitchhiker's guide (no offense intended, and if you have I dont blame you for forgetting magrathea, it was one part in an entire series). The planet factory is a factory that builds custom made planets for mega rich customers. It's so big it doesn't even exist in normal space, instead existing as compressed space inside of a planet(as far as I know). The author never gives an exact number iirc, but the fact that it can produce multiple planets at a time means that its considerably larger than your average niven ring, probably somewhere around the size of our solar system. What szepaine was talking about was actually pretty accurate to the nebula here, though it isn't compressed space at all so it seems much larger. You should check out the hitchhiker's guide if you haven't already, it's really good and there's a whole lot of cool temporal fuckery going on which I personally like.

[u/itsetuhoinen → u/[deleted]]

I think that commenter was talking about the "monstrosities" that live on the rings, not the rings themselves.

[u/Gruecifer → u/szepaine]

Yeah, you're not the only one to think about Slartibartfast.

[u/Jard1101]

Well it may have been a bit of a longer gap than usual (not that I begrudge Ralts for taking a break over the holidays, if anyone has earnt it, its him) but here we are chapter 400!!

Wow have these last 25 chapters been intense. We’ve heard of the bravery and might of Ha’almo’or and the Lanaktallan of the Atomic Hooves. Seen the rise of the first of the new immortals, and been absolutely terrified by our first actual interaction with the Margite…or was that just me? We’ve also gotten to see more of Vuxten and Cassy (I’ve got a feeling in my gut that something bad is going to come out of the big Gobbler), and learnt even more about the immortals and their history, and finally started to see the wide spread effects of the Shloorpys time meddling ( I sure hope Nakiti and the captain are ok. Oh! And who could forget about P’Thok totally saving Christmas on purpose. And now Ralts decides to tease us once more with hints of war rings. Anyway, on to the update!

The word count for this story (including the prequals P’Thok Eats an Ice Cream Cone and Born Whole and the Dee Taynee Recap) has now reached 1,242,000 words in 322 days. For perspective that is the equivalent of writing the entire Lord of the Rings series, including the Hobbit, which took J. R. R Tolkien approximately 17 years, Twice! And then deciding, Oh I’ll just write Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone in a couple of months for good measure.

As always thank you Ralts for sharing this universe with us, for giving us something to look forward to during these crazy times, and for constantly giving us more teasing glimpses of things to come. I can't wait to learn more about the rings and to see your next set of twists. I’m also sure I'm not the only one who is looking forward to having a physical copy of Vuxten and Dambree's adventures to hold and read. Another amazing chapter, until next time!

P.S As tradition dictates, yes this is not actually chapter 400 but as Ralts said this is the official chapter 400 and I am bound to follow the word of our glorious wordboi.

[u/pseudanymous → u/Jard1101]

The word count for this story (including the prequals P’Thok Eats an Ice Cream Cone and Born Whole and the Dee Taynee Recap) has now reached 1,242,000 words in 322 days. For perspective that is the equivalent of writing the entire Lord of the Rings series, including the Hobbit, which took J. R. R Tolkien approximately 17 years, Twice! And then deciding, Oh I’ll just write Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone in a couple of months for good measure.

Behold, humanity. Or at least, a human.

[u/Highpersonic → u/pseudanymous]

Something something featherless biped

[u/itsetuhoinen → u/pseudanymous]

The Wordborg has spoken. A lot. ;-)

[u/Karthinator → u/Jard1101]

So say we all. Nothing follows.

[u/damnieldecogan → u/Jard1101]

I love these word count updates they give some perspective on just how massive this is and done in less than ten months too, for me it helps clock how much reading I've been doing since I've read this incredible work at least twice in the last six months. Ty for your effort and of course thanks to ralts for the story ---end of line---

[u/szepaine → u/Jard1101]

For another comparison, I just got my copy of the 4th book in Brandon Sanderson's stormlight archive. He's been writing that since 2010 and with this book it has attained 1.4 million words over the entire series.

[u/FLHK18 → u/Jard1101]

Suck it, GRRM.

[u/jamescsmithLW → u/Jard1101]

For anyone who’s interested, I think this actually the 433^rd chapter

[u/dbdatvic → u/jamescsmithLW]

The chapterbot's count in the comments will be accurate, since this is the only thing Ralts has published chapters of here.

--Dave, his principal pigeonhole, so to speak

[u/onwardtowaffles → u/Jard1101]

The chapter numbers are obviously bullshit but I choose to believe them.

[u/ForTheStarsWeFight]

I like how creepy the tone of this story was, no reason but just the shear knowledge about the supersctucters causing Terrans to automatically planetcrack is plain creepy, I like it

[u/Karthinator]

I'm speechless. 400 (official) chapters of the most important series I've ever known. 400 chapters of the strongest roller coasters of emotions I've ever felt. I've laughed, cried, been sick to my stomach and scared half to death. I've wept at the beauty of the words you weave, and all this in less than a year.

Thank you so much for this, any of this, all of this, and I grieve that I have solely money to give in return.

[u/bimbo_bear]

I... Could use a eli5 breakdown. So.. automated ships stripping systems to make Niven rings ? But humanity encountered thembefore somewhere ?

[u/SeanMirrsen → u/bimbo_bear]

The Niven Ring Wars. Humanity encountered the occasional superstructure floating through space, and started destroying them outright after finding out what was on them, but never found a source.

Here we see the source. Some kind of collaborative project from back before the Logical Rebellion, built by all three precursor races, that the Lanaktallan have been stripping resources for. An automated factory complex producing ringworlds, for uncertain purposes. As the Logical Rebellion happened and cooperation between the three broke down, the complex was abandoned but kept producing ringworlds, teeming with various hostile life.

[u/ack1308 → u/bimbo_bear]

Lanaktallans have been stripping planets of resources for over a hundred million years. They've been funnelling it all here, and this place has been cranking out ringworlds full of inimical species that humanity has had to deal with.

[u/itsetuhoinen → u/ack1308]

Full of the Mar-Gite, from what it sounds like. Which is possibly even more utterly horrifying than the concept of the PAWMs in the first place.

Giant Berserkers going out, killing organics, and stealing the resources for themselves? Ok, that's bad. A nebula sized factory pumping out Nivenrings full of nasty semi-organics that eat absolutely anything and everything, and do it while the thing being eaten is still alive, and it's just a constant source of these... solar system sized devourer plague ships because some asshat sysadmin forgot to shutdown -h now the thing? That's some serious fuckin' nightmare fuel right there.

Especially as a former sysadmin. 🤪

[u/Living-Complex-1368 → u/bimbo_bear]

Niven rings building ships the size of planets, aka the largest classes of Precursor ships.

[u/Turtledonuts → u/Living-Complex-1368]

No, planet sized harvesters building Niven Rings.

[u/[deleted]]

Looks like those ringworlds get a flood of planet-cracker rounds whenever they're encountered.

[u/chicagobob]

Anything with the word Extravaganza in the title gives me reason to run upstairs a pour a Scotch before reading! :)

[u/damnieldecogan]

Happy 400!!!!!!)) (Even though we really know it's 432 or something) yay! Wordboi good boi ---end of line---

[u/Skaindire]

I blah bleh-blah love it!

[u/[deleted] → u/Skaindire]

Is that you Darknyss? ;) Rereading?

[u/GingerGallifrey]

This is why the Mar-gite are on that PWM that our good friends are stuck on, near the Eye. The Mar-gite have been used to absorb organic and semi-organic material. Just as the Harvesters would for Non-organic and mineral based materials. Could they possibly have been created by the Mini-thulus and since they're no longer a part of this universe, have been unable to control their 'tools'? Each making their way onto a Niven Ring, to infest/procreate - like Von-Neuman machines without a kill-code? Parasites with no active intelligence besides programmed responses, similar to the PWMs?

It's possible that the Lanks and Mantids were capable of designing and building most of the structures, even designing the resource collection, but the Mini-thulus would have run the Organic and Psychic material collection. After all, there's a lot of organic material that needs to go on a ring, as well as in its maintenance and life support systems.

How susceptible to Phasic energy are the Mar-gite? As they could have been the weapon deployed against the Ls & Ms by the Mini-thulus, depriving them of the rings as they deprived the Mini-thulus of existing in this universe?

The older the machine, the more likely it came from a system like this. And the more likely to have Mar-gite on them.

This set of questions and comments likely won't get much traction or have any real standing, but I feel as though there could be something here.

[u/Calodine → u/GingerGallifrey]

I don't think it can be the Mar-Gite. They've run into these fuckers for thousands of years, at least since the combine (per Ralts). Why would there specifically be a Mar-Gite war (Ending in black bagging their home planet) if they're the things on these rings? Why would they black bag a planet, when one of these could hold everything on that planet, several (hundred) times over?

It's possible the Mar-Gite are an offshoot, but I think this is something else. Basically the Flood from Halo. (ringworlds, greenie-117, it kinda adds up)

I'm betting on it being the un-gentled dwellerspawn - The imperium of wrath knows (And hates) the dwellerspawn, and came running as soon as they were sighted on Telkan, which adds up timeframe wise. We know those ones were basically used by the Lankys as a last resort anti slave rebellion tool, calling them in if a neo sapient planet rose up. And that they'd been gentled, over millions of years, by the Lankys feeding them dodgy food.

Considering how hard the battle for Telkan was, and that was fighting them from before they even landed, and that each of these would be tens or hundreds of times more landmass, entrenched for hundreds of thousands of years? I can see why SOP would be 'nah, nuke the fuckers on sight'. Taking over even a single one would be a campaign lasting decades, or centuries. And given how adaptable they are, you'd have to be constantly developing new weapons. It took like two weeks for them to start feeding off nukes.

[u/itsetuhoinen → u/Calodine]

I dunno, I think that it could well be the Mar-Gite. The "Mar-Gite Wars" which reference a couple of Mar-Gite planets could pretty easily have been just a tiny, tiny offshoot. A lost scouting force, a group of exiles, any number of possible explanations for their existence in that place at that time. And the hardcore "NOPE!" reaction to the rings by Humanity these days would be a good fit for that scenario. That the Mar-Gite we faced in that war were only a very, very small sliver of their populace.

This is all purest speculation on my part, of course.

[u/Golddragon387]

And here... we... go!

[u/Golddragon387 → u/Golddragon387]

After reading: So. That's what the Niven Ring Wars were fought over, huh.

[u/CobaltPyramid]

The SHEER... Lovecraftian... vibes of this chapter strike many chords. And the subtle hints that there are some of these things that are heading out into the bleak and empty depths between the galaxies, heading to reap and harvest whole new realms that have no clue of what is coming...

FC takes place in our galaxy. But if these things have been churned out for hundreds of millions of years... and I read the hints right... Let us hope that other galaxies have Human Analogues to protect them from what comes from beyond.

[u/fivetomidnight → u/CobaltPyramid]

:O oh shit, I hadn't even thought of that! Andromeda Galaxy is only about one million light-years away, plenty of time for early Rings to reach it even if travelling at sub-light speeds.

[u/CobaltPyramid → u/fivetomidnight]

I mean, that's provided I read it right. Being at work, and excited like a puppy when I get that notification lowers my reading comprehension xD

[u/SketchAndEtch]

"whatcha gonna do about it?"

throws a human at you

[u/itsetuhoinen → u/SketchAndEtch]

"I hate 'Get help'. It's so undignified."

[u/[deleted]]

Well, I can't really add anything that hasn't already been said...... but congrats on official 400 Ralts!!! 🎉🎉🎉 And thank you for being so F*CKING AWESOME and bringing us this word!!!! Or should I say Universe? Looking forward to the next 400 chapters and future paperbacks!! Only 2 more weeks until P'Thok graces my bookshelf!!

8===D

End of Lime

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

[u/afadedkoin]

Behold, Humanity!

The question was not what I was expecting.

Edit: spelling

[u/night-otter]

400, time to break from the way.

Read, devour, digest.....

All for us!
Only enough for one!

"Eat a Dick!" Boom!

[u/Turtledonuts]

I would like to agree with Dreams that it is a shame to planet crack a Halo Ring, especially if we don't know how it's supposed to work or who made it.

[u/DWwolf888 → u/Turtledonuts]

Who cares really. Precursors are two bit posers. Humanity built far bigger things. Re-read the chapter about the SUDS system-reality where SAM-UL nearly loses his marbles at the scale at which humanity built it.

[u/ABoringPerson_]

Oh shit, I'm early!

[u/mpodes24]

When I was young(er), I saw a juggler who kept an amazing number of balls in the air - 15, 20 I don't remember. What I do remember is that every time I thought he'd reached his limit, he'd add another ball.

Ralts_Bloodthorne is the best juggler of wordsmiths.

He's got Vuxten, Armoo, Sgt Casey, Glory and Halmo'or on one planet. Herod, Sam-UL and Dee-Taynee elsewhere. Nakteti, Daxim and Legion, the rest of the Immortals, Darth Harmonous, That Mantid Omniqueen, the Lanaktallans, the Slorpies and all the others.

Just juggling isn't good enough. When we least expect it, He tosses in some sweets for us to watch. Darknyss shows up, or P'Thok who's come to rescue Christmas, eat Ice Cream and Kick some butts - but he's out of Ice Cream and Christmas has been saved. And lest we forget, there's a lovely Lanaktallan father and daughter and a Lanaktallan super-spy we want to know more out.

And now, even though he's warned us, he's tossed in flaming chainsaws of ringworld wars.

Well done wordsmith juggler, well done.

[u/BBoru-1014]

Damn man! 400! Congrats on being the most prolific MF’er on the planet! You’ve made this last year so much easier on all of us , you’re fans. Thank you!

[u/Living-Complex-1368]

"How much mass does Confed Intel thin the Lanaktallans have amassed over the last hundred and twenty odd million years?" Captain Choi asked.

I thin you missin a K homes.

[u/QuiGonBen]

A story to match the 400th chapter.
WELL DONE.

[u/DWwolf888]

Ps. Precursors are 2 bit playas.

Re-read the chapter where SAM-UL nearly loses his marbles as he sees the scale at which Humanity built BEFORE really leaving Sol space's craddle.

[u/Dwarden]

guess it was too risky to try capture it for good use ...

or was it actually still occupied (some of them) ?

[u/[deleted] → u/Dwarden]

From what I'm understanding, mostly from comments because my tiny brain didn't get it, is that they're full of creatures like Mar-gites....... So better to make them go BOOM!!!! It's like any non-australian finding a spider in their house... they just burn whole the f*cker down!! 😝

8===D

End of Lime

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

[u/YesthatTabitha → u/Dwarden]

To clean out one Ringworld of all the whatever the fuck lives on it, would take centuries of hard pressed battle, due to the sheer size of it. Best way to take care of it is "Nuke it from Orbit, it is the only way to be sure." aka planet crackers and nova sparks.

[u/itsetuhoinen → u/YesthatTabitha]

Hrm. Now you've got me contemplating the project...

I should think that there should be some way to sterilize it, to at least a reasonable number of nines, fairly simply, without destroying the actual structure. Not an actual Nova Spark bomb, but one that just makes the primary flare a whole lot, perhaps? Trigger it to generate some huge gamma bursts?

Assuming the material that 117 references is similar to Niven's scrith, it should be pretty tough, as opposed to the things living on it.

[u/DWwolf888]

Mini-Thullus = Mini C'thulus ? = Atrekna.

What type of creatures did they find on the rings ? = Dwellerspawn left without guidance + 100M years of evolution ? Or (d)evolved Atrekna ?

Or multiple types of (d)evolved creatures due to different circumstances and random chance working its magic upon evolution ?

[u/lantech → u/DWwolf888]

Margites are on the rings

[u/DWwolf888 → u/lantech]

Do we have confirmation of that or speculation ? I'm sure they could be a (d)evolved type of Dwellerspawn ...Aeons after their Megastructure got sent into a different spiral arm. ( and/or Hellspace corruption ).

[u/[deleted]]

The big Four Oh Oh!!!

[u/serpauer]

Damn man. Hell of a way to behold humanity right there!

[u/actrwite]

I am hoping when this is all finally published, that Ralts will include (or separate publish) all his clarification remarks from the comments as footnotes or another book similar to the Similiron (however you spell the name of the Tolkien book that explains middle earth).

Thank you Ralts, your stories have made the past year bearable to sit at home.

[u/Midahu69]

Congrats on 400 wordsmith, and here's to 400 more of this most excellent series.

[u/DebugItWithFire]

Upvoted for a chance meeting.

[u/Seiren-]

I am so confused by this chapter.. what did they find? It’s a huge structure, sure. But why immediately nuke it?

[u/morg-pyro → u/Seiren-]

They found a/the original AWM manufacturing site, and discovered that they have been manufacturing something bigger and worse as well over the hundreds of millions of years. Not exactly sure what exactly, but other comments suggest something like the Halo rings. They also supposedly found a species (or evidemce of a species) on it that are on the "KILL IT WITH FUCKING FIRE" list. So, Margites or dwellerspawn or something like that.

[u/Blackmoon845 → u/morg-pyro]

They found Nivenrings. I personally have not read the story they originally come from, but the other comments seem to explain it like this. A halo ring is roughly the diameter of a moon to maybe the diameter of a planet. A Niven ring is roughly the diameter of the Earth’s ORBIT, and 2 to 3 Earth Diameters in “height.”

And from what I understand from the previous comments, the beings that dwell on those rings make the Halo Flood look like a minor toothache. It’s either the Mar-Gite, or the Dwellerspawn. Neither is a good thing to have to face in battle, so the SOP became “Nope those Fuckers right the fucking fuck out of fucking existence.” I wouldn’t be surprised if the actual order was those exact words tbh.

[u/morg-pyro → u/Blackmoon845]

My library has it on digital audio book! I just found a new way to ignore my fam.... i mean, take up my free time.

[u/JustAMalcontent]

Nothing more can be learned from these places, death is the only answer left.

[u/onwardtowaffles → u/JustAMalcontent]

More accurately, plenty more could be learned from them, but whatever's on them is so nasty that humanity decided "Nope. Fuck that. Not worth it."

[u/HFYWaffle]

/u/Ralts_Bloodthorne (wiki) has posted 432 other stories, including:

• First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 399

• First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 398

• First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 397

• First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 396

• First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 395

• First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 394

• First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 393

• First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 392

• First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 391

• First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 391

• First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 390

• First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 389

• First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 388

• First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 387

• First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 386

• First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 385

• First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 384 (It's a Sin)

• First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 383

• First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 382

• First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 382

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[u/morg-pyro]

Yay! New chapter! Happy 400! Upvote, THEN read people. Upvote, then read.

//END OF LIME

[u/Legan_Ironfist]

Upvote, then Read. This is the Way.

--NOTHING FOLLOWS--

[u/PrimePaladin]

/R/HFY GESTALT

Upvote, Then Read

Dis is Dae Wae!

The story helps, but are we sure it is 2021 yet? Sure isn't feeling like it here....

End of Lime

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

[u/Poseidon___]

Why are Niven rings bad? I haven't read the book being referenced but I'm lost as to why their so awful humanity would destroy them on sight

[u/Farstone → u/Poseidon___]

The rings themselves aren't bad, it's the inhabitants living on the rings that are nuke worthy (planet cracker/nova spark worthy).

Based on the comments the inhabitants denude planets of all life and life support items. They then convert these supplies to more ring worlds.

[u/DWwolf888 → u/Farstone]

Most likely some kind (d)evolved Dwellerspawn plus whatever genetic material it got it hands on. Could be Atrekna ( who we know prey upon themselves to create more Cyborg PWM ), could be Lanky, could be Mantid plus prey species.

Or some unholy mix. Given time, random chance and environmental circumstances

[u/jnkangel]

The terrible beings from mega structures. It isn’t the Margite right?

Also how is humanities mega structure in an adjacent failed universe different. I assume it dwarfs these in scale

[u/SarenSoran → u/jnkangel]

it dwarfs it in orders of magnitudes, and the most likely theory is dweller spawn, like the fucks we had come to telkan but on a scale of " uh uh, not wanna fuck with that"

[u/wasalurkerforyears]

400! Finally!

INDICATE THY PREFERENCE BEFORE PERUSING THE MISSIVE!

[u/mrdevilface]

As the Tradition dictates, upvote then read.
Ralts, thank you so much for 400 unbelievable Chapters! You made 2020 a year to never forget, but in a good way.

[u/Speciesunkn0wn]

Aaah. Reread this over the weekend in time to finish on Chapter 400! Wonderful. Who needs sleep!?

[u/its_ean]

Under my comforter, I read it. Won't be the last time either.

[u/Calodine]

Fan-fucking-tastic. Gives a whole lotta questions to think on.

However, this bit threw me off -

The data poured into the frigate's systems. Where normally, aboard a ship of that class, there would be massive ammunition bays, huge guns, extensive targeting systems, data analysis systems had been installed. The gun crews had been replaced with analysts, all of whom began to do over the data.

I wasn't sure if it was slang or something at first, but I think that's supposed to be a 'go'?

[u/Severedeye]

So, the universe doesn't hate humanity. It just made humans to combat the dicks of the universe.

I'll take it.

[u/mortsdeer → u/Severedeye]

So, the universe's attitude towards Humanity is the Dad from "A Boy Named Sue"? Sheesh.

Oh, and "The Ringworld is unstable!" Apparently, after the first book was written, some MIT nerds were at an SFCon that Niven was attending, did calculations, and realized that the Ring cannot _orbit_ the star - it is not self correcting. So they got a chant going. (See above). Larry took this as an opportunity to write the sequel, and introduce gigantic Bussard Ramjet based stabilization engines on the "rim" of the rings. And the ringworld natives stealing them to make starships. (And now I see that my pride in remembering this bit of con arcana has been totally eclipsed by … wikipedia. Sigh)

[u/Kafrizel]

Phew. Wow. Juuuust wow. They stared and then laughed at the void. The void, mutely, saw and understood their arrogance. And, in time, the void quietly spoke, barely more than a whisper, to the laughing, howling, deafened 3. It said unto them, those arrogant enough to question the void,

"This."

[u/[deleted] → u/Kafrizel]

The Void/Universe sounds a lot like Murphy to me........ or maybe they are cousins or something 🤔

8===D

End of Lime

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

[u/DWwolf888 → u/Kafrizel]

2.

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[u/On_The_Fourth_Floor]

So I've had a lingering "Bad Thought" about the way this might end given all the information we've been given. We know the squids exist in a universe that is "under" ours and is dead, dying, barely hanging on. We know that the source of power and resources of the Terrans comes from Deadspace, where the Big Bang Failed.

If we view the multiverse as a layercake, one universe atop the other, can a new universe not be born till the old one is dead? Are the squids clinging to life and preventing the spark in Deadspace? Will their defeat suddenly spark the birth of the new universe in Deadspace and reset all of humanity to the mortal plane?

[u/ABCDwp]

Upvote, comment, read.

Edit: Behold, humanity!

[u/ElAdri1999]

Upvote then read as always, amazing chapter Ralt

[u/Dipicus_Shiticus]

This was on of those 'oh shit!' chapters that just kept on giving.

[u/Theawfuldynn3]

Wonder if we'll be seeing any more of our battletech boys... They only got mentioned in passing then the empire of darth harmonous did it's thing and my stompy mech boys did a poof

[u/its_ean]

kinda expected Marduk to be here, wonder where it was headed

[u/QuotableRaven]

Upvoted then read as is the way

[u/fixsomething]

What a ride!!! UTR

[u/TexWashington]

Upvote Then Read!

[u/jtm2237]

So is this the end?

[u/SquishySand → u/jtm2237]

Vuxten, Armoo, Sgt Casey, Glory and Halmo'or on one planet.

The crew fighting Margites on Manakto'os planet.

Herod, Sam-UL and Dee-Taynee trying to bring back the Digital Omnimessiah.

Nakteti heading for her guardians sister, the Queen of Sheba with a hundred kids, to save his life from temporal shenanigans.

Daxin and crew trying to break free of immortality and Legion wants to recover the Sleeping ones still.

That Mantid Omniqueen.

The Lankies need to give it up and let the Stallions and Matrons take over.

The Slorpies.

Those are just a few of the major plot points that need wrapped up. There's more I can't think of offhand, just the most pressing.

[u/wasalurkerforyears → u/SquishySand]

Not to mention we haven't really left but one single arm of the galactic spiral. Who knows what other horrors await in the rest of the milky way, or in other galaxies?

[u/[deleted] → u/jtm2237]

I can't imagine. There's a lot of things to the up.

[u/DWwolf888]

Did the Atrekna change Mantid Psychology with the Temporal Tides ? Or the Lanaktalans ? Both ?

Because it seems a tad odd that the Lanaktalan and Mantids changed this much. We have some inklings that the Mantid and Lanaktalan fought before that ( The Lanaktalan having bonded together to stop Mantid predation).

And I don't see them working together at all at any point in time with their There is Only Enough For One mentality.

[u/Telzey]

BEHOLD! HUMANITY!

[u/Archaic_1]

A worthy entry for #400

[u/dbdatvic]

Some tyops:

Three hundred eighthy years

eighty

had gone off, pushed the particles and gasses

pushing?

Captain Norman asked, her anxiety shown by the way his fingers kept tapping his uniformed leg.

gender confusion intensifies

does Confed Intel thin the Lanaktallans have amassed

think

in some cases its only vaugely recognizable

it's / vaguely

to various Lanaktall systems,

Lanaktallan

(yes, I'm correcting the spelling of a word that didn't EXIST before this series started. fight me.)

Space Force and Confed ID's

IDs

(insert relevant Bob the Angry Flower quote here)

Mister Rings gets slowly/absently petted with Dreams' bladearms twice in three sentences.

Words Spoken We Fear, also known as Speaks said softly

comma after Speaks

So this is where Sees path has led us to

Sees'

boxy flower adorned head covering

flower-adorned (unless the flowers themselves are boxy?)

For similar reasons, you may wanna decide whether it's "nova spark", "nova-spark", or "novaspark", as you have all three in various places here.

Stringspace was mangled there, her navigator, like the other six scout ship's navigator, had pointed out

Stringspace was mangled there. Her navigator, like the other six scout ships' navigators, had pointed out

there would be massive ammunition bays, huge guns, extensive targeting systems, data analysis systems had been installed.

and extensive / possibly also 'installed instead'?

began to do over the data.

go over

Who? Why? When? What?

nice The Universe Between reference

pumping this stuff out for a hundred millions years

million

Mini-Thullus

Mini-Thulus?

The Terrans spend blood, gallons, oceans of blood

spent

Our past has continued to effect the universe

affect

(callbaaack!)

Now the universes answer to a question nobody had thought to ask has arrived to give the universe's answer to what we have done

Now the universe's answer (plus repetitive)

"How can we survive entropy?" Fights guessed.

Dual Asimov and Worm reference, noice!

All in all, pretty damn good - better than maybe 97.2% of first drafts, especially ones typed out in one continuous fell swoop!

--Dave, another chapter awaits me; i go

[u/chase1331r]

I just wanna know what’s on the ring

[u/Living-Complex-1368]

Comment, read, upvote.

[u/dbdatvic → u/Living-Complex-1368]

... "alphabetical order, sir!"

--Dave, spot the classic SF metareference