Brave Galaxy is set in a world loosely based on Hiro Mashima’s Fairy Tail and Eden’s Zero. It is a PG-13 or so rated space fantasy RP, and uses a combination of character statistics, which can be acquired via roleplaying and events, and creative freedom to help direct players’ characters. While there is a main storyline, which can be found in the events section, characters are free to interact with others and their environment however they see fit.
Explore the galaxy. Overcome the obstacles in your path. Shape the future of humanity.
Post by Reya Starlyght on Aug 6, 2019 15:27:28 GMT
Leo grinned. "That's not particularly a secret. If you actually drink with either of us, you'd discover it soon enough, unfortunately." It was clear from his tone Leo's last word was referencing their struggles getting drunk more so than what Blitz had commented on. It was almost entertaining, seeing him get concerned about them accidentally giving away hints. If only he knew the whole story, he would realize that what they did give away paled in comparison to what they didn't. To be fair, Blitz had figured out their age on his own, everything else they had offered only heavily related to it.
They both had little idea what Blitz was talking about as he managed to open the second airlock, for while they knew how to press buttons in specific orders and Eris had learned how to pilot starships, it was more of a practical application than anything related to actual technology. It hadn't even occurred to Leo that Blitz's magic he performed to open locks wouldn't work on the alien door, because it was still, for all intents and purposes, a door, right? He was starting to get a headache just thinking about it, which was a pretty typical reaction of his. Magitech was slightly, well actually a lot better, but it wasn't what he had chosen as a field of expertise when pursuing magical studies. He had always found magic in its more natural forms to be more interesting anyway, and it was easier to understand for him.
Thanks to Blitz's efforts they were completely inside the outpost though, however it looked practically deserted as they entered it. The walls were slick and smooth, hued the same black as the exterior of base. Oddly enough, there didn't seem to be any source of lighting nearby, but the area was bright, at least for Leo. "Can you two see?" he asked, eyes narrowed almost in uncertainty.
"Yeah," Eris replied. "I don't see a source either, if that's what you're asking. Maybe it's the walls?"
He shrugged. "Strange place." They stood at the end of a passage, with the only way forward being to travel in that direction. However, even as they did so they didn't seem to make much progress at all, the hallway appearing featureless aside from the entrance they had left behind. It made sense, he supposed, that there weren't many if any guards posted about, considering they were on an inhospitable planet that was practically untouched by the galaxy at large, but it was disorienting nonetheless.
Blitz merely waved it off with a smile. "If what's in that fridge is your standard traveling supply, then I suspect you have a greater fondness for drink than I. Assuming you don't mind me sipping drinks at my own pace, I might take you up on that offer sometime."
Blitz managed to open the airlock door with his technique, though there was a brief look from Leo and Eris. "The door LOOKS fully manual, but not entirely," Blitz explained, as it seemed unclear to them how he had 'hacked' a valve. "The valve allows manual operation for the most part, but there's some minor software running the airlock feature, and they bundled it in with an electronic trigger for the bolting mechanism, so when I opened the door, it popped open the bolt trigger as well, thus, unlocking the door." It wasn't like either of the duo needed a lesson in hacking doors, but as an inventor, he had a habit of explaining how his things functioned.
Blitz looked into the courtyard area with Leo and Eris, and much as it was for the other two, he could see fine, as the place was well-illuminated, but there wasn't an obvious source of light. "Maybe there's something about the walls themselves that gives off illumination, that has a greater collective effect?" Blitz mused quietly. "It would be an odd way to go about it, but given that they're aliens, there's no doubt a number of different ways that they go about things compared to what we expect."
Blitz followed the duo through the halls, which were lacking any sort of decor, but given the atmosphere, Blitz couldn't exactly blame them for not putting in carpet and furniture. "Given how often the optimal temperature zone shifts on this planet, any building wouldn't be in a livable area for terribly long. There should at least be a skeleton crew guarding this place, so where on Earthland did everyone go?" Blitz said quietly.
Post by Reya Starlyght on Aug 8, 2019 15:13:10 GMT
They nodded along as Blitz explained how he opened the airlock, neither of them really comprehending what he was saying but hey, they tried at the very least. It was a very unsuccessful attempt that just left Eris staring at the mechanisms for a moment and Leo wondering what a bolt trigger was - it sounded like it belong on some type of firearm but hell if he knew any better. Regardless, it was clear to both of them that Blitz just liked explaining things related to technology, which they certainly needed help on although it was to the degree where it was unlikely they would be able to improve much if at all. It was only a sign of the ever-changing times, decades and centuries they had a great difficulty keeping up with although they tried their best.
The walls were a greater mystery, as they were unlike anything Leo or Eris had seen before, or at least from technology. Yes, many devices glowed, but they had an appearance of actually doing so. This... was different. It didn't even give off the sense of light, as a matter of fact he had initially thought they were walking into complete darkness until he had realized how far he could see down the hall, and that neither Eris nor Blitz were struggling with navigation. "That's likely the case," Leo answered in response to him, shrugging.
"So this is what it looks like to you when I can't see anything?"
He nodded. "Pretty much. It's fun, isn't it?" Eris rolled her eyes in response, though she let out a small laugh.
The dilemma still remained that there appeared to be no halls branching off from the corridor in sight, and as they continued on a little farther they encountered a dead end. "We're definitely missing something," Eris stated, studying the road block in front of them. Frowning for a moment, she tapped the area with her staff, which elicited no response. Leo tried similar, however he instead touched with his actual finger. This time, the wall let out an electric current, zapping him although there wasn't much a response other than a quick recoil on his end.
"Well, there's something there, at least. The question is what it is. Do you have any ideas?"
Neither of the duo seemed to really grasp his explanation, but in truth, Blitz hadn't expected them to truly be invested in an explanation on the software relating to alien locking mechanisms. Maybe another time, Blitz thought, following them into the main area.
However, while the light wasn't quite what they were used to (at least in terms of illumination), it seemed that Leo was having a different time with it than either Eris or Blitz. "So you can see farther into this darkness than we can? I can see a fair ways, but from the way you're talking, you can see all the way to what I assume is the hall's end, somewhere." Blitz asked.
Eventually, they realized they'd been traveling down the single-lane hall and encountering nothing, no guards, not even forks in the path, which seemed odd to the entire party. Eris tapped the wall and nothing happened, though it gave off a brief zap when Leo touched it with a fingertip. "Not sure if these are just lights, or if they serve another purpose, but if there's electricity powering them, then maybe....." Blitz reached out with his metal arm and placed his palm against the lights, waiting a moment to see if he would get zapped, and then faint blue circuitry ran along the wall for a moment, before fading. "The walls are designed to give off light. And....something else. I'm not sure what else they're supposed to, but there's a LOT of excess programming and code in there for what should just be a light switch. I don't think 'glowing' is their only functionality. It's also odd that they reacted to your bare skin, but not organic objects, even though my metal arm should be conductive."
He chuckled at Blitz's response, shaking his head. "Well, it's not exactly something I can turn on and off so I wouldn't know for certain, but being able to see in the dark doesn't negate the fact of a horizon line, well in this case it's the vertical definition of such." Though, within a few minutes they did reach the end, in which he added. "Actually, I might have seen this, but it's so featureless that it doesn't really make a difference."
Yes, the wall was perplexing, and not just to them it seemed as Blitz tried his handy circuitry work on it to little avail. According to him there was more to the place than it seemed, which made much sense considering the dimensions they had observed from the outside, yet how to unlock the mysteries of the base was yet to be known to them. Leo wondered if the aliens were watching them right now, laughing as they struggled to comprehend something that was likely so simple in their eyes. Of course, such prying eyes were new to neither him nor Eris, but alas it almost felt like looking from the other side of the mirror, for a second.
Curious and not at all concerned about bodily harm, Eris reached toward the wall as Leo had done previously, and as expected got the same response of shock, although her reaction to it was more pronounced than his own had been. "Perhaps it's trying to read some sort of genetic code? If that's the case it likely rejects us because we aren't aliens," she hypothesized. "I'm not exactly sure how you're supposed to manipulate something like that, though...."
"If it helps, the aliens don't have any hemoglobin," Leo said, before frowning. "Yeah, that's not going to help at all, is it...." Eris just shook her head, sighing for a moment.
Leo clarified that his vision here wasn't exactly stellar, but he could see a respectable distance into the areas the glowing walls didn't quite illuminate properly, even if he couldn't really make out figures at the full distance. "Still, better to hear that your vision is slightly better than slightly worse, I suppose." Blitz said with a slight smile.
Eris tried reaching for the wall just as Leo had, and sure enough, got a shock just as Leo had when her bare hand touched the wall. "Not to put too fine a point on it, but, uh..." Shoop said from atop Blitz's head, "You DO know the definition of insanity, right?"
Blitz dismissed his comment with a slight wave. "She might have a point about genetic code, and she proved that it wasn't just Leo that was setting it off. We're narrowing down options about what the other functionality might be, assuming the spark means something."
"It DOES means something," Shoop shot back, "Don't. Freakin'. Touch."
Blitz sighed and continued down the hall with the others as they theorycrafted a bit. "Given that they're transparent up close, I suspect anything we have in common might be in smaller supply in their forms than in our own. It would explain the thin nature of their skin. I can only guess that the coverings they wore wasn't just for disguise - their homeworld must be one with a lower-powered sun than the one we're used to. Otherwise, it would have been easily damaged by their own daylight."
Post by Reya Starlyght on Aug 9, 2019 13:41:00 GMT
Eris merely chuckled at Shoop's comment, for she was not attempting to bypass the barrier, not at all, it was collecting evidence, rather. She did not write it down, though, which was what some argued delineated science from more cruel practices... but it was her own hand she had put out so what did it matter anyway? Blitz seemed to pick up on her point, however, and thus the conversation moved onto more important topics than merely the chit-chat that had been occurring beforehand. "Not necessarily, it could just be that their natural biome is more densely covered than what we're accustomed to. Or perhaps they're partially aquatic... plenty of fish found on different worlds exhibit some pretty strange characteristics, some of which are similar to their's. One such species even has blood that was a similar color to their own... though I recall reading that it wasn't a particular advantageous trait...." she trailed off, glancing down at the floor.
"I suppose we could just look around and see if any of them left biological material behind, as tedious as that is," Leo replied, before his brow furrowed in thought. "Hold on Eris, if you said the atmosphere here was similar to what we're used to, then it wouldn't make sense that they would be able to survive in it - the oxygen concentration is far too low. Unless... well perhaps life on their homeworld evolved with a different binding protein in their blood?"
They both moved up and down the hallway, studying the floor and ceiling, walls, and everything, with not much luck. "Or maybe they just are purely magical, like...." He extrapolated, nodding. "Though that didn't really seem to be the case at the Gala, our top priority wasn't exactly studying the aliens themselves."
"Well, I suppose we'll just have to find another fellow and ask."
While Eris took Shoop's commentary in stride, she didn't seem as convinced about Blitz's theories, proposing a few of her own. "It's not entirely impossible that they've got dense coverage or aquatics, or even both, like some civilization that's far enough down in the water that sunlight doesn't properly reach, but I'm not convinced on that one," Blitz said. "Because back during the Gala, the main guy took his headgear off, and I don't recall seeing gills on his neck. Although admittedly, a lot was happening, so it's possible I didn't see them, or perhaps they were elsewhere, but you'd think he'd leave them uncovered to breath properly."
Leo brought up the idea of getting a sample of their tissue for analysis, but Blitz paused. "Wait, weren't some of the guards of the same species? I know they escaped quickly, but I'm fairly sure a few of them were killed. A pity that they crumbled away when the leader made his exit, otherwise we'd have had plenty to work with already."
Leo also raised the point of the oxygen concentration, and whether or not their blood used the same materials. "It might be convenient in some manner beyond mere survival - I doubt it's for comfort, given their choice in planet, but it might be for some other reason. Besides, Earthland itself was rumored to have once not had any oxygen in it's atmosphere, eons ago, so the creatures at the time didn't need any, but as oxygen rose, so did the reliance, to the point where we now, literally, can't live without it. Perhaps they come from a similar kind of planet, but where the adaptation to oxygen never occurred."
They continued exploring as Eris proposed yet another idea. "It might be possible that their bodies are somehow forged from magic. Remember how the guards crumbled away, after they were slain at the Gala, then reanimated?" Blitz said. "He seemed to take control of them very easily, and they crumbled away to the point of non-existence after the leader escaped. I thought it was part of the spell the leader used to flee - the 'leave no evidence' sort of thing - but if they're pure magic, it would explain why they bubbled away after their job was done."
"Magic they might be, but doesn't stop 'em from bein' solid," Shoop pointed out from atop his head. "You used one to block all those blades, and it was solid enough to be a meatshield, so there's that."
Post by Reya Starlyght on Aug 13, 2019 6:00:27 GMT
As Blitz pointed out that he hadn't seen anything resembling gills on the aliens, Leo paused for a moment, narrowing his eyes. It was a bit of a blur, given the shock that had thrown his focus off-balance some, but he did recall what the metal mage was speaking of. "I did. Not on Khix'eks in particular, I didn't get close enough to look at him in detail, but I removed the helmet of one of the guards that had attacked Argall and they had several partitions in their neck. I mean, they also had nostrils, so it could just be a vestigial organ. This area is clearly not underwater, so either that is the case or they are capable of both breathing underwater and in normal air."
His head tilted ever so slightly at Blitz's next comment, or at least at his first part. "They were all of the same race. Unfortunately, the Fioran government is being a bit... touchy, or at least that's what seems to be the case. Only the infiltrators their leader reanimated were reduced to nothing, the rest the Federation took into their generous fold. Some theorize they might have lost the bodies and prisoners from the Gala, possibly they were living bombs or something of the like. Whatever the case, nothing has been revealed to the public yet," Leo replied, a degree of vexation found in his voice. Governments, they could never seem to get anything right. Had they sent some of the living captives to IMG's Intelligence Branch, no doubt many more details would have already been gleaned. But that was not how society operated, unfortunately, a fact he was reminded on a regular basis.
Of course, his theories had been proposed on the basis that the aliens were similar to humanity in some way, they did have roughly the same shape, after all, but at the same point the metal mage did bring up several good points. "That much is true, but it was not complex life, likely not even capable of thought beyond the most basic of needs. They are aliens, however, so truly anything goes," Eris answered before he could, shrugging.
As for magic, though, that was a bit of a stretch, one that Shoop in particular seemed to express noticeable disbelief in. "Being solid doesn't necessarily discount being magical in nature, many demons and vampires, for example, don't exactly follow the laws of science very well, if at all. Regardless, let's get back to trying to open up that bloody wall." With that being said, Leo started to pace back toward the airlock they had come from, pausing about halfway in between the two defining features of the hallway. A small, clear puddle he had not noticed before accumulated on one side of the passage, a feature he quickly pointed at with a finger.
"Well, I suppose that explains why they're so pale - they must be used to living deeper underwater where the sunlight doesn't reach, then. Or perhaps their planet just doesn't have as much sunlight to begin with and they live closer to the surface anyway." Blitz mused. "But remember where those partitions were if you have to fight them - it's possible they also use those to breathe air along with water, so if you manage to block them with something - even just covering them with a hand - it might have the same effect as choking their windpipe."
Blitz held up a brief hand when Leo mentioned the guards. "My mistake on the phrasing of that one, let me rephrase - I know they were all the same species, what I meant by 'some' is that 'some' of the guards were the infiltrators, not that the infiltrators were mixed species. We'd be in real trouble - moreso than already - if they had already met other species besides humanity and convinced them to assault the gala run by humans." Blitz said.
The duo seemed skeptical on the idea of magical bodies, however - or at least, the idea that being 'solid' and 'magical' were two different things. "Well, it's not that they can't be both solid and magical, those aren't mutually exclusive - I should know, I use magic to create solid frames for my takeover magic - but what I'm saying is that creating a living, breathing being with nervous systems, tissue, organs, blood, etc, would take some VERY major mojo. It took a equal parts guesswork and luck to make Shoop, and he's essentially a talking hat." Blitz pointed out.
"I'm still in the room, hotshot," Shoop said sarcastically.
Blitz rolled his eyes, but continued. "Granted, nature's fickle, because it took a fair amount to result in us, humans, but still, magic can be unpredictable, so a living creature emerging naturally from magic that's that close to a human in structure is fascinating."
Blitz paused when the noted the puddle, then said, "Is it possible they were attacked by something else, and had to abandon the base? Given where it is, it would make a certain degree of sense if they decided that they were better off leaving this temporary shelter between the frozen hell and the traditional firey variety to whatever wanted it. Though as for what might have attacked them, I've no clue - this planet is supposed to be barren of any life from the rapid temperature shifts."
