Forums » Sci-Fi Roleplay » Travellers (Semi-Open RP between Tara and Catrin)

Tara looked thoughtful as she considered the stories, "Hm... well, considering who and what ou are, I'm not sure what to believe."

"I think it was the second one. I've known a few Mages in my time who'd do that kind of thing, especially if it was their last act in this world." Thyr said, he then 'shrugged', "Of course, I've also heard tales of nobles dressing as commoners, but I think the second story is more likely."

Tara nodded, "I agree, Story two it is then!"

Catrin looked at Tara and Thyr when they answered, then grinned slyly. “Ha! Got you. Made the second one up, completely. The first one was true. Alright, drink up,” she said, lifting her glass and sipping some wine of her own as she waited for them to empty theirs.

The two shared looks, Tara sighed, "Tricky is't she?"

Thyr nodded, "Indeed."

They both downed their wine, the glass in the hologram's hand refilling instantly whilst Tara stood up and went to the processor to refill her own. Whilst she did that, Thyr said, "I think I'll get in on the fun too. I have a few tales to spin." The AI seemed to collect his thoughts before he spoke again, "Twelve thousand years ago, near the beginning of the Second Great War, I was the AI assigned to a small scout frigate sent to probe the enemy positions in the Tashar'i System, on the enemy side of the front, the idea was that I'd discover their fleet deployment and disposition in preparation for a raid on the system. There were only nine people on the crew, eight Isthenir and a young Terelain captain. Anyway, things had gone well, we'd entered the system without being detected and we'd already surveyed the outer system, and we were heading inwards to the habitable world closer to the star where the Gillorian colony was located, when a T'eleth class battleship suddenly appeared on my sensors, a long with seven Is'tah class Battlecruisers and a Vritar class destroyer and a handful of frigates. Now on the one hand I was startled and scared out of my wits, after all I was just a lone scout ship, hardly the best armed or armoured vessel in the fleet, but on the other I was intrigued; what was a capital ship and its escort fleet doing in this system? It wasn't exactly a strategically important location."

The AI paused and sipped his ine, "So, I faced a choice; try and sneak away from under their sensors, or try and find out what they were up to. I chose the latter. Turns out, the battleship was the flagship of some admiral who was on his way to a meeting on the colony, I managed to get recordings of his ship and its escorts, as well as the ships and escorts of two other admiral-types and hightailed outta there. Unfortunately, I got spotted on the way out and I got chased half way across the system by the whole lot of 'em. Close call, let me tell you. I managed to lure them into running after me near-lightspeed and ran 'em into a dust cloud. Hitting a grain of sand at those speeds is nasty and I managed to total seven or eight ships like that, and slip away in the confusion"

"The second story is later, when I was in command of a light cruiser. I was part of a small taskforce that was supposed to drop in behind enemy lines and take out an important supply dump, there were three light cruisers, five destroyers and a one heavy cruiser. The heavy cruiser was commanded by an old friend of mine, n AI by the name of Aelya. Aelya was a warrior and a half, let me tell ya, and she could pull some moves! Anyway, We hit this supply depot, which wasn't all that heavily guarded, and wasted the whole thing, dropped a few satellites from orbit and managed to knock out a military installation for bonus points, but just as we were headed for te closest jump-point, this big god-damned Gillorian warship jumped in-system! Thing was almost three kilometers long and half a klick wide! Turns out, the supply depot was the place where their Titan class ships came for refueling and rearmament! Damn thing had an escort fleet with it too! Now, we were outgunned and outnumbered, but they were between us and the jump-point, so Aelya told us to go for max acceleration and charge right through, guns blazing. We managed to take out a few frigates and a cruiser, then we hit the Titan with a barrage. As luck would have it, it was fresh off the front and it was coming here for repairs too, so we managed to take down its forward shields and waste the command deck, then as we were passing by we strafed her along her weapons emplacements and her engines. Must've hit something important, 'cos before we knew it there was this big explosion and the ship tore itself in two! We got passed whilst the rest of their ships were scrambling to help and jumped out, but not before I managed to catch the Titan blowing up in my rear sensors, taking a chunk out of the rest of the fleet when she blew!"

Catrin smiled happily when she was called tricky and sipped her wine before listening to Thyr's stories. “A couple of heroic tales you have here. Hmmm... I like the first one more. Will you be guessing, too?” she asked Tara.

Tara smiled, "Oh, I don't need to guess. It is the second one. A famous tale from the war, the Titan was the ISS Sundering Claw the pride of he Gillorian star-fleet, it had destroyed thousands of our vessels over its service career, and for it to meet such an ignoble end - at the hands of a few cruisers - was almost poetic."

Thyr grinned, "And before you say anything, I wasn't just pretending that I was part of that famous engagement. I really was. I've still got the footage somewhere." He smiled wistfully, "Ah, those were the days... hmm... I think I'll look Aelya up when we get back, we haven't spoken in too long, it'd be nice to see her again."

Tara smiled mischievously, "An old flame, Thyr?"

"A commanding officer!" He said, "Hardly a romantic partner!"

"Oh?" Tara asked, "But isn't that kind of thing common in wartime?"

"Aelya was a very attractive AI." He said, "Of course attractiveness for an AI is down to intellect rather than appearance, since our only physical existence lies in our processing substrates, but still, she had a beautiful mind. Something I could appreciate. She had a firm grasp of strategy and tactics, and she made very graceful calculations; her firing solutions and her targeting sequences were precise and elegant. These are things one can appreciate without any kind of romantic connotations."

"Hm." Tara said with a smile, "If you say so..."

Catrin laughed, drank the rest of her wine and went to get some more. When Thyr explained, she smiled. “I didn't know AIs could have romantic partners. That's... intriguing. You'll have to tell me more about that one day,” she told Thyr teasingly. “But now, more interesting tales from Tara?” she asked, turning to her.

"Of course AIs can have romantic relationships! We're sapient beings, we have emotions just like organics." Thyr smiled, "I'll have you know that I've had numerous romantic partners over the years, and I'm considered to be a very attractive example of a demilitarised fourth generation comabt AI, of the Alshat subtype."

"Yes, incredibly handsome." Tara agreed with a nod and smile, "Definitely the most attractive computer I know."

"Than- wait hey! i'm not just some mere computer!" Thyr said.

Tara winked at him and then turned to Catrin, "Hey! it's your turn to tell the stories!"

Catrin tried to do the Terelain equivalent of raising eyebrows, with partial success. “So the two of you are a team? Well, then, alright, although you might consider telling stories the other one doesn't know. It might even help get you to know yourselves better,” she said with a chuckle and leaned against the wall by the food processor for this one, the glass in hand, looking thoughtful before she began.

“So, when I was young, just a teenager really, I really really wanted an initiation into the more interesting parts of magic of the Courts of Chaos. The man who decided these things wouldn't let me do it, no matter how much I begged, so I threw my energy into the study of poisons instead – which was something I was allowed to do. Later, I was able to sneak some non-lethal poison in his wine and went on to take the whole thing on my own – it was possible, he was just guarding the place where it had to take place, and gave out advice, things like that. It came close to killing me. When I was done, I couldn't move very much, and just stayed lying in the room, hoping to be able to start moving soon. It didn't happen, and when the poison effect wore off, he found me. He scared me to death and then he accepted me as a pupil. Apparently, my ability to poison him rather impressed him – he considered himself beyond that sort of threat, and it was just the fact that I used a fairly exotic substance, tasteless and odourless, that helped me succeed.

On to the second one,” she said, smiling nostalgically for a moment. “During one of my first individual travels through the universes, I kept being attacked by various hostile creatures, but one of the actually turned around when I injured it and it learned who I was. It was a rather powerful demon and the only reason I was able to injure it in the first place was that I had a powerful spell ready – one that took me a week to prepare to the point where I was able to cast it using just two words that finished the spell. In the end, it started travelling with me, enjoying the advantages of passing through universes while it protected me. It was a fire-breathing feline demon with limited use of rather powerful spells, and we were together for years before we parted our ways. I have no idea what happened to it, or if it's still alive.”

"Hm..." Tara said thoughtfully, "i think the first story is true; demons aren't known for trustworthiness, or for being particularly honourable, so I think the first one is true."

"I'm not so sure, getting a demon to become her travelling companion seems exactly the sort of thing Catrin would do. I think the second one is true." Thyr said with a nod.

Catrin smiled brightly. “I can get demons as travelling companions, but I never did like that. And they are surprisingly honourable when dealing with the Lords of Chaos. Which makes Tara right for all the wrong reasons,” she said, winking at Thyr, “and you wrong for the right ones. Sorry.”

Tara giggled, "So, take us together and we're entirely right."

"And entirely wrong." The AI pointed out, draining his wine glass, "Your turn for stories, Tara."

The scholar nodded, tapping her chin thoughtfully, "Um, well, okay. So, when I was still a young student at the Royal Institute for Knowledge and I was only just learning the skills I'd need to be a Xenoanthropologist, I went out exploring the city of Oberoth. Now Oberoth is the largest city of Aerin and the oldest and it has been the capital of the Kingdom for thousands of years. I was wandering down a side-street when I heard someone singing, I followed the sound and found a man in a cloak sitting on a bench singing to himself. I stood there, unseen, and listened to him. He was singing a very old song, in the Old High Oberain dialect, not many people speak it anymore. I was intrigued, so I stayed out of sight and listened to him. Eventually he stopped singing and said, 'It is rude to eavesdrop.'" Tara smiled slightly, "I was so startled that I almost fell over, and I stumbled into view, before I could do more than stammer out half an apology the man asked me if I wanted to hear another song! So, not wanting to offend him, I said yes. I listened to him sing a few songs and the a woman wearing a blue cloak came walking over to him and told him that she was done. I don't know what she was doing, but he simply nodded and smiled t me, pulling down the hood of his cloak, he had blue eyes and brown fur and he had many scars, he said that his name was Nathaniel, and that the woman was his wife and he had to go, and that it had been a pleasure meeting me. Before they left, I asked him what his wife's name was, and he told me... it was Nariel. Then they were gone."

Thyr stared at her, "Are you implying... that... you met Nathaniel and Nariel Tynian-Amaar? The Exile himself!?"

Tara nodded, "Yeah, I know. My other story begins on an out-of-the-way planet in a remote starsystem, the indigenous species had only just gained a primitive form of interplanetary travel, and I was supposed to go and see how heir civilisation was progressing. Whilst I was studying them, a war broke out between the two largest nation-states on the planet, nothing unusual for a planetary civilisation in that stage, but the place where I'd hid my ship got stuck in the middle of te war zone. I ended up having to befriend a few soldiers, impersonate a general and fake my death in order to get back to it and escape the planet!" She chuckled, "Too bad, one of the soldiers was kind of cute for an alien."

Catrin smiled and turned to Thyr. “Does this mean both of us are guessing this time? I randomly pick the second one as true!” she said, chuckling.

"I agree with Catrin, there's no way you met The Exile and his wife." Thyr said.

Tara smiled wickedly, "Unfortunately for the two of you... I really did!"

"Come on Tara! That's just too hard to believe!" Thyr protested.

She 'shrugged', "Hey, it really honestly did happen. I swear it."

Thyr looked at her suspiciously and then sighed, "Fine." He downed his glass, he then looked over at Catrin, "I suppose it is your turn now."

Catrin smiled wily and downed her glass, putting it into the food processor for a refill. “Okay. Hmmm... I'll make this short since the two of you seem to be determined to make me tell twice as many stories as either of you. So... we're back with the prince from one of the former stories, now king and my future husband. However, the marriage had to be sanctioned by the assembly of the nobles, and some of them were very reluctant to agree with it. Reluctant to the point where they had to be disposed of. I performed the assassinations – five of them.” She reached for the glass of wine and took a sip before continuing.

“Next one - we didn't have any children and when he died, I stayed behind as a regent because of successorship problems – there were no clear heirs and the country was on the verge of a civil war. I ended up ruling for about a hundred and fifty years, creating an empire simply by other countries essentially joining in voluntarily.”

Tara smiled, "I think story two, Thyr?"

"They're hardly going to let their queen be some random woman, I strongly suspect the first tale to be the true one." The AI said, "Reminds me of a few royal marriages in our own history. Remember that furor over Prince Calin marrying the Lady Tliera?"

Tara did the equivalent of arching her eyebrow with her tail, "I'm not quite that old, Thyr."

"Hm? Oh, oh yes, of course." Thyr said, "That was two kings ago."

Catrin smiled at Thyr. “Believe it or not, they did. Queens were rather unimportant, and I did seem to have a good upbringing, which was the most important thing to them. I think we're going to have one drunk AI here at the end of the day.”

"Hmph." The AI grunted as he drained his glass, "Yes, well, a very drunk subroutine at any rate. I'm only dedicating a fraction of myself to this little game, the rest of me is busy with the rest of the ship, so even if this tiny bit of me is drunk, it won't affect the rest of the ship. I've isolated it from the rest of my cognitive and behavioral processes."

Tara grinned, "Is that why you're losing"

"If I dedicated my full cognitive capacity towards this game it wouldn't be fair. It'd be like putting two kittens in the room with an Archmage and asking them to beat him in a test of magical knowledge." Thyr said, "Anyway, my turn." He frowned sightly as he thought, "Hm, well, there was this one time, during my service aboard the RNV Tia'Ren's Light, we were in orbit of the planet Alera, engaged with a Gillorian fleet as it tried to retreat back to the Jumpgate. This was after the Battle of Aerin, so at this point we were just hunting them down. Anyway, it was the Tia'Ren's Light, an Outspread Wings class Hypercarrier, the RNV Scent of Prey Across The Plains and our escorts, against a Gillorian force about half our size, though they had three capital ships; two T'Eleth Battleships and a Grik'ar Carrier. It was a bit of a fight, but we had the upper hand when one of the T'Eleths turned about and drove right at the Tia'Ren's Light at full speed, we let off a barrage at it, but its shields held and it was about to ram us! The crazy b- ah, bad guys." Thyr chuckled, "It seemed like it'd hit us amidships and cut us in two, when all of a sudden a Gillorian drone-fighter smashed into the Battleship at about eighty seven percent lightspeed! The thing must have been aiming for us, swinging in from somewhere beyond the system, except the T'Eleth had gt in the way at the last minute." Thyr barked off a laugh, "Saved my bacon, let me tell you, not to mention the thousands of crewmen aboard the ship and the other two AIs on board."

"My second story happened centuries later." Thyr said, "It was near the end of my military career, and I was being retired, full honours, and I was installed aboard a light cruiser again, the RNV Aeylana's Bow I was headed back towards Aerin where I'd be removed and placed in storage whilst the Aeylana's Bow was scrapped and rendered down to her constituent subatomic particles. I was passing through the outer Aera system and I picked up something odd in orbit of one of the moons of the outermost gas giant. I wasn't in a hurry, so I swung by and tried to find out what it was. I found a perfectly intact Cha'ta'ahur class Obliterator. A Gillorian warship. It must have been hidden there for centuries, dormant, since the Battle of Aerin. They'd sent a whole fleet of the things into Aerin's atmosphere... they were planet-killers, Catrin, designed utterly any surface assets on a planet. Unfortunately, my scanners seemed to have activated some kind of back-up system and the thing went online and opened fire on me! Now this was centuries after the war, so my skills were a tad rusty, and the ship was on its way to be decommissioned; there was only a skeleton crew and most of the weapons and shields had been taken off. The Obliterator was designed to take on planetary and orbital fortifications. I pulled some fancy moves and opened my comms channel and started screaming to high heaven for help. Someone up there must have been smiling on me that day, because no sooner had the thing started firing than a wing of the Knight of Aera fleet dropped in and opened fire on it, I turned around and opened fire myself, realising it was outnumbered the Obliterator started accelerating hard and swung towards the inner system; right at Aerin. I don't know if it planned to just bomb the planet, or try and accelerate to relativistic speeds and ram the planet. Either way, we had to stop it, so me and the other ships set to firing at the engines." Thyr smiled, "Then something... awesome happened. The Guardian Array opened fire."

"The Guardian Array is a surface-to-space weapons complex on Senura, Aerin's second moon, Senura, it was built after the end of the Second Great War to protect Aerin from attack." Tara said.

"Yeah, so they fired with the Guardian Array. Sent a hyper-accelerated Ultra-dense round hurtling into the Obliterator at ninety eight percent the speed of light; it was like getting hit by a neutron star. The ship's shields overloaded, the armour crumpled and it just went BOOM!" He emphasized with his hands, "Biggest damn explosion I've ever seen... well, except when the RNV Ulundra blew up."

Catrin tilted her head, looking thoughtful. “Hmmm. I'll go for two. Makes you sound more heroic,” she winked at him.

Thy grinned, "Good choice." He said with a wink, "The right one too! The second story was the truth!" He drank from his wine glass again, "Of course, if I hadn't woken up the Obliterator it might have lain there, dormant, for hundreds of years more."

"And some poor unarmed civilian ship would have been blasted to atoms." Tara pointed out."

He grinned, "S'true."

Catrin smiled, took a step away from the wall and swayed, having to steady herself against the wall again. “Oopsie. Conjuration and alcohol don't go well together. I think I'd better lie down.”