I'll get the initial embark done later this evening, say in the next six hours or so, and edit the OP accordingly.
Six... thirty-two... they're both numbers, right?
Anyway, got a call about a job on top of everything else, so yeah. Although I still could've taken ten minutes to do an embark and write something up, so my apologies!
Also, I reported the spambot, if nobody else did. Now, let's get this party started.
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Prologue: Left Turns at Albuquerque"They're made of meat."
Expedition leader Soli looked up from the pile of redacted safety memorandums piled on her desk and raised a prickly eyebrow. Cacti don't have the best of hearing, even at the best of times--and in space, no one can hear you... unless you speak up.
"...What?"
"The asteroids in the belt we're passing through. They're made of meat." The pilot, Soli could never remember his name, double-checked his scanners. "SPAM, to be specific."
"Oh, don't be ridiculous, what's-your-name," Soli answered, going back to her work. "SPAM isn't meat."
"Noted. All the same, a course change may be prudent. The asteroids seem to be launching attack drones."
"That's nice," Soli answered, readjusting her glasses as the ship shook under the force of several kinetic impacts. "Just keep us on bearing 32, we should be back home in no time."
There was a long, uncomfortable silence--or as silent as one can be in the midst of a SPAMbot siege, anyway--before the pilot answered.
"Bearing... 32?"
"Hmm? Yes, 32."
"Not... for example... 6?"
"Hmm? Oh, no, certainly not. Wouldn't want to go anywhere
near that sector. Dimensional rifts, temporal anomalies, high gasoline prices; it's just a bad neighborhood."
"I... see. So, not the place you'd want to raise your kids, then?"
"Certainly not."
"Well... that's a shame, then, because we're going to crash in it."
"That's nice," Soli answered as she dropped another safety memo into the shredder. "...Wait, what?"
****************
Chapter One: Surfing the Zeitgeist on Cheap Public Wi-FiSoli and the rest of her crew and passengers--or what was left of them, anyway--emerged from the splintered wreckage of their ship.
Literally splintered, it's worth noting; the entire ship had been made out of plywood. Poor taste, really, considering they had treefolk on board, but that was HQ for you, always looking to save when they could. It was an admirable quality in a megacorp, when all was said and done.
It was, in fact, why they could afford to have an Artificer on board. Drago, the short, bearded fellow with the magic wands and hammers, had signed on to be the ship's metalworker--and since they didn't really
have any metal on board, they'd been able to hire him for cheap on the assumption that he wouldn't actually need to do anything.
Soli took a peer around the crash site.
"Hmm... wide open fields, waterfront property, great scenery... we can make this work..."
"Well," Drago was saying to the others as he stroked his beard and looked over the wreckage. "Without getting too technical, we're screwed. Even if I could somehow manage to weld the hull back together, we'd still need fuel, and an M-Class Stardrive like this one isn't going to run with a busted fanbelt regardless."
The security chief, a metallic maniac wielding an axe, rolled over to the dwarf wizard. "Observation: you just made all that up."
"I'll make
you up, you tin-hearted--"
"Yes!" The two stopped their feud and looked over at an excited Soli, who was raising a green, thorn-covered fist to the skies excitedly. "
This is where we will build it!"
"Interrogative: Build
what, exactly?"
"The best amusement park the multiverse has ever
seen, that's what! Why, just look at the signs of intelligent life; we'll have no shortage of tourists!"
One of the other crew members piped in. "If by 'signs of intelligent life,' you mean those signs nailed to the tree over there that say 'aliens go home,' and if by 'tourists' you mean 'torches and pitchforks,' then yeah, probably."
"See, now that's the kind of positive attitude we'll need to make this work! I know we've all come to this ship for different reasons--"
"No, actually it was a shuttle, we were pretty much going from point A to point B."
"--
But we all came to the same place:
this place. And we shall call it... Gameworld! Strike the earth!"
Drago looked back at the crater where the ship had crash-landed, then back at Soli.
"Yeah... no kidding. We are
so screwed..."
"Affirmation: brother, you aint kidding."