Traveller: Gate Wars
The material presented here is a fan fiction of my original creation, set in the GURPS TRAVELLER: INTERSTELLLAR WARS] setting from Steve Jackson Games. This material is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games.
The Traveller game in all forms is owned by Far Future Enterprises. Copyright 1977 - 2011 Far Future Enterprises.
The other part of the story covers the Stargate Universe, though without Stargate:Universe.
Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate, Stargate: SG-1 or anything associated with it. That all belongs to MGM and SciFi Channel or whoever might own it at the moment.
NOTICE: THIS STORY MAY BE DISTRIBUTED FREE OF CHARGE BUT MUST NOT BE SOLD OR EXCHANGED FOR FINANCIAL RETURN IN ANY FORM.
-COPYRIGHT/DISCLAIMER NOTICE-
The full disclaimer will be located at the end of this story. However, be it known that I own nothing and expect to get nothing because the rights are owned by others. Only certain characters and technologies are mine and these are the creation of the author who is solely responsible for them as such. Neither Studio is responsible for the content of this story.
THIS STATEMENT MUST ACCOMPANY „TRAVELLER: GATE WARS" IF DISTRIBUTED. THIS STORY IS FREE OF CHARGE AND MAY NOT BE SOLD OR EXCHANGED FOR FINANCIAL RETURN IN ANY FORM. THIS DEDICATION MUST ACCOMPANY ANY DISTRUBUTION OF THIS STORY.
Prologue
Moala Mountain range
Vland
Ca. 16,000 BC
Shaguri's troop had been hidden in the Moala Mountain range for weeks now, and the gods had not been seen for even longer. Shaguri was happy: There was enough to eat, they could sleep at a dry place and this area had good stones for tool making.
He was sitting in a shallow cave overlooking the plains to the horizon, as suddenly a strange sound emanated from the rocks above him, followed by a rock slide that missed him by only a few meters. As he looked up, he noticed a new small cave had appeared, and two… things looked out. They carried staffs, and their heads - which glowed in the sun and were carried by long necks - had sharp beaks like no animal he had ever seen. Climbing out of that cave, they looked over the plains, until they finally noticed him and began to speak in a language he had never heard before. Their whole bodies seemed to be made from the same shiny material as their heads.
Several others started to send balls of fire from their staffs that created a way out of the mountain by enlarging the cave.
Thirty kilometers away from the Moala Mountain range
Vland
At the same time
###Z-27V online
Huge energy spike detected in grid 8347-45K9-7785.
Checking energy signature against database… checking... chec…
Alpha override.
98.45% match to artifact B01. Meson comm.: online, send alpha alert: B01 found at 8347-45K9-7785. Alpha alert, use full force applicable.
Disintegrator one: online.
Disintegrator two: online.
Follow up Plasma fire, several salvos, emanating from fourteen contacts resembling species G-AK3 to 40%, 30% G-AW4, 30% no fit. Registered as species G-AK/W1. Ten contacts of species G-V7 nearby. Alpha alert message updated, 18V checking in, arriving in 5 minutes at the latest.
Moala Mountain range
Vland
A few minutes later
"My Lord" Hel'mak suppressed a sigh as he looked at the obviously shocked boy clad only in furs sitting near them "I do not think this world is worth our effort, that boy doesn't speak any civili…" he looked up as a ray of sunlight was mirrored into this eyes. He lowered his staff and turned around to face it, as suddenly, three Horus Guards just… disappeared. As did his master. He noticed the two specks in the distance: armored boxes that simply had no right to fly let alone at the ludicrous speeds the magic in his helmet showed them going at. For once, this information was easily picked up, if not exactly useful. A whole part of the mountain's flank next to him just disappeared, as did something above the gate.
"Out! Get out! Retreat!"
Shaguri ran, praying in fear as he saw the gods appear – he had never seen more than one of them! – and destroy the strangers.
He simply ran, hoping to hide again, inform his troop and find a new hiding place. He would never get a chance to do so.
Only Hel'mak made it through the gate, even as a disintegrator hit cost him an arm and staff that was the last thing passing the gate before the wormhole collapsed.
Fifty kilometers away from the Moala Mountain range
Vland
At the same time
###Z-00V online
Alpha override detected. B01 found.
All units, authorize full strike.
Warbot Z-00V got an order it had waited for ever since its construction in the final war, more than a quarter of a million years ago. After all those eons, it finally reactivated the extra dimensional storage magazine, loaded the first missile into its integrated launcher and armed the multi-megaton warhead.
###Target acquired.
3…2…1… launch.
The first missile left the warbot while it already prepared its last two shots.
Moala Mountain range
Vland
When Shaguri looked up at the sky, he noticed something shiny, small, coming to the mountains, he even noticed the gods fleeing, and that sight would have given him something to think about if he had been able to live just an hour longer.
250 kilometers away from the Moala Mountain range
Vland
At the same time
Enlardi had been happy ever since the god that had spotted him on his risky hunt sped away to the mountains in the distance.
Now he was carrying enough meat to feed his family and Gaarirra for two days.
Suddenly, a wave of white, hot light appeared behind him, nearly blinding him. In short order, two waves of the same type hit him, followed by a shockwave that moved trees and rocks over a vast area.
When he finally looked back, he was awed. Where once had been mountains reaching into the clouds, there was only a single, titanic cloud formed like a mushroom and reaching higher than the mountains ever had.
The plains near the cloud burned, and no tree in more than a hundred kilometers distance still stood, while boulders and ash rained from the sky.
Then, he heard the sound he had learned to fear since he was old enough to think. The gods were coming.
He ran, but stopped involuntarily after a few steps as he tripped over something. Looking down, he saw a strange helmet with a beak, half molten and of an unfamiliar material. Next to it, there was an amulet carrying a strange symbol buried in the ground.
He took both, although he never knew why he did it, and ran for his life again, forgetting most of the meat.
But even as he became his troop's shugilii, Enlardi would never forget the strange helmet, the amulet he gave to his future wife, the sign of Ra and how the gods disappeared for months, only to be seen in the sky where once Moala had once been.
There are constant mentions of the fist of a god in early Vilani myths, legends of total destruction and an ever occurring word: Moala. All hints point to the Ishimaga province on Vland, which shows signs of an extinction event, and interesting concentrations of rocks that seem to belong to the same geologic structure, but there is neither a mountain, nor an impact crater. The Ishimaga inland sea, while evidence, is in no way big enough to be the result of such an event.
But the most important evidence against it is the simple fact that there is no extinction event that would inevitably have been caused by this.
Where were the millions of tons of material that would have blocked the sunlight? No, there was no ice age and therefore no destruction of a mountain range or something like that.
Fringe opinions like the Vilani "gods" simply being ancient warbots and fighting the ash are as ridiculous as calling the Terran pyramids a landing site for alien spaceships or locating Atlantis on Prometheus.
Document registered in the Argushiigi Admegulasha Bilanidin, written down in 1250 V.I. (2163 AD)