Introduction:
Yep, that's right. Back from the dead. In a series of events that would take far, far, far (very far, indeed) too long to explain I have been withheld from my aspirations in writing for God-knows-how-long. But I'm back, and with summer ahead. Those of you who by some miracle are still following what I write, I salute you. I hereby give my promises that not only will this story satisfy, but Spode help me I will finish "the Prodigies" if it's the last thing I do. I have chapters for this very story in my documents right now ready to be uploaded.
On a sidenote I can't help but notice that stories can no longer have asterisks within them. So if you visit my older stories and they sound chunky and unorganized, they were organized into subsections by groups of 6 asterisks…so that's why. Henceforth subsections shall be divided by a single, bolded, centered exclamation sign.
Anyway, much of what free time I can scavenge has been spent playing Galactic Adventures. It'd seem that Maxis took reviews on the original Spore to heart; in other words, if Spore's gameplay mechanics are too simplified, why not let the players make their own games, with the Spore engine, and see if they could do better?
So I got thinking: let's make a story. What's more, let's make a story that strings together the best of the best adventures (with maxis ones and, ahem, some of my own thrown in) with a narrative of my own design. It's a piece of advertisement and entertainment all in one digestible package! After all, Ascension discussed the nature of greater life while advertising creatures and vehicles. This one, in contrast, shall discuss the nature of character while advertising adventures.
Oh, and as you read along, know that every chapter except this one will be named after an adventure that it will be set in. I recommend you play every single one of the adventures listed. They're all wonderful, in one way or another.
Bon lecture! (That's right, I speak French. Oui, je parle français. I also do Latin. 8P)
For what must be the 5th time now: I do not own Spore or any content within Spore that is created by Maxis/EA Games or other players.
And for anyone who's interested, my spore username is Godofall123. Any comments on any of my stuff, especially my adventures, are always highly appreciated. Thank you.
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"Don't think that an individual or a small group of people, with a determined cause, can't change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has." –Linda Ellerbee
"The Hero's Journey" is the term for a theory made by one of the great ancient philosophers of Old Earth (the supposed homeworld of the human race), though his name isn't known. It refers to a basic pattern that a shockingly high number of stories throughout the galaxy follow. That alien scholars near and far still refer to this theory is a testament to how groundbreaking it is.
Here's the idea in a nutshell: nearly every story, narrative, and myth in existence, or at least the good ones, all follow a basic pattern that's very easy to dissect.
Skeptical?
Consider The Spodessey, a story popular in Spode-loving Zealot empires everywhere. In it is the tale of Spodysseus, ruler of a small province that's part of his species' empire. Here's the story: Spodysseus returns from a war (to be precise, everyone but Zealots call this war "The War of Infinite Pain and Slaughter", though Zealots call it "The War of Infinite Glory and Cupcakes"). En route to his home planet he angers an agent of Spode by poking out one of the "ten quintillion" eyes of one of His children. Thus, Spodysseus is cursed and forced to wander space for decades before ultimately returning home. He faces many challenges along the way and his entire loyal crew is slaughtered in one way or another, but ultimately he returns home as a changed, Spode-fearing man.
Now, consider this.
There's a second story called Bar Wars, very successful with readers in Bard empires. It's about Luke Skystumbler, a scotch-drinking farm boy who, in a long and adversity-filled adventure, defeats the evil Vodka-peddling, nameless Empire and reconnects with his deadbeat father. It involves supernatural intervention, trials and tribulations, a motley crew of friends who help Luke out, and a happy ending preceded by a suspenseful rising tension. Oh, and there's lots of alcoholic wife beating. But that's a story unto itself.
See a pattern here? Yes? No? Maybe so?
Both of these stories are narratives that when boiled down to their basic elements share eyebrow-furrowing similarities: an unlikely or unwilling protagonist, supernatural and normal help, regular tests of strength or will. The thing is, every culture needs its identity. To create an identity, one needs to create purpose. And this is where the narrative, the…"monomyth" comes into play. Everyone needs a hero, and the closer that hero follows a path similar to what's mentioned above, the more his message relates, and that message provides purpose.
This is the story of a hero's journey that is as normal as they get. Will there be a protagonist who slowly changes to represent a prime ideology? Yep. Will there be a colorful cast of characters who both help and hinder him? Yes indeedy. Is the protagonist going to suffer tremendous loss only to apply his experiences and win out in the end? Probably. Will these adventures include llamas and cake? The llamas, yes. But the cake is a lie.
The only thing that separates this story from countless others: you now know what to expect. But what to expect is never what you get. The universe is too big a place to be that predictable.
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Absolutely no one knew what the name of this planet was, not even the happy folk who lived there.
It wasn't a stereotypically dark, mysterious, unexplored world. It was a far cry from that; this planet was a congealed wad of flowers and sunshine. 56 percent of the surface is fresh, clean forests and prairies and hills, while 43 percent is equally fresh, clean ocean. However as any self-respecting educated sentient, semi-sentient, and Grox will know, 43 plus 56 does not equal 100.
The remaining one percent of this unlabeled planet's surface belonged to the one, the only…Adventure Town.
The label "Town" is a misnomer. The settlement is actually a modern sprawling metropolis. But the spaceport is small enough that a onetime visitor may underestimate it. Then again, an edict from the Galactic Council of Planets ensures that most of those who visit Adventure Town do so exactly once. This edict was of galaxy-changing importance, and in turn made Adventure Town a galaxy-changing place.
You know…I dislike that place. Adventure Town….ugh, it brings back memories. But then again I dislike most things. Let's see…I dislike Adventure Town, banana splits, leeches, the Grox (who doesn't), kumquat jambalaya, octopi, all zealot empires, lunchboxes, sailboats, Amy Winehouse (again, who doesn't), intercourse, khaki pants, swimming goggles, that feeling you get when you pour ketchup and all that comes out is red water, dental floss, and the planet Saturn along with all its moons. Actually, I do like that one moon that looks like the Death Star. Seriously, one of Saturn's moons looks like the Death Star! It's called Mimas, look it up.
Oh, wait, getting off topic. I tend to do that. I'm someone who sees a lot in the universe and, understandably, has a lot to say. Who am I? Well that's not really your business, good sir and/or madam. Back to business: the edict from the Galactic Council of Planets.
The edict was due to a series of unfortunate (and some fortunate) events that started ten years ago. It was then when an alien figure, known only as Mahan the Omnipotent, was declared the first space captain for a council-recognized empire to reach the fabled Galactic Core. But that's all that has been proven. Records show the spaceship that Mahan was commanding disappeared without a trace upon entering the core. Many skeptics confidently assert that this event proves how the galactic core is apparently nothing other than a really hungry black hole, and that the crew was simply crushed into a singularity. Regardless of what happened to Mahan and his crew afterwards, it was two years ago (eight years after the disappearance) when Mahan's empire found a series of data-logs written by the captain himself, hidden in a crate of green spice. The data-logs are a series of electronic documents holding a wealth of information on the Omnipotent's life and experiences as a captain. There are star maps and planetary charts, video logs and diaries, storage of encyclopedias on every subject known. It's widely believed that this cache of data-logs, nicknamed "The Green Box", was left behind by Mahan on purpose right before he ventured off into the Grox-owned regions of the galaxy. It's probable that even he doubted the likelihood of making a roundtrip from home to the core and wanted to leave a safety deposit behind.
Unfortunately enough, when the Green Box was being loaded on a cargo ship (to be researched later) a large pirate force struck the colony that the ship was docked at. Communications with the colony went dark for three hours; afterwards, not only was the colony badly damaged but the Green Box was gone too. It was effectively swiped out from under the nose of the Galactic Council itself. A repository of knowledge collected from across the known universe, gone.
While this certainly isn't the biggest setback for galactic scientific progress (the Grox and their many calculated incursions would hold that honor), it merited the Council's attention. Pirates weren't good for democracy or any kind of progress. So just a month ago a huge galactic brainstorm unfolded: every one of the council's 607 member empires met in a session of congress and gave ideas on how to get the Green Box back.
When you put 607 of the smartest individuals from the 607 most powerful galactic empires in one big room, you get one hell of a brainstorm. What, then, did this ensemble of shining brilliance declare to be the solution to the Galactic Council's problem? Would they launch a gi-hugic assault on known criminal organizations everywhere? No, that'd be like clearing weeds with tweezers. Could they declare the entire attacked colony one big crime zone, and solve things the CSI way? Well, the colony's digital records were ruined, so the endeavor would be a highly protracted and expensive one. Besides; member Diplomat empires would have to deal with the paperwork of contributing investigators. A single investigator from any Diplomat empire hired for the Galactic Council has, exactly, 43,842 filed documents attesting to his skill and explaining his work. 20,000 of those documents are actually bibliographical pages, title pages, pages with a single stamp of approval on them, or documentary documents documenting other documents.
What was I talking about again? Oh, right. The council didn't pick a conventional solution to finding the green box or whatever.
Nay, a single representative mentioned a team of four explorers that had yet to fail a mission. The big boys. The interplanetary A-team. The group had a legendary collection of badges and had accomplished thousands of missions (from many empires) between the lot of them. Indeed, it seemed like this delta-force of delta, er, aliens would be just the right group of people for the job.
But they were all at a Dairy Queen at the time and thus weren't available.
So a representative from another empire with a less-than-pristine reputation saw the chance to put his species on the galactic stage. They were, after all, a younger empire. There was a time when there were far more of them, but it was a long time ago. Anyway the representative thought that a young captain with big plans, even with his lack of experience, would be the right person to use in this search for the Green Box.
None of the other congressional members could think of anything else. Most empires' captains were either on vacation this time in the galactic cycle, or also at a Dairy Queen. So it seemed a grand mission like this would be a fantastic opportunity to get a bright-eyed captain into the field.
And this, dear-reader-whom-I-know-nothing-of-and-who-clearly-expresses-a-curious-fascination-with-literature-based-around-other-media, is where the real action begins. The captain of interest has already been told that there's a big mission with him in it. But he needs some training first. The first step in his training shall be in, what else, the aforementioned wad of sunshine: Adventure Town.
It was today that the captain would be visiting this land. In fact, his shuttle was touching down now.
Adventure Town was largely populated by an intelligent species of bipedal amphibians (often seen wearing a sun hat), along with a variety of other alien species as well as two animals unique to the planet: spoffits (sheep-like creatures) and a particular type of rabbit. But there'll be more on those two animals later. Regardless of how many fingers or what skin shade each inhabitant had, all momentarily stopped what they were doing and looked to the sky when they heard the very distinct sound of spaceship engines.
Up in the thick air of the blue sky was a dot growing in size. It was quickly descending towards a hill just outside town. As it neared hovering distance, the spaceship's design became apparent: it was a disk, and had a composite metal exterior sealed on in plates with bolts, colored grey and blue. Six crablike appendages, assumed to be some sort of landing gear, were strapped to the underside. What looked like a cockpit was situated at the very top. Some of Adventure Town's more knowledgeable citizens immediately recognized the ship as a Capsasian Abductor.
The Abductor stopped short of landing on the hill and hovered in the air for several seconds. Then a series of lights on the ship started flashing in a dazzling display. Remember those rabbits mentioned two paragraphs before? They love bright, dazzling displays, and given there's a large population of them right outside Adventure Town, a good number of happy dancing rabbits were clustered around the ship.
Finally, a shining column of green light fell out from under the spaceship, and a shadowy silhouette could be seen riding down it. He touched down onto the unnamed world's grassy surface as the column of light disappeared. He looked around for a moment, almost disoriented, before remembering the goal and pumping his fist into the air as a sort of self-encouraging gesture. The rabbits nearby went wild. A preordained show organized by the citizens of Adventure Town (known as Adventure Townies) launched fireworks into the sky as a welcoming gesture.
The captain was clad in armor that was standard-issue for officers in his species' military: bracers, chestplate, leggings and boots, and a helmet of course, all colored a soothing teal. He was otherwise without any real inventory, minus a universal translator (for talking to aliens) and a walky-talky for communication with his ship. Under his clothing was a creature that had existed in the light of sapience for a couple million years: it was bipedal, and had two arms ending in 5-fingered hands. It had a head, with a distinct compact face and a scalp of clean-cut chestnut hair.
The creature was distinguished in stellar biology for its lack of defining biological strengths, aside from a great talent for long-distance running and fantastic adaptability. They were mostly water laden with a bit of hydrocarbon stirred in. They were whiny at times, but it could be said they haven't really found their niche in the universe yet. They are Wanderers, after all, instead of Scientists or Shamans or Warriors.
The captain was known as Arcturus D. Clarke. And he was the trailblazer for none other than the Human Empire.