Chapter 1: Game set-up
Back in the darkroom time to make some new choices. Combing through the list, I find a movie section I'm immediately drawn to one of my favorite movie series Aliens or more specifically Alien vs. Predator. The perfect monster and the ideal hunters with humanity trapped in the middle.
I decided to go with strategy, 4x, and RPG. But I don't feel like managing every little detail of the lives of a few of my creations. If anything I would instead pick my favorites based on the survivors of tough situations, rename them and have fun with that. I'm tired of handcrafting great heroes with grandiose backgrounds the person has no actual claim to in the end.
Accepting with cheats turned on. I would rather have them and not need them than need them and not have them. Soon after I make my choice, everything fades to black, but unlike last time I don't wake up to a galaxy to play with instead all I see is race select screen. There were three options for species with various sub-factions.
For the Yautja, also known as the Predators, you can choose between an ordinary clan or a bad-blood clan. While from a hierarchical stance, they're run mostly the same it's very much so a "Respect your elders." sort of race. With bad-bloods, however, a bit more weight is put into "Might makes right." ideology. Though I would say that the most exciting thing that's different between the two is how their populations grow, for normal clans, it's more or less what you would expect the population grows naturally with birth rates being affected by the current populace and access to supplies. Bad-blood clans, on the other hand, have much lower birth rates regardless of population and supplies, their most reliable source of new hunters is by taking in criminals cast out from other clans. This difference leads to having more sporadic bursts of hunters of various levels of experience appearing though this does translate into a lower public order.
Next up is the Xenomorphs. I was surprised to find that there were two choices here in the form of red and black xenomorphs. Instead of a difference in population growth with this choice comes a significant boost in strength and speed. There is, however, a considerable debuff to match it. If you choose red xenomorphs, you will be the only red hive, and any 'wild' black xenomorph hives you run into will be immediately hostile to you. Otherwise, it's what you'd expect from a parasitic hive-mind. To say the least public order is not an issue. Though as a bonus using two pretorians ten warriors and twenty drones, you can start a new hive and select whether you become said hive turning your previous one into an allied A.I. or founding an A.I. hive at the cost of its survival having less of a guarantee.
Finally, onto the humans, there are four factions. A United Americas colony based around expanding the holdings of the UA in exchange for sending regular tithes of resources to the UA you can at any time call for marine reinforcements or emergency supplies. Next is a UAMC sector commander, less focused on city-building and more on logistics you've been assigned to maintain various outposts and garrisons in your assigned sector to protect UA assets. The third is a Weyland-Yutani research outpost that earns resources and support by aiding the Weyland-Yutani corporation in their research while being able to utilize the various lines of advance synths for a wide variety of tasks. And finally, the independent colony, while lacking any of the bonuses from the other factions you additionally lack any of the restrictions they have.
This is going to be a difficult choice for me.
I'm pretty proud of myself. It only took me three hours to narrow it down to red xenomorphs and a yautja clan.
Three years later… Not really but this is a really difficult choice. I've decided to go with a red Xenomorph hive, a familiar darkness falls over me.
When I come too I'm in an overhead view of a ventilation shaft overlooking two ovomorphs they seemed larger than usual. When I selected the smaller one of them a small tooltip appeared (Royal ovomorph- this egg when hatched will provide a royal facehugger who's resulting offspring will produce a Queen Xenomorph.) Looking over at the larger one I got quite a shock. (Imperial ovomorph- The one hope of the red hive. This egg will produce a red Xenomorph Emperor if lost too soon another might be born the natural way but it will take a very long time.
It seems the god of games has smiled upon me for this initial start. Well… this is where the fun begins. The royal egg began to open. It was a large adorable little thing. It's a larger than average facehugger with beautiful red splotches across the sections of the black carapace that cover its body. No… I can't use this one. It's a guaranteed queen quickly hatching the Imperial facehugger I sent it through the ducts unveiling more and more of the facility to be my hive. Being very careful I soon get a feel for the size of the facility. It's old twenty to thirty rooms and under-maintained definitely a terrestrial facility I found an external heat vent to prove that. Whatever this facility is it produces a large runoff of heat and smoke maybe a refinery or power plant. So far the count is about seven workers. Listening in on various conversations I've learned that this is less than a quarter than should man the facility. Sounds like this place hasn't seen much love in a while.
Alright, a little more recon and I think I have my guy. Dude, literally just wanders around all-day all I need to do is just wait for him to cross into a zone no one else enters and he's mine. I got my chance when the poor dumb bastard took a smoke break in a supply closet. He was wrapped up and unconscious before he knew what hit him… what hit him being a strangling death crab… moving on.
Giving a few hours on crab-support I directed the hugger to crawl into the vents it's timed lifespan drawing ever closer to its end. Now Dave, as he shall be referred to from now on, wakes up none the wiser. A little three day fast forward later and good ol' Dave is having chest pains. He's been working a late shift and just about everyone's gone… just the one I've taken to calling Janis. But she's on the other side of the facility and won't hear what happens next. As the timer ticks over to complete something surprising happened. Instead of the screams, I expected, the bar turned into a button. This opens a whole new avenue of attack for me. It's probably how I'm expected to spread to other planets. Interesting but progress must be made the button was pressed and the screaming began as poor Dave's chest began to heave then there was a sickening crack then the little prince did pull itself from Dave's chest. He was further along than your average chestburster using four spidery limbs to pull his way from the dead man's chest. He was adorable, his head had the beginnings of the prominent ridge seen in the xenomorph upper hierarchy. His exoskeleton while still mostly a pale fleshy color was already showing signs of red on the dome of his head and a few splotches on his body. Sending him quickly into the vents I'm suddenly made aware of the sound of feet hitting metal floor plates.
Oh, this is just too perfect setting up the royal facehugger near the door I catch Janis before she could even scream at the sight of Dave. It wasn't even two hours before the queen would hatch, and if I had any say in it no bodies would be found when the next shift arrived.
