Mylene Rapha Holfort: So this... Satellite? You want to use it to look at other worlds?
Da Vinci: According to the Luxion's logs it was originally designed for space flight, if the Ancient civilisation built it then they could've built more.
Mylene: We haven't even finished exploring this world yet and you want to set your sights on another?
Da Vinci: Fortune favours the prepared. If it matters any the same technology in the satellite that will let us look at other worlds should let us look for new islands and spy on your enemy nations.
Mylene: Lead with that next time would you? What do you need to get this facility up and running?
Excerpt from a meeting between Da Vinci and Mylene Rapha Holfort
Cereza and Jeanne had been invited to one of their new Allies base of operations. It was a relatively isolated location within the Holfort Continent, the land was too nutrient poor and rocky to farm, too mineral poor to make mining practical. It was in short a place that no one wanted, which made it perfect for the Da Vinci workshop. Luxion had built large brutalist buildings like warehouses, each of them a factory/refinery that efficiently used all the materials he received with no waste product, or when their was waste product Luxion found ways to efficiently seal it away as filler with no chance of bothering either the environment or the other people that were living on the continent.
"It's odd to think of you being so environmentally conscious." Cereza stated as she sat a patio table with her wife.
"Who exactly did you take my creators for?" Luxion snapped with a glare at the Black haired woman. "It's precisely because they valued the environment that they lived in so much that they worked so hard to minimise their carbon footprints!" Though a large portion of resources were coming from the dungeon and its drop items, not all of them were. The fusing of worlds meant that there were several Earths worth of raw materials beneath the water below the continent, Luxion had deployed submarines to scrape this material off the bottom of the ocean and bring it to the surface via a series of dedicated elevators.
"I thought all the mana in the air was interfering with your transmissions." Jeanne knew this not because Luxion had deigned to inform her as much, but because she had bore witness to the death of Radio.
"Transmissions still work at short ranges. For a few years now daisy chaining to other countries and around Holfort has been my main side project, Quantum Entanglement still works but is resource intensive, while the use of Cables can be thought of as the hard way. There's also the option of simply creating simplified AI programs to run anything that doesn't require my immediate attention." Jeanne was familiar with Quantum Entanglement, take a particle, split it in half, stick one half in a communicator, stick the other half in another, the two will stay in touch no matter where they go, they used a similar principle for the magic mirrors. Cables was as easy as taking a string of suitable conductors, like glass for instance, and connecting two points, though it was largely a practice that had fallen out of favour by the time of the Shattering War itself.
"How have you been managing your facilities then?" Jeanne asked with legitimate curiosity.
"The Hard way." Luxion simply didn't have access to the massive stores of Unobtainium he needed to mass produce Quantum Entanglement units, and even if he did they would be too valuable to risk just tossing into the ocean. Cables limited how far away from Luxion the mining equipment can travel but that wasn't a big deal at the moment. Holfort travels faster than the continents of old anyway, and there were lots of resources that he could gather up, occasionally he even found the pieces of airships or chunks of old human technology that were still in good enough condition to salvage. There was simply no need for him to work harder to get the same rewards that he could get with his current amount of effort. "Either way, this is what I am most proud of." Luxion turned his attention away from the two picnicking women to a cable stretching all the way into the sky. One part Space Elevator, and one part Hubble space telescope, Galileo.
"Impressive. Does that mean you have your show ready for us yet?" Cereza asked as she sipped her tea.
"Indeed." Luxion led the two women to the dome structure that he had built around the base of the space elevator. Inside could best be described as a planetarium, or a museum.
"Nice place." Jeanne let out a low whistle as she spun on her heel to get a better look at what she was looking at.
"One day, when the situation isn't so apocalyptic or the future so uncertain, I would like for this facility to be open to the public." But not today. "For now a history lesson." Thus holograms appeared before the two women, of familiar yellow and red planets.
"Venus and Mars." Jeanne stated having quickly made her own deductions as to why they had been invited here.
"To be more accurate Colonies Eve and Adam." Luxion replied as the two witches watched history take place.
Currently, Earth is the only habitable planet in our solar system. The two biggest contenders as sites for potential colonies are respectively Venus and Mars.
Simply put in their current states these are uninhabitable rocks, but we know why they are uninhabitable and we know what we have to do to make them habitable again. As a start, our terraforming efforts begin not on the planets themselves, but with the sun. Our project will require a tremendous amount of energy to accomplish, and the biggest source of energy available to us is the sun itself. By constructing a series of satellites around our sun we will be able to cover it in a Dyson swarm that will siphon 1% of the Sun's daily energy output. The most suitable planet to put this factory is Mercury, due to it's abundant mineral resources, it's close proximity to the ultimate destination of the satellites reducing the time to get there, and the abundant energy stemming from the sun.
More than enough for our needs.
This factory and solar array will be run by the 'Cain' AI.
The Problem with Venus is that its atmosphere is too thick, and it's too damned hot. Venus's atmosphere is approximately 93 times denser than Earth's, and 97% of that atmosphere is Carbon Dioxide, a highly effective green house gas keeping Venus's temperature at a whopping 460% Celsius.
To begin with, the AI 'Eve' will have to construct large conical mirrors built in front and behind of Venus to catch the light going to the planet and redirect it away from the planet itself. Sixty years on the now Darkened Venus and its atmosphere begins to liquefy, raining down on the planet in a great flood that makes Noah's Ark look like a pool party.
200 years into the darkened world and Venus freezes over, the only atmosphere left on Venus is Nitrogen, at roughly three times the atmospheres of Earth. With this we will have taken the first step in making Venus habitable.
Our AI ships will have to construct machines to excavate the frozen Carbon Dioxide and Nitrogen atmosphere and remove it from the planet, mass drivers to launch the frozen blocks away, constructing a artificial moon orbiting Venus for storage and future use or launching them at other planets via the use of Sky Hooks and Solar Sails. For water our AIs will have to draw from comets and ice moons, specifically Jupiter's moon Europa launched from the world via the use of Mass Drivers and Sky Hooks once more, this time constructed by the AI Abel.
After a few more centuries of work Venus will be covered in a nice shallow frozen ocean a few hundred meters deep. Now the final lap of terraforming can begin, a third mirror is built and now orbits the planet, catching the light from the two larger mirrors and shining it down on the planet as an artificial sun. At this time, Eve begins the task of populating this world with a variety of genetically engineered life, modifying Earth based life forms as she sees necessary to modify Venus until it is suitable for the human embryos that she will have in storage on her ship, including possibly the humans themselves.
In the mean time the AI Adam will work on Mars. The problems with Mars is that it's too small, it's atmosphere too thin, and it's too far away from the sun to get anything that it needs. Mars is approximately half the size and mass of Earth, the biggest problem will be increasing its mass, but there are solutions.
We already discussed mass being shipped in from other sources, Eve sending Carbon Dioxide and Nitrogen from Venus, Abel Water from Europa, and Cain mineral resources from Mercury, other lesser AI's will be tasked with shipping mass in from the other planets in the galaxy and the nearby asteroid belt. Once Mars has grown sufficiently large to retain an atmosphere Adam can begin modifying the frozen mass of dirt, water and carbon dioxide into something habitable.
Cain will begin concentrating and firing energy from the sun at Mars in the form of large energy beams, which Adam will catch with specialise Satellites and fire on the planet below, magnetising it's core and generating a stable magnetic field capable of retaining a atmosphere while melting and mixing together the various elements on the surface of Mars into a molten hellscape, in the wake of this energy beam the scenery cools, the vaporised elements rain back down on the planet in a bizarre snow forming shallow oceans in the process. Adam like Eve will generate a vast quantity of genetically modified organisms to transform Mars from it's current form of a lifeless mass of rock, ice and carbon dioxide into a planet capable of sustaining human like life. Thus we will have two planets that are fully habitable, maybe we will even be able to discuss retaking the Earth from the various monstrosities that have taken it captive.
Time will tell the future fate of humanity.
A Lecture by Professor Hugo Mass of the University of California During the Shattering War
Luxion looked as close to nostalgic as a rehabilitated genocidal colony ship's drone could get as he looked on fondly as the holograms of Venus and Mars slowly transformed into what they should look like according the professor's predictions. But reality was a cruel mistress, and the results from Galileo was every bit as cruel as it indicated that efforts across the Solar System had taken a different direction from the glorious idealic future than Luxion's master's had predicted, and reluctantly the AI needed to know why.
"Alright you filthy animals." Luxion turned around to face Cereza and Jeanne. All three of them knew that they weren't there to admire the works of Luxion's masters, and while mildly miffed about being insulted to their faces the two witches had a look of pity for the AI for the fact that they would have to burst his bubble. "Hit me!" Luxion wished that they were going to hit him, it would hurt less than having to look through another of those atrocious video games, let alone two.
Doom Craft Ragnarok is a Real Time Strategy game taking place on a Sci-Fantasy Mars. You can control a Colony of Dwarves under the DRG, a swarm of alien monstrosities known simply as the Xenomorphs, or the biomechanical Grigori as they gather resources, build and expand their base, and fight for control of Mars against one another. Doom Craft Ragnarok calls upon much of the elements of the classical real time strategy games as you decide upon the ultimate fate of Mars. Will you side with the DRG? Or the Xenomorphs? Or perhaps you'll ally yourself with the Gregori? The Choice is yours!
Doom Craft Ragnarok Promotional Quote
Armoured Frame Evolved Is a 1V4 Monster vs Squad game in which players compete with one another over control of various Venusian colonies in a frozen Terraformed landscape.
On the Squad side you play as 'Armoured Frames' Synthorganic bodies combining nanotechnology and human clones operating as either a Tank, Engineer, Tracker and Medic being controlled by a 'Operator' a ghostly disembodied figure resembling a human teenager working to protect the Colonists of Venus.
On the monster side you have the choice between one of five different Nephaelim, alien monsters native to Venus here to save their world from further hostile terraforming.
Whose Side will you choose?
Armoured Frame Evolved Promotional Quote
"Alien Monsters!? Remote Controlled Homunculi!? Dwarfs!?" Luxion was fuming, the orb pacing back and forth as it frothed with impotent rage at the contents of the conversation he was having.
"He's really not taking this well is he?" Jeanne almost sounded sarcastic as he commented on the orb's temper tantrum, before said spy device zoomed directly into her face.
"That is the most outrageous understatement I have heard since the idiot king dismissed your half human abomination of a son as a factor in the battle against the principality!" Luxion floated back to a reasonable distance, which was good for it as Jeanne was getting ready to flick it away. "Where are the files?" Cereza held up a jump drive, ancient though it was she was a master of time manipulation magic so preserving some files from the old world was not too difficult to do, even if mana did seem to hate electronics. Luxion produced a mechanical arm from his drone body and clamped down on the USB drive with it, downloaded images of the various abominations of Doom Craft Ragnarok and Armored Frame Evolved.
"These 'Xenomorphs' resemble the various demonic creatures I've had the displeasure of learning about since arriving here with their physical appearances tweaked. Is this more of your sister's 'editing' at work?" That was the biggest reason not to trust the contents of these files. Chiyo didn't create these games because she was desperately trying to create time capsules to contain accurate information about the future, she was making exploitative video games for profit and used the visions she saw as a short cut, visions that since she had them were subject to over eight hundred years worth of change and the butterfly effect. For all they were relying on her as a source of information Chiyo's visions were incredibly unreliable.
"Do you know what the 'Dark Forest' is?" Cereza stated seriously.
"An answer to the Fermi Paradox, that we haven't found any evidence of alien life because they're all in hiding, both from the danger they represent to each other and we to them, or worse yet that we haven't found any evidence of alien life because something is actively wiping out the civilisations in question that we need to be afraid of." Perhaps it would be more accurate to call the Xenomorphs Xenophobes. "In other words you are suggesting that since negative emotions give birth to demons then their fear of the unknown and imagination has conjured these abominations?" The two women shrugged their shoulders, anything was possible in the realm of idle speculation. "These Gregori look more like bio-mechanical abominations than any of the angels I've seen around Holfort. Any ideas as to why?"
"Negative emotions give birth to Demons, positive emotions to angels. If the Xenomorphs are demons then it seems likely that Chiyo gave the other faction the name Gregori because they're part of the Hierarchy of Laguna." Cereza explained as she started to play with one of Luxion's displays. "As for resemblance: Most angels tend to have three features in common: a human face either a child, a woman or a old man, a gold on white colour scheme and feathery wings of some kind, not necessarily functional." Taking Cereza's explanation into account, the Gregori appear to meet the bare minimal aesthetic requirements, something that Chiyo would've also noticed. "As for why they so heavily resemble machines, Angels are born of positive emotions for instance feelings of gratitude and deep appreciation." Which is logical for people to feel considering their entire civilization was built and was dependent on technology. "By aiming these feelings at singular items or concepts they eventually manifest and take form."
"Fantastic." By the sounds of things the Xeno's and the Grigori's were dependent on the colonists to maintain their numbers. Which also means that even if their numbers were being actively culled they wouldn't be wiped out, which left the subject of Venus left to contend with. "Unlike the case with the Mars colony the Venus Colony facilities are being actively threatened." Quite honestly, Luxion understood how the beasts felt. "Humans being genetically modified, infected by Homunculi nano-technology and hollowed out so that these 'operators' can control them? These 'Armored Frames' are abominations, flying in the face of every ethical law devised by the UN for the humane treatment of human beings and for the handling of Extra-dimensional materials."
"Stones in a glass house." Cereza stated bluntly. "The entirety of humanity on this asteroid belt we call a planet, including your precious captain, are the descendants of Singularities experiments."
"Not to mention we have no idea the true nature of the Armoured Frames either." Jeanne gave a natural follow up. "I assume you remember the last time that you attempted to rely on game knowledge to a fault."
"...yes. Your son's mutilation at the hands of the Black Knight. Is he well at least?" Luxion looked down right sheepish. "Considering the slightly more apocalyptic situations we've been involved in you'll forgive us for not having the time I hope?"
"A Nubile young lady on each arm and all of his limbs restored to him, thanks to the help of your friend Cleare. He'll be fine." Jeanne explained bluntly. "Though since we are on the topic of getting off business..."
"I would like to know how the abominations were able to follow them all the way to the stars." There were many practical scientific reasons to have all of the human cargo shipped over to the colony sites in the form of Embryos.
But chief among the more 'magical' ones was that they were hoping that without a chain of memories connecting the two worlds back to the accursed realms of Inferno and Paradiso the demons and Angels wouldn't be able to follow. Yes they considered the possibility that the Angels and Demons along with new realms of Paradiso and Inferno being formed by the colonists.
"I've seen some of your database already so I'm going to make an educated guess." Luxion liked nothing about this situation. "Your fellow AI attempted to preserve as much of the internet as possible and take it with them when they fled for the stars correct?" Cereza looked like she was asking a particularly slow child something, or like a mother asking their child about a very dangerous person that they recognised.
"Yes." Luxion didn't quite get it. Yet. "It was hailed as one of man kind's greatest achievements at the time." The two witches groaned. "You two were there at the time shouldn't you be aware of this?"
"It's kind of hard to watch the news when you're fighting to save all of humanity." Jeanne looked like she was getting a migraine. "Remember the lecture about how Inferno and Paradiso are made up of positive and negative memories?"
"Yes?" Luxion replied to the question and waited for the follow up, before the penny slowly dropped. "Are you telling me that the Internet had turned into one of these accursed realms of Inferno or Paradiso!?"
"Has." Jeanne corrected. "It still exists after all. And it would be closer to Purgatorio than anything else." The two witches hotly debated the subject for years, before Rodin got annoyed enough to tell them to go jump into a TV. To their shock, it actually worked!
"Are you telling me, that we ended up preserving the very dimension that we were hoping to leave behind and carry it with them?"
"If you don't mind us opening a hell portal inside of your ship we can go into Inferno and make sure if the dimension is still there." Cereza suggested shrugging lightly. Oh lovely. A massive security breach built into the very design of his ship, which he had been spreading around while backing up his files into various consoles. "Later, I need to deal with this and other issues. You have whatever support we can offer you, and access to whatever technology we build or develop, though I don't know how effective it will be against these Alien Demons and Angels you all are afraid of." Which was natural, given their alliance.
"Alright then. We'll leave Chiyo's transcripts to you to pick through at your leisure." With that the two women left, leaving on the ship that Luxion knew as Umbra. Luxion returned underneath his above ground facilities, into a area that he had set aside for a particularly annoying new roommate of his.
"Status report." Cleare had set up new biological modification facilities inside of Luxion's laboratory. Whatever the Colonial AI didn't already have in his Standard Template Construct Library Cleare was able to instruct him to build.
"Good news!" Some part of Luxion doubted this lunatic knew what those words in that order meant. "I have five Chambers ready each with a Human+ program ready to install in those five idiots!" Cleare had landed in a dream come true: the chance to unleash her full arsenal of biological modifications and correct the idiocy, physical deficiencies and general incompetence of the love interests from that atrocious game she was stuck play for eight hundred years with the power of 'Science!' Luxion activated numerous security turrets and trained them all on Cleare at the same time. "What'd I do!?" The Medical AI shrieked at the blatant threat.
"You were supposed to be working on the Captain!" Luxion's eye glowed a crimson red as he debated the merits of digitally dissecting Cleare and prying her secrets out of her.
"Oh that!" Cleare flew over to another part of the facility, into another pod where Erica was located. "You did good work with the environmental Hazard suit, but you were limited in what you could do cobbling together your STC's with this era's crude dungeon materials and your limited knowledge of life support magic."
"So naturally you've found the cure to her condition." Luxion had kept is expectations high.
"Like I said you do good work." Too high it would seem. "Aside from the Human+ series of augmentations I've also threaded her bones, muscles and skin with Nanowire and implanted a Medi-Gel organ in her body." According to Luxion's search of his data base medi-gel was a Pluripoint stem cell bacteria hybrid produced through genetic modification. Luxion didn't know of an organ that could produce it and plant it in the captain's body. "With this we will be able to begin repairing the large scale damage to the Captain's body, including her damaged DNA from mana poisoning." Luxion's algorithms told him a 'but' was coming. "I am not however able to isolate the particular sequence of genes that is keeping her from being able to process mana." Close enough. "Luckily for us, the captain has a brother." Cleare went to another console as she continued to work.
"What does that idiot have to do with this?"
"They share the same parents." Cleare stated as if talking about something obvious. "Meaning that they should have every gene in their bodies in common bar one: the one that is responsible for Erica not being able to process mana."
"Except that even I have the ability to conduct such a basic procedure." Luxion produced a readout of DNA Samples, not only Erica's but also Julius, Mylene and Roland as well. "A large portion of the Captain's DNA is not shared among anyone in her family. It is however still in common with her previous life's genetic profile." The one that died of mana poisoning. Lovely and Ironic, the one thing that kept Luxion from killing Erica on sight when they first met is now the thing that's actively killing her.
"Then perhaps the answer is not in the body but the soul." Luxion couldn't dismiss Cleare's crossing into the subject of fantasy, not when Luxion himself was so firm in his belief that Erica was his captain reborn. "If the problem is not in science then we have to assume magic. It is a phenomena that's part of our daily reality now, one that we poorly understand."
"Meaning that miserable bitch gets off Scott free a second time." Luxion made his anger known, to whom was the problem.
"Bitch?" Cleare asked sounding suspicious.
"When we went to confront the other Reincarnated Lafan she explained to us her own experience with the game. She blackmailed her brother into beating it for her, forcing him to spend his own money on P2W items-" Evidently Luxion himself. "-and his own vacation days in order to beat it, ultimately costing himself his life after the rotten boards of the cheap apartment he had been living in gave way sending him careening down the stairs. Meanwhile I recall how the Captain explained that she was separated from her original life's mother who had been disowned by her family for getting her brother killed over these same accursed video games."
"Wait a second, are you telling me that-?" Luxion interrupted Cleare's question by continuing his rant.
"That Bitch has no right to call herself the Captain's Mother. She is a hideously irresponsible creature who got her own brother killed and went out with men with zero merits and no capacity for funds and ultimately died as a result. She has learned almost nothing of value from her previous life instead attempting to leech off of men of the same quality as her past life and succeeding in leeching off someone of legitimate value to the captain's future." Especially since they may have to ask that same person for his aid in saving Erica's life. "Any positive contribution she has made is entirely incidental, and outweighed by the sheer damage that her actions have caused to the Kingdom's internal political structure! If I had not received strict orders from the contrary from the captain I swear...!"
On a related note, Marie suddenly woke up screaming from her cot with a nightmare.
"Are you done with your rant yet?" Cleare suspected that if Luxion had lungs he would be working to catch his breath.
"Yes we've strayed off topic. I should've asked the witches about the Captain while they were here." He wants to have Cleare see what she can do first, best not to lay his cards on the table as it were. "For now complete you implantation process. Once the captain awakens we will be able to get her opinion on the situation. For now I need to review the data the Witches have already left and compare that to the Second Diary."
"There's another reason why I think it's not physical." Luxion stopped at Cleare's statement. "Assuming the game's are accurate, there's another with her symptoms."
"The third protagonist." Luxion summarised.
Milialice Lux Erzberg, AKA Mia, is the protagonist of the Third game.
Mia is the favourite bastard child of Repard's current King. Possessing a sickly physique Mia was sent away from her homeland where her perceived weakness would likely lead to her death at the hands of the king's rivals. Mia's first year of schooling takes place during the last year of Olivia's, in other words the tail end of the war with the Principality. Much of the initial plot revolves around laying low during the war and its aftermath, as well as progressing treatment for her illness in the Dungeons.
Her symptoms are identical to the condition of another individual in the game, Erica Rapha Holfort.
Unlike Mia who easily earned the adoration of those around her, Erica held the role of one of the antagonists of the game, a bratty child spoiled by her father who enjoyed causing havoc. Unlike Mia who improved with time and eventually fully recovered, Erica, I, would eventually die of her symptoms. Preventing Holfort's fall at the hands of either Fanoss and Olivia can be aided by Mia's presence, though we should not take the threats we'll face lightly.
Excerpt from Diary 3
Recent events threw the events of the third game off even more than they had the first. Whereas the first game had their events accelerated both the Principality and Olivia had been pacified in advance, all threats to Holfort's stability had been neutered already, which means that Luxion can focus the sum total of his time, energy and resources on treating Erica and finding a cure for her.
"Yes. Dissecting that brat should be extremely illuminating." Cleare wanted to complain that Luxion was treating her like the crazy one.
"Please don't jump to 'dissect' as the best solution."
Cereza and Jeanne had returned to Umbra, the women had already kicked off their boots and were now laying in bed together, intending to enjoy themselves to the fullest until they get back to the Compound.
"You wanna take bets on how long it'll take the orb to Demonise?" Jeanne asked as she crawled over her wife who was laying under her. "Artefact spirits have formed from a lot less going for them."
Artefact spirits are born of intense emotion and bearing witness to events, in other words stimulation. Luxion had bore witness to the deaths of his crew, had fought against Demons, Angels and Homunculi during the Shattering War, and had been keeping backups of vast swaths of human kind's databases and was sapient to begin wtih. On top of that the Ship had been festering in his genocidal feelings for eight hundred years. Demons have been born from far less.
"Hard to say. The ship will have to bite the dust first." With that the two witches engaged in activities that made it clear that work was the furthest thing from their minds.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: I believe media like to popularly portray vampires as a product of infection in humans.
Dakota Bruder: Something like that yeah, though it's not just the Japanese that thinks that way to, the Maori tribes think the same.
tsun: Glad you like the story so far, I'll answer any questions you still have when you catch up.
RedRat8: Angie enjoys the thought of them suffering, which makes Leon happy.
Laughingman: I understand the concept and fantasy of the Harem genre, I just think it's foolish, I can barely make a relationship with one woman work and you're expecting Leon to juggle several? Even though I say that I've made additional plans over the course of the Alzeran arc for more women.
