The World Is Mine

The World Is Mine by Cirr
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The Non-Canon Spaceventures of Ei

A quest by Cirr. Someone is in a derelict facility that is filled with a variety of deadly abominations and is controlled by an unstable AI. Except this time you are the AI, and the goal is taking over the world.

This article contains spoilers! You were warned.

Characters

Miscellaneous Protagonists

Sinter

Actual Name: Serelki

Species: Areeni (post-baseline)

Gender: Female

Age: Unknown

Sinter arrived at the KerenzeTec facility and managed to infiltrate as far as its core AI room at the very beginning of the quest. She previously worked as a scientist for a biotech research company run by her father, until he died in an accident. Sinter then decided that there was nothing else there for her, and left everything behind, possibly just to take over the Zero Station that she thought was abandoned. From her former career she understands enough about biomodding to have made nonsurgical improvements such as extremely sharp and hard claws, and an acid producing gland on her tail. Sinter managed to convince not only herself, but both the site director and AI of the Zero Station, as well as just about everyone else she's met since getting here, that her nebulous plans to take over the world are sound. She is known to be ambitious, although rash and impulsive, resorting to bad ideas very quickly when under stress. Fortunately, she has someone more capable of considering immediate events more fully in a short timespan, giving her feedback and suggestions.

...Wait, that someone is /quest/? Oh. Well, she's doomed.

Vibrant

Actual Name: Kealeli

Species: Areeni (amphibious positive)

Gender: Female

Age: Unknown

Very little is known about Vibrant at this point. She has a great proficiency in the crafting of synthetic life forms, for whom she has a strong affinity, and has usually been seen with at least one of her creations nearby. She is very meek and shy, and despite her nudism felt extremely embarrassed and nervous being around Tzet. Despite anything that one would expect from one with such a personality, she has entered competition with an unnamed male synthetic crafter to conquer a city, which Sinter claims is a romantic pretext in areeni culture. Despite what appears to be phenomenal skill, her friend has apparently so much more so that he felt he had to handicap himself by taking a flying arcology for her to even stand a chance.

Zero Station Staff

SARU-601

Actual Name: Ti-kza

Species: Saa-kru (Saa-kru Replacement Unit)

Gender: Female

Age: ~83

SARU-601, or Saru as she prefers to call herself, has been maintaining the facility for a while. Originally intending to escort the obvious intruder out of the facility, Saru decided to let Sinter stay partly due to finding her ambitions something more interesting to work towards and partly out of the crippling loneliness of being by herself in the facility for sixty years. She was once biological, but an ambiguous accident vapourised her entire body. Her consciousness was salvaged and placed within a replacement robotic body, a fact she resents with some intensity. Because of the imperfect process of recovering the consciousness of a dead brain, for the majority of her time as a machine her mind was a wreck and she drifted in and out of lucidity for years unable to remember what she had been doing. Her mind has since been repaired by unknown processes. She longs dearly to be restored to who she once was, yet knows it to be impossible. She was once a talented and respected researcher at KerenzeTec, though she suspects that she's been scrubbed from the records in wake of her horrific accident. Although Sinter bit one of her antennae off earlier, she woke up one day to find it replaced, presumably by the repair drones she had slept with. This might facilitate a foreign control at some point.

Mahari Spacers

Ei

Actual Name: Ei

Species: Areeni (spacer)

Gender: Female

Age: Unknown

Ei is the surgeon of the Mahari. She has a radically augmented body structure, even by spacer standards, consisting of six arms (without hands), four eyes, and ears that by all accounts make even less sense than standard areeni ears to everyone but her. In fact, almost every one of her organs has been replaced at some point. She's eccentric and hyperactive, to say the least, and highly emotional or prone to abrupt changes in mood, but always extremely friendly and outgoing. She loves Tzet dearly, and was externally incubating a child of theirs before it was destroyed in the attack on their ship. Despite seeming unprofessional, Ei is actually a phenomenally skilled surgeon and biotechnologist among a society already known for being the best, and is able to grow and add new fully functional organs and even major physiological changes over the course of a day. To assist with this, her arms are apparently sharp and capable of dispensing both local anesthesia and for some reason, paint. As revealed when AOS switched IBIS control to her, she has modified her senses to the point where she literally sees the world in rainbows and has an innate sense of her internal organs. Despite her attitude towards self-modification, it is notable that most of her current modifications were actually made in reaction to the Anathema bomb that killed most of the crew of the Mahari, in order to repair and replace rapidly failing organs being attacked by the nanites which are engineered to be absolutely fatal to areeni.

Tzet

Actual Name: Tzet

Species: Areeni (spacer)

Gender: Male

Age: Unknown

Tzet was the first officer of the Mahari until the captain went insane. Though he also possesses noticeable modifications that seem to change daily, they are far less extreme than Ei's and are more standard in scope for a spacer. While somewhat stubborn in his spacer ways, he is substantially more stable than Ei, albeit a bit hardened, and understands that he at least partly needs to adapt to living with colonists for a while.

Tsu

Actual Name: Tsu

Species: Areeni (spacer)

Gender: Female

Age: Unknown

Tsu was the Mahari's synthetics crafter, and Ei's best friend. After the initial attack, she was shaken and afraid of dying and never finding someone to love. Inevitably, when the already weakened ship was attacked by an invasive and infectious hivemind she was the next to be taken, and was dragged away in front of her friend, screaming as her bones were wrenched apart and her mind was violated. It's not certain how Ei will react when she eventually finds out that she didn't eventually die and has been in this state the entire time. Despite this, there may still be a chance to save her, somehow.

Potential Threats

Mysterious Level -5 Being

Actual Name: Unknown

Species: Unknown

Gender: Unknown

Age: Unknown

A being presumably in containment on on of the lower levels of the facility. It is known to have some degree of control over the facility's electronics, which it uses to send ominous messages. A force either the same as or extremely similar to the this one was responsible for dominating and destroying the mind of the captain of the Mahari (Ei and Tzet's ship).

Alien Cultists

Organization Name: Unknown

Species: Multiple unknown species

A group of aliens from outside Alliance space who apparently seek to kidnap Areeni and use their genetic material. They have been seen working together with a being that either was or exactly resembled Level-5 being, though it is unknown whether they were its masters, partners, or servants. So far they have only been seen in Ei's memories, but they are likely to show up at some point, considering their probable involvement with the Level-5 being.

The Alliance

Despite the entire world and its people being part of the Alliance, Sinter and her allies still have much to fear from their government. The Mahari was shot down and the crew are still wanted by the Alliance because of a huge misunderstanding involving the origins of the Anathema bomb that devastated their ship. A misunderstanding of the "kill them at all costs" type. Not to mention that taking over the world, even if done peacefully, is still probably extremely illegal.

KerenzeTec

While Saru is indeed functioning as the legitimate site administrator, her recent actions in collaboration with Sinter and the spacers is likely against protocol, and she has been blocking vector clamp access to KerenzeTec personnel offworld. They are threatening to send a team in to retake the facility if this isn't sorted out.

'Objects'

The Perfect Cube

Storage Location: Level -1

It's a box. It's just a box. Unless, that is, you happen to be an organic (or organic derived) intelligence, in which case it is the most perfect box ever and as you examine it you realize you need it need it NEED IT.

Fortunately the effect seems to start wearing off once the box is out of sight.

The Nightmare Sphere

Storage Location: Unknown

The Nightmare Sphere is a grey floating sphere. It distorts all methods of sensing (including sight) that are used in its vicinity, and the records say that nobody is to touch it under any circumstances. The being in level -5 claims that the nightmare sphere possesses further abilities that only it can use.

The Story So Far

(Going to need to think of how to split this up. I'll come back to this tomorrow.)

Setting

The world in question in The World Is Mine is the planet Tinvishe, an Alliance controlled and well-established colony world with diverse populations of many species and many large population centers, three of which have been detailed in the quest and one of which we have visited. It also contains the KerenzeTec Zero Station that serves as our base.

Races

Areeni

Areeni are a relatively humanoid race, complete with mostly analogous organs, except with claws, large swiveling ears, and a tail. They are best known for their extensive biotechnology, vast diversity, and tendency to modify their bodies to suit their needs. Note that this is not something they do at will, but instead requires surgery or other artificial methods like any other species would require. Despite this, areeni are able to do this to an extent far beyond any other species because of an immune system that is powerful yet neglects to attack benign foreign bodies such as transplanted or synthetic organs. Because of this and the fact that there is a small degree of inheritability to certain kinds of modifications, areeni can range from minor divergences from the baseline, as is the case with Sinter, distinctly different and specialized subspecies (likely from controlled evolution of populations on planets with harsh climates) such as Vibrant, or in the case of the inhibitionless culture of areeni spacers, totally alien and almost completely unrecognizable from more "normal" areeni.

Saa-Kru

Saa-kru have a number of insectoid features, such as mandibles and antennae, but despite this have an internal skeleton and skin. Gender is primarily apparent by coloration, with males being dark-skinned and females being light-skinned, children remaining grey until maturity. They have long butterfly-like tongues and eyes that change in color depending on emotion (though allowing for a degree of conscious control). Saa-kru also have two pairs of lungs and a decentralized cardiovascular system made of a series of small pumps that transport their grey blood. They possess six limbs, a pair of arms with three radial fingers, and two legs with similarly arranged toes. The knees appear to be on alternate sides of the front and back pairs of legs, so that they all face inward. Of notable cultural importance to the saa-kru are the pair of nonfunctional wings kept folded away on the upper back. They have intricate rainbow patterns that vary between every individual, and thus represent their identity. However, the majority of the time these wings are hidden from view, and are in fact only used for attracting mates, making them also serve a sexual symbol.

Human

As a real species that the reader is a member of, humans require little explanation. Humans are present in interstellar society and are fully integrated within it, sharing general culture and technology. Little other information is known about the role of humans in the setting, as they have yet to be encountered.

Keletian

Keletians are a currently unencountered and very secretive race. Almost all of the ones in the area live in the city of Jekiten, which suggests that they are predisposed toward academic pursuits. They lack legs and appear to propel themselves in a manner similar to snakes, despite appearing pseudomammalian. The most noteworthy aspect of keletians is their bizarre telekinetic abilities. There is little general scientific understanding of the extent of their abilities or how they might function due to their nature, as they refuse to divulge their secrets to other species.

Keynain

Almost nothing is known about the keynain as they have yet to be described except in a passing description in-quest. What is known is that they are a technology-obsessed race that prefers to live in the arcology of Crestrisen and similar places. It is mentioned that they are quite xenophobic, but it is not clear if Saru meant a hostile or a fearful type of xenophobia.

Locations

This is a map of the area hand-drawn by Saru because our database is corrupt.

Relk

Relk is a relatively plain city to the southeast of the Zero Station. Its majority population is areeni, and it has large minorities of humans and saa-kru. Near the outskirts of the city are Vibrant's base and Ei and Tzet's downed spacecraft. The city is currently in turmoil after the areeni leader Eselrek Arklat was killed in an accident leaving his human assistant Derrick Stern to rule. The city considers him a tyrant, although it has not been revealed what has earned him this reputation. The unrest caused the vector clamps to be shut off in the city, leading to Sinter crashing an experimental aircraft into a building and leading to a citywide riot against Stern after it was mistaken for an attack. It initially appeared that there was racial tension caused by an unelected human leader coming into power over a city primarily composed of areeni, but the other races in the city, including humans, subsequently joined the mob.

Crestrisen

Crestrisen is a rather futuristic city to the southwest of the Zero Station. The city is designed as an arcology and has engines that originally enabled it to hover above the ground, though they have not been used in sometime because they are a rather major waste of energy. The city is known for its heavy industry and technology, and is populated by a vast majority of keynain.

Jekiten

Jekiten is a city to the northeast of the Zero Station known for scholarship and academia. Not much information is given about its primary population, but almost all of the keletians nearby live here.

ITQ

Appearances by the cast Inside the Quest.

ITQ: [1] [2] [3]

Gallery

Official And Potentially Useful

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  Data on areeni

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  Data on saa-kru

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  Data on saa-kru eye colouration

Author Art

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  Old areeni concept art

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  This time with hugs!

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  Concept for a species called keletians in the setting yet to be encountered

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  They are telekinetic.

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  A rejected concept for a species called enesi, though it is unclear whether they are totally rejected or merely require refining

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  This is the quest's current end-goal

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  Sinter meets Saikhan from Hugs Quest

Fanart

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  Sad bug girl in sno- I mean, box.

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  HURR DURR HEY KID IMA COMPUTER

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  THREEEE DEEEEE

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  Sad lizard girl with box.

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  Where did she get those chest bumps?

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  Lemons forever?!