Xomeron

IC: Can

"Water is the worst parts of being in a well combined with the worst parts of being out of one. But I was on the team at the Academy. Took on three in a row when we went up against University of Europa." Can said, looking out at the majors. "I think we can handle them, but it-is that towel floating? Why is that towel floating? Why did it just hit Estelle in the head?"

IC: Zhanar

"That's simply preposterous and goes against centuries of the glorious Naval tradition humans have that I learned about." Zhanar said, waiting for a beat. "I love it."

IC:

As the colonel entered, Zhanar met her at the door. One could say that he was glowing with pride, but he was always glowing, so that was hardly special. "Captain." He began(he hadn't quite caught on to having shipmasters who weren't Captains) "I've been collaborating with your security chief and our partnership has been quite incredibly fruitful. We have created...ART!" At this, Zhanar did an excessively dramatic flourish with his arms, pointing towards Can as he stood up the glass-coated wire picture of the Kestrel. Can was actually smiling as he held it up, quite possibly for the first time since his demotion.

IC:

Zhanar and Can hadn't actually spoken until the call for R&R at the beach had been announced. However, on seeing the possibilities of a Zoltan combined with a beach room, Can quickly enlisted Zhanar's help, and aquired a spool of welding wire from the Brasilia's supplies. Carefully, Can cut out segments of the wire and twisted them into intricate two-dimensional patterns, then buried them in the sand. As Can stepped back, Zhanar sent a bolt of electricity coursing through a small segment of wire that had been left exposed. When the lightning from Zhanar's hands faded, the wire was lifted out, coated in glittering, crystallized glass. Can immediately declared their art project begun, and followed up their proof of concept by beginning to twist the wire into an artful rendition of the Kestrel.

Knowing lots of references to movies is not something to be particularly proud of, and absolutely no one is interested in hearing you brag about how much you know.

For reference, no one's much interested in hearing you brag about anything.

IC:

Zhanar was a wanderer. That should have been obvious; no one without a natural tendency to wander would have been made a Precedentor, or found such success as an Adventure Capitalist. Of course, there was inherent danger in all three of those monikers. Despite this, Zhanar figured he was safe exploring any section of the ship that no one explicitly told him to stay out of. And, since the engines were the locus of the power system, at which a Zoltan was bound to be useful, Zhanar decided to familiarize himself with what he would probably eventually be assigned as a battle station.

It was sheer bad luck that, on a 50/50 chance, he walked into the engine room that Devas was in.

I can't really see that psyche eval ending in anything other than an "UNFIT FOR DUTY" stamp.

Why is a psychologically unstable slaver victim who really ought to be sent groundside for therapy on the ship's payroll in the first place?

Rand, I was going to PM this to you, but your inbox is either full or locked, so it's going where everyone can see.

You seem to be acting under the impression that you're the smartest person in the FTL RPG, and it really bothers me and that you're taking that for granted when it's so blatantly false. I would appreciate it if you stopped. It's very insulting to belittle what we know and expect us not to know basic science, and then "lecture" us about it while getting your facts wrong. From here on out, please assume that nothing you know needs explaining, because the rest of us will know it too. If we don't we will ask a reliable authority.

No, don't start typing about how much stuff you know about astrophysics. It's really not important what you know. The issue is your self-important, pretentious attitude of being the smartest person in the room. Even if it were true, which it isn't, it also makes you extremely unpleasant to associate with.

IC:

Can couldn't help but notice the Vendarian veer away from him. For a moment, he was struck with a childish impulse to breathe directly at her face. Her reaction to that would probably be hilarious. And, being a political officer, it would probably land him a bullet in the gut for assault, or at the very least a dishonorable discharge for "disorderly conduct to a superior"

A superior in a service whose chain of command he wasn't part of, members of a fascist government that had no right to rule its own people and were easily worse than the slavers they claimed to hate?

Can's mind wandered back to whether or not he was bound for a dishonorable discharge with thoughts like that. At least she wasn't a telepath.

Knowing his luck, she probably was.

It was at that point that Can realized he'd gone far past her and had reached his quarters. The ship seemed deserted with so many of the crew aboard the Brasilia. Which immediately struck Can as ridiculous. If the fleet was attacked, both the Kestrel and the Brasilia would be hampered in their jobs until they could get their crews sorted out and separate. The Colonel should have set up a strict rotation of no more than three officers off the ship at once. Realizing how badly this could end, Can pulled up the teleporter's software on his computer and quickly wrote retrieval solutions for each officer who wasn't on the Kestrel, then made a program that would obviously retrieve them in order of rank, even if no one was manning the teleporter.

>Okay, did they ever teach you about dark matter?

Yes. We covered that last month in my high school Astronomy class, at the same time as Dark Energy. But I've known about them since I was in sixth grade, because I read science news and sci fi on my own. And if you can't do anything with Dark Matter or Dark Energy in hard sci fi, then you need to work on your imagination.

Av: Dark Matter and Dark Energy are theoretical but are currently the best theory that explains the facts, and have generally been accepted by the scientific community at large as a concept even if there's disagreements about the particulars.

Funny. I knew what a light year was in third grade. What sort of schooling did you get?

On the center-of-the-universe bit; The universe has no center because it has no shape. But because of the age of the universe and the speed of light, a given observer is always at the center of the observable universe.

There you go.

IC:

Ameli, by the most ironic coincidence possible, crossed paths with Can on her way to her office; Can had just returned from the Brasilia and was headed towards his quarters. Knowing that the Colonel's decisions could be second-guessed by her superiors, and that the entirety of the Space Force wasn't set against him, seemed to have lifted his spirits slightly. Without really noticing her, Can gave Ameli a polite yet impersonal nod on the way to his quarters. He hadn't actually processed that, as a Vendarian, Ameli was probably considering a summary execution for him; his mind was clearly elsewhere.

Hey, Rand. You can stop trying to teach us science. You've been blatantly wrong on at least two basic things, and so far you haven't mentioned anything I didn't know by the time I was eleven. I think everyone here is about on that same level. We all have general knowledge of physics and chemistry, some of us much more than you given that at least one of us is an engineering student. So, you don't really need to explain yourself when it comes to basic science.

The Corps Is Mother. The Corps is Father. Trust The Corps.

IC:

"For some reason, I, the security chief at the time, was not consulted on personnel appointments when the ship's crew was being formed. Likely this was due to secrecy; doubtless the ship's crew was carefully selected for the sake of the mission, taking into account factors I do not have clearance to know." Can said. "However, if I may hazard a guess, I would suggest that the presence of a Vendarian 'adviser' to the colonel is a political concession granted to the Vendarians. I believe that neither of them should have been onboard in the first place. Vendarians seem to think that their own political, cultural, and personal ideals are more important than the mission at large, and for that reason I think that those two are far more dangerous than even our Mantis crewmembers."

You're misusing the word "Toxic"

Toxic means that a gas is outright damaging to an organism, on its own. Carbon dioxide is an inert gas and not chemically reactive enough to be toxic. Just because it means you can't get oxygen doesn't mean it's toxic. By your logic, water is toxic, which it obviously isn't.

I never said we should boot him. He asked a question and I gave my opinion. Never asked for any sort of action.

Also, Rand, as correction about Venus. Carbon dioxide is not toxic. You exhale it every time you breathe. As for "Interacting" with other characters, if that's what you call skipping their chance to even speak so you can keep talking, sure.

I'm gonna be the one to say what he's thinking instead of trying to be nice, since that's what I do.

Yes. You are a burden. Your RPing is lackluster, your ideas are uninspired, you seem to think that you're the most learned person in a thread full of engineers and networkers. Your characters fit with the group terribly. You seem more interested in RPing with made-up NPCs rather than the party. You don't seem to contribute much to the group.

I speak only for myself, but I want you out of the game and think it would be better without you.

Atton Rand: I think we all took grade school, we know about how inhospitable Venus is. Also, there's a habitable level of the atmosphere a few dozen kilometers up in Venus' atmosphere, so sky cities almost certainly would have been put in place for the sake of Venus' chemical industries.

Next time ask before you flat out declare things about the setting.

IC:

Can, having been ordered to stay, of course did so. He hadn't expected his demotion to come up, to be honest; it was universally known among the Planetary Forces that Navy crew never shaved, never washed below their collarlines, slept in their uniforms, and treated the ship's master as an absolute monarch whose declarations are absolute and final. Intellectually Can was aware that the higher-ups had oversight over shipmasters, but Can's experience mostly came from civilian pilots in the Belts, where Captains actually were absolute monarchs of their ships.

Realizing that he was about to be questioned, Can began reviewing what had happened to him during the slaver raid. One moment stuck out to him; Devas was a member of the Navy, but had attempted to give an order to Harken, who at the time was an enlisted member of Special Forces, but was under Can's command and thus was in the Planetary Forces chain of command, which Devas had no authority over. That had been an illegal order. It was probably too late now, but that realization should have struck Can long beforehand.

IC:

Zhanar had spent most of his time since the battle with the slavers on his computer, calculating his assets and going over the markets between the ship and their probable destination. Once he had finished, he floated onto the bridge and spoke in his odd Zoltan buzz to Daniels.

"Ship-Commander. Request permission to access low-level military channels for purposes of financial investment to provide for journey ahead. Non-combat channels, trade oriented. Request one-fourth of cargo-bay volume for storing of goods."

IC:

Can had followed after the colonel and the major, mostly silently. His mind was divided, and a significant portion of it was given up to wondering if he should transfer off the ship. This would probably be his last chance to do so. There were two inhibitions that kept him from committing to it. The first was the sense of duty that had been drilled into Can since the academy; the second was at once more complex, more typical, and more pink.

IC: Medbay

Can opened the door to the medbay, saw Ashley playing a card game with two slugs and a blue Zoltan, mouthed an obscene question, and decided that this was absolutely the wrong place to be, closed the door, and decided to head to the mess hall to get something to eat. Maybe Estelle would be there too, since she wasn't in the medbay.

LucasArts declared the expanded universe non-canon, so Fett did in fact get shot by a blind man and then get eaten by a creature that can't even move.

Pet peeve.

Anyway, I'm kind of wondering what to do with Zhanar. I've got to figure out something for him to do...

OOC: Let Basilisk answer. Have some patience. Don't just assume how the conversation will go. Let other people respond. What you're doing is as bad as controlling Basilisk's character, because you're controlling the entire conversation. It's very rude and you should stop immediately.

OOC: This post doesn't make any sense due to continuity error. Removed