Billiam T Shoreman seems to have stumbled into an invasion fleet. The foreign carrier ship is bottle-green in color and seems designed around forward-facing guns and a multitude of detachable landing ships. The quirks of AionGate travel mean that these ships are glimpsed only briefly as if through glass; they depart as Shoreman and his pursuers arrive. Their destination is initially not known.

Shoreman bounces from one surprise to another. Lost and disoriented, he had been attempting to travel to a blue world seen through the Gate on the incorrect assumption that it was Eeeyaow. It is some other world (surprise). Then he was staring down the barrels of an invasion fleet (surprise) that vanished (surprise). Then he was surrounded by happy singing whales from home (surprise). And then from around the curve of that blue planet (surprise) two more green fleet carriers revealed themselves, cruising toward the whales. One of the carriers opened fire; its wide-barrelled cannons shot out small fighter ships the size of dolphins. The fighters arrived at the same time as radio messages from the planet and the carrier, but too soon for translations to kick in.

Everyone shouted lots. One of the dolphin-sized attack ships plunged directly at Billiam Tecumsah Shoreman, who dodged but took a long slash down his back. One of the rescue crew was not so lucky. A hole punched clean through his midsection.

The search party managed to shout surrender, we come in peace, let’s be friends etc into their translation boxes enough times to get the message across to the natives. The attack ships took up escort positions and guided the whales into orbits around their home planet. The whales couldn’t help noticing a robust traffic lane carting full bags of Gas from the local Gas giant toward the homeworld. The gas planet’s name is Nougat, while the home planet of seas and rocky shores is known as Vish. The star system is called “SPLT”.

After considerable time and effort, communications with the natives were established. English seems to work reasonably well, once it is run through a clicking device some of the natives possess. They are air-breathing insects, who have mistaken the Whales for ships. The insects spend a great deal of time demanding that the Whales disembark their bodies, even offering to repair the “damaged ship.” Shoreman’s wound has proven fatal.

The natives call themselves the Althyve. They provided the whales with a device that projects a small hologram of their leader. When he points to himself, the device transmits the words “Slab Bulkhead,” so this is what the whales call him. Through the device Bulkhead asks many stilted questions about the Gates the whales have passed through. Bulkhead claims the Althyvers are looking for the Holhyve, a lost location where many of their brethren live. Attempts at smalltalk or friendly engagement fall flat.

Wary of the apparently militant nature of these people, the scouts endeavor to give away as little information as possible. It is obvious from observation that the whales came in from an eastern direction, but they pretend they are all as disoriented as Billiam. The whales claim they fell through the Gate and found themselves in a cloudy nebula, tried to get home and ended up here.

The scouts observe carefully and determine that one Fleet carrier is idle, the other operated by only a handful of persons. It is probable that the bulk of the warrior class has departed with the invasion Fleet. On this hunch they plan a daring escape. They spin a story about needing to ritually toss Shoreman’s body into the Sun, disguise their report as a funereal song, and plan to momentarily make a dash for the open Gate, in the direction of Ryft. Yes, they do have their dead companion’s body with them, and yes, if Clancy responds quickly they could make a dash for a different star system, or remain in SPLT as if the funeral thing were serious.

Prince Fingarr points out that the trails left in Ryft’s gases will expose their inbound and outbound destinations to the Hyvers, and warns Clancy that the Althyve’s military could track the scout’s next move as easily as the Space Whales traced Shoreman.

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Next Week: A Crystal Shell

The folk tales tell of a time when the simple folk native to the Flonk system (the manta and the sea monkeys) lived together in peace and harmony. Occasionally someone would invent stone tools and their main byproduct, war. Wars on Flonk mostly took the form of mobs beating uppity gits to death with their own inventions. In most cases this persuaded inventors to give up their careers or lives entirely. The rise of civilization was thus successfully postponed for many generations.

This changed when the PulseGates brought a new type of fish — a type-a business fish — to Flonk. A business fish saw great potential for developing Flonk and its red anemone forests into resorts for the apparently vast number of type-a fish who were also doing a business. And so these type-a fish set about a business of clearing away forests to build a city and a resort. The vampires, whose homes everybody knows are deep in the red forests, did not take kindly to this. The death toll among the type-a’s rose to such heights that they concluded after a few years that they could not do a business here after all. Some more outlandish tales imagine that the vampires launched a counter-invasion against any type-a fish, its family, and its business.

Nonetheless great damage was done. Enough forest had been cleared, enough fish species had immigrated and enough cafes, bistros and pubs built that the denizens of Flonk could never again fully eradicate civilization, which became endemic. The Sea Monkeys lived at the fringes as pitiable beggars, and the red forests rolled on, protected by their mysterious vampires, variously known as “the Guardians” or “Friends of Flonk.”

Still, Flonk’s economy moseys along at an obviously low efficiency. Siestas are common and wages are often paid in alcohol rather than hard currency. Fear of vampires and a cultural distaste for hard-charging type-a personalities seems to keep a lid on ambitions for economic growth.

Fleet Range, Arranged

The upgraded Fleet Range comes in the form of jacked-up gravity belts. These puppies can really let rip. (Note: no actual puppies involved). It turns out that getting through two Gates at one go is partly about really precise aim at the Gate and partly about approaching at speed. Sebastian says he could’ve told you that ages ago, if you’d asked, but nobody ever asks the insanely wise crab who has a supercomputer for a house anything because that would make too much sense for you kids, wouldn’t it. Yeesh.

Next Week: Looking Down the Barrels of Way Too Many Guns

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Clancy mentions that he’s heard a call for adventurers, but has no one to answer Yardarm’s call. The Princess lights up, offering to make the trip. She seems delighted, a little nervous that Clancy will feel she’s abandoning him. Clancy confesses he hoped she would take on the mission, but since it may be dangerous he didn’t want to make it a whole thing by asking her to do it. She swats him and calls him a darling chauvinist, and begins assembling her equipment for the journey. She leaves in time to catch the open Gate, but does not send an update this Pulse.

Verbel Icing Begins

The ice shipment to influence Verbel is a thing to behold — a pair of whales strapped on either side of an overclocked gravitic drive flip their tails lazily inside a tear-drop shaped crystal comet, liquid inside a shell of ice. It sublimates a tail into space. Sebastian gripes about the horrible impracticality of this form of transport any time anyone mentions its serene beauty. “Slow as a snail, steers like a cow, liable to burn engines out at any minute.” He says “I’d rather ride a jellyfish.” Sebastian hates jellyfish.

Early Days for an Institute at Verbel

While one whale manages the influence campaign, the other freight-carrying whale will work with Verbel locals to establish a collaboration with the tourism bureau at Verbel. Tentative offers include a day trip “whale watch” service that allows tourists to ride along on whaleback voyages from orbit down to the deep seas and back. Another option would be a pirate treasure salvage operation, that applies Space Whale diving know how to the project of locating and salvaging biosphere sites of high value.

Both can be achieved within the costs already allocated, and both are expected to yield at least some Rares, more or less in proportion with Verbel’s overall economy. Whale watch would provide insights into present-day visitors, while salvage operations would be more likely to yield insights into past inhabitants.

The whale in charge of glad-handing mentions that there’s some local excitement about a star a couple Gates northwest -- a white giant known to have zero planets. No planets, but something out there is orbiting the star and giving off a line of light. A really long line of light. Local hope is that this signals the new era will feature a “triple word score” of star systems that are rich in Rares and foolish people willing to spend them. The whale ambassador has played it cool, but thought Clancy would want to know.

Next Week: Flonking Vampires

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I am still thinking about Verbel, so now that we’ve got another round of Ice let’s send it and spend it. Throw a kegger or the next-best thing and invite the common people.

Separately, let’s establish our own institute at Verbel. I bet a tourism board would be welcomed. Pitch our counterparts on Verbel about jointly re-popularizing Verbel and bringing tourists to Erinne Prime. I bet ten cubic meters of krill that they’ll go for it. We can lead those guys by the flipper and become their bestest allies.

Okay, so vampires. I’m not wild about having vampires wandering around the shores out our interstellar lagoon, so to speak. We’ve got to learn more about this. Send a team to Flonk, and I suppose we ought to pick a team that can stay sober long enough to read a thing or two. But not, you know, stuffed shirts. Find some folks who dabble. People who can hold their liquor and their anemone stings. Bring back the details on these vampires – but don’t bring the vampires, unless they’ve got a stake through the heart. You picking up what I’m putting down, here?

Make friendly contact with that unidentified fleet the Shorechasers spotted. Establish trade/friendly relations/information exchange if possible.

Keep chasing Billiam T Shore because I have a feeling Blubber’s a whale-beard-bristle-width away from a complete mental breakdown, desertion of his post, and disappearance into the void.

Now, as for Princess Preach… I better talk to her myself.

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Next Week: Adventure Calls

With all the exploration, Clancy and Delphine carefully update the map of the known universe.

It becomes clear that it’s useful to distinguish between areas where Aion Gates do not go and areas that are as yet unseen. The AI recommends a mapping solution in which white/brown areas indicate places where a map rendered in 2-D on a hex grid has holes, but the holes are meaningless imaginary things. Grey areas indicate that it’s not known whether anything is out there. Delphine finds the whole exercise dull, but Clancy contemplates the map long and hard.

Messages from Abroad

From Verbel

Passing on a message from Yardarm we received last Pulse: “Reputable monarch seeks adventurous individuals for mission of mercy. Serious inquiries only. Must provide own ship. Respond on this frequency or arrive in person within three Pulses.”

From unknown

A small canister arrives to Betamax. The dolphins there manage to intercept it before it floats through the prison’s entry forcefields -- it’s unclear whether it would have made it or would have been destroyed in a collision with the spinning rings. It contains a reel of photographic images imprinted on translucent material.

From “Arkator”

This message is heard by scouts at Xasis with some interference. Crews at Hedge can hear the message faintly as well. After cross-referencing the data from each, this is the best reconstruction of the original:

A light blaezes in the darkness! We know not why. The ancestorae wrote that we [indistinct] all with these words:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

The watch is ended, the seal [indistinct]
What was closed shall open
What was banished shall return
[Indistinct] your shields, look to your spears, look to your seas
The [indistinct] must die again.
The war is begun, the [indistinct] lit
Minds opened must be closed.
What returns, banished.
Look to your [indistinct] to your spears, look to your seas
The God of Death [indistinct]
These are the words of the ancestorae.
We convey, though we [indistinct]

From “Academe” (beyond Flonk and Ryft)

Sebastian takes time out of his normal routine to find Clancy and declare this message “fishy.”

This is an open invitation to all historians within range. The Interstellar Information Vault of Academe is organizing the first ever Conclave of Conferences, to occur on the seventh Pulse of the New Era. We encourage submission of papers covering your respective local histories during the long closure of the Gates, and will prioritize presentations based on those researchers able to donate the largest volume of information to the Vault. Original documents and artifacts will receive treble the weight in the competition for rank and speaking order.

RSVP is required for presenters but optional for attendees who wish merely to observe and learn.

Due to campus rules we must request that attendees submit to a weapons search upon arrival. We look forward to a history-making event!

Next Week: Clancy Makes It Up As He Goes Along

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Remote mine construction begins. The mining equipment is almost entirely assembled -- if all goes according to plan, Clancy can expect the bundled equipment to be shoved through the AionGate next Pulse and can anticipate seeing full production results in about two Pulses.

Query: Hedge

noun A row of closely planted shrubs or low-growing trees forming a fence or boundary.

noun A line of people or objects forming a barrier.

noun A means of protection or defense, especially against financial loss.

noun A securities transaction that reduces the risk on an existing investment position.

noun An intentionally noncommittal or ambiguous statement.

noun A word or phrase, such as “possibly” or “I think,” that mitigates or weakens the certainty of a statement.

intransitive verb To enclose or bound with or as if with hedges.

intransitive verb To hem in, hinder, or restrict with or as if with a hedge.

intransitive verb To minimize or protect against the loss of by counterbalancing one transaction, such as a bet, against another.

intransitive verb To plant or cultivate hedges.

intransitive verb To take compensatory measures so as to counterbalance possible loss.

intransitive verb To avoid making a clear, direct response or statement.

Xasis

Immediately upon arriving in the star system, the scout team is confronted with radio waves, missile lock, and a single, slow-moving incoming missile. Decoding the radio messages results in instructions to hold position and await arrival of the greeting platform. The team correctly deduces that this is the incoming missile, which unfolds to a flat square, marked with an eight-by-eight pattern of black-and-white tiles.

Holograms arise from the far edge of this plane, most cylindrical and uniform at their lower ends, then forming stylized persons at their upper end.

Greetings from the people of Xasis, says the second-tallest hologram. It glows extra-bright to indicate the speaker. The voice’s tones indicate a feminine gender.

Your presence here is not welcome. Our people have achieved perfect balance between all factions. The Game continues because it cannot be won and cannot be lost. Visitors from beyond the Aion Gates can only serve to disturb this arrangement to the detriment of all residents. This is not acceptable to us. Please depart in peace or, if you prefer, in pieces.

For your entertainment while you wait for the Gate to allow your departure, we provide this archaic copy of the ancestor-game, “Chass.” Its rules are quite simple. The tutorial can be accessed by touching any square. We add but one further rule: If you beat this archaic program, a radio link to the current High Queen will be provided.

The rules of the game call for players to make simultaneous moves, with each piece constrained to unique movement patterns. The game ends when one or both players are left with no legal move. Winning only occurs if both players have no legal moves.

The team divides labor. One whale plays Chass while the others conduct thorough scans of the star system. It’s strange. A large, complex system of heavily armed defensive satellites swirls around three modestly-sized rocky worlds, but there appears to be no space travel. No nuclear fusion or fission signatures show up on scans. No electrical systems appear active on the planetary surfaces. On the night side of planets, the only visible sources of light are combustion reactions.

Toward the end of the Pulse, the whale playing Chass finally “wins” by creating a tie game… only to have the board shift shape to a hexagon with three colors of triangle and three teams. Again, the rules specify how pieces must move, and winning requires bringing all teams to a simultaneous standoff.

Next Week: An Afternoon Map

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Showing surprising personal growth, Prince Fingarr takes up a form of therapy that really works for him. Specifically, he spends his mornings screaming at recruits, his afternoons reviewing defense contract proposals and his evenings doing watercolor paintings or writing in his personal journal.

The Whalenese Defense Force takes shape as an actual military force, and after much deliberation and -- incredibly -- turning down a small bribe, Prince Fingarr settles on a Fleet Carrier solution that isn’t entirely satisfying. His largest recruit, a baleen whale named Bertha, wears an enormous bullet proof vest with a propulsive anti-gravity belt and bandolier-like loops that Fingarr’s orcas and dolphins tuck into for Gate travel. The overall effect looks something like a jumbo jet wearing a suicide vest. Fingarr’s made many unkind comments about Bertha’s weight -- she’ll need to gain a lot of it to achieve the Prince’s vision of holding the team in her gullet. Bertha takes the criticism with grim determination and seems committed in principle to doubling her size.

At any rate, the Fleet is assembled. They could be sent through the Gate immediately, if Clancy so chooses.

Fingarr himself is notably more relaxed. Whether it’s the watercolors or the knowledge that the homeworld can defend itself against attack… unclear?

Here the Sirens Wail, or Hear the Sirens’ Whale?

Clancy sends a trio of dolphins with a food packet to join the gang in Betamax. This is their report:

Those guys on the inside -- are you sure they’re your best people? They seemed to think we should charge straight in to deliver the food and go explore the “barracks”. I know misery loves company, but we’re not dumb. We shoved the food through and stayed outside to see whether we could disable the force fields or work out how guards got in and out. There are nine rings here -- roughly half of them are generating monodirectional force fields, but no clue what the third, the fourth, or the eighth are doing unless they’re here for aesthetics or like, to whack you away from other rings? The guys inside got bored waiting and went off to “explore” the salty wet world they mentioned in the last report.

Meanwhile we noticed that the spinning ring things had inscriptions. With a few well-timed backflips we got steady still images. The auto-translator chimed in with an old language apparently used by a lot of fish races. The signage reads: Second-Best Prison for Re-Schooling of Exceptionally Dangerous Thought-Criminals. And then further in: All Who Hear the Sirens Wail Have Passed Beyond Redemption.

We radioed the guys inside to see if maybe there were other inscriptions around. And well… here’s their report.

Report from the Inside:

We went to explore the wet world and got the feeling that instead… it was exploring us. You know when you dive down and your eardrums pop and then you can hear everything for miles? It was like that. Just suddenly… boom, fish speaking directly into our minds. These fish are the descendants of political prisoners. Super-friendly dudes persecuted for um, believing in free love and the abolition of personal property and I... we should help them out. It’s super important to shatter the third, fourth, and eighth field-generator rings. I can never feel fulfilled in my romantic relationships until that occurs.

You know when you’re like, meditating and then you catch yourself thinking about thinking and you try to quell the layer that’s like, monitoring your thinking but then you just get really focused on avoiding thinking about the fish hidden inside your mouth with intent to hijack your friends minds when the evil quantum interference field goes down? I’m meditating real hard on that to avoid blurting it out loud. I’m a good meditator. I will be rewarded. As soon as those pesky quantum field rings are shattered, I will be renowned as the most desirable mate in all of time and space. Yes. That makes sense.

I see that my friends have understood me and I experience intense pleasure. I believe they will definitely return next Pulse with heavy weaponry to do that thing I have asked them to do. Hooray.

Next Week: Reports from Foreign Worlds

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In his own eccentric fashion Blubber Gump has been planning a solo mission to seek his missing relation. This included several deep dives to consult the AI about orbital mechanics, attempting to calculate the last known trajectory followed by B.T. Shoreman, the better to predict his destination system.

He’s pleased to see teams working on the problem of locating his lost relative. He promises to double local production of ores. On the other hand, double zero is… not a lot. Gump’s ore production solution is brute force. It involves immediate application of his new orbital mechanics knowledge base. Gump travels personally to the edges of Erinne Prime’s star system -- at his own expense -- to shove bits of Ga-ga-ga-ravel into arcs that intersect with EeeeeeeyyyoooooeeeeeeyaaaaaowwwwwwwWWWWw. Done properly, this will put the rocks into elliptical orbits around the Space Whale homeworld, where they’ll be super-easy to harvest. Done a bit wrong it will rain hot meteors into the sky and sea. Gump promises to limit the size of individual rocks and it looks like he’s following through on that promise.

Anyway, nothing to worry about, definitely no potential for causing mass extinction. Ore harvests should be marginally higher but the yield may vary widely from one Pulse to the next. Blubber Gump can’t shove rocks around and run out to chase Shoreman around the galaxy, so Clancy has that going for him, which is nice.

A Flonking Good Time

Clancy sends shipments of Ice to Flonk along with recipes for some of his favorite cocktails, only one of which calls for a lemon wrapped around a gold brick. Unsurprisingly, there’s no shortage of volunteers for this line of duty. Those who passed around the red anemone for a taste of its pleasant tingly sting are particularly eager.

Next Week: Whale Defense Force

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Princess Preach’s Whirled Tour wraps up with packed crowds and gushing reviews. She sashays into Clancy’s home pool with unprecedented approval ratings that wash over somewhat to Clancy himself.

The Princess herself is pleased with the tour, but also worried about how to surpass it. She thinks she might want to explore the universe of music beyond the AionGates, looking for new sounds and a sexy-ass alien band that can keep up with her white-hot lyric-spitting bubblegum pop. Princess Preach and the Band of Adventurers has such a ring to it, you know? And what if they like, all had horns? We could probably glue horns on aliens and no one would know, but real ones would be so fab.

Imagine topping the charts in multiple star systems. That would be really something!

Whale Trail

Investigators seeking Billiam start out skeptical that they can locate a single whale in the vastness of space beyond the Aion Gates. However, they go through due diligence in calculating Shoreman’s trajectory when last viewed, making a best-guess determination that the youngster traveled toward Betamax or the star beyond it. Plainly if he had gone to Betamax, he’d still be there, so… they examine imagery of the star systems beyond Betamax. The yellow star southeast shows nothing notable, but the imagery of the unconventional system between Betamax and Gratton shows a streaky texture at first thought to be a fault in the photographic equipment. More intensive analysis suggests it’s actually swirling particulate matter, like a sneeze the size of a solar system. Literally. It’s water crystals mixed with organic and metallic substances, and the individual particles are smaller than the camera’s resolution. The streaks show places where something -- possibly several somethings -- traveled through the system, leaving swirls in its wake. It’s highly plausible that the object that made this path was the same size, shape, and mass as Billiam T. Shoreman.

Based on this evidence, the investigators jump to the streaky star system. What they discover there is mind-bending. They debate whether it is a white hole or some other phenomenon, among the team they end up calling it “the rift,” and the star system Ryft. Whatever the rift is, it spins rapidly and sprays tiny droplets and grains of sand out across this area. The effect is something like fog. It’s difficult to scan anything in this star system. It does not appear to have planets. Almost as a side note, the team imagines how easy it would be to scoop sand out of this area -- it’s low-density but seems like easy pickings.

The team broadcasts loud radio blasts during the interval when the Gates are closed, and sticks close to the Gates during the window when they are open, capturing photographs to the best of their ability. These aren’t as good as they would be from the homeworld, but they get lucky -- they snap a shot of Billiam T Shoreman entering the AionGate between the two blue stars southwest of Ryft.

The catch: the destination star system shows obvious signs of active space travel, including flashes that look like gunfire from small fighters. A chunky, angular rocket has entered the Aion Gate from this star system and appears to be headed straight for Ryft. The investigation team can stay put, make the jump to catch up with Billiam, retreat to Erinne Prime, or move to any other star system within two hexes.

Next Week: Blubber Gump Seeks Some Answers

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Erm, next up let’s talk Flonk. We should send someone – maybe Jeff? – with a nice big chunk of Ice to spread around. Call it 10 Ice. Spend it like, well, like water, see if we can’t influence the masses of Flonk. I would like them to flonk out with some ice, if you catch my drift. Ride the chill wave. We’re hip, we’re cool. Ok, we don’t have hips to write home about but they can flonk it, amirite?

There was something else I meant to do. Ah. The military. Yes, fix them up properly. What was it they asked for? 10 gas, 5 ice… Fine, fine. Go ahead and convert the merchant marine into a proper fleet. The AI is sure to have a field day with that project. I’m thinking massive spacefaring whales large enough to carry several orcas in their mouths. Nanomachine plating, built-in rainbow drives, hyperintelligent neuroptic accelerators. The works! Unfortunately, we’re a bit short on Ore so I expect the um, back of the napkin technical drawings with lots of shiny metal robot legs for all our warriors will have to wait.

Let’s go ahead and send a nice big gift of Ice to the Verbel system as well. Sounds like they need Ice badly. Hmm? What do you mean, we don’t have enough ships for – oh, yes, I see. I did turn quite a lot of them into merchant marines and then full military just now. Right. Postpone our push for popularity on Verbel.

I think we’d better investigate the whereabouts of Billiam T. Shore. Where’s Blubber? We’re gonna get your boy back. Pick your best whale and send them out with my blessing – but don’t pick yourself. I need you to stick around and advise on the economy. Never met a more opportunely intelligent whale, none of us have. People are always telling me, Blubber, he just seems to know what to do at the right times. Oh, don’t do that, you’ll make me cry too.

Okay, we have a couple more things here. We need a volunteer to go past Hedge to the red star system we can see beyond it. The nerd brigade is telling me they probably have Ore out there. We need that Ore for...things. So I’m told. Sometimes the advisors sing to me and I listen, but honestly they could just be me singing to my catfish, Delphine.

Speaking of Ore Shmore and good old Blubber, we need to shift production to Ore. That should get us a couple of Ore every pulse, enough to at least get in the swing of things. We start by building a swing. We can’t have colonies without colonists, and we can’t have colonists without families, and we can’t have families without children, and we can’t have children without schools, and we can’t have schools without playgrounds, and we can’t have playgrounds without slides. What was I saying?

Oh yes, Mining. We should establish mobile mining operations on that moon in Hedge. Spend the resources – what was it? Yes, sure. 2 Gas, 4 Ice, 2 Ores. What exactly is a hedge, anyway? Sebastian? Sebastian! What’s a hedge?

Messages sent this Pulse:

To Gusharr Gwinn

Please, feel free. Don’t mind Blubber. Let your leaders know that we’re more than happy to establish trade. Our ice for your ore?

Wishing you a stellar time,

Clancy

To Friends of Flonk,

Thank you! We are not personally acquainted with the sea monkeys but would love the opportunity to learn more. My liaison will be in your system for a while digging up information. Flonk is truly a fascinating place!

Yours in Flonkitude,

Clancy

Blasted to every system within range, in English (to sound erudite):

EeeeeeeyyyoooooeeeeeeyaaaaaowwwwwwwWWWWw in the system Erinne Prime is looking for alliance and trade. We want to learn more and find adventure.

Tck click ee ee’ee keeeeeEEEEE eeee!

Clancy

Next Week: A Princess’s Ambitions

Message From Verbel

The Verbel Tourism Bureau invites all and sundry to come experience the comforts that made Verbel renowned among the wealthy and elite for generations.

This message is sponsored by the Verbel Tourism Bureau

Message From Beyond Betamax

My name is Gusharr Gwinn and I desire to see all the worlds of the cosmos. I plan to arrive in your system within the next three Pulses and wish you to know I am only a tourist who means you no harm. I will take only photographs and leave only my ion wake. Peace be upon you.

Message From Flonk

It is evident your kind are relations of the sea-monkeys. Those here who know what you have done hope you enjoy your flonking. You do not know what you mist.

You should know that on the worlds of Flonk there is a saying: keep your friends close, and your anemones closer.

Let us be close!

Friends of Flonk.

Next Week: Prince Clancy Speaks!

There’s one Gas Giant here locally known as Zundarahara. It’s chilly and distant and nobody seems to go there unless they have to. The spacefaring operations in this system have the feel of a long-slumbering bureaucrat who, forced to actually do his job, takes out the resulting resentment on the customer.

At first it seemed like I would not be allowed to make planetfall on the water planet Wegabrega (motto: “See the Sea and Eat the Fish”) without paying a baffling set of fees. I applied unsuccessfully for a tourist visa, a sea permit and a C permit before giving up and hiring a licensed sherpa known as Tim the Tall to help navigate the difference between a vat tax (on containers), a vat tax (on added value) and a vatter tax (on pollution mitigation measures). Tim the Tall is green and stick-like, with a habit of standing very still. I thought at first that all Verbelers would be like him, but Tim explained that Wegabrega is home to many unique, bespoke biospheres.

The biospheres are hollow glass spheres as large or larger than whales. They float at neutral buoyancies in a complicated ever-shifting three-dimensional agglomeration below the slow-slopping waves of Wegabrega, one of many things that give the world a frothy, viscous feel. The world is sufficiently dense with biospheres that would be near-impossible for our kind to swim freely here, but trust me, this is undesirable in any case. Tim the Tall explained that Wegabrega was once a luxurious hub of high-and-mighty types; a galactic elite who could afford to funnel small fortunes into grand construction projects. Wegabrega’s major economy ran on entertainment and engineering -- the “sea of green” was about money as well as the native algaes and seaweeds. Along with the wealthy classes, a cadre of workers from all around the galaxy arrived, constructing their own habitations beneath the waves, often taking over luxury apartments that had fallen into disrepair, then making their own ingenious if hackneyed modifications.

Closure of the AionGates brought about a near-total collapse. Black humor and black flags dominated the green sea for a generation as former galactic business-peoples turned to piracy and cannibalism (motto: “Seize the Seas and Eat the Rich”). During this time, almost all the major biospheres were shattered, and their contents poured forth. We’re talking toxic, biological, electronic, shards of every known type of glass, microplastic and macroporcelain. It’s all in the water now and nobody’s bothered to clean it up.

For us, this presents an opportunity: Although nominally a water world, these people are unusually interested in obtaining sources of clean Ice, or better means of purifying it in situ. My initial judgment is that the high cost of vat, vat, vatter, and permit permissions, make trade in anything but Rare elements a non-starter. Theoretically possible, but stupid-expensive.

The personage to correspond with here is Lefthand Quinn, whom I understand to be the leader of the globally dominant pseudo-pirates.

Flonk: What the Flonk?

After a Pulse here in the Flonk system, many questions remain. Are there aliens? Yes, several varieties. Are there vampires? Allegedly. What’s a flonk? No one will tell me. You know or you don’t.

There’s a sport known as flonking, which a considerable portion of the population here follows with a religious fervor. It involves appending weights to the feet of multiple starfish-type creatures, placing bait at one end of a long course, and seeing who gets there first, with a time penalty for limbs removed en route and a bonus for competitor’s limbs eaten en route. Flonking is also an appropriate term for that dream you sometimes have where there’s a ravenous predator close behind you but suddenly the water turns thick and sticky and you can barely swim and also cannot breathe. Flonks is a slang word for “thanks,” and to flonk yourself is something not done in polite company, which I had to have explained to me. Don’t get too excited about this; whale fins sadly are not long enough to accomplish the deed.

There are three planets here:

Flink is the friendliest planet for our kind. It’s wet, it’s relatively warm (no ice caps!), and they serve a number of excellent cocktails in unfortunately small containers. Several intelligent species live here.

Kerflonk is the largest, the middle planet, mostly gas and overall an orange-brown color scheme. Untasteful. Did not visit

Flonkalonk is furthest from the sun, but is surrounded with thick, fat rings of large iceberg-like asteroids. Visited briefly to confirm hunch that these would be relatively easy to haul off whole. Could do a joint gas/ice mining operation here so easily that it’s odd no one has thought of this already.

Whatever a Flonk is, it can be found on each of these worlds and also in the iceberg rings. On the advice of my so-far favorite bartender on all of Flink, I’ve cooled off my inquiries about the Flonk. “You go looking for the Flonk, they gonna come find you,” he told me, “You go in with the Flonk, you don’t come out, you see? Like a little fish in the anemones. Pow-pow-pow, you paralyzed, you dead, you never seen what hit you, you never tip no bartender no more. Sad day.”

The bartender is from a race shaped like more or less like manta rays, and is one of only a few creatures here that grow anything close to our size. The manta-men, some types of turtle, and a hard-beaked species like the parrotfish back home make up the major races capable of carrying out a conversation suitable for a polite dinner party. There is one mammalian race here known as the sea monkeys. These are -- like us -- air breathers who show the occasional burst of intelligence, usually in the form of stealing food. They tend to make their homes in the branches of red anemones the size of… well, the size of me. The sting of these anemones is death to most species, but for the monkeys it induces a pleasant high with aphrodisiac properties. The most common answer to “what is a flonk” is “ask a sea monkey, they’ll show you any time.” I can only assume that this is a reference to the monkey’s favorite pastime. I managed to very carefully obtain a small (young?) red anemone to bring home with me for *ahem* research purposes.

So in short, this star system has promising ice/gas prospects, looks like a place we could make some wet-world friends with other species, and might have interesting pharmacopeia. Standing by to make a jump or remain here at Flonk.

P.S. One more thing here: The local terminology for leaders around here is “Prime.” So like, you can write to the Turtle Prime, to Manta-Man Prime, to Parrotfish Prime and folks here will know who you mean. Or I guess to Sea Monkey Prime or Flonk Prime?

P.P.S. I forgot: vampires. Lots of stories about those, all with the feel of folklore. Young person disobeys mother, goes into spooky jungle, misty kelp, silty anemone forest, or whatever. Their bloodless body washes home with the next tide.

Next Week: Message me, bro

Hedge: Mine In Mind

Mission report from Hedge:

Good news and bad news boss. Oh, and also ugly news. We’ll start with the good.

There’s a rocky moon here just begging for a mine. It’s pretty pock-marked already and like, we’re ninety percent sure it’s been mined a bit before. The thing is small enough that a kickass antigrav engine could yeet chunks of stone off-world -- chewing up the rock in the first place is gonna take some brute force but we’re fairly sure it’s manageable. With plenty of water and ice on the planet below, we even have a fairly safe spot to duck and cover if things get dicey or like, the original miners show up.

Bad news is some orbital mechanics. This beautiful ocean world is on a stupidly long elliptical orbit. So right now it’s just about as warm down there as it’s gonna be for say, the next hundred and twenty-seven years? If things were otherwise, we’d say boogey down and build a colony, but even old man Blubber Gump is gonna feel the chill all the way to his bones.

Finally, the ugly. Specifically, there are some bros down on top of the ice, and they’re just about as hideous as you can imagine. They’re about the size of a baby dolphin, with beady little eyes on the front of their faces, and absolutely not a single tail among them. They wrap dead skins around each other and talk in these dinky voices that took us a while to make out.

They call the moon Pitts, and they believe their world is one big level ocean, carrying different ice plateaus that they call Bergs. They’re nomads with pack animals about the size of a healthy beluga, which they call porkers.

Real mind-blower: these guys have fire, but not a single transistor radio. Wild. We donated one to their tribe chief so you can send him a message. Our call was like, there’s no way these guys get the picture that their moon could be mined, so why loop them in and create drama?

Anywho, unless otherwise instructed, next stop is the red star connected to this system -- looks like there’s a hint of a rocky world out there. There’s a couple more stars beyond that with promising planets for Ore production -- marked em with little red dots on the attached map update. Could try a double-distance jump to reach one of those if you prefer.

Betamax: Beta-Locked

You’re not going to like this, but I think we’re stuck here.

There’s a thing like a multi-ring swinging-round chaotic-motion thing that’s hung in space around the AionGate. It’s all nested circles that spin around the Gate, so each ring sweeps a sphere around the Gate. We came out of the gate inside it and were like, yo, bro, there is definitely a civilization here that enjoys wasting money on useless public art. Our bad.

It’s some kind of prison colony. Very obvious now that we ducked through the moving rings and had a look around at the various worlds out here. There are like, guard emplacements with mondo gun turrets around the ring, and the penny dropped when we realized there’s a reason they ain’t pointed at the gate. A quick poke affirmed that we’d crossed through multiple layers of one-way forcefields -- every ring is a force layer set up to stop people getting out of the system, not getting in.

We worried about that a bit but then were like, ok we came here with a job to do so let’s get that done and at least have something to report when we gotta call home asking for help, maybe we can even find a way to do a prison break.

Here’s what we’ve got:

1 water-world, smaller than home. The ocean has a bunch of fish in it, some seaweed, and salt levels higher than we usually care to bathe in but like, tolerable, you know? So far as we could tell, nothing intelligent, and no AI you can call on to order a decent bagel. We didn’t stick around all that long, so maybe we missed something.

1 gas giant. Tough to really say what all is going on there -- murky clouds, intense winds. Spectroscope turns up nothing special in terms of the available elements, but you could load the Gas from here straight into anything we use, no problem.

Finally, we’ve got these gun emplacements and what probably amounts to barracks. These are too small for us to get physically into, but from what we can tell they’re abandoned and pretty stripped down. The gun barrels appear to be welded into the actual asteroids they’re mounted on -- can’t promise that any of the fiddly bits that make it go pew-pew will be in there if we had a team dismantle them, but it does appear that at least the barrels themselves are made of some sort of extra-good alloy. We’d guess there’s about 1 Rare of material in the gun barrels, and best guess these forcefield rings are made of something similar. Not that we know how to dismantle them.

Let us know what you want done up in here, or like… how you plan on getting us out.

Next Week: What the Flonk

Prince Clancy’s insights are not far off. Two sips into teatime, Prince Fingarr breaks down. He’s a blubbering mess. The missus is missing. Well, not so much missing as told him she was leaving him for a younger more virile bachelor with an exciting Saltan-Sea accent.

Clancy firmly declines Prince Fingarr’s half-hopeful request to “test the new weaponry” on a few hand-picked Saltan-Sea residents, but encourages Prince Fingarr to “really whip those recruits into shape,” and hopes that the orca’s displaced aggression can be channeled into productive uses.

According to a subsequent report: “For the time being the Defense Force is successfully organized as a Merchant Marine, with an ongoing cost of 2 units of Gas per Pulse. Say the word (and authorize the budget spend of 10 Gas 5 Ice) and we will convert the Defense Force into an expedition-capable military Fleet. This would fully convert it to a military unit, make it eligible for upgrades, and eliminate upkeep costs incurred by its ad-hoc status.”

Mining Options

The distant Ga-ga-ga-ravel rocks hold somewhat more interest now that there’s a demand for Ore. On the other hand, it’s wickedly inconvenient, so establishing mining somewhere beyond Erinne Prime is likely to be more efficient per unit of investment. Sebastian works up a couple options for establishing mining operations:

Gravel Mines -- a local-but-long-distance operation. It will cost us 4 Ice and 2 Ores to get going, but once it gets going it is expected to chew up asteroids slightly faster than they can be hauled away. The consequence would be that Clancy can obtain up to 2 Ores per Pulse, but has to pay for it in Gas at a 2 Gas to 1 Ore ratio. It’s better than nothing, but… not a lot.

Mobile Mining Unit -- exact same equipment, only this time packaged in such a way that it can be shoved through the AionGate and deployed on other people’s rocks. It would only be compatible with asteroids and moons so tiny that the gravity is negligible. 2 Gas, 4 Ice, 2 Ores.

Slow-Start Planetary Mining -- this plan recognizes that you need Ore to make Ore, and ingeniously sets up the very minimum set of equipment needed to start extraction and then ramp up production using initial returns. The result is an ore-cheap startup cost in exchange for a longer wait until it becomes productive. Building this rig costs 2 Gas, 6 Ice, 1 Ore and 1 Rare, requires a follower for the first 2 Pulses, and only starts contributing Ore to the economy after 4 Pulses. Suitable for planetary surfaces.

Missing Shoreman

Bill T. Shoreman Jr. doesn’t show up in any of the scout’s reports -- nobody’s so much as seen him. Blubber Gump gets a bit bent out of shape at the lack of progress and says he’ll go out looking for the kid himself next Pulse unless he sees some sort of actual action.

Next Week: Scouting Reports!

Prince Clancy’s investigation into Sebastian starts by confirming with the very oldest whales that Sebastian has indeed been around for as long as any can remember. He’s always been snappish, gruff, and close-mouthed about his exact origins. Now and again he’s dropped into conversations some offhand or incomprehensible reference to past hijinks on other worlds, where the sun was hotter or the food was spicier or the local residents were green and frilly.

Whenever Sebastian seems uncomfortable he retreats to the deep dark depths where he makes his home at the outlet of a thermal vent. He talks sometimes in his fleeting good moods about how life is better and wetter down there. Visits to Sebastian’s home are impossible when he’s present. He backs himself into a hole and throws starfish, sea urchins and clams at any interlopers.

A discreet visit when he’s gone reveals the thermal vent is definitively not a geothermal phenomenon. Why anyone ever thought it would be geothermal is baffling. The Space Whales have a rough notion of plate tectonics and hot lava underground somewhere. But every independent investigation indicates that aside from a few imperfections here and there, the core of Eyoeyaow is solid diamond, through and through. Lava doesn’t come into it.

The whale investigating this (Jeffery Flipperkin) finds it difficult to ponder this while holding his breath and approaching the thermal vent. Other thoughts keep intruding like “Can a whale be boiled alive?” Attempting to overcome his fears with sheer speed, he swims directly into the vent itself and immediately discovers a medical condition previously unknown to cetaceans: the concussion. Half stunned, he floats belly-up to the surface and receives first aid from… Sebastian.

“Yeah,” says Sebastian, with typically brusque bedside manner, “I’m made of metal and live in the vents of a liquid-cooled artificial intelligence machine. Side effects include brains big enough to, you know, not swim directly into force-shields you great big chicken-of-the-sea.” Sebastian is then obliged to describe what a chicken even is. Sebastian either has considerable experience off-world, or has become so saturated with excess intellect from the AI that he can no longer distinguish his own experiences from the machine’s.

(Just so you know, boss… investigating the AI directly would require assigning personnel more talented than Jeffrey or his peers.)

Next Week: One Defensive Orca

Prince Clancy Speaks

Thank you, team, for indulging me with this bubble bath. It helps me think, it really does. And I think, now that I’m thinking, that we spend some time investigating Sebastian. He seems fishy to me, with his stories about these gates in spite of civilization being younger than he is. What is he, a robot? Or a lying liar who lies!?

Fellows, the bubbles have gone thin. Oh, you’re out of breath. Yes of course, go up to the surface and have yourself some nice big breaths. I’m not trying to suffocate you, chaps, I’m simply trying to think straight now that it seems people can punch in and out through the fabric of space and time like some sort of teenage lovers breaching the surface to impress each other. And yes, Francois, I am looking at you. Don’t blush, we were all young once.

Anyhow, I am thinking we should Assemble something like a Whaleanese Self Defense Force under Prince Fingarr’s command. He wants one, and it turns out we could probably use one. But before we do, we’ll need to sit him down with a nice strong cup of tea and just, you know listen. It sounds like maybe he has some things going on at home he needs to get off his chest. Best to know how much of his deal is a reaction to problems with the missus and how much is protecting the world from aggressive aliens who want us all dead. Right. Put it on my calendar. I don’t know. Tuesday? Yeah, the day Jesse invented. It keeps Monday and Friday apart. He what? No, I shouldn’t think we need more than one day for that purpose. Well, tell Jesse we’re cutting off his grant money if he goes banging on about further expanding the calendar.

Oh! Scouts! I have a hunch Sebastian is right about needing Ore to make any advances in technology. Send out, I dunno, three or four of them I should think. The hope is that scouts can forge some intragalactic relations and we can start trading and building influence. But I would also be happy finding any uninhabited systems and settling in for a time. Tell all the scouts to return in 2 pulses, but let’s plan for them to spend some time actually in the systems they visit to establish diplomatic relations or game nights or something.

Let’s see, there was one more thing. Yes, gentlemen, more bubbles, just a touch more, I promise I’ve almost finished.

Right. Speaking of advances in technology, let’s do some technology research with help from our friendly neighborhood AI. I’m thinking some mining technology. But first we’ll need some ore, but first we’ll need mining technology, but first we’ll need ore....oh dear. What say we hire the best minds in Erinne Prime to sort it out.

Next Week: Deep Dive on Sebastian

Material Benefits

Sebastian says Clancy’s top priority now should be reaching for the stars. “Kid,” he says, “You could do a helluva lot more research here but you don’t got the stones.” What he means is, Space Whale technologies have until now been limited by the paucity of local resources -- Ores and Rare Elements are scarce. Those that can be recovered within Erinne Prime’s orbits are expensive. Sebastian asserts that he could do more -- much more -- if he had access to these resources. At the same time, he urges caution. “It’s dangerous out there,” he says, “Send other people. Or better yet, other people’s people.”

Tick, Tick, Tick

Somewhere deep in the sea, something has begun to make an intermittent clicking sound. Whatever it is, it’s big.

Next Week: Prince Clancy Speaks

• Leader: Clancy the Serendipitous happens to be a narwhal. He arrived slightly late to the original Whale Constitutional Convention that occurred on the particular Thursday when civilization was hashed out. Through this fortuitous timing, he was not yet aligned with any faction in the bitterly-divided “work half days” or “three-day weekends” debate that nearly broke the convention. Each of the Founding Flippers having by then concluded that governing would be a real shit sandwich (invented on the previous day in one of Blubber Gump’s less successful experiments) the Convention voted unanimously to appoint Clancy as head of government, and suspended the meeting for brunch with intention to reconvene. As any governance nerd will burble happily about for hours, the Long Brunch is still ongoing and the Constitutional Convention technically remains in session. Such nerds will with equal happiness roll out the oft-debated and extremely witty question of whether Clancy was late on porpoise. (Be warned that in many jurisdictions this joke was made so frequently that it has been criminalized with a penalty of three days in whale jail.)

• Cultural Advisor: Princess Preach A clear-voiced cultural star with brains to back up her booty. Ahem. Beauty. Princess Preach is a fellow narwhal on a k-pop style mission to “make the uplift uplifting,” which is less about inspiration and more about bubbly bedroom innuendo. She sings, she swings, she makes a damn fine broadcast and regularly guest-stars on Bayleenwatch, a show in which scantily clad whales stage daring land rescues. She is the most recent addition to the advisory council, and the only one actively popular with the public. Her official title is “Grand Stan.”

• Economic Advisor: Blubber Gump. He’s trying, folks. He’s trying. Blubber Gump came up as a krill farmer and knows the tricks of that trade but frankly struggles with many other aspects of life. He is an enormous, ponderous uplifted blue whale, older than most. His brilliance mainly comes in the form of dogged persistence and learning by trial and error. Once he knows something he knows it, but the insertion of new concepts takes him time. His official title is “Contract Caterer.”

• Science Advisor: Sebastian the Crabby is old as the hills. He remembers prior times when the Gates were open and functional. His mood is generally foul any time he is drawn away from his deep-sea home on the brink of thermal vents. He complains that if he stays away too long, vegetation and molluscs will accumulate around the vents until he can hardly hear himself think. His official title is “Knower of Things.”

• Military Advisor: Prince, Fingarr Prince is an orca whale that actually deserves to be called “killer.” He is charged with keeping the peace as society advances and eagerly volunteers to compose a military force for defense of the homesea against “wackjobs and criminal types coming here to take our stuff.” No evidence that any such exist is yet available. His official title is “Keeper of Peace and Pieces.” While he’s not the person you’d look to for brilliant concepts, he gets his team to implement the hell out of the plans they do hatch.

Whirled Tour

Princess Preach’s new album, Kriller Queen, has just hit the waves, and she is making an eleven-ocean tour, synth-singing her heart out to sold-out shoals. Unless she is recalled or replaced, Prince Clancy must function without his cultural advisor. The most recent time Princess Preach cancelled a show, her fans burned down a kelp forest, which should not even be possible. Prince Clancy could recall her to the office, but there would be consequences.

Dolphins and orcas represent the law enforcement class of bioengineered citizens. Physically they are smaller and swifter than the filter feeders. Space travelers from toothed whale families tend to be xtreme sports types, and have invented null-g rugby suitable for play by an arbitrary number of teams (N). It resembles the galactic sport known as Calvinball. The most effective strategy for scoring points is to perform an end-run around the existing rules.

Farmers tend to be of the filter feeder species. “Service sector” citizens are a mixed bag--no one is beholden to their genetics but most prefer the lifestyles they had evolved for and been genetically engineered to epitomize. Space travelers from baleen whale families tend to be either chillaxed surfer bros or enormous, oddly zen gas-harvesters who simply enjoy contemplating the enormity of space.

For some, fighting genetics to master trades ill-suited to their body types is profoundly satisfying. Consensus among most citizens is that they’re happier doing what they know they’re good at. As the heavily subsidized wisdom of Big Nacho adverts persistently remind the populace: “I’m happy for you to over-achieve, and I’m just as happy over a cheese.”

Space Whales tend to travel in familial pods, with pubescent males leaving their home pod as they come of age, run in gangs, experiment with drugs, get themselves into trouble and either die or fall in love. While in the gangs, they do not readily distinguish between these fates.

The space whales are trilingual, and use each language for different purposes.

• Whalesong has a primal resonance akin to human bass drumming; it is used for moments of profound sadness, utter joy, and electronic dance parties. It is the preferred language of farmers.

• Fastspeak is the language of the business professional. It uses whistles, clicks and the higher frequencies of whale’s auditory regime to convey massive volumes of information with incredible speed. Its acoustic qualities are similar to simultaneous use of four jackhammers, two tin whistles and human nails on a slate chalkboard. It is the preferred language of tryhard assholes and dedicated bureaucrats.

• English derives from the Ancient Archives and is the language of artists and scientists. Scientists assert that it enables great precision and is useful for thinking in abstractions; artists assert that it is a delightful garden of vagueness and subtle nuance.

The highest art form in Space Whale culture is the trilingual pun; entire holograph channels are devoted to news coverage of newly-discovered puns and heated debate over where historic puns rank on the scale of all-time hilarity, ingenuity, and scatology.

Remedial Geography

Yes, your Middleness, you are correct in recalling that you snoozed through most of your geography, astrography, and historiography lessons (afternoon class, warm lagoon, no need to say more). Here’s the basics in a clamshell.

The Space Whales are one of the galaxy’s newest civilizations. It’s as if one morning they woke up, noshed on a few tons of krill, looked at one another and said “Right then, let’s call this Thursday. If we invent global society today and electronic technologies by tomorrow afternoon, we can get round to alcohol and karaoke by Friday evening, spend a couple days on hangover cures and then start next week with discovering space and manipulating gravity.”

To the absolute astonishment of several generations of herring, this more or less worked. In a series of technological and sociological leaps, the whales invented telecommunications, genetic enhancements, interplanetary travel, and fire, in that order. With relatively small population, abundance and peace were easily attained and maintained, ecological harmony stabilized, and miscegenation between toothed and baleen whales invented, decriminalized and then re-criminalized because everyone agreed that was part of what made it a satisfying kink.

In short, this is a society enjoying long, utopian, blissful years. Visits to the other planets in the Erinne Prime system have turned up nothing especially useful. Up to now, space travel has been an entertainment akin to surfing, but isn’t viewed as a “serious person” pursuit. There is however a niche market for exotic gravels and harvested gasses used to make after-dinner cocktails more intriguing.

Speaking of other planets, we should list them.

• Erinne Prime (a known name from the archives) is the local star. It’s ordinary and yellow.

• EeeeeeeyyyoooooeeeeeeyaaaaaowwwwwwwWWWWw is made almost entirely of water. It has polar ice caps and a high-pressure ice core with some bits of gravel lodged in it. It is slightly larger than Earth, and nonetheless is a moon in orbit around gas giant Bababawooooo-squik. Gravitational flexing heats EeeeeeeyyyoooooeeeeeeyaaaaaowwwwwwwWWWWw somewhat and compensates for the long nights when it passes through Bababawooooo-squik’s shadow.

• Bababawooooo-squik is a gas giant somewhat larger than Jupiter. It has no rings and a single moon.

• Ga-ga-ga-ga-ravel is a belt of rocky asteroids that rings the farthest edge of the Erinne Prime system. This name is a triple pun meaning roughly, “a dozen indulgent sweet snacks I ate secretly in the night,” “the level of scientific breakthrough that makes one joyfully expect an award,” and “a bunch of small and worthless rocks.” This pun is certified as the work of Swarooon the Magnificent, based on the astronomical observations of Alfred Oxler the Third. Alfred Oxler the Third subsequently died of embarrassment for failing to come up with the pun himself, and was posthumously awarded the Ravel Prize.

• The AionGate is located between Bababawooooo-squik and Erinne Prime. Prior to the recent reopening of the Gates, the Space Whales were aware of the Gate’s existence only as knowledge from the Archives, not as lived experience.

Next week: More persons, puns, and things.

Clancy the Serendipitous, Narwhal Prince of the Eleven Seas, rules from the middle as a general rule. He swims in the middle layers of the sixth sea where it’s not too hot and not too chill but the specific middle he generally rules from is his considerable gut. Upon this day it rumbles, not the way that it does when proximity-blasted with music’s latest development (electrofunk), but in the way that it does when recently consumed krill remain disagreeably alive inside of him.

Thus it is no particular surprise to Prince Clancy that when news arrives it is troubling. Sebastian the Crabby, the Prince’s Principal Knower of Things, rides a bubble up from his netherworld dwelling and announces that the blasted AionGates are open again. Sebastian has spoken of the Gates before, explaining them as sort of blow-holes in the ocean of space-time. At regular intervals they open, allowing passage from one star’s realm to another’s. For all Prince Clancy’s life, space-time has been dead, or holding its breath. Until now.

Flash Cordon

Without waiting for Clancy’s say-so, Prince Fingarr (Keeper of Peace and Pieces) declares that he has direct authority over who can and cannot pass through the Gate. He begins deputizing Orcas and pods of porpoises for the purpose of patrolling the space immediately around the Gate. At the same time, he demands more gravitic drives with which to conduct operations. Also, fuel.

Local Locales

Sebastian the Crabby explains to His Serendipity -- for the eighteenth time -- that EeeeeeeyyyoooooeeeeeeyaaaaaowwwwwwwWWWWw is a gas giant planet with a watery sea wrapped around a hard crystalline core, all of which is in orbit around a yellow star known as Erinne Prime. This is nothing special, since there are many such stars connected through the PulseGate network. Back in his younger days, Sebastian traveled through several systems. He didactically points one leg after another at a holographic map projected helpfully into the swirling seawater.

• Erinne Prime has an AionGate that connects to three star systems:

• Flonk has a yellow star, two gas giants and one wet ocean world considerably smaller than Eyoeyaow.

• Betamax has a yellow star, one gas giant and one wet ocean world, considerably smaller than Eyoeyaow.

• Hedge has a yellow star and a single wet ocean world smaller than Eyoeyaow, coated in ice and orbited by a small rocky moon.

Further star systems can be visually observed through the Gate, with a few visible details noted. Of these Sebastian can only put a name to one: Verbel, which in prior times had gained a reputation for ambitious engineers and late-night comedians.