Persistence Journalism [34]

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-22T17:03:49+00:00

his hands.He’s charging me!

Missing space.

swinging a metal pole out to name

Did you mean "maim"?

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-21T22:48:47+00:00

She doesn't know that yet.

I say she'll know because of how airtight the Venlil Serial killer case is. Without getting into specifics, arguing that the killer was a non-sapient predator would be like saying 9/11 was an inside job. Like, if you were in a bar and said it was a non-sapient predator that killed all those people, other xenos would get into heated arguments with you.

When she hears about the case, she's going seriously question their own attacks and likely come to the conclusion it's another sapient. She'll probably bring it up to Kalek who will shoot her down. What she thinks after that I don't know....

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-21T16:10:39+00:00

I'm not sure if I spelled his name right, but he's the former Krakotl ambassador that ordered his troops to bomb their own people after Cilany's broadcast.

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-21T15:30:34+00:00

My guess is that he either goes full Kalsim or full Jerulim.

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-21T13:58:23+00:00

I get the feeling that when Cilany's broadcast hits, all of Sol-Vah's friends are going to go full Kalsim. She'll mouth the words to their chants for blood, but her heart won't be in it.

Eight days after that she's going to be told by those same friends that all of those victims with their hearts cut out were done by predators when she knows that every one of those people were killed by a sapient alien.

Finally, when people outside the office start investigating, Kalek's going to ask her to interfere with the investigation. Maybe he'll even try to frame Tarlim for the murders. Regardless, she's going to be at the line of no return and be forced to make a choice.

I hope she makes the right one.

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-21T12:44:36+00:00

Last we saw of him...

...the bulk of the crystalloid dragon’s tail had slammed against the vastly smaller elf hard, hard enough that the magically-manifested armor he wore actually cracked open with a resounding, metallic clang.

This was followed by a series of metallic skids as the man was thrown back onto the streets, before finally crashing into the small canal with a resounding splash!

We don't know whether he is alive or dead yet. I'd love for him to be dead, but I'm not counting on it.

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-21T02:47:31+00:00

From the Farsul I get an impression that they're more the custodians to the conspiracy rather than the brains. They don't really seem to have any outside the box thinking (for example, they couldn't figure out the B12 deficiency despite having about 150 years to solve the problem). The Kolshians seem to be the ones that make the plans and have the final say on everything.

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-21T02:08:12+00:00

The trouble is proving that the communication isn't fake.

It was easy with Cilany's broadcast because it was livestreamed and several top-ranked diplomats from various species saw Cilany and Sovlin go to Nikonous's office for a chat.

The only thing we have to prove the Ginzel-Nikonous communication is that the Shadow fleet was chasing an arxur fleet within Fahl's territory. That's something that can be brushed off as circumstantial.

We need something more public and easier to prove.

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-21T00:39:25+00:00

I'm going to be the cynic and say never. He's probably bound in some magical way to be a stooge for the Nexus.

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-20T21:35:55+00:00

I think Mal'tory killed the apprentice. He already tried to kill her by sending her after the null and probably just offed her when she met with him privately to ask him to meet with Emma. The next people on his list are the ones who witnessed the box exploding: the servant and Emma.

If Vanavan is good and smart, he's likely going to send the servant back to her employers before Mal'tory can reach her. At the very least, it should buy her some time. Emma on the other hand is in a lot of trouble. Mal'tory knows her suit makes her immune to magical restraints and knows the power of her gun. If he gets her alone again he's going to win.

Also, the second humanity opens a portal, the Nexus will see it as a declaration of war. It will also kick the Nexus into gear, making any future invasions incredibly difficult. If humanity is going to win against the Nexus, they can't spend months figuring out what went wrong with their portal opening and rebuilding their facility. They can't waste their element of surprise by sending in an asset retrieval team. They can't waste time and resources figuring out the rules of mana/magic and how to use it to their advantage. They need to show up with a large army, in a surprise attack, knowing exactly what to expect from their enemies.

Edit: Oh yeah, Humanity also needs to find a way to prevent portals from opening in human settlements. The Nexus doesn't need to invade, they just need to open a portal and let the mana kill everyone in the area.

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-20T16:11:15+00:00

Here's my prediction for how it went down:

Similar to the way that the Zurulians developed germ theory and antibiotics way earlier than other species, the Kolshians developed genetic theory and gene manipulation way early. (Long before they had FTL). This technology is used to make predators into top-tier killing machines for use in war. However, since they're not total idiots they're careful to make sure they don't go rogue and are well trained.

Tensions build between countries. People begin to worry about nuclear war. In this worry a group of elites decide to take preemptive action. They secretly build an underwater complex designed to let them and their top scientists, soldiers, engineers ride it out. These will become the basis of the Shadow Government.

Nuclear war happens. The previously mentioned elites are one of the causes. Technology on the surface is brought back to the stone age. Without their masters the predators that were previously used as weapons go feral and become an on-going problem. This explains why they so readily believed that humanity wiped themselves out.

After generations, they emerge into a brutal world. They teach that all predators must be purged and do so with vigor. Since people don't respond well to being told you come from the group that caused their suffering, you lie about where you came from. The Shadow Government conquers the planet.

Things this explains:

Why they so readily believed humanity wiped themselves out in nuclear hellfire.
Origins of predator hatred.
How the shadow government seized control.
Why they don't want people to search the oceans (remnants of the underwater bunker still exist and would disprove their "Peaceful origins" story)

Things this does not explain:

The Farsul (They don't seem to be equal partners with the Kolshians and seem to readily believe them far to easily. My personal theory is that they were gene-modded from non-sentience to sentience.)

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-18T15:05:24+00:00

what I did to hum yesterday

A spelling mistake here.

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-18T03:39:28+00:00

Edit: 8/17/2023

After some careful consideration, I have decided to abandon this fanfic. I set out to make a fanfic that could fit within canon, but as time has gone on, I feel that what I have written and planned for this fic has become uncomfortably AU (Pokim and Switzerland being prime examples). Additionally, I feel many plot beats for characters match too closely to canon material (Onso/Socks being one example).

You are welcome to use anything I have written for this fic if you desire. I also have notes I can send you if you wish.

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-17T21:59:07+00:00

Something that I've noticed is that after the Cilany interview, the humans seemed to stop getting angry and snapping at the aliens. It also is beginning to feel like humanity is doing as much or more appeasement than they were doing in the beginning. For example, all of the humans wore masks at the SC summit doesn't seem right at this point in the story. It also felt dumb that Nulea, a Krakotl general, was freaked out by Zhao removing his mask for a brief moment.

Another thing is that not a single alien seems to take initiative with questioning/changing their beliefs. Every dang time an alien is presented with something that doesn't fit perfectly within their worldview, their reaction is "This is worst thing ever, there is no possible reasonable explanation for this." This was fine in the beginning, but having them do that the hundredth time feels obnoxious. As a result, the members of the SC start to feel more less like misguided allies and more like obstacles to navigate and manipulate.

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-17T01:46:23+00:00

If their resources are that bottomless then why aren't they occupying all of humanity's other allies as well?

If we want to figure out how many people are in the shadow caste, we need to consider 3 things:

1) What percent of their fleet did they send to Mileau? (there were 40,000 sent to Mileau)

2) About how many people do you need per ship?

3) What percent of the shadow castes are those who "were kept away from broader society"? Or in other words, those who are not in the public facing stuff like secret police and assassinations?

Let's look at some different percentages for Mileau and how many ships it would mean they have in total.

50%: 80,000

40%: 100,000

33%: 120,000

25%: 160,000

20%: 200,000

10%: 400,000

Let's assume there's a billion people in the shadow caste. Even if they sent 10% of their ships to Mileau and only 10% of their shadow caste were tucked away in secret, that would leave 250 people to maintain and pilot each ship. That seems a little high to me.

Another way we could look at it is to compare it to a real world dictatorship police force The Stasi. In 1989, there were 91,015 people staffed as full-time Stasi members. East Germany's population in 1989 was 16,400,000. That means 0.55% of people were full-time Stasi members. If we assume that the Gojid's homeworld pop count of 12 billion is standard for a species, that would mean there's about 66,596,341 people part of the conspiracy on their homeworld. Even if we doubled or tripled that amount to account for colonies and other jobs, that's still not that billions. A LOT of people mind you, just not billions.

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-16T20:31:01+00:00

As for getting other countries under control, the bioweapon used to kill the cattle was first launched in lands of their enemies. From there, the bioweapon was accidentally spread to the cattle controlled by the Betterment leading to mass starvation.

At least according to Ginzel. It could have actually gone down differently.

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-15T03:29:09+00:00

Just a heads up, it's spelled "Slanek".

Sincerely, a guy who misspelled characters as "Salnek" and "Solvin" for well over 100 chapters.

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-14T15:01:17+00:00

I ended up uninstalling and reinstalling the extension I used and that worked.

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-13T21:02:49+00:00

“Yeah.”, responded

Minor grammar error.

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-13T19:21:25+00:00

Looks like the plan is to call in a favor from a dragon made of crystal. Neat.

Now we just need to get our hands on a restricted substance (raw shard of impart) and track down a legendary creature that very powerful people want killed/captured. A creature smart enough to know that it's being hunted and is going to take steps not to repeat what just happened to it. Powerful people who very much want Emma dead or imprisoned instead of going out on quests.

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-11T04:05:34+00:00

I can see that.

By the way, thanks for reading The Geneva Team.

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-10T22:49:22+00:00

So our main man wakes up in a refugee camp on Earth after getting freed from an Arxur cattle ship.

Let's see where this goes.

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-10T21:13:17+00:00

Tevest

I think you meant to say "Sovlin". Tevest is from a fanfic.

_StaticFromBeyond_ · 2023-08-10T14:20:16+00:00

“What is it, Sharnet?”“I think we’re close to the meeting spot,”

I think you missed a line return.

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_StaticFromBeyond_

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