ftp.ee.pdx.edu/2014.02.ftp.ee.pdx.edu.tar/ftp.ee.pdx.edu/pub/frp/Archives/710

Text File | 1994-10-28 | 16KB | 260 lines

Path: usenet.ee.pdx.edu!insosf1.infonet.net!yeshua.marcam.com!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!olivea!uunet!not-for-mail
From: [e-mail]
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.archives
Subject: STORY: Darkworld Ch 1 (Rifts megaverse)
Followup-To: rec.games.frp.misc
Date: 27 Oct 1994 14:05:02 -0400
Organization: UUNET Technologies Inc, Falls Church, VA, USA
Lines: 246
Sender: [e-mail]
Approved: [e-mail]
Message-ID: <38oq4f$[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: rodan.uu.net


                        TALES FROM THE DARKWORLD
                            By Tony Figueroa
                          Chapter 1: The Shift                  Page 1
Copyright 1990 Tony Figueroa

    Warning: Chapter One is merely background for Tales from the Darkworld.
    The real action starts in Chapter Two although the background here
is useful if you, the reader, want to know the world the story is happening
in.
    Also, the first few chapters in this series are my earliest work, so
they may be more amateurish than my later works.  I hope it is
entertaining.
   Chapter two is a story in itself while chapters three through six are
another story.  When finished, chapter seven will be another self-contained
story.  They do occur in chronological order, so there is continuity.

                                   Start

    A dark-robed figure hummed with boredom as he sat at a computer
terminal in a nearly empty taelon-walled research chamber.  Shadowkeep
typed in a subject word to search for.  It came up with what he'd expected
it to come with first.  He'd typed in "Dimensional Shiftings" and the
computer spat out the file on the most famous one.  This did him little
good.  It was ancient history and he knew this all to well:

    It had been the year 2097 AD.  The Robotech Wars were over, and the
Earth was nearly fully restored from its double apocalypse which were gifts
from the Zentraedi and Invid during R.W. I and II.  Jupiter and Mars Base
were again operational.  Earth had been completing its healing process from
its past wars for the last several decades and while it wasn't restored to
its former glory, it was now once again a good place to call home.  Human
civilization had inevitably split once again into factions.  Some of these
factions tried emulation of civilizations that had once ruled the planet,
the USA Empire was one such nation.
    The moon had been completely terraformed and was home to several cities
and military installations belonging to that very same USA Empire.  A
megacorporation called Molatile Construction was the backbone of this
"Empire" composed of land seized without bloody conflict.  Ventures had
even been made to colonize a habitable world, Arcanar, in a "nearby" solar
system which had been named Alpha Zeta, after its binary star.  Terra's
solar system was totally under control, and all seemed well.  That is,
until the Eltides were encountered.
    The Eltides were a race of creatures whose interdimensional empire
measured far larger than that of the Robotech Masters who were destroyed in
2032.  First to meet the Eltides was one of many Sentinel Class ships which
scoured the galaxy and reported information back to Earth.  The automated
ship was able to send 4 seconds worth of video back to Earth once it was
found by the Eltides.  That was on January 3, 2097.
    Terrified by the prospect of another alien invasion, the world leaders
began planning.  Prompted by the USA Empire, Molatile quickly sprang into
action.  The Eltides were detected near Alpha Centauri and were still a
good distance from the Alpha Zeta system.  Data from several Sentinel Class
ships confirmed that the Eltides, still called simply the Aliens by Terra,
were on a course for Earth.  By that time, the U.N. had received plenty of
information from the Eltides.  A transmission from the Aliens declared
their name, the Eltide Empire, and proclaimed their intention, the invasion
of Earth and the murder of its inhabitants.  Their oceans were to be turned
into an acid, a suitable spawning place for the Eltides.  Earth's
inhabitants had twelve months.
    Molatile's first action was to speed up progress on Arcanar in the
Alpha Zeta system and soon the seven huge factory cities were in operation
by July 27, 2097.  Humankind had devised methods to construct weapons
capable of destroying worlds, moons, and stars by this time, but none had
ever been built, until now.
    The date was October 31, 2097.  It was the day the first System Class
Warhead was used.  Its size was a horrendous five miles of length plus 1300
kilotons of mass, and the thing didn't even have onboard equipment to move
it.  The railgun to launch it was even bigger.  This device of hellish
design was launched at the current location of the Eltide armada.  Their 36
million ship fleet, now 3 solar systems away, was to be wiped from
existence along with the solar system it was passing through.  However, the
warhead never reached its destination.
    Molatile's railgun had an accident.  It was late afternoon and
technicians were taking care of prelaunch details on the railgun.  A battle
broke out with an unseen enemy who attacked as the railgun was launching
its payload of death.  The warhead went off in the Alpha Zeta system.
Shortly after, Earth reports told of the annihilation of the Alpha Zeta
system.  That wasn't the case.  One world had escaped, Arcanar.  Molatile's
employees never saw Earth again, however, they weren't dead or alone.
    The inhabitants of Arcanar's factory cities had watched as the railgun
had catapulted the S.C.W. up into space.  They'd said their prayers as they
learned it was heading towards Alpha Zeta, their own sun.  Sun had gone
supernova with a flash sure to consume all of its worlds, yet the flash had
then faded out.  Blue lightning shot through Arcanar's dark skies and
earthquakes shook the planet's continents.  The tides shifted and gravity
vanished for a half brief second.
    The survivors were shaken.  It was now night even though the afternoon
had only been a few minutes ago.  The constellations above their heads had
changed.  Another dimension had been entered.  The planet which Arcanar had
taken the place of here had been consumed by the supernova that Arcanar
escaped.  Cut off from Earth, the survivors made due, fighting off attacks
from horrifying creatures that defied normal laws.  The former employees of
Molatile Construction were forced to ally with the humanoid natives which
had been avoided so far.  With these alliances, the humans survived on a
new and frightening world with no apparent hope of ever seeing Earth again,
and they learned to live and cope with a new concept, the force that had
always ruled Arcanar before, magic.
    Three-hundred years later, the human nation stood tall with a
population containing as many Arcanar natives as humans.  The USD it was
called, the nation formed by the paladin Cochise who had led the humans
from the darkness and forged an alliance with the delven nation, LarMoire.
Arcanar's changes were apparent.  Sorcery had been combined with science,
magic existed side by side with technology.  And so, the USD had survived
the monsters led by the Demon Emissary Baalek who had been the one to
sabotauge the SCW Railgun in an attempt to drive the humans from a world he
considered his to conquer.

    Shliff Shadowkeep sighed at the computer terminal.  This wasn't helping
any.  He inputed a search string cross-referencing "undead / dimensional
shiftings."  The machine spit out a find, and Shadowkeep was rewarded with
the information he sought.

To be continued...
in chapter two


                              Technical Data
                               Explanations
                             World Description

    "System Class Warhead" meant that the weapon was to be used against
unfriendly solar systems.  That's what it did.  However, Arcanar survived
and this is why:  The warhead was not one weapon.  It was a multi-weapon
unit with destructive power measured into the thousands of megatons, and it
also contained an AAMI (all available matter imploder) which had the
purpose of cleaning up after the destruction and containing the blast.  To
insure the unit's survival, a temporal shifter had been installed with the
purpose of sending the AAMI 45 seconds into the future 10 seconds before
the warhead detonated, so the AAMI would survive long enough to do its job.
The AAMI could not just be launched afterward, because there was no way it
could get there quick enough to do its duty and not get vaporized by the
warhead.
    The damage to the railgun caused the warhead to hit the binary star.
This resulted in a dimensional rift possibly from black holes and loose
temporal energy that caused Arcanar to be in the future.  This is just a
theory, but the end result was Arcanar shifting into the Miranda X
dimension replacing another planet which was shifted into Alpha Zeta and
destroyed.  Arcanar now resides in the Beta Zeta solar system that has a
binary star.  The two stars are named Zeta I and Zeta II.
    Arcanar is a planet approximately 5,400 (at least over 5,300) times the
size of Earth.  One of Arcanar's scary mysteries is why its gravity is
equal to the Earth's.  The most common belief is that the answer lies at
the core of the planet.  Scientists have decided that the core somehow
generates anti-gravity, but they have yet to prove it.  Powerful
interference has prevented sensors from probing deep enough to discover
more.  Some have suggested that the world is artificial which is a
suggestion dismissed as nonsense though it would answer many things.
    The only mostly explored continent is Arc (Arck).  It's the smallest
continent and has an area of 400 million square miles.  Arcanar is 77%
ocean.  The two polar and ice/snow covered continents are Frase and Fraze.
Zinx is the feared continent of magic and monsters and home to a great many
dragons.  Legas, commonly called The Wasteland, is a continent where a
powerful technological race met its end.  Little is known about that race
except that the land is still deadly with their automated war machines and
various items of doom still running.  Legas is divided by the Legas Strait,
a strait resulting from war.
    The 2.3 million employees that survived the shift built seven city
states around the seven factories during the 300 years between then and the
present.  The large number of employees is explained by the fact that the
Molatile Corporation set up Arcanar not just as a spot to launch the Galaxy
Class Warhead at the Eltides but as a colony also.  However, human survival
on Arcanar cannot be given credit to humans alone.
    The delven race became a human ally shortly after The Shifting as it is
called by the people of Arcanar.  Delves are a humanoid race not unlike
humans.  The difference is that most delves are not as physically tough as
humans.  They are, however, generally more agile and faster than humans.
The delves were at a medieval technology level.  Now, they have technology
equal to USA 20th century and have a small civilization around the seven
city states.  The rest of their civilization is slightly less
technologically advanced.  Being early late 19th century to early 20th
century Earth level of technology.  After around 500 miles from the human
city state cluster, the land becomes wilderness and unpredictable with most
delven kingdoms having a mix of low and equal to 18th century technology.
Most of their kingdoms are benevolent towards humans and other races not
stereotyped as purely evil as are some.  Other races that make up large
numbers of human allies on Arcanar are the troglodytes, dwarves, and
brutans.  The troglodytes are the most powerful of the races recognized as
friendly by the humans.  It is the trogs who are the masters of magic and
supernatural powers.
    Arcanar is commonly called Darkworld because its 30 hour days have 19
hours of darkness due to the Erval atmospheric layer.  Noon and midnight
are 15 AM and 15 PM.  A black flag with seven large white stars represents
the USD (United States of Darkworld), and 75 million  of its citizens are
human.  "In darkness, there is light," is the nation's motto.
    The name Darkworld is one taken from early propaganda against remaining
on Arcanar.  Naming the nation that was a direct attack against those who
opposed its formation.  They called it, "a world of darkness and nightmares
unfit for human habitation." Bloody battles and terrorism plagued the early
periods of construction.  Wanna-be prophets foretold of the end of human
civilization, but human civilization has prospered and formed the most
powreful nation on the planet with nearly invulnerable city states.  As the
generations passed, the human race became less fearful and some even
embraced the magic that inhabited the world.  General Cochise of Relo is
one such man.  His age is estimated at two centuries, and his magic is
considerable some of the most powerful in the world.
    It is now the present, some 300 years after The Shifting.  Earth has
had its third apocalypse and has numerous dimensional rifts and Ley Lines
(magic energy flowing around like a river) everywhere. The Ley Lines and
their Nexus Points are visible from space, not that the Earth can put
anything in space (killer satellites and a cloud of debris).  The Earth
lost so many people in the cataclysm that all that psychic and life force
energy released turned Earth into a state of having its Ley Lines pumped up
so much they glow at night.  The North American superpower is now the
Coalition which uses propaganda to control its people, and its emperor is a
fascist pig.  Earth has no idea what happened before the cataclysm and
doesn't even remember the Eltides.  The USD does transdimensional traveling
between Arcanar and Earth.  Unfortunately, it's unable to maintain large
enough dimensional rifts for the purpose of sending sizable forces to
Earth, but it does try to help the people of Terra by often sending many
small military groups.  The USD's main objectives in going to Earth are to
obstruct the Coalition and destroy hostile supernatural forces that direct
their evil towards the human race.  The vampires that control Central
America are of serious concern.  In the big picture, however, the USD has
its own problems on Arcanar to worry about.
    Arcanar's human population now doesn't flinch at sorcerors and
psychics/psionics which are as common as normal humans.  It's a vast planet
with the technology supplied by the humans and the benevolent Lurans of the
neighboring planet of Lura.  Arcanar supplies all its own supernatural
properties.  The human population has discovered it is a world where magic
is as important as technology.
    The Lurans are a quite indifferent and seemingly callous people, but
they have good intentions.  The popular belief is that if the city states
did not cover the argor ore rich area of Darkworld that the Lurans would
not have offered any assistance to the USD whatsoever.  Argor happens to be
nonexistent in the dimension that Earth occupies, Miranda Y, now that
Arcanar is in the Miranda X dimension.  The Lurans use argor, a metal, as
money and as a fuel source.  Argor's value is that it continuously converts
its matter to energy and regenerates its matter with energy supplied by
gravity.  Half a pound of argor can power a hover car for an infinite
number of years.  It is the primary currency in the Beta Zeta star system.
The two other currencies of Darkworld are the two magic metals: mithril and
arcanite, with the latter possessing greater power and value.

                        And so it has been since...

    Note: Most of the background information is provided here.  For more,
read the Darkworld Role-Playing Game which must be acquired from the author
of this story as it is an original work and not in publication.
    Credits: Some of the information here, the stuff about Earth and the
Coalition, is from the Rifts role-playing game by Palladium Books.  The
Invid and Zentraedi are alien races from the cult classic animated TV
series by Tatsunoko, rewritten and renamed Robotech by Harmony Gold which
owns the rights in the USA.