APDL Other Worlds

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Background file for SunBurst Written by Owain Cole. © Visions of the Impossible 1996. I don't really know what the background for this game is, but here are a few to choose from: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Attempt 1 Introduction: Imagine a planet much like our own planet, with people, and animals, and trees, and all the other small but meaningful things that make our lives what they are. This planet resides in a parallel universe which exists beyond the limits of our own. A universe with much the same physical laws as ours. A universe where the life is starting to reach out towards the stars in a vain effort to find out if other life exists. The difference being, that in this universe, it does. Chapter 1 : The winking light. Adrian Jones sat on his bed and peered out through his window at the small spec of light that was slowly travsering the cosmos above him. It was probabley just a plane, or maybe a satellite, or perhaps one of the shuttles taking a work crew up to the new US Space Station. He lay down again under his douvet and pulled it up tight around him to keep the heat in and the monsters out. 'Perhaps I'll go up there someday', he thought to himself; as all small children do. 'I think I'd like to be an astronaut.' On the next continent, the light grew brighter and turned red as though it were heating up. Radio telescopes began to become interested and twiddled in its direction. Computer lights flashed and LED's became bright with activity. Somewhere in a university a bright haired student began to obverve the descent of the object. News cameras were turned on it. The doom comet had arrived they said. The vast chunk of rock screamed through the sky. It was very VERY large. When it hit the ground, Adrian Jones could feel it. He jerked awake. The tremours were dying down now. He could feel the bed under him move, just slightly. He could also feel that there was something very wrong. His parent were in the front room with the television on. They NEVER watched TV at night. He swung his legs over to the floor and found his rabit slippers where he had left them. He tiptoed to the door of his room and peered out, rubbing his eyes with his fists until they became acustomed to the light. A helecopter with an SAS team hanging from it was the first on the scene. It buzzed low over the hills, it had been in its hanger when the great wind had come. A wind pushing dust, pebbles and shards of rock on its front. Many of the towns they had crossed had been damaged. Now they were closer, most had been ripped to shreds. There was no life. The cold morning sun showed little except the torn remains of building foundations. Large sections of roads were missing. No cars. No bodies. The helecopter buzzed on. Passing less and less. Towns on the map were missing. Nothing but dust where streets, parks and houses had been. On the horizon, a line of black could be seen. They drew on. The line became a rectangle. Blackness with no obvious features, a chared smell on the air. Closer and closer the helecopter came. The rock got bigger, until they could not see past it on the horizon to either side. It was perhaps unfortunate that the comet had landed on the grossly overpopulated and industiralised continent wiping out most of the reactors and satalite dishes. With no power, no communications, and very few people left alive, the planet began to die. With the extra mass, the planets orbit began to decay. In a few hundred years it would be exumed by the sun. Chapter 2 : E.T. Of course, not everybody was on the surface of the planet at the time of collision. A warning light on the comms board of the control centre of Space Station Winchester winked on. Space station Winchester was the last of a dying beed, a SETI station equipt for first contact sightings and meetings. Perhaps it was lucky that the senate had ordered it built despite growing grumbles from the populous. Finished only a month earlier, it would be the first meeting place between a dead race and the a new one. Perhaps it was a little unlucky that the new race was that of the Empire. A vast killing machine stalking the universe for prey. Equipt for battle on, and around, any planet. As yet, no one had beaten its terrible might; and earth was no exception. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Attempt 2 Chapter 1 The emperor stood rubbing his gnarled hands together, looking through the plexy glass at his fleet, already pulling at the end of its leash. Eager to rip the remaining shreds of life from the planet below. A smile broke out on his cracked lips; his blackened tounge flicking out wetting them. The Virain had beeen on the run for a while now but it had still taken him ten long years to drive them back, back, back to their stinking planet. The Virain ambasidor opposite him, seated behind the desk looked on anxoiusly. The Polaniss ambasidor next to him twiddled his thumbs with a worried expression; Polaniss, although it had a peace and trade treaty with both Virain and the Empire, was weak; and the empire was not well renouned for its long friendships. "Come on then Emperor!" "Let the battle commence." All teams began to stab the buttons on the desk in front of them. The plexiglass screen lighting up showing ships from both sides lashing energy at each other. The Imperial fleet although large, was unwealdly and small Virain ships flitted in and out, dodging laser fire from fighters, stabbing deap at the heart of the fleet. "Come on then James, it's time for tea." "Oh daaaaaaaaaad, do we have to?" "You know what all these computer games do to your eyes." "Pleeeeeeeease!" "Come on it's tea. Your mother's waiting." James, aka Emperor, left the darkened room to eat his tea. It was time for a bit of cheating. "And I know exactly where I've put all my ships, so don't bother to move any of them." "Yeah right.... Come on Chris, let's do some damage." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Try a Yorkshire accent for this one. Attempt 3 Now then, in my day we didn't have none of this fancy matter transporter stuff. Life was simple. You tried to keep yourself out of the way of the empire, and alive, with enough credits to your name to stop Shotgun, and Dribble from blowing your kneecaps away for not paying them back the money you'd been lent. Aye, in them days you knew what a real fight was. None of this drone fighter stuff. We had to fight proper, with our bare hands. We used to have to press the trigger ourselves, none of this poncy mind control rubbish you kids now-a-days get off on. And if we were lucky, we'd come home at the end of day, with our spacecraft shot to bits, that's if you had your own space craft, which many of us didn't. And ah mam'd give us a pan of gruel and ah dad'd beat us round the head with a long stick, and we'd be glad for it. Luxuary! We didn't had a home, we had to live on an asteroid in space. We'd spend all day scrubbing our asteroid clean and stopping them Polaniss scum from mining it. We got paid half a credit each for that. And at the end of t'day, we'd come home and ah mam'd give us a pebble to suck and ah dad'd beat us to within an inch of our lives with a metal bar, and we were the lucky ones! An asteroid! An Asteroid! I'd have given my right arm for an asteroid. We had to live on a piece of debris flying through space. We had to pay ah mam 5 credits to get up at the crack of dawn and spend the entire day, and half the night mind you, licking the debris clean and trying to stop the emperial forces from taking it over, and the Polaniss scum from mining it. An' when we'd come home ah mam'd break all our teath and make us eat them and ah dad'd flog us to death with roll of barbed wire. And that were on our birthday. Debris? Debris! I'd have given my entire body to medical science for a lump of debris. We had to live on a particle of space dust traveling at the speed of light through hyperspace with no oxygen. We had to sell our soul to the devil every morning so as we could spend 25 hours a day wiping the atoms off our debris using the lenzs of our eyes. And we had to stop the hoards of aliens in hyperspace from devouring our space dust, and we had to stop the Polaniss scum from mining it and the empire's evil forces from taking it over. And when we'd come home, our mam'd spit in our faces and our dad'd rip off our arms and beat us to death with the soggy end. Then he'd fling our limp bodies on the fire so that he an' our mam could watch us burn. And that were if it were a good day.... Really grandad? Well.... no. But we didn't have any matter transporters. Aye, them were the days. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Attempt 4 Notes for the meeting of the 'Oasis Space Station Peoples' Liberation Front'. "So what has the emperor ever done for us?" Mumbled: "War" "Sorry? I didn't quite catch that?" "I was just saying that he's given us war against the Virain hasn't he." "Well obviously. But I mean What has the emperor ever done for us?" "Well he's given us panic." "Yeah, and vast mine fields." "And slaves!" "I mean apart from War, Panic, Mine fields and Slaves... What has he ever done for us?" "Well, he has given us a bitter hatred for the Poliniss." "Yeah and an enormous fleet of gun ships armed to the teeth!" "Yeah, and a space station filled with scum and dissidents." "Look, apart from War, Panic, Mine fields, Slaves, a bitter hatred, an enormous armed fleet and a space station filled with the very scum of the earth, what has he ever given us." "Rare STDs!" "Vast unemployment." "Unforetold damage on our future generations." "Intergalactic Peace talks!!!" "Intergalactic peace talks?" "Well, ok, maybe not intergalactic peace talks. But definitely unforetold damage on future generations." "Look, the unforetold damage on future generation goes without saying." "A gate for the unspeakable forces of evil to enter our universe?" "Ok then, have it your way. What, apart from War, Panic, Mine fields, Slaves, a bitter hatred, an enormous armed fleet, a space station filled with the very scum of the earth, rare STDs, vast unemployment, unforetold damage to future generations and a gate for the unspeakable forces of evil to enter our universe...... What has the emperor ever done for us??" "Well nothing I suppose" "Yeah, nothing.... grumble" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Attempt 5 Introduction After many years of hyperspace travel, the vast hulk burst into subspace with a crackle of excess energy. Aboard, the occupents slept on, their twisted bodies kept alive by fluids pumped through plexi-tubes by deepsleep machines, now coated with an eons worth of dust. The hulk drifted on across the firmament with dread purpose hidden deep within its pitted exterior. Sensing the signs of life from the nearby planet, a sub system of the vast dark mechanism, which had kept the hulk on course through its years of travel, flickered into life. Indicators flared briefly and the actions which had been programmed in many millenia before began. The temperature in the deepsleep machines slowly began to rise. Soon the creatures would be awake. Chapter 9 As the last of the defenders' bodies fell in a bloody heap at his feet, the marine paused to wipe his blade. The assult had been sucsessful. Only just mind, but they had managed to defeat all that the pitiful inhabitants of this dingy planet had been able to bring against them. The emperor would reward him well for this, if he ever managed to make it back to the surface of the planet alive. Dispite the ease of landing, the defence had been well thought out. The assault craft might not leave the planet dispite the heavy bombing the fleet had given the surface. The tunnels that burrowed and squirmed through the planet held not only desperate troops but deadly booby traps that could destory a whole squad if they took a wrong turning. Taking out the guards was only the first step, getting out alive again would be harder still. The marine swung round the throne room. The dead king slumped over the side of his chair, blood dripping from his heavy robe, its white ermin now stained a heavy red, had been the last to die. As he turned, he noticed a shadow moving quickly, just outside his vision. He turned again. There it was, a brief darkening just beyond the edge of his sight. Blood spurted onto his visor from the inside. His scream was drowned by the thick red liquid. A white claw gleaming with silver sharpness burst from his chest. It was joined by a second, then a third. Each piercing major organs with deadly accuracy. They withdrew and he too fell in a crumpled heap. The alien paused before morphing once more into the shape of the throne. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please excuse the 'Monty Python'esque ones but it's very late 01:31am on Mon 30th December 1996 and I'm going to bed now.