Tormuse wrote:perhaps we shouldn't be making suggestions that will make him second-guess his actions?
Death 999 wrote:Yes. Less hinting would be good.
Quasi still remained obscure enough (since I'm not even sure if my assessment was correct or not) but I see your guys' point, especially since I'll likely continue to move the story in quick succession the more I travel from place to place.krulle wrote:Awww....
Majority decision? Apparently so.
I've actually had some time to sit down and try to piece some the puzzles together, and I've been trying to anticipate some of the possible outcomes, but I'll keep those predictions to myself for now. Let's just say that I'm sure I'll be returning to Umgah space at some point, and not just for a quick refresher on slapstick humor.
(Meanwhile…)
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Captain’s Log - Apr 17, 2157 - HyperSpace {043.8:637.2} - Yellow Alert
There is one thing I have observed about the Arilou... I am quite uncertain if I can trust them or not... and I’m leaning towards probably not.
We established communications, and their captain or leader sat barefoot and cross-legged wearing a neat outfit, almost like a uniform, and it was in several shades of blue. I could quickly see that their appearance is much different than the way our computers displayed them in our historical documents of the old war. He(?) had a shimmering orb that shined a bright yellow that matched the glow of his eyes, but I’m not sure if he was holding the sphere in place as both of his palms remained outside of the curious ball, but it may have been levitating under the guidance of his hands. His blank stare that only displayed almond-shaped eyeholes without pupils was magnified by his devilish grin which created an eerie ambiance as he spoke, and his words only furthered facilitated my already heightened levels of apprehension.
The surrounding area of the bridge(?) where the Arilou spoke from augmented the weirdness; there were strange multi-colored stretched ovals on a pitch black background with stars which gave a swirling like effect that implied that they may even be on the cusp between two dimensions at that very moment, and an abundance of different colored bright shiny orbs (similar to what the Arilou held) flew from somewhere at the starry center and continued to fly all around the entire duration of our talks and then they’d vanish as they approached the centered Arilou:
Did I feel any better after finishing our first conversation? Uh, no. If I had to describe how I felt afterwards, I would say that the term “creeped out” quickly comes to mind.
They seemed adamant about assuring us that they have only the best of intentions for us and our peoples, but it only had the effect of reinforcing my mistrust. It also didn’t help matters that they quickly stated how they were satisfied to leave the war effort and decided to completely abandon the Alliance of Free Stars once they realized that we were placed under a slave shield by the Ur-Quan. It would seem their priority of involvement with humans has been focused on ensuring our safety… and apparently, Earth having a giant red “cage” around it is good enough for them, and they even expressed how they wish they had thought of it themselves. Troubling.
They described themselves as being many places at many *times* (using similar speech patterns as the Orz when mentioning words like these) and this place is an easy place, one of ten easy places, and they explore these unusual places at various times. Of course, none of this really made much sense to me, so I asked what they are looking for during their explorations of these easy places, and they said they like to trap (and release) *Nnngn* but we cannot catch them because we are not solid enough. Hmmph!… Well, I feel solid enough!
I continued to inquire them about their relationship with us, and they reiterated their desires to protect us from harm, and they even made inference to understanding our origins, claiming that they knew the “first human”. Interesting… puzzling… and creepy.
I asked if they could help us and our Ur-Quan resistance movement, but they declined, saying that they lost too many shipmates in the last conflict, but they were willing to share information that may help us, and they confirmed that in order to uncover the nature of the probes that attack us, we should look for aliens that inhabit a gas giant (a world with no surface), but we already knew that from the Melnorme, and we ended communications and observed their sphere of influence, which only occupies a small region of space between several surrounding constellations:
Speaking of the Melnorme, the 2nd blip turned out to be the Melnorme trade ship, and we refueled our flagship before meeting another set of Arilou Skiffs, and their captain spoke of missing Earth and gliding along its fields under the light of the moon, and he admitted that they had even recently been to Unzervalt. That’s odd.
They also confessed that they have visited us for sustained periods of time, even since the dawn of mankind’s civilization, and everything our history books describe about the possibilities of aliens affecting and influencing our culture have been true all along, and the accounts of people getting abducted and experimented on was also admitted by our Arilou “friends”, who even went as far to say that in several instances they allowed for the abductees to remember their experiences. This keeps getting creepier and creepier.
They are aware of how the Mycon use their Deep Children to change worlds, and they even gave a subtle insinuation that they know about my feelings towards Talana. But how?
The 3rd encounter happened just two days prior to the opening of the dimensional portal, as another possible Arilou blip showed up on sensors on an intercept course.
They talked momentarily about the Orz, and they are also, like the Arilou, dimensional travelers, but they urged for us not to trust the Orz. Not that I am super fantastic about the Orz and their possible motives which may present problems down the road, but I’m not sure if the Arilou have any room to talk, whose potentially clandestine plans involves keeping us humans as their own little “pets”, even though the Arilou refer to only being interested in our further “development”. Yeah, sure, whatever. No, I do not trust either of them, and of the two, I’m thinking I may even trust the Arilou less, since their ulterior motives seem to lie atop the surface in ominous, foreboding ways. Very disconcerting indeed.
They also shared the special “Hold!” phrase to get the Ur-Quan folks to reveal their reasons behind their crazy orchestrated civil war, but we have already used it on both the Ur-Quan and Kohr-Ah.
We moved out of our dimensional portal position and towards the other bogey to make contact with only one day to spare before the predicted anomaly’s appearance, and it turned out to be yet another small group of Skiffs.
Their captain claimed that he had visited me during the previous night and said that I smiled as he touched my face while I slept. Yikes! Chills went up and down my spine as the disturbing images of an eldritch creepy green elf-boy touching my skin made me shudder with hair-raising uneasiness. I’m going to pretend that he’s lying so I can sleep better at night and, as a precaution, shipwide security has been upgraded to high alert during the remainder of our stay in Arilou space.
They asked if we were seeking the dimensional “doorway” and they told us we could look on our starmap during the days between the 17th and 20th to locate it. All this time and I never thought of that!... and furthermore, nobody down in stellar cartography must have either, because I was never informed during any of those time intervals that something was being detected! I’d better have a stern talk with those guys! Worthless star gazers!!
I examined my time portal saves and found one that fit the date (Nov 16, 2156) when we were in Eta Ceta on our way to investigate the disappearance of the Spathi’s SOI, so we waited a day and brought up the starmap:
Awesome! After we pinpointed the exact coordinates of the opening, I activated the time portal and continued our conversations where we left off.
I’m now convinced that these Arilou freaks have been going over my logs, since they used almost the exact phrasing when we had first forged our alliance with the Orz (as seen here):
“The enemy of your enemy is your friend... at least for a time.” - Arilou Lalee’lay
Or perhaps they were speaking about themselves?
Then, when the 17th arrived, we used the information to find the exact location of the spatial anomaly, and lo and behold, we found it right where it was supposed to be!!!:
Before getting close enough to enter it, I ordered the ship to come to a halt, and we began scanning the anomaly. Strangely enough, my science officer reported that the scans were entering the aperture, but they weren’t returning with any data. Confusing. Well, we’ll learn nothing else just sitting on this side of the “doorway”, so we may as well go *inside*.
We are setting course for the opening of the spatial anomaly. We are going to Red Alert. Captain out.
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