So, what games and such are humans respected as equals or even feared by the other races?

>>5030859


none, because typically all our enemies are bigger and meaner than us.

and in the ones where we are not against anyone in specific we're some communist love fagot race that says we should all be one with everything.

Bydo here, we like to tell you to go fuck yourselves after we adapted to harsher shit, came back from being sent to another dimension, and proceeded to rape your planet multiple times.

awesome i love these threads

>>5030911
and humanity with 600 years more primitive technology than those of your creators STILL bent your existence to our will in the Force and kicked your asses back into that dimension.

>>5030859

40k to a certain extent. If a race doesn't fear humans, it fears Spess Mahreens. If they don't fear Spess Mahreens, they fear Grey Knights etc. Star Wars as it's generally humans who get shit done for good or ill in that universe (and most of the powerful force users are usually human).

>>5030991
I'm not sure that 40K counts, simply because humanity is an unimaginably ancient horror there.

>>5030941

You know how every R-type game after Delta, had a bad ending where the Bydo ended up converting the protaganist in the end, or just killing him right before he died.

>>5031023
>or just killing him right before he destroyed some core or something.

There's a trilogy of books called "The Damned" by Alan Dean Foster. It's pretty much what you're looking for. Two large aliens confederations are at war, and the losing team is searching for more allies. They find humanity, bring some of us up there to test us out, and we kick so much ass that even our allies are too scared to associate with us.

My squad and I were on a mission to raid a drug deal that was going down in a heavy industrial sector. We consisted of 7 members: 3 close combat specialists, 2 gunners, and myself commanding.

We breached the suspected warehouse and found more than we had expected. The drug-runners had brought a few bodyguards, and we quickly got dragged into a firefight. I ordered my gunners to take cover and pin the enemy down long enough for the close combat specialists to get into melee.

The apparent leader of the group snapped his fingers, and a cloaked form dropped down from the rafters above, into the middle of my close combat team. In one swift move that I was barely able to follow, the new combatant landed a solid blow on one of my men, sending him flying back towards us. It then pivoted on one foot and delivered a rotating blow with the other foot, causing another specialist to crumple to the ground. My last specialist drew his weapon and struck the new opponent on the head. What seemed to be a mask fell off, revealing one of the last things I had ever wanted to see.

"HUMAN!!!" I ordered a full retreat, but the monster already had my last specialist by the throat, holding him in the air by his neck. While fleeing the building, I saw the beast throw the poor man to the ground, the life strangled out of him. Then, to my horror, it turned to me and pursued. Despite my impressive speed, it quickly caught up, pulling some sort of gun from inside its robes and firing, dropping my gunners. Fortunately, I was able to reach the deployment vehicle and return to base.

And that, security chief, is how my entire squad was lost. I repeat my request to be transferred to a different sector and recommend that stronger security forces be deployed to the industrial areas.

>>5031023
>insinuating side-scrollers have plots

>>5031223

This is intriguing. Tell us more.

>>5031088

there was a thread about this a few months ago and someone saved it on archives

it was awesome

Humans are abducted by aliens to serve as shock troops in a war against another alien nation who, by instinct, see the human body/face configuration as terrifying, and tend to direct their fire immediately on them when spotted.

Long story short, Humans get sick of this shit, take over their transport ship with help of a sympathetic AI, and try to find their way home.

>>5031244

It does, especially if you play Tactics/Command where it's an actual RTS

>>5031289

>try to find their way home.

And then extract the necessary technology from their ship, strip-mine a planet to build a fleet of them and go crush the fuckers who thought they could use human beings as cannon fodder.

What's to stop the aliens coming back, eh? We have to take them out before any more suffer the same fate.

Humans are vastly superior physically, but there's not very many of them (7 billion in the entire galaxy? I'm surprised they haven't died out yet!) So they often are found working alone, usually as mercenaries or private guards. Having a human guard is a symbol of wealth and power, for Humanity has realized that it fulfills a very important niche that has long been empty: Brute force. Human-guarded clubs and bars have almost no violence outside what the human itself causes, as everyone is too afraid of having their bones broken by a swift blow.

Sometimes humans will sign on to our armies to enjoy the failings of diplomacy they call war. These humans are often juggled between combat and command roles, as the human mind is singularly focused on war and the conduct thereof. Human-led armies have an average 23% increased success rate over non human-led armies.

Humans can also be found working outside the law. Truly, this is where they can most often be found, as their mindset is often one of individuality over unity, and they take pleasure in corrupting those who will listen with ideas of personal freedom and wealth over the well being of the whole. Parents who are aware of a human presence should take care to keep their children away, as Humans are naturally charismatic and are capable to tricking others into believing that they have held Human ideals all along.

What if viruses are unique lifeform that only exists on Earth?
Humans have immunity-system to protect, but aliens don't have that luxury.
Humans would be dealed as plague-bearers if viruses could infect other races.

Meh.

>>5031375
(fucking flood detection, you are worse than that goddamn robot on r9k)
Finally, there is the central grouping of humans, in the star system they cal Sol, after their sun. Only two planets in that system are inhabited, but there are reports of efforts being made to set up habitation on the various moons of the gas giants. Here resides the human government, a loosely-knit alliance of nation-states and corporations. Our information here is lacking, but what we do know is very troubling. Apparently, all their talk of peace and friendship is a smoke cloud to mask their true intent, a grand plan to conquer the galaxy. This plan seems to be code-named "Manifest Destiny."

This finishes my intelligence report. I will return to the field and continue to observe.

>>5031399

What the hell is this alien fuck doing in the comms room!

Get that bastard!

>>5031462
Oh... Oh my. How do you humans say it?

Ah yes. OH GOD!

>>5031377
How fast was doom guys running speed? Wasn't it like 150 mph?

>>5030027
Yeah, we pretty much are.

I wonder, what if humans had collective memory when it came to war? Every tactic, every fighting style, every which way to create and use a weapon.... What if all humans knew that from birth? Every single human would be a battle hardened veteran with thousands of years of combat experience even as a child.

>>5031667
We become the tough warrior race of space?
FUCK YEAH

>>5031667

fuck yeah THIS !!!

As a flipmode of another poster, what if all *other* races in the galaxy had instinctual and natural methods killing, not even comprehending other ways of doing things? Humans as a race that has put a lot of thought into how to kill eachother and the consequences of their actions would the best equipped and psychologically and socially ready to deal with the concept of a alien element to an ecosystem killing shit.

"I once fought on the battle of Cypress Valley, though the name is a misnomer now.

The humans there had torched much of the forest in hopes to deny our archers the chance to hide. They salted the ground itself after, denying our magicks to make it grow anew. They destroyed many of the caves, traping a great deal of living sentients within the chance to escape.

We won that battle, but I am troubled. Each human believes himself invincable. I had cut dwon nearly a dozen warriors, only to have the next man charge in. They never believed themselves to be weaker then anyone else. They always believed that they would be the one to bring me down. Even surronded by his friends and covered in blood, he believed he could have stopped me.

The humans are frightening. If only because they will never stop fighting for long. We have fought three battles already in that valley, and each time we drove the humans off. Each time they sent a messenger who, delightfully I might add, explained why their "mechants" were trying to cross he valley to peddle their wares.

The vile humans don' even respect us enough to provide a proper war declaration.

I am worried though. They breed like rats, their fighting styles changing drasticlly from year to year. Our people are not so lucky, with only a handful of chiuldren born every month or so. It is only a matter of time before they overhwlem us. "

>>5031787

in the last thread about this theme humans where the only (or one of the few) race able to built an advanced civilization, thus get related to other non-humans, and yet commit violence against their own race and even more to other races, while most cililized species abolished violence and the other races able to be violent were just too much of a barbaric beins unable to get related to other races and without the level of military briliance of a human

>>5031824
Wrong setting.

Pic relevant

>>5031667
A new report from my spies indicates that at the time of widespread human colonization, genetic "buffering" had been in effect in order to strengthen there race in the event of finding new worlds to colonize. This process apparently was a method of modifying base genetic structures to be born adapted to a wide range of environments estimated for discovery.

However, this was not all that we've come to discover about this procedure, as there latent abilities sometimes manifest themselves even without proper education facilities led me to question its source. After many attempts of infiltration, it turns out the humans had figured out how to modify "genetic memory" as they call it, instilling base proficiencies into there very being, a affinity for combat and base trades is already growing within them, at rates which our own people could only hope to follow in double the time, and yet only a few cycles after there birth!
This would certainly explain how different worlds have distinct specialties for combat or trade, and as how there race can vary so much to different biospheres of gravity and atmospheric densities.

I shall report later as soon as my spies return, however, it has been a few days since our last check in, I fear the worst.

>>5031667

We already have that, in a sense. Imagine that we're the only species with standing armies and entire industries devoted to warfare.
While other races beat their swords into plowshares and all soldiers go home after engagements, we spent thousands of years and sizeable resources always preparing for the next battle, even in peace and surrounded by friends.

>>5031908
That was awesome.

Man I'd been thinking of starting a Humanity thread it's been months since I've seen one.

I've got a small file of stuff.

>>5031977
And another...

>>5031983
Genocide, terraforming, genocide, terraforming....

we followed them into the jungle, for 7 moon cicles we made our way on that god forsaken land.

On the first days we had no contact with the enemy, but in the after 2 moons we were so deep in the jungle after them we couldn't even find our way out.

after 1 moon the first contact was made, but only to reveal their fighting nature, instead of fighting us directelly they kept ambushing us with their snipers luring our man to their boodtraps, for the next 3 moons we couldn't even see their faces, we only knew they were there when one of ours fall from their so called "guerrila warfare", at the end of the 6th moon cicle more than half of the 400 men sent, most died from exhaustion while the others KIA were killed by no more than 8 or 10 of their "warriors".

on the 7th moon cicle just 37 including me remained, we were able to endure long enough to be picked up by a rescue transport, I will never forget the hell those HUMANS made me and my men suffer in that jungle

Report from Capitan Shipur Uorthen

That would be hilarious if after all our Sci-fi stories about vicious, invincible alien threats, we turn out to be the largest, most vicious, armored, flesh rending beasts of the universe.

The next lot I've got saved in word so they'll take a while to post.
Part 1.1
***

"What game are you playing, my child?" the Stellarin asked as he walked to the boy playing in the outdoor sun. Despite his great age, several centuries by Human reckoning- suns and moons curse that race- his lithe form echoed that of his youthful son, an elegant economy of motion evident in every motion.

"I'm playing war, father!" the boy said with unbridled enthusiasm, wielding his toy sword with an agile grace that the greatest Human acrobats would envy. "One day, when I am old enough, I shall join the League of Warriors and make war against the foul humans as you did, father! And this time, we shall push them out from the Rim Worlds once and for all!"

At his son's words, the elder Stellarin felt his knees give way underneath him, and a lump catch in his throat as terror's icy hands gripped his heart. "Father?" the younger asked, seeing his father stagger, "what's wrong? Shall I call the-"

"Sit down, my son. Would you like me to tell you a story about my days fighting the humans, all those long centuries ago? Before I met your mother, before I had you? A true story, unlike the ones the Grand Council tell."

"But... but father, the- the Council tells of great victories, of valiant actions by our warriors, and great strikes against Humans-"

"They're lies, my dear son," the elder said flatly. Ignoring the look of disbelief on his son's face, he continued, "Lies that I too, once believed..."

>>5032016
Part 1.2
The Council tells us that the humans started the war, that their race wished to complete what they started when they drove us, the Duerfin and the Uruk off the Home World, and they did so by attacking Vylsan, Gillia and Terriniel. The Council tells of valiant last stands, heroic actions and a final assault against the rampaging humans that drove them off our worlds, did they not?

I told you, my child, they are lies.

In truth, we began the war. Vylsan, Gillia and Terriniel were the worlds where we gathered our troops. I, myself, was born on Terriniel. You should have seen us, my child; 20,000 of our world's finest, standing arrayed with gleaming armour, protected by the finest forcefields, armed with lancer blade and fission bows. We knew that we would later be joined by 50,000 more warriors from Vylsan and Gillia's Leagues.

Our first, and only target, was the Human world of Lee's World. We mocked the name, mocked the humans' lack of creativity, and we thought it a simple enough matter to throw them off the world and claim it for our own. We had superior technology, and no race travels faster in space, in the sky, or on the ground than we. We landed and struck suddenly, taking the token garrison entirely by surprise; it was a sparsely settled world, and after a week, we had thought the world pacified.

We were wrong.

>>5032021
Part 1.3
My child, did you know that every Human is willing to fight? Not just their nobles, but their shopkeepers, their farmers, their road workers, their scientists- all were ready and capable of learning the arts of war. We found that it was... unsettling, that despite, or perhaps because of their short lives, they are capable of learning so much in so short a time.

How long did it take for you to learn the art of the warrior, my child? 10 years? 20? What if I told you that a Human child needs but a week to become a passable, if not fully competent, warrior? What if I told you that Human design philosophies ensured that their weapons and war equipment were focused not to killing power, but on ease of use, so that ANYONE might wage war on their race's behalf?

You are 90 years old by Human reckoning, and yet you are just learning to use your sword. Even with the regenerative technology the humans use, you would be considered old, and yet by this age, a Human concieveably be able to lead an army. Trained properly, a Human a third your age would be able to fight toe-to-toe with a savage Uruk. Not only that, but a Human is capable of bearing more than one child at once, and in some Human societies such an achievement is lauded, even encouraged.

I know it is hard to believe, but that it the reality of it.

Mankind will only be able to unite as one if an outsider enemy, aliens if you wish, were to threat our existence.

>>5032031
Part 1.4
My child, enough guessing, I'll tell you: they landed over 6 million soldiers on Lee's World that day. How do I know? Let me finish the story.

Our army was destroyed the day they landed. Warriors, who I had trained alongside, and fought side-by-side for more than a hundred years, were cut down in a storm of war. The Human lasers were so numerous, I saw many of our soldiers obliterated in what seemed to my eyes a wall of light. A single laser would have caused our shields to merely flicker, but a hundred would demolish both it and its wearer. Human artillery never stopped thundering, and for each Human we killed, it seemed like a hundred would take his place. We Stellarin are trained to face enemies in single combat, each of us, but not even the greatest Avatar of War can defend all sides at once. The humans don't understand our concept of honourable combat, seeing one-on-one battles between equals as foolish; instead, they struck at our supply lines, poisoned our food and drink, broadcast loud propaganda at night to disrupt our rest, let loose vermin that carried plagues their bodies could withstand and we could not, and when all that was done, take potshots from afar at us with snipers and drones. Only when we were truly weakened did their assaults come.

>>5032037
Part 1.5
We did not force the humans off our worlds, my son, they forced us off theirs. They proceeded to bomb, then raze Vylsan, Gillia and Terriniel while they ignored our entreaties for peace. They burned the Worldtrees of each world, rendering each world magicless for centuries to come. The valiant struggles by our warriors to chase them off? They were almost all failures; our only victories came from attacks on isolated supply stations and minor supply line raids, 'victories' that the Council milked for all they were worth.

In the end, only after their appetite for vengeance was settled did the humans leave, bought off- yes, bought off- by the Council with technosorcerous secrets and slaves. Don't believe me?

I was held imprisoned after the assault, one of only a few hundred of our forces sent to war. I met your mother in that prison, you know. A Gallian; she outranked me, but in there, we were all equals. You and she are the only good things that came from that war, and I thanks the stars and moons every day that I was so blessed. We were released, and walked through the holds of the Human transports, so that we could see who we made war with, and the cost of doing so, and thus bring the news back to our worlds. I saw holds brimming with Stellarin treasures, weapons and slaves, troop transports each carrying more soldiers than the forces we sent to Lee's World.

>>5032049
Part 1.6
You know how those who boast tend to exaggerate their accomplishments? Our warden, the commander of the Human forces, was telling us about the troops he brought, and the number I arrived at, 6 million, was one I came up with after I downgraded his own words- I refuse to believe that even among the humans, they could somehow come up with more than 20 million soldiers to bring to a single world,

But in any case, my son, dear heart, set your sight on other things beside the humans. Wage war against the Uruk, or the Duerfin, or the cursed Illthidim, or the warrior-breeds of the Tchkon hives, for those wars... those we might win.

Anything, than those accursed humans.

+END+

>>5032064

There's another story from this set about humans hiring/taking in the forgotten and unwanted of other races to boost its armies and create a force far greater than the sum of its parts. It's an arachnid/insectoid race debating what should be done in relation to the humans...it's not really as good as the first story though.

>>5032064
1.* implies that there's a part 2.

>>5032095
Wait... So humanity takes the same approach to interstellar war as it does for softball?

>>5032097

Beat you to it, its actually story 1 rather than "part" 1, that is the end of that story.

I'll stick the other up though, others might like it.

>>5032115

That's why it works so well on aliens.

>>5032117
The continuation of that set:

INTERMISSION PART I
As the hyperdrive carried them along the star-road, as hyperspace lanes were called, the two green-skinned Uruk sat playing cards with their Duerfin co-owner. They were the only crew on the ship, primarily because the finely-crafted Duerfin ship needed no more crew, and also because any more Uruk would have meant that sooner or later, there'd have been a fight.

"Y'know, dat world, woss name, Elysia, it was one of our worldz once, b'fore da humiez took it."

"Grok, shaddap and deal da cards."

"Oi'm just sayin', yanno! Wot, can't a Urk say sumfing wivvout yer jumpin on 'is back?!"

"Shut it an' deal, yer panzee sprout!"

"Oi'll show ye-"

"Oi! That's right enough I've had o' yer two's squabblin'!" the Duerfin said. "Now, Grok, are ye going ta deal, or are ye and Ugga gonna start whackin' each other over the heads again wit' those clubs o' yers?"

"Sorry boss."

>>5032134
INTERMISSION PART II
"Honestly, ye two. Want to know why the humans managed to take your world? It's 'cos of yer inability ta discuss anything wi'out gettin' someone killed! Ye see the humans doin' that? Nae! They fight and bicker amongst themselves ta be sure, but at least they know how ta pull tagevver whn th' goin's tough!"

"Big words, little boss," Ugga laughed maliciously. "After all, 'snot like da humiez took anyfing o' yer people's- oh wait!"

"Go ahead, laugh it up ye two! At least when ye buy something Duerfin, yer sure of buying something made well, and no' 'made well enough'! Those crazy talljobs dinnae even wait 'till something's -legal- before spreading it!"

"Dat dinn't stop da humiez makin' more money den you lot! 'Ow many Duerfin 'Oldz wot 'ad t' shut down lately?"

"Do you want ta keep working fer me or not'!"

***

>>5032148
The other story:
Part 2.1
The Great Hive was abuzz, to use a Human pun, Queen Mother 49 observed. She was the oldest and wisest of the Queen Mothers, and her station demanded that the strongest of her warrior-children brought her to the Great Hive. Queen Mother 135 had brought a motion to the Hive, and while Queen Mother 49 wasn't told of what it was (as per ancient tradition), she had a pretty good idea of what 135 wanted. She didn't know that 135's request was made in the same spirit as a Stellarin child on the other edge of the galaxy, or that she felt the same way as the child's father, but it would not have mattered if she did.

"News from our trader-spawn hath revealed that humanity's greatest strengths are their numbers!" 135 screeched in ritual high-speech. "The other races are hard-pressed, for though they have superior technology or strength, they simply number fewer, or cannot outproduce the primates! But Queen Mother 49, surely thou can see that their numbers are but a drop in what we can do? I, in concert with my lesser queens, can birth twoscore times a thousand warriors in the time it takes the humans to birth and train a tenth of that number! I alone could raise an army to take ten Human food-worlds for our race, think of what we could all do in concert!"

Why did the Eldar-ripoff suddenly become just like the Ork-ripoff?

>>5032158
Part 2.2
A screeching hail of consent greeted 135's words, even the older Queens coloured the blue of consideration, a colour only Queen Mother 49 could see- in fact, she was the only member of her race outside the mindless worker castes to see in colour. It was this ability that gave her her position that had ensured her rise over the centuries over other Queens Mother, a near-mythical ability to see the lies and feelings that her other kin could not. Nobody knew where she'd received the gift, nobody outside a select few individuals knew she even had the power, but all Tchkan agreed that she wasn't bron with it. In her youth, Queen Mother 49 had ventured beyond the stars with her brood, determined to carve a name out for herself. She returned decades later with her brood mostly intact, but the Queen Mother herself had changed. Ever since then, she had led her race, with all those who would challenge her rule outmanouevered both in the plotical arena and in some cases, on the battlefield.

And now it was time for her to pay her debt and save her people.

"Wouldst thou listen to me, 135, of why I think thy idea is, to couch it in the politest of terms, sheer folly?" Queen Mother 49 asked gently.

>>5032166
Part 2.3
She saw 135's carapace colour the green of fury- 135 was proud, too proud, perhaps?- but her words were respectful. "Forgive me, Queen Mother, if my words didst unnerve thee. I wouldst be willing to hear thine words on why we should not assault the primates."

Queen Mother 49 turned the red of satisfaction as she asked a question. "Tell me, 135, wouldst thou accept a Human as a Tchkon? Or a Duerfin? Or a Stellarin? Mayhap e'en an illborne Illthidim?"

"What? No, Great Mother, of course not! Wouldst I did so, thou'rt most welcome to think me mad!" 135 said, her green carapace now spotted with purple and black.

>>5031876
Of course, the guy's idea means that child soldiers are now cost effective. Just give them spare parts and watch them kill aliens by the hundreds.

>>5032179
Part 2.4
"The humans would. The humans have," Queen Mother 49 said calmly. "Their soldiers may use basic weapons equal to anything our shaper-caste can spawn, but their superweapons, elite troops and greater war machines are designed and created not by their kin, but duerfin mavericks, unaccepted by their own kin, accepted by the humans. Uruk warriors, hungering not for bloodshed, but the cmamaraderie of fellow warriors, serve alongside Illthidim warrior-sorceror auxilliaries in Human armies, and both often reach high command. Stellarin can be found navigating their most important ships, either because they cannot take the structure of Stellarin society, or because they have found Human mates-"

"Impossible! Disgusting!"

"-but true, Queen Mother 91. The other races doth speak of the humans' blatant speciesism, but 'tis reality: humans accept far more of other races than we, theirs. Fight any one race if each of us were alone, but can we outmanouever Stellarin navigators? Can our sorcery compete with Illthidim mastery of the Ninefold path? Hath our warriors suddenly evolved carapaces that can withstand Uruk strength, or our hives withstand Duerfin weapons? For if we wage war on humans, all this we shall surely face, for they are willing to see those e'en not of their kind as equals, not paid help or mercenaries."

>>5030894
mass effect.

>>5032187
Part 2.5
"Queen Mother 49, that is a risk we must take!" 135 said hotly. "The farmland on our worlds doth run fallow with o'eruse, the rivers run dry! We must take the humans' worlds, or we shall all starve!"

If Queen Mother 49 could sigh with exasperation, she would. Instead, she just turned a bright pink with black spots. The situation wasn't half as bad as 135 said; their worlds were more than capable of sustaining them. What she didn't have was that feeling of glory in her carapace, that fire burning within her fluids that told her she was worth something. What 135 had, in fact, was the same desire that Queen Mother 49 had when -she- was young, and her memories drifted back...

She broke off. She had to focus on the here and now. "I hath considered this question, Queen Mother 135, and though 'twould displease thee, 'tis but the sole island of sanity in the ocean of madness that would descend on us 'ere we go to war." Queen Mother 49 knew it was not all that intelligent to insult 135, especially with the young Queen practically frothing at the mouth, but to hell with that bitch.

>>5032196
Part 2.6
"And what plan is this, Queen Mother 49?" 135 asked, the hostility of her bright green carapace colouring her voice slightly now. She was speaking low-speech now, too agitated to bother with high-speech, and uncaring of the political fallout- more evidence of her youth, Queen Mother 49, realized, mentally taking back her 'bitch' remark.

"We have them help us," Queen Mother 49 said simply. "With Human technology aiding them, our workers can harvest food far better than we could ever before."

"And how are we to do that, Queen Mother 49?" 135 asked. "If not through conquest? For the only other way would be to... to join their Alliance..."

There was silence, and the Hive burst into an uproar. Even so, Queen Mother 49 observed with red satisfaction that there were many blues in the chamber...

>>5032202
Part 2.7
Several hours later, Queen Mother 49 was carried out of the Hive, having successfully argued for a trial membership, with both sides, Tchkan and Human, exchanging limited resources for a while, the mutual relationship providing for a closer relationship should the need arise. As her warriors carried her to her biopship, she allowed herself to reminisce, of leading her armies off into space, wanting to carve out her own Empire. Of meeting a human trading fleet, and being awed by both the sheer power of the fleet, and the diversity of the crew. Of trading food, resources, and most importantly, bio-engineered compound eyes instead of weapons fire...

She lifted one of her clawed arms, the talons at its end currently retracted.

Of one human, James, helping her adapt to the new, terrifying world of colour.Of James, the skilled, but poor doctor, giving of his skills generously, without fear or favour...

The claw came out, and Queen Mother 49 allowed herself to be lost in the memories the simple gold ring brought back.

(=THE END=)

I've got one or two more so I'll put them up and thats my lot, as I said I've not seen any NEW stuff in months, I should probably write my own.

>>5032209
+++++++++++++++++++
“Humans are insane. You see, Humans have this concept called “Vengeance”. Once, a Vuux warship blew away one of their early colony ships. Fifty Terran geo-helio-cycles later, without a word, they glassed the entirety of the Vuux homeworld and called it even. Not one senator in the Union even dared bring it up with their ambassador. They have no compunction to follow the Concord of Equal Force!”

“The Human muscle-to-mass ratio is incomprehensible. Their world must have been at least half-again as large as ours. Their biology defies reason, they breathe oxygen and yet can swim in liquids without trouble. They can kill with their manipulator extremities, and more. One prisoner slammed his brain case into a guard, and then beat them to death with his bare hands.”

"Humanity, FUCK YEAH".

“Of all the violence-capable sophont clades, Humans are the only ones who strap themselves into armored shells and drop out of the atmosphere onto enemy positions. And that’s only after they soften up any ground resistance with orbital bombardment. We are certain that they have secretly developed mind-upload technology (and thus a kind of technical immortality). The other possibility, that they are willing to throw themselves into the path of anti-starship weapons without hesitation and risk their consciousnesses, is unthinkable.”

>>5032209
>The claw came out, and Queen Mother 49 allowed herself to be lost in the memories the simple gold ring brought back.

/d/'awww.

>>5032226
lol yeah that ones very much /d/'aww/heresy.

I was thinking about how a universe could come about where humans would be the ultimate badass. I thought what would happen if for some reason earth was one of the very few planets in the galaxy to produce predators. Everywhere eating other animals causes lethal prion diseases like cannibalism in humans. Elsewhere therefore predators never evolved, the vast majority of sapient species developed on worlds with no fear of predation, no cause for real aggression. The galaxy is full of vegetarian herd animals, docile and content. Their cultures slow and stagnating to human eyes. Imagine their horror at discovering a meat eating species, with incredible adaptive intelligence, agression and independence and co-operation existing simultaneously as part of an utterly alien pack mentality. We'd be horrors.

You could even imagine that earth is a high grav world compared to the galactic average and has a higher oxygen content so humans are bigger, faster and stronger as well.

>>5032223
“I once met a Human at a waystation on a Class 1 world. It did some kind of rough work for one of their colonies. It called itself a “search and retrieval expert” but I’m guessing the translation software couldn’t find the proper words. A few weeks later, it returns to the waystation, sans its trans-grav (rented, I might add). Apparently the people it was hunting took down its transport, but it continued on foot after escaping the wreckage and patching itself up. The scary part was that it was wearing clothes fashioned from Tharge pelts, had its targets’ ears on a necklace (DNA proof, I guess), and had fashioned a spear from a jagged piece of the trans-grav’s hull and an Iron-root. And it was honestly none the worst for wear, just sauntered over to the AENet terminal and collected on its kills.”

"You want to know about the humans? Let me tell you something, comrade. You want to stay far away from them if they're in a fighting mood, because there are plenty of them to go around, and they're not at all shy about killing each other to get the pleasure of killing you."

"Eighteen years back, I was serving with the Coalition in the Battle of N49. Us, the [Andromedans], and the [Milky Way Defense Command], all against the Red Star Council. And about halfway through the battle one of their big cruisers- you know the type- gets into a direct gun-duel with one of the Council's big gunships. They get torn apart in short order, but we've got our hands full and no way to evac them. We expected them to sue the Council for their surrender, and I think they did too."

>>5032245
"Instead, the crazy [untranslatable] fire up the main engines and drive their ship STRAIGHT INTO THE COUNCIL BATTLECRUISER. And as if that wasn't enough, while everyone's staring at the debacle, they touch off their reactors!"

"There were seventeen thousand humans crewing that ship. I saw the battle report afterwards- the Council folded almost immediately after the battlecruiser went. They deemed it "a regrettable but acceptable loss."

"Stay far away from the human sectors, comrade."

"Of the mighty armada that had left Imperial space to claim the blue planet there was no word. The transmissions had ceased abruptly, but long range communication was prone to mishaps, and no one was overly concerned."

"When the transit pod dropped from hyperspace it was assumed to be space junk at first, but a very weak transponder signal caused enough interest that the Governor-General ordered an investigation. The pod's sole occupant, a technician from the Armada's flagship had been driven to insanity by what he had witnessed, but he still managed to push a box into the Governor-General's grasp before collapsing."

"None of us were quite expecting what we found inside, if we knew to expect anything at this point. Staring back from the box were the lifeless eyes of the Lord Admiral, well two of his lifeless eyes at least, the third had been destroyed by a projectile which had left a gaping exit wound amongst his antennae. Accompanying the head was a small piece of paper on which was drawn a crude representation of a four-limbed biped, raising the middle digit of his forelimb in some sort of gesture."

"A translation of the short accompanying text proved to be a suggestion to do something physically impossible."

>>5032256
Ah I just realised the last story I have is Rescue Party
by Arthur C. Clarke.
It is some 10,000 words so I don't think I'll be posting the whole thing.

Look it up cause I've certainly hauled it off the net from somewhere...if you're the lazy sort though I can post just the ending, it's pretty good.

The Emperor would be soooo proud to read all these

>>5032238
Combined with >>5031667, this setting would be biased towards humans in the most horrific way.

"Chancellor Davin, you were present at the occupation of Eluain 3 were you not. Would you care to share your experiences of the human's belligerance. Your wise council would be much appreciated."

The old one sighed. Across the great debating hall all eyestalks swivelled to take in the old warrior's medal covered carapace. Chromosphores flashed in curiosity and respect as the elder rose slowly on his foot.

"I was at Eluain," the old one clicked, "I watched as the humans fell on our world and the skies burnt with the flames of their dropcapsules. I saw the great legions of Krillia destroyed in one night by a single unit of Human soldiers that stalked the shadows of that terrible darkness like vengeful spirits. I watched as arcology after arcology fell one after another. Some by guile, some by the sheer force of their armies. I watched a single human kill Lord General Kallerd and 7 of his staff. A bipedal giant with the strength of three warriors combined I watched him tear the generals head from his shoulders even as his staff lanced him through.

>>5032346
And awesome!

>>5032238

We'd fuck everything that moved.

>>5032431
In more ways than one, I dare say.

Goddamn xenophiles.

>>5032431
I'm pretty sure some people would keep sex slaves, yeah.

I do really like (or should that be dislike) the idea that even if we aren't the strongest biologically, or technologically, we have the abillity to totally go against any form of self preservation and common sense for the most trivial of things, never mind important things like family/loved ones.

The last thread brought up somewhere that we would probably be the only species in the universe who FOR FUN would create and imagine things always bigger and badder than us in games, films, literature, pretty much every medium, just so the human characters are challenged.

The humans not only attempt to mate with other species in the most horrifying and undignified ways, they even mate with one another in orifices not meant for the action at all!

I am proud to be a human now fa/tg/uys.
I want to be the bad guy alien in a vidya

>>5032483

You take it for granted. I’m not saying it’s your fault or anything, but it’s true. Your species lives your entire lives and some may never really think about that second voice in your head as just that, a second thing. It’s a part of you and maybe you’re a part of it too, but you still take it for granted. There isn’t a human word for Jalan’ra: Reason being, it’s a foreign concept to them, the closest things they have might be “fear” or “conscious” in equal measure.

What happens when you see an enemy Skinreaper? Hell, what happens when you _think_ you see a Skinreaper? Your Jalan’ra takes in what you’re seeing and analyzes it. It determines what you’re looking at and whether or not it poses a threat to you. If you’re in danger it tells you option after option about how you can react and how best to do it depending on the situation and your preparedness for it. From a list of thousands of options your Jalan’ra can fashion fit an option to your liking in milliseconds and you’re good to go.

A human doesn’t have that. When a human sees a Skinreaper - when a human sees you in that big battlesuit- it doesn’t think or consider options: It reacts. Sometimes, sometimes it runs. The human can be foolish, but it’s not dumb. If it thinks it’s screwed, it’s out of there just like that. However, that’s not always how it works. If it has an order or if, gods help you if you do, you’re somehow threatening something it holds above itself, those little pools of color on its head lock in and there’s no considering involved: It’s coming for you.

There was this low-budget RTS game where three races used to live peacefully in a planet until humanity invaded the pacifist fucks. They allied, fought them off, but by the time they won they had become as warlike as humans, and they used the gear humans left on their retreat to bomb the crap out of each other.

Wish I remembered the name, though.

MUSCLE MEMORY BITCHES, WE HAVE IT.

Seriously though, what if other races didn't have that? Instant reactions to a given situation. We don't have to even think about it, we just do it.

..Across the room, delegates clicked their earscales in agitation and sympathy, but the old one continued.

"I remember the fear we felt as we sent our surrender, knowing in our heartweaves that it would not save us. And I remember the atonishment when they accepted it." The old one straightened, facing the room flashing red with conviction.

"I was at Eluain. I watched as the humans that a week before were our most dire enemies distribute sweet candies to the hatchlings. I watched their engineers replace the very power lines they had destroyed with more efficent human units. I took our sick hatchlings to the medihabs the humans set up for Krill and humans alike. Watched with wonder at the new extranet links the humans set up in the education centres as our hatchlings learnt of wonders the guardian fathers had long forbidden us."

"And", said the old one slowly "I was there a year later, a fresh security recruit with a fresh stamped lance in my claws, when the G'rriah came looking for slaves. I remember the look on a humans face as he joked of the certain death to come, his laughter as he took his enemy with him to the afterlife. He died to defend hatchlings of a different species, against an evil he could have ignored, on a world that wasn't his. Death came for him, and he welcomed it like an old friend."

The old one sighed again. "And you wish to fight these people on their own grounds? This time they will not stop, they will only lay down their arms when every Krill world is reduced to burning ash. You wish to provoke these people. In that case you are as crazy as they are..."

Your humanocentric writefaggotry is bot inaccurate and tedious. Slapping a 40k motivator on your post doesn't make it /tg/ related.

>>5032611
It's something to do.
Also countersage.

>>5032611
STOP HAVING FUN, GUYS I MEAN IT

“It was probably about 13 Galactic Years ago that I first fought alongside the Humans. My unit of Vargruung Walkers were acting as heavy support for a unit of about 14 human infantry, doing hunter-kill missions against the Kell-wreth in some dark swamp world.

Reminded me of home if I’m honest.

Sure we’d all heard the stories of how humans breathed oxygen neat, could rip a reef lizard apart with their bare hands, felt no pain, breathed fire etc etc. The usual fznar you always get from military stories.
The truth is that, yes, humans have a well honed capacity for violence, but that’s still nowhere near the sort of thing you get from a Drll Suicide Bezerker. No the thing that makes them dangerous is that…

Well it’s hard to put in the words. You know that feeling you get when you meet a doctor? That sort of feeling of trust you have that he knows how to do his job, that’s the feeling I get from humans with regards to fighting. They’ve got the air of knowing what they’re doing when it comes to fighting.
They have this completely detached way of thinking about warfare that no other race can match.

>>5032642
It was posted already.

>>5032642
That one's been posted.

rolled 86 = 86

>>5032611
Starcraft, my friend. It's Starcraft, not 40K.
It think this thread gives excellent ideas for new campaigns as or in my case, to an existing one.

postmind

>>5032642
That and adrenalin, that stuff’s just incredible. It’s considered an illegal and potentially lethal drug in 90% of galaxy. Drll Juveniles use it as a Narcotic, the Octovar consider it an Aphrodisiac and the Kell-Wreth use it as a combat-drug. But only humans produce it naturally, and only humans have bodies DESIGNED for it.
Afterall, it was the Kell-Wreth deciding it’d be fun to abduct humans and surgically harvest their adrenalin glands that caused the whole Terran / Kell Wreth war in the first place, and it was why we were doing HK missions on Ghoulad III.

So there we were, me and two fellow Barghast in our Vargruung Scout Walkers, acting as heavy support for a unit of human “Rayn’garrs” when a trinity of Kell-Wreth in full Mechanized Battle Dress get the drop on us.
You could clearly see their veins monstrously blue and throbbing, and they’re squealing in that horrible way that they sound when they try to use their underdeveloped vocal cords.
It was obvious that they were doped up on adrenalin so far that they couldn’t even act rationally any more.

>>5032559
Awesome, just like that.
I suppose depending on the reason it can be one of our nobler or more heroic traits if the reasons are good...but then it's the same process that shoots innocent civilians, rapes people, and all the other bad shit too.

>>5032653
>>5032650

Seriously!? But that's my writefaggotry!

Who in the world actually saved one of my stories!?

>>5032672
That one's been posted too.

maybe humans are the maximized killers balancing nearly perfectly the calorie demands of a brutal body and a sharp mind

>>5032709

Where? I'm not seeing it?

Most of this is copypasta from the original trilogy of threads, now on suptg.

I was sort of hoping for new content, since I'm a shit writer. Might give it a go, though.

>>5032694
*quietly raises hand*

What can I say I like humans being the real monsters we know we are just we have no comparison race to judge outselves by yet.

Good writan.

>>5032718
see
>>5031977

>>5032209
That ring part is still horribly disturbing...

Right now everything is possible. We MIGHT be the strongest, smartes and best developed species right now.

It's possible, but not very likely.

Inquisitor Tom wants to write too, but doesn't know where to start.

>>5032781
>>5032726

Yeah I'm thinking about taking a crack at it myself, I mean you don't need to be Arthur C. Clarke to write a cool wee bit of story that gets people thinking.

>>5032732

Oh, uh, thanks. Looking back, there were probably things about it I would add or change, but it's pretty good short story all told.

Also, I was under the impression that main theme behind these threads wasn't basic humanocentralism, but rather a mild rebellion against all of these generic sci-fi games and shows that depict humans as being Mr Average McAveragepants of the universe.

>>5032758
Well, er, we've been into space, and noone has noticed, so I assume that if there IS a super advanced space civilization out there, they are still way out of range.

>>5032781

>Inquisitor Tom wants to write too, but doesn't know where to start.

Just start writing. It doesn't matter if you write an end first, or what you write is initially crap. Just so long as you write something.
Trust me.

"Commander we are receiving signals from moon base"
Commander Davidson sighed, after the hours of screaming the radio silence had been a relief, still may as well grin and bear it.
"put it up"
The screen flickered momentarily, then came on-line. Face to face with Davidson, was one of them. For a moment the sound was incomprehensible, before a translator somewhere along the line kicked in.
"...ling the planet you know as earth to discuss terms of surrender"
It was as he had suspected, he could only hope they would not be too harsh. hesitantly he pressed to respond.
"This is Commander J.N. Davidson talking on behalf of earth, what are your terms?"
"We will immediately withdraw from your system, leaving behind one of our ships as remuneration for your loses, further, once you ente-"
"WAIT, What? you demolished us up there, shouldn't we be surrendering to you"
" This fleet was provided with 400 warriors, each the product of a 16 generation breeding program, designed to create a creature for which violence was not unnatural. it was estimated at 8 times the population of combats a world your size could support. Our calculations would suggest that your moonbase should have fallen without a fight, it denzins unable even to think of violence. Every, Single. Occupant. Fought until death. You lost less than 1/100 millionth of your possible fighting forces, we lost 1/200 of all the warriors our race has ever produced. We surrender"

>>5032785
I am freaking the fuck out right now because I read this post before I posted mine.

>>5032815

Yeah I'd say that's quite right, generally humans are pretty average, or even lower or worthless entirely in a lot of scifi, usually as a good grounding for the fight against adversity/underdog/heroic story.

While it comes over as "Humanity fuck yeah!" sometimes at it's core it is generally still "dear god we are monsters/some of things a saine person can do are just unbelieveable" depending on the context of the story.
I like the ones which tell of humanity being almost wiped out but then using that inner strength to retaliate just as much as the stories where the humans are abusing that strength to be the agressors.

its unlikley we would ever meet an alien race we could ever relate with. we would be lucky just meet another upright, bipedal race.

>>5032930
given the size of our own solar system it's unlikely we'd ever meet another alien race.

>>5032836

Oooh, I like that one, I've not seen a bit about when the realisation that we are actually scary as all hell has finally dawned before.

>>5032819

They're not out there. All that is out there are the Matrioshka brains left behind by their apotheosis, built from the dumb matter of the planets they evolved on. Dyson spheres within Dyson spheres, composed entirely of nanoprocessors, providing enough memory for an entire race to upload into them with room to spare.

But they are all empty but for the raving shells of quasi-companies and subsapient lawsuits, like barnacles on an old shipwreck.

Hey, you know, this has always bugged me: Is there more than one Solar system? Sol is the name of our sun, right? So wouldn't this be the only Solar system? Would the rest be Star systems, or named after their stars similarly?

I remember one day when I was a guard in my post in Luvia, it had been a few months since the humans settled into our world, the Council had heard and seen their exploits against the Kallr, and they were all the wiser for offering a peaceful solution to things.

Well, that day, two of the human settlers had decided to make a trip into the wild, they were new and had taken a day off, they asked me to be their guide, seen as I didn't have guarding duty that day either.

Well, we hadn't seen the prowess of the humans when they fought, we didn't see just how fearless they were in a moment of life-or-death, but most of the guards had not seen how the Kallr worlds had been left.

It was not their massive warfare or their strength in numbers that won them wars, it was their sheer ability for fighting, no, not fighting, for killing, they already had the knowledge to kill and destroy engraved into their minds since their birth, each one of them.

On the trip, we found a Skralld, I ran back immediately, I knew enough not to try to fight against one of them. The two humans prepared to fight the bloody titan wielding our spears, not even their laser weapons, but our own military spears.

One of them forged an strategy on the second, have the Skralld chase one down, while the other attacked from behind, and immediately they went. One of them ran and the Skralld took chase, the other one simply jumped into it and jammed his spear into the beast, it tore off the carapace with only the strength of his arm.

And as the Skalld whinced in pain the other one went back, and finished off the beast.

It wasn't so much this, though. These two humans were dressing in their simple clothing, a fine layer of fabric that they used to avoid cold, as they told me. I was fully armored, and yet they took him with only their wits and their strength.
Eh, not that good, and probably too big, but I'm kind of inspired.

>>5032963
Someone likes my writefaggotry?
Awesome
I could try writing some more if you guys like.

>>5032976
'sup Charles Stross

I'm suprised nobody wrote a descriptive story about a human and some alien mating.

I think's it's good that way.

These threads are one of the reasons i love tg.

>>5033064
He is the reason why I have begun to differentiate between neckbeards and fatbeards, the latter only having negative attributes. He belongs to these.

>>5033099
Second.

>>5033039

A part from the lack of splitting up your story (Seriously, do what everyone else is doing and keep the paragraphs short and to the point then break them up by an empty line) I found it to be entertaining.

>>5033099
Don't tempt them now.

"Humans have no queens. Instead, they have a second gender that comprises at least half their number, which individually serve the same purpose. So when you hear the dire numbers of their population from the calculation drones, you'd think to cut those numbers in half, wouldn't you?

But no, it is not so. Their sub-queens fight as well, and fiercer.

We were assaulting a small human settlement that had been erected in violation of the Auveri-Terran Colony Suspension act; our superiors had ordered termination. The automated defenses fell quickly, and the civilians - mostly sub-queens - scattered in what we thought was a retreat.

We split up to search for them, and one of my soldiers ducked into a room alone as I continued down the hall. One of their spawn was there, screeching, and without a thought he discharged a mag-round into it to silence it. One of the sub-queens screeched. I think they name their spawn, so that's what it might've been.

I heard two more rounds go off before I heard him scream. By the time I'd turned around, it had torn off two of his mandibles, screeching as it used them to stab his eyes. I couldn't bring myself to shoot.

This creature - this human sub-queen - had just murdered a veteran Auveri warrior in less than ten klivec with its bare hands, while injured. And when it looked at me, I knew I would be next.

So I did the only sensible thing. I ordered a full retreat."

>>5032585

Or adrenalin.

I think when we write these threads, we focus too much on the brutality of man in combat. We are less killing machines and more beings of passion and intensity. I'm trying to write up something along the lines of how for every atrocity humanity commits, it also does something incredibly noble. Think along the lines of when the US troops found the Nazi death camps in WWII, which would show both sides of this.

>We were not nurtured by our planet, but instead nurtured it.

riiight.

I was afraid, Thought-Helper. It was not the dull fear of hearing about a wind-storm on the horizon or hearing that your herd is moving faster than you are, but a deep fear. Like an icy river in the cold season, and I had fallen in. The Drelnack had burst into the shelter, teeth gnashing and snarling with hunger... Do not go to Pavius 4, Thought-Helper. It is a cruel world, where all the beasts seem to be interested in seeing if they can ... eat you....... yes.. yes, apologies. The Drelnack had knocked down the door to the shelter. I was closest to the door, and thus closest to it. I was locked in that sick cold-fear... I was doomed! But the human traders that we were travelling with.. They were still mobile. A few of them, yes, were just as frozen in fear as I. But one of them, a beta-female, if I recall correctly, was close enough.. I still wonder if my memory is faulty, Thought-Helper. But I swear that she ran up to it and kicked it! She was not the alpha, and yes, humans don't pick alphas or betas based on size, but she was still not even large for a human. She kicked it, like one of our own females would kick a rutting male! Even with their strange plantigrade legs, the kick pushed the Drelnack a few feet. It turned, its attention on her. Then the.. I forget which one Thought-Helper. I think it was the beta male. He pulled his weapon and fired it. The blast drove us into herd-panic, but we survived, I survived, and most amazingly... the human survived.

She attacked it, Thought-Helper! It was going to eat her! She got a lucky hit in and it was going to kill her! I don't understand it! I don't understand it! The Captain tells me that its a valid strategy, distract a foe while your Alpha readies, but she had no time to enact that strategy! She just attacked it blindly! I.. I would like to be sedated now, Thought-Helper... It is stressful to remember... ahhhnnn... thank youuu... zzzzz....

>>5033133
Was fine till the end.

>>5033052

This is nothing to say of how they approach the care of their bodies with things that aren't chemicals. Human culture seems to have always felt a need to modify their bodies. It wasn't until fairly recently in their history that they've been actually capable of doing so in any meaningful way.

These heathens willfully butcher their bodies. They hack off perfectly healthy limbs full of living cells, grafting on a metal skeletal limb covered with wiring and synthetic muscle fiber that gives it strength above the cieling of human strength (and already impressive cieling, mind you!)

And they still things in these fact limbs. Sometimes simple devices - cameras, data storage devices, interface jacks. Sometimes tools of war.

Especially tools of war.

Some take this further. They replace more and more of their bodies with machinery, to the point their fellows have expressed a disbelief to me that there's any flesh still inside the shell.

Others have taking to playing at being Gods, tampering with the delicate nature of genetics and modifying their forms in unnatural and horrific ways. There are a number of humans who traverse the stars looking like the beasts of their home world - or monsters from their myths, and these modifications are rarely purely cosmetic. They have a disturbing tendency to attempt to follow in their chosen creature's abilities. Powerful crushing jaws, clawed fingers, powerful noses.

They were not sated with the killing and predatory might of their natural bodies, and crossed themselves with creatures who's traits they envied.

Humans cannot be contented. Their bloodlust and want for power is insatiable. They will build pistols into their forelimbs, steal genetic data from predatory creatures to augment their speed and smell, and graft metal ontop of flesh-most-sacred.

They are corrupt and dangerous creatures. Tread carefully.

ITT humans indulge in the conceit that they will be physically superior to other species in the universe

>>5033175

All of these "Humanity, FUCK YEAH!" talk is about the human soldiers, which gives us some space open for the sensible and humane actions that soldiers generally don't concern themselves with.

The most terrifying thing about the humans is not that all of them are willing and capable to fight, nor is it their rapid rate of population growth.

It it their ability to learn and adapt.

It take two years for a Drone, after birth, to grow to full size and learn all the skills it will ever have. A human, on the other hand, will take approximately 16 years to fully develop and learn a basic skillset. But it never stops being able to learn. Every moment of its life is spent acquiring new skills or new uses for old skills.

When you face a human soldier, you face a creature that has spent longer than you have been alive learning how to kill .

>>5033244
But it's still mostly fapping off to humanity as some kind of uber-daemon with roidrage. For every drop of blood a soldier spills, he will one day shed a tear for that fallen foe.
Even at war, we're capable of camaraderie with our enemy. In WWI, whole sections of trenches had to be moved out after Christmas because they refused to fight again with the friends they'd made. In WWII, soldiers who had been left untouched by the deaths of their comrades and enemies alike stopped and wept horribly when they walked into the death camps.

>>5033175

The arachnid/insect story sort of touches on that, the fact that while all the other races are very much seperatists the humans are willing to take in the outcasts of the other races.

It's a fairly light version of it though I agree. An obvious easy one would be having a story about say a human soldier risking his/her life saving an alien child, though I think it would have to be bipedal/fairly human like, then again in the future we might be more open as a species so the gribbly insect baby might look worth saving.

An alien race with totaly different morals, values, possibly even method of thought/perception entirely could very well be utterly confused by that...
...hmm I've just had some great ideas for a little writing.

*wanders off to put some bullet points down*

>>5033280

But those are rare occurances, you have to admit. If two different species where to fight each other, there's a bigger chance of it boiling down to extermination wars. But yes, I have to agree, "Humanity, FUCK YEAH!! but we can be nice too, y'know" has been briefly touched at best.

>>5033239
As a parallel to 99% of sci-fi settings where the aliens are bigger or more advanced or whatever. When there are threads on Stephen King's settings do you make a retarded post like

ITT humans wallow in self pity and assume they will be completely inferior to other species in the universe

>>5031908
Hey! This was my own delivery! Small board huh? I love this stuff. There's never enough settings where humanity is at the top of the spectrum rather than being bland and in the middle. I always wondered what it would be like if alien species were generally weaker, slower and less agressive than us.

>>5033298
Just as rare are the mentally untouchable uber-soldiers who can remain completely detatched from the horrors they're committing.
The sympathetic soldier might even be more common. Even when faced with killing another living thing capable of sapience, many humans balk. Regardless of species.
For every psychopathic killer intent on genocide, there is a sympathiser who will want peace and understanding. Only against a species that we could, in no way, understand would we fight a terrifying extinction war. If there is a way to communicate, it will be tried time and time again to stop the atrocities.

>>5033011

>>5033342
>>5033305
>>5033298

>>5033207
isn't about soldiers

>>5033372

Why did I do that lol

>>5033342

This was what I intended to quote.

Heres we go, contributan.

We gazed at their star system with hungering eyes, planets ripe with resources for the taking, nothing but low forms of interstellar travel had ever been observed between their fledgling planets. "Humans" they called themselves, "Useless" is what we called them. We assembled a sizable fleet, 500 destroyer ships strong. On that day we landed on their planet. I was deployed as a foot soldier, we expected resistance and we were met by it. Although hardly to be considered soldiers, their law enforcement and militia claimed many of our warriors. In two planetary rotations 3 of their 4 planets had fallen. They called their last planet "Delphi" and it was their beacon of hope, but it too soon fell. After our swift victory is the Sancarion system our own system flourished with the new plentiful flow of resources. It ushered in an era of unprecedented peace. It was not till many star rotations had passed until we realized our mistake, and by then, it was far far to late.

>>5033403
We had never imagined ourselves capable of such self-destruction, but on that day we understood how flawed we were. It was that day that the world of Xel'grathen fell and with it the rest of our planets, it was that day the the human ships blocked out our star, it was that day that we realized we knew not what we had provoked. After our assault and quick resolution on what we believed to be the only human star system, we had become a greater civilization then we had ever hoped, our system flourished, our armies swelled, our colonies multiplied, but we never imagined that the human system had been just that, a colony. In our ignorance we had invoked the wrath and vengeance of an empire spanning into the vast reaches of the galaxy. We had little time to prepare after learning of Xen'abrina's fall, we knew not who was laying siege to our system, but we knew that our might was dwarfed 100 fold by their own. A slight breeze blew, rustling the trees and grass of Xel'grathen. We stood entrenched, ready to face the foe that we knew was coming. The calming silence was cut short by the thundering of anti-ship guns and it was then that we saw their ships. A fleet to end all fleets descending on us, Fighters screamed passed our entrenchments and unleashed bombs that incinerated deep into the tectonic layers of our planet. Their transports looked like keltrip bugs, descending in the thousands. Before no time their ground forces were upon us. I write this to teach a lesson to anyone who might survive this, I write this because we were wrong by every stretch of the imagination. It was we who thought ourselves the better, I see the truth now. We were far to young a species to meddle with the forces at play within our galaxy.

*The transmission buzzes as a large rumble shakes the screen*

I do not expect history to forgive us.

*The creature on screen places a small object resembling some type of gun to his head and pulls the trigger.

>>5033406

And that's the fate that awaits all members of the Tau race.

>>5033431
...No. This is not a 40k circle jerk thread. Take your things and go, namefag.

!This data is preserved for future reference on the intelligent speciese reffered to as "HUMANS"!

They came from a far off star in one of the spiral arms ajacent to our own which they called "SOL". They were exceptionally friendly and exceptionally curious, but they were not like any life form I've ever seen. Tall, bipedial creatures with two limbs for motion and two for manipulation. The variety was atounishing, their genome must be twice the size of ours given the sheer variety of colors and dispositions they have.

After the language barrier was broken, we quickly allied with them. It was startling at first, but seeing how comfortable they were taking care of our brood along with their own young put the Elders to rest quickly. Sharing technology resulted in such an explosion of information that we thought we'd soon have an age of enlightenment that would last thousands of cycles.

>>5033480
It wasn't long, though, before the Qu'rahns decided to make war with us again. We feared that it would be the same as always, many lives lost and a hundred cycles of lives lost on both sides before yet another uneasy truce. The Elders thought this would be the case until the Qu'rahns attacked a Human settlement.

The response was almost immediate. Their Elders came to ours and started asking many questions about them. Their numbers, their beliefs, but especially the Qu'rahns leadership. Not even a lunar cycle passed and the humans moved out to the Qu'rahn home planet. They sent a short message: "Stop all hostile acts or face the consiquences."

The Qu'rahns reacted as they always did, with hostility. What followed was one of the shortest wars I've ever seen.

Humans are creatures of incredible passions and - in equal parts - perversity.

They are *always* ready for sexual activity. Humans have no mating season. They also seem to have no limit on imaging new and inventive ways of conducting sexual activity. They use orifices not meant for sexual activity for pleasure, couple up in same-sex pairs, use a variety of objects or unusual methods (such as binding one partner up, inserting foreign objects into orifices, while partaking in some sort of strange game where they take different roles than they actually possess in life, etc.) and even copulate outside of their species with other sentients. Both the ones that are similar enough to appear attractive to the average human and the ones that are radically different from the average human and may not have equivalent genitalia.

Research into ancient human ttexts and data infrastructure only reveals more and more of this sexual depravity. Data dredged from databases containing information from the old "Internet" information network is riddled throughout with pornographic content.

I am certain there is no act or thing that some human, somewhere in the galaxy does not find sexually arousing.

>>5033431

I laughed harder than I should have.

>>5030027
This reads like it's from "The Forever War"

Or more likely

"Starship Troopers"

No?

80s cartoon wallpaper unrelated

>>5033486
The Humans sent messages to the Qu'Rahn cities, saying to cooperate and to not help their Elders when the time came. We now know why that is.

The bombardment only lasted a third of a lunar cycle, but the devistation was unfathonable. Their great towers to their Elders were decimated, their leadership quickly executed, and their armies demoralised all within two lunar cycles! They gave the Qu'rahns the same technology they gave us and told their people of a system called "Democrasy". Once the humans were certain the Qu'rahns were no longer a threat they left them peacefully.

These humans... they are such interesting creatures.
----------
Sorry, first time I really tried this.

>>5033496
It was bad, and you should feel bad.

>>5032346
The interrogator sweated nervously. Even though the prisoner was trapped behind three layers of force fields, her predatory stare was totally unnerving. He settled down on his hooved feet and wiped his brow. "S- so..... State your name and age." The little girl giggled. "My name's Sarah. I'm 9 years old. What's your name, Mr. Hooves?" The interrogator was taken aback.

"Oh! Um.... I am called F'jurk." The girl shook her head disapprovingly, keeping her blood chilling stare aimed straight at his eyes. "I like Mr. Hooves much better than F.... Fuj.... Fujerk or however you say it." The girl's stare kept him from arguing. "F- fine!" He gulped. His tail was practically plastered to his back from the sheer terror. Sarah wasn't even half his size and yet she was more fearsome than the largest Nophelm warrior. "Now.... Why did you kill our ambassador?" She giggled. "You're so silly, Mr. Hooves. You guys are like animals, you know?" Her gaze turned from bloodthirsty to what appeared to be total insanity. "You know what we do to animals back on Earth? We kill them." F'jurk realized just how twisted the humans were. This situation was more critical than he thought. He had to go warn the others!

>>5033547
As soon as he turned his back, a loud noise turned his blood to ice. It was the sound of the forcefields being disrupted. Before he could fully turn around, little Sarah had already run up to him and effortlessly driven a hidden knife between his ribs. 3 of his stomachs were pierced, and several major vessels had been hit. He fell heavily onto the floor, struggling to get away as Sarah planted the her bare foot directly onto the knife, causing him to bellow in pain.

"Now, now Mr. Hooves. Don't move around so much. You'll bleed out too quickly if you do." She ground her heel into the knife, elicting another scream of pain from F'jurk. He was absolutely terrified. F'jurk didn't have the strength to struggle any longer. He was totally at her mercy now. 'Please, don't kill me! Don't do it!" She smiled widely. "You're so silly, Mr. Hooves. I'm not going to kill you." He looked relieved. "I'm going to eat you." His eyes widened. "W- what?" Sarah giggled. "That's what we do. We kill and eat animals. Didn't you know that?" She pulled out another knife. "I heard from the Commander that your race is tastier than cows are. I wonder if that's true?"

>>5033406
>>5033403
FUCK YEAH THAT WAS THE BEST.
No not really, I just wrote that. Any feedback (good or bad, I don't really care) would be appreciated, try to be sincere "hahaha I'm trolling this guy, how original." Gets a bit old.

>>5033555
Blatant ripoffs of Asimov are not welcome here.

>>5033568
I'm not sure what that is. So if it was unoriginal, I apologize, but I assure you it was not intentional.

Why does this topic remind me of shitty fighter-sim game Darklight Conflict?

I love this kind of threads.

>>5033496

I think a better story would be the other way around. If Earth had a dictator of some sort that was building star-destroying bombs and the rest of the galactic civilizations disapprove and pass resolutions to place sanctions on them.

I had been beaten, pressed back through the jungle and obsidian rocks until I was against a large cliff wall. We had been fighting for days. Our shots rang out through the plant-life at great range, each hoping that maybe this time it would land a killing blow. A 'sniper', the Humans call a warrior who excels in this sort of combat.

He had run out of ammunition, a fault of the Human weapons systems. Every so often I would see a shadow or other illusion and the dull whisp of my weaponsfire would be squelched by the heavy brush. I waited and watched. I watched until I felt the first sting of the Human's knife slip in to my backside. Perhaps he didn't understand how to properly kill our kind with such a weapon... Fortunate, for a while.

We fought in close quarters combat for a while until we had reached this point. Until I was sure I was about to meet Asaraal. I dropped my weapon and waited for the end. But something unexpected happened just then.

>>5033431
OH U

>>5033547
>>5033554

And then the alien wakes up?

Are they suicidal? Are they foolish? They do not act calmly, they do not pause to think. They are imprecise, they are careless... and their engineering reflects the way they think. We build to perfection. They build to "good enough".

The number of fatalities they endured before they could become spacefarers - both in actual spacefaring and in the constant low-level wars resulting from their cobbled-together energy economy - perhaps hardened them to risk, and taught them to work with it instead of avoiding it.

And as a result, they are generous in peace and terrible in war. Their machines! -- their industry produces far more than they need to consume, which makes them... wonderful partners in trade negotiations. And their ships! Each ship is not just a single hull, but contains a myriad further hulls inside, each containing much of the same equipment as the next. This... indulgence seemed at first to be terribly inefficient, until we angered them; and a single one of their cruisers held off a small marauder fleet long enough for their full fleet to arrive.

Our naval weapons had pounded the cruiser's hull, opening one compartment after another to hard vacuum, but the ruined bulk of the ship protected many more from our attacks. We found later, when they shared their records, that crews whose compartments had been breached simply donned pressure suits and fought on; crews who had received lethal doses of radiation or other mortal injuries fired on us until they died at their stations.

They fight with a suicidal fury when they feel threatened. Their weapons are clumsy and bulky, but overwhelmingly effective. Anything they build has so many redundant systems that it's nearly impossible to put it out of action without blasting it into slag. They are... dangerous. But now that they've achieved space flight, now that they know where we live, they are unstoppable.

It is we who will have to live with them, and not the other way around.

>>5033617

The human, I think, seeing that I had been beaten did not take the kill he had earned. His knife was poised to strike, but slowly it was put away. He drew close... Perhaps he intended to finish the job with his bare hands!

Instead, this human I had been locked in a bitter stalemate with for near a week urged me to sit down, pushing on my body until I was slumped against the cliff wall. He kneeled beside me and proceeded to apply field-medicine to the wound he had caused not so long ago. So he DID have an understanding of our physiology.

After he had mended my body, this sniper stood and took my Hakir [rifle]. He nodded his narrow little head toward me and left in to the shadowed jungle as quickly as he had been upon me. To this day, I don't understand why I'm alive. He must have known I wouldn't have shown the same compassion at the time, but he didn't seem to mind...

>>5033496

I rather like it, easily another possible alternative from the "extermination" route a number of the stories tend to take.

>>5033583
myself I thought it was kind of decent.

>>5033655
Yes, more of this.
Humans aren't dicks.

>>5033496

It was good, and you should feel good for giving it a go. Interesting way to look at things, humans playing it smart as well as using lotsa BOMBS BOMBS BOMBS like the rest of this thread.

Humans place a queer sort of value on the individual. It took a while for the sociologists in the thinker-caste to figure out, but our liquidation of their workers and warriors due to resource consumption upset them terribly. It helped to explain their refusal to even entertain negotiation with the brood-queens, since to them, we were committing an incredibly heinous war crime.

>>5033692
Kinda reminds me of Ender's Game.

>>5033709
...thanks for nearly making me puke. Hated that book so much.

>>5033692
More?
That one sounds like it has potential.

>>5033099
I was being courted by a female Undoriand, well I am pretty sure it was female. it
had designated it's universal translator to a human female voice set and I believe I
saw it's ovaries through its translucent bulk. If I remember correctly that is how we
were instructed to differentiate male from female but I have a poor memory for
xenobiology. "she" was unexpectedly funny foran alien, she had a surprisingly astute grasp of human humor. we had spent the evening imbibing our preferred drinks

and mocking the other ambassadors and delegates over our private com link. as we fell
further into self inflicted stupidity through drink, the tone of our conversation shifted. we started flirting with each other. I believe at first it was a joke but it soon spiraled out of control and we were actually taking an interest in each

other. I can not speak for her mindset but I was becoming very aroused, this fueled in equal measure by the taboo of the idea and the sexy voice set she had chosen. we ended up wondering off together as the event slowed down. she lead me back to her quarters.

>>5033746
for you to understand how awkward my encounter was you have to know what a Undoriand looks like. they resemble roughly a land dwelling jellyfish with a slug
like mobility appendage on the base fringed with tentacles.they are about four feet
tall and six or seven feet in diameter. the only thing remotely ascetically pleasing
about them might be their colour. they are semi translucent with a shimmering
reflection of blue or pink depending on the light. their organs are visible though their skin as I implied before. most of the organs are buried deep in the center of the mass, except for the females. the females have their ovaries closer to the surface. they are visible as opaque white structures resembling flowers or rosettes.

>>5033757
now back to my encounter. I found my self naked in her residence completely unsure as
to what the hell I was doing. she was not any more experienced than me at this sort
of thing and her translated voice seemed as nervous as felt. Despite her nervousness
she had a better Idea of how this would work than I did. she took charge of the
encounter guiding me. she instructed me to become erect. I fiddled with myself to
provide stimulation the necessary to achieve this. she then instructed me to pierce
her membrane with my member near an ovary. I was hesitant afraid I would damage
her but she reassured me that this was typically of Undoriand mating. that the males
penetrated the females flesh with their reproductive member. I sympathetically winced as I attempted to pierce her membrane. It offered some resistance at first then it tore open. I would have thought I was causing her damage if it was not for the
orgasmic moans in my headset. I thrusted in and out rhythmically, some of her internals
leaked out from the gash I had torn with aid of my movements. despite her appearance it was quite a pleasant encounter. she was so unlike a human it was just like masturbating and
her flesh seemed to have and stimulating effect that was almost electrical. it was
like an amped up stimulating lube.

>>5033763
her moans and and the physical sensation she provided ensured that I quickly
climaxed. spilling myself inside of her. I apologized and she asked me what for. to
be honest I wasn't sure what I was apologizing for but I felt like I should apologize for something. she gushed that was the best sex she has ever had that it lasted forever.she informed me that her species sex was just a brief transfer of DNA alone and the act of penetration was the pleasurable part. she divulged further that she had learned about human biology and speculated that they could be Superior consorts and that she had studied in depth human mating rituals and found that humor played a impotent roll.

>>5033769
I stood nude and flaccid in front of my grotesque lover realizing I had been manipulated the entire night by a blob of jello. she had practically poured the alcohol down my
throat and spent the entire night flattering me just so I would end up bedding
her. a shudder of realization rolled through me, the realization of what I had just done. I dressed myself and left, I got no impression she wanted to cuddle. and that is the end of my story, I have yet to receive child support bills on the behave of
twisted eldritch horrors wearing my face yet. so I believe I got away with every but my pride and a few ounces of liquid.

I am pretty sure they were ovaries

ITT: Discussions of humanity's "greatness" largely involve sex and violence.

Spoilers: I THINK YOU'RE STARTING TO UNDERSTAND.

you all invited it

Humanity is... strange, to say the least. Less than one hundred cycles ago, our species was on the verge of extinction at their hands. And now, they preserve us. Had it been us in their place, I do not think their would have been such mercy.
Something overcame humanity as it brought the last few thousand of us to heel, they soon viewed our destruction, which was their right of conquest, as some great atrocity. And since, they have commenced a program to rebuild our shattered homes, to encourage us to breed, to protect us from other space-faring species that would destroy us in our weakness. I am not sure what to think of humanity, other than that, likely, they will never be shown the kind of mercy they have shown us if something ever does conquer them.

>>5033746
There's always one, isn't there?

>>5033777
>>5033769
>>5033763
>>5033757
>>5033746

>>5033692
This also explained their refusal to surrender worlds even as it became abundantly clear that they were ours for the taking. In the times before the one hive, a brood queen might sacrifice territory to an encroaching hive rather than expend its resources uselessly in the defense of exploratory colonies with their low-level drones. Humans will fight to defend even the most paltry of colonies simply because their worker castes occupy it, and when no option remains but to succumb, they will willingly salt the earth to render it useless in its entirety, with the apparent total cooperation of the worker classes they had until hence been defending. I'm sure the thinking castes can recall Beron V, whose exploratory colony was abandoned due to suboptimal output after the humans detonated several million neutron bombs on the single continent.

this thread is screaming down in quality

>>5033910
yes, let's give it a dignified burial

>>5033910
Yes, uncalled for sage with snarky comments will do that to a thread.

>>5033910
Why would you sage a thread ten minutes after the fact?

>>5033926
The comment is not snarky at all, it is quite simple in its intent and message. The thread is going down in quality, with the adjective "screaming" to indicate a plunge like that of an aircraft, which fall quite a distance quite quickly.

>>5033931
As an indication for those who bumped it afterward

>>5033836
Humans have an exceptional ability for empathy that exceeds, we expect, even brood queens. Empathetic thought serves as the linchpin for their society: despite being highly individualistic, their ability to extrapolate the thoughts and emotions of their fellows helps to guarantee at least some degree of cooperation. This is, according to current theories, why their various nation-states, particularly in their far more fragmented past, rarely attempted to entirely annihilate each other. Most attempts to do so were accompanied by dehumanization of the target: they were depicted as unfeeling, destructive, and subhuman. Human war propaganda is an excellent source of this. Astute minds will recall how captured human soldiers, before liquidation, displayed astonishment that anything but the brood queens were actually sapient. A classic example at attempting to curb empathetic thought.

>>5033952
Human technological advancement has been troublingly quick, and underlies in part our current cooperation. While the one hive is primarily focused on expansion, with technological advancement used where needed and with a specific goal in mind, human technological advancement is haphazard, diverse, and continuous. Humans are socially competitive, desirous of as much comfort as possible, and crave the recognition and adoration of their peers. To this end, billions of human scientific institutes are constantly trying to outdo each other in every field our science encompasses and more besides. Our own attempts at emulating this constant push for technological progress has been comparatively stunted: humans are highly emotionally invested, our own are not.

Water Drawer Reconstruction: Day 1
Break their tools! The True Masters have given me a Human "Assistant" to take on the Water Drawer Reconstruction job. Its just to appease that loudmouth Ambassador, I tell you. Apparently this guy is out of his learning period and is only Apprentice grade. Its gonna be rough.

Water Drawer Reclamation: Day 8
We finally arrived at the Junnit colony with the broken Water Drawer, and I managed to avoid my "Assistant" for the duration of the trip. Though I wish I hadn't. Apparently he had never been taught about the Junnit, because he raised his hand to them! They nearly tore the poor dumb novice apart! I had to step in because they would have turned on me after they had finished with him. Strangely enough he had a tool drawn as if it were a weapon. An Engineer! Fighting! What kind of fools are these Humans? Not only would the tool have been an ineffective weapon, but fighting would have destroyed it beyond use! Not to mention that no Engineer would waste his Learning Time learning to fight! Hes even more useless than I thought!

Water Drawer Reconstruction: Day 10
We've finally located the Water Drawer. The Junnit make good food, but they make terrible maps. We hadn't a driver, but instead of waiting for one to arrive the Human assured me that he could drive. Even MORE useless knowledge! What are those humans using their Engineers for? Does he even know how to repair ANYTHING? How much more does he know outside his job? He can also cook apparently, since he made us some Master awful food when we set to camp last night. He seemed to like it, of course. Greasy beasts these Humans.

Cont...

>>5031908
>>5030027
My skin is crawling from all the damn testosterone.
Makin' me proud to be a humie!

“Can you recall the events that resulted with your return from the Human Relations mission we sent you on? Specifically the events involving an entire cargo ship worth of missing Au and your return being possible thanks to said Humans who found you floating through space grasping for breath in a waste chute?”
“Yes, yes I can.”
“…and?”
“Well the events are rather embarrassing.”

>>5034101
Water Drawer Reconstruction: Day 11
What are these Humans? Even with all the knowledge outside his job, and his low level of Engineer knowledge he STILL managed to do what I could not. How many times are Human Water Drawers being simultaneously hit by a meteor AND flooding that would require even their Apprentice Engineers to know how to fix it? Is their lack of tools so bad that they have to improvise so much? In what situation would an Engineer need to know how to disassemble a vehicle for parts to assemble a pump, and at the same time make it small enough to allow for movement within a Water Drawer?
What is-? No, its a Job Log, and its none of your business whats in it. No, it has never happened before. I dont understand, Human. You do not. Please, I need to finish this. Archive nearly full? BREAK HIS T-

Water Drawer Reconstruction: Day 11
I have to start a new entry, because the Human tricked me into filling my last one up with part of a conversation we had. The Human has, however, shed some light on my trouble with them. He asked if I had ever done a job like this one before. I told him no, noone had, and he said, "You learn something new every day, I guess." Could Humans not have a Learning Period? Impossible. They're just horrible Engineers. Thats got to be it.

“If it’s a mocking response you fear I can assure you that I will hold my amusement, my disdain however might just show itself.”

“Well it all started while I was headed towards the Human flag ship. I was forced to slow down due to an unforeseen asteroid cluster that had drifted into our path. While I slowed the ship in order to chart the shortest course around or above it I noticed a weak human distress beacon nearby. Since the ship was under my command and I wasn’t aware of some Human’s tendency of treachery I acted accordingly and docked with the ship. I suppose the first sign things were astray should have dawned on me when I noticed little modification was needed to partake in the boarding of the ship, alas I was ignorant…

After me and the guards from the ship went inside we were greeted with the hostility from the one human on board you could call both mad and genius. When we located what we thought was the crew in the cockpit it turned out to be fake bodies! The door slammed shut behind us and a gaseous substance began getting pumped into the room, I lost conciseness first. When I woke I was in the holding cell of my ship. I couldn’t tell completely but I’m fairly certain the man from before came in and put a gun up to my face."

"Handing me a translator he explained that he was in need of my assistance, I was to call up for a last minute change to the diplomatic conditions. Specifically a medium cargo ship filled with Au to be delivered in orbit around a nearby moon. He would kill me if I didn’t and in the act of self preservation I did what I thought needed to be done in order to save my life. I called in from my ship an had them deliver the gold. I assumed that he would give me back my ship and let me return to our fleet but alas, he dumped me in the waste disposal unit and jettisoned it from the craft. You know the rest of the story by now.”

“Yes, I know that you were found and returned by another Human ship and thanks to the their sympathy to your failure they relaxed on the peace agreement enough so that we may afford it without much hindrance to our own. You got lucky, don’t be so gullible next time.”

With that the councilor dismissed the emissary, letting out an audible sigh as he left the room.

>>5033495
Wait, was that the series with the green rabbit fighting other animal people in his spaceship?
I think he had a pink rabbit girlfriend like the one in your pic. . .
Fuck I thougt it was awesome when I was a kid.

And now I realize somebody draws furry porn based on it. Fuck you, internet.

>>5034115
>>5034127
>>5034133

What do you guys think for a first shot at writing after several years?

>>5034168
Very decent, I'd say.

>>5033777

>I am pretty sure they were ovaries

Haha, oh wow.

>>5034243

Thanks

Remember that they are made primarily as a counterpoint to the usual humans-are-scum, humans-are-mediocre or humans-are-worthless stories that are the majority in science fiction.

That said, Human is a pretty cool guy. eh eats lightning and shits thunder and doesn't afraid of anything.

This thread is great. We should do this again sometime.

>Mankind endures. Mankind prevails.

>>5034168
Reads just fine my man. A bit stilted, comes out a bit unnatural. I lol'd in a nerd joke at Au, though. Aurum? Gold? Au on the table of elements? Oh, the funnies...

By the way, how do we update archived threads on sup/tg/?

>>5034397

it is written at archive's main page

but save the page first with your internet browser

Science report: Observer Shan'shi reporting.
Subject: Human aggression

I...apologize for the lateness of this report. The crew is still disturbed after being attacked by a pack of Ry'leh scavengers, and we've suffered some casualties. Yes, only six-please, I know how strange that must sound, and that information would normally be contained with a conflict report. But it is a point directly related to the presence of the human subject on board, and the focus of the current study.

The human subject who had become stranded aboard after our discovery of the new species (ref. past exploration reports) was adapting well. The initial period of discomfort had subsided, to the point we could relax setting on the psi-dampeners. (Another point - the species initially showed very little psi-potential, and had no ability to suppress his emotional output)

We were waiting for conditions for FTL transit to stabilize before making the last jump into home space, when we were ambushed by a Ry'leh slaving ship.

>>5034324

Gold, I wanted to be subtle with a through back to early piracy in the discovery age while still being realistic, seeing as alien tech would cause questions to arrise.

>>5034416

Oh, sorry.

Not this shit again.

>>5034152
That's the one.

Anyway, there's furry porn of everything.

"Listen, this one knows that you've heard a lot about these 'humans' lately. How they secrete liquid to cool themselves, how they can live in environments that by all rights should be fatal, how they can eat just about any damn thing they find as long as it doesn't kill them outright, but nobody bothers to tell you the weirdest part. This one did a few cycles back on their home world as an exchange student, as mandated by my predecessors, and this one will tell you, the strangest things about the humans have nothing to do with their biology.

They have this idea, see, we don't really have a word for it, but they call it "ambition." It's hard for this one to explain...well, actually, no, actually its not hard at all. Like this one said, this one's exchange was on their home world. That wasn't a mistranslation. Their home world is still habitable! They left it WILLINGLY...granted, it took several of their generations to do so, but when they did it for the first time it was to settle a BET. Can you believe that? One group of humans wanted to prove they were better than another group, so they WENT INTO SPACE when their star was still billions of cycles away from going nova. No. No, you're not listening. There were no meteors. No, they weren't being invaded. They had no need to leave their world at all... in fact, after they made it as far as their moon, they lost interest and stopped. They don't do things because they need to, they do them just...well, just for the sheer....."idea" of it.

report continued

we moved away immediately, though there was little chance of escape, and the pervading psi quickly degraded towards complete despair. Few realized it at the time, but there was a psi-outlet that resisted the emotional shift - the human subject. looking back, I suppose it off-set the communal fear and helped ensure a continuance of rational thought.

When we explained the situation and the likelyhood that we would all be consumed or absorbed into the Ry'leh hive-structure, the human grew fearful as well. But when the navigator made the passing remark that the Ry'leh would now learn about and target humans, the subject became...angry.

I apologize, minister. There is simply no word to express exactly the emotion we sensed emanating from the subject. I expected fear, but it only intensified as he learned how low our chances of survival.

His next action was surprising. He inquired about Ry'leh combat capabilities, tactics, and weaponry, as well as the nature of our own defensive equipment. I assumed he did not fully understand the situation.

>>5034504
This one knows. It gets stranger. Do you remember how when we made first contact we thought they were telepathic? Well, that comes from another ability they have. It's this strange form of communication where a human can tell what another human is thinking, or even FEELING without being told. No, there's no phermone exchange...there's no actual communication at all. This one asked a human about it once and he described it as "putting [myself] in someone else's shoes." By which he meant, he was able to construct an imaginary world in which HE was enduring the experience of an ENTIRELY SEPARATE human, even if he had never himself endured it before. It's not just with other humans...as the human this one spoke to became more familiar with this one, the human was able to use that...crazy...emotion...sorcery on this one. He became so proficient he would sometimes ask if this one was troubled about something even before this one decided that this one was feeling disturbed!

Oh, that's another thing. They ACT on their emotions before they even decide that they are feeling them completely. But this one won't go into that right now...

>>5034152
Bucky O'Hare was teh green rabbit. The collection of furry's, and a human kid from our dimension, on the spaceship fought zerg rushes of toad people who flew toad head shaped ships.

I actually have the first comic book in the series, bought it as a kid, read it, and mostly forgot about it untill things like THIS bring the memory back in painfull detail.

>>5034504
>>5034556
Surprisingly enough, this emotion reading of theirs makes them surprisingly pleasant to be around. As this one's friendship with said human grew, the human was able to predict activities this one enjoyed, and avoid activities he imagined this one would find unpleasant. The human was even able to accurately predict this one's response to an activity that this one had NEVER EVEN ATTEMPTED before...he was able to infer based on an accumulation of emotional data (and their ability to treat something as unpredictable as emotions as "data" terrifies this one) how this one would react to new stimulus. This one can't even do that about this one's self! Humans can, in this respect, be truly noble when they wish.

However, this ability has a dark side as well. They are able to construct imaginary scenarios based on emotional data, predicting what another being would want to be told, and then fabricate a scenario that does not even exist in order to manipulate a being into doing their will. They call this "lying," and it is their second greatest weapon. I cannot even fathom how this is done...to not only construct a scenario based on the thoughts and feelings of a separate being, but then to convey it in a convincing manner, knowing yourself that it is false...it boggles this one's mind. Worse, they have such an acumen for it that they are even able to defeat one another's emotion-magic! A human child is able to lie almost as soon as they are given language - it is, believe it or not - an integral part of their society...sometimes it is even considered a noble thing if the truth would lead to great harm.

I tell you, humans truly are confusing creatures. The strangest part, though, is that this one has been infected by a strange compulsion upon leaving their world. God help this one, but this one wishes to return and spend more time among these bizarre creatures.

The Corridors of Odil were empty, aside from the large Shelak standing perfectly still, perfectly straight, and wide-eyed before a large wall. Upon it five faces would glow, as if melted into the wall. The council of Shelak, known simply as Lotis, prepared themselves as much as they could for the change in status quo. "I come to you, humbly as one could assume in these circumstances. I have dire news, that can only be expressed as malicious, treacherous, and otherwise complete. We have found them. We have found them. We have found them...

Message received 3.02 Rekklids ago:
Message Repeats:
"Me'lak, I must say this before you continue on. We were right about them. We were so right that I cannot give you this message in person. I shall die here, as that I cannot escape. These beasts, these monsters of flesh and bone, are so different from anything we've seen. They are able to withstand a large amount of stress, both physical and spiritual, only to realize mistakes and counter-act such things with a more sound resolve. Their mind is almost as deepening as ours, and their sense of existence lasts only as far as they may reach, warring themselves constantly over something they've already mastered. Shelak would think such actions to be a work of angels for our cause, but their engines and gears work to war better, to kill better, to endure better than we could ever hope. They will come. And when they do, there will be no stopping. They will war us, they will tame us, they will force us to become them. And then, as the last of our kind lie true in our funeral tomes, we will realize that they are us. They are me, they are you, and they will prevail. To the end of the sky-dotters, their arms will reach, and none will remember us, for we did not remember ourselves."
Message Repeats: "Me'lak, I must say...

>>5034638
>>5034152
Well I just nistalged hard. God this was a big part of my childhood.

As the Ry'leh closed on us, the human subject requested the fabrication of weaponry - a futile gesture, as our psi-weaponry has little effect on Ry'leh biology. Instead, the subject commissioned human-designed weaponry, enhanced by our technology and adapted for what we hoped for greater effect against Ry'leh biology.

The initial confrontation seemed hopeless. Ry'leh boarders swarmed through the outer levels after affixing their ship to our hull, and the subject employed a cycle of 'strike and retreat' tactics, which initially had little effect.

When the human happened across several of our crew that had been partially consumed, his psi-output momentarily ceased - and he requested, in a moment of perfect calm, the likes of which I have not sensed for our greatest of adepts - to de-activate the emotional dampeners we had requested he wear. I did so.

What I saw next, through the visual uplink I...I cannot speak of. Only know that feeling, that anger, increased exponentially. Through multiple decks, through psi-shields and years of discipline developed in the most hallowed monastery of Fieeral, that feeling hit like a shockwave. Most of the crew were rendered insensate. Others reported horrifying hallucinations, images of pain and suffering flooding their minds. The most fortunate were merely wracked with intense pain.

Shortly afterwards, The Ry'leh ship disengaged. To my knowledge, ry'leh drones have never acted in such a manner. The only explanation is that the controlling royal had fled in self-preservation.

When I next met the human subject, he was severely injured and coated in ry'leh bio-material. I had remotely reactivated his psi-dampener at full power, so I am unaware of what he was experiencing emotionally. He was, however, making an odd noise. If I had to apply a descriptor to it...I might say that he was laughing.

We are a race of warriors. Before the time we could fight those from other worlds, we fought each other. Entire continents were laid waste and millions died.

We threw those aside who called for "peace" and instead took the powers of the stars, the forces of the gods themselves, and made them our own. To us, even air itself was a weapon.

>>5034700
Original content. Was it half-bad?

>>5034764

Got me pumped. FUCK YEAR

>>5034806
Fit perfectly, nice job.

>>5034836
FUCK YAH HUMANITY

>>5033635
No, he gets gutted.

Everybody in that station is fucked.

>>5034847
Thanks. I want to start writing again.

More HUMANITY IS MIND BLOWINGLY AWESOME please.

>>5034504
>>5034556
>>5034645
I liked this one quite a bit.

>>5034152

Bucky O'Hare. Shit was awesome.

Our civilization had finally reached its peak; our domain stretched nearly the entire length of the galaxy. Hundreds of civilizations pledged allegiance to our rule, and for that they were pampered with our love and resources. Some did not comply, and they were punished for being unruly upstarts in our domain, and once we had shown them the errors of their ways they accepted our ways and were loved and pampered as the rest.

>>5035221

It was toward the late part of the cycle of 420^M51, our scouts had found an irregularly large solar system. Only one planet had life upon it and what we found disturbed us greatly. It was a planet of evolved sapient apes, naked though they were, wrapped themselves in the skins and fabrics of the other life around them. They were suicidal, destructive, aggressive, deceitful; everything we were not. I had never known another species to kill one of its own, or even to take its own life, but these creatures did it all willingly. I learned a word while monitoring their world beyond what they had named the Kuiper Belt, Genocide.

>>5035229

It had taken me many glanns to properly give the word a definition that I could comprehend, and when I did I wish I hadn’t. The utter annihilation of a group that was not of your own, every adult, child, every bit of its culture, is what it meant. To do so not only confounded me morally but even through an ecological standpoint would it not greatly change the environment and cause more species to go extinct? Truly no creature would be capable of such a foul act, but as I continued to monitor them, the more I realized they would not only do so willfully, but willingly, fanatically, dogmatically. I fear we had stumbled upon a civilization that fully deserved punishment for its ways.

I hold in my hands a short story by Arthur C Clarke called "Loophole." Its a story about how after humanity developed the atomic bomb Aliens contacted us saying that we must stop all rocket technology or they will destroy us. For 50 years the Aliens watch us and see that we have agreed. Its all written in the form of diary entries and letters. The last entry is from a Human military officer reporting that the teleporter worked and that Mars is now a bombed wasteland and all the aliens are dead. The aliens told us not to work on rockets so we worked on teleporting instead.

Does /tg/ want the full story?

>>5035268
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loophole_(short_story)

>>5035268
Clarke is always relevant

>>5035240

I reported my findings back to our Council and they deliberated of the fate of this race. This civilization so prone to civil war, our strategists assumed that we would be able to silently pick off many of their factions while the rest were busy warring with the others. It was simple, but we felt it should work. I had failed to gather how fast they were able to adapt and engineer, for by the time our ships had arrived, they had not only gone to the moon and back, but they had learned to split the atom, and had already colonized the fourth planet and many of the moons of the fifth and sixth planets all within five of their generations!

>>5035240
Herpderp, humans are the only beings who will genocide so us, being aliens, will genocide them. Oh, wait...

>>5035401

What I mean is the aliens will attack and subdue humanity and have them assimilated into their empire like the other "unruly ones" they've come across, especially because of how bad they think we are being not only a threat to ourselves but potentially them as well.

>>5031932
>there
>there
>there
>there there there there there
GOD FUCKING DAMMIT, I WILL UNEARTH YOUR DEAD MOTHER AND USE HER SKULL FOR SEX!

>>5032033

SOUNDS FAMILIAR...

>>5035388

Krrreeesssshhhkkkkrrrraaaa-----EEEEEEEEEEuuuurrrrrrr- KFSSSHHHhhhhhhh--eetings, aliens. We, humanity, bid you welcome! We hope to make a first good impression upon you, as the human race (thus we call ourselves). We live in this solar system, <Image Corrupted>, on the third planet from the sun. We call this planet earth. We live about eighty years each <fast clip of human fetus aging to adult and then into wizend elderly> and stand on two feet. We are advancing in technology swiftly, and we hope to meet you people sometime soon!
===+===Hidden & Encrypted===+===
Addenum Code: Project Piggyback
Status: Active, datafeed relaying
Notes: Virus infects accessing software; multiple variants embedded to insure highest probability of access. Sends back any and all information, energy readings, star charts, schematics, weapons, sounds, anything that the software communicates with, is transmitted back.
Goal: Advance our technology to further capitalism over the reds.
===+===Hidden & Encrypted===+===

>>5034700
nice
Hey, anyone have those where we become Cthulhu or something?

>>5030027
When first these beings appeared, we laughed. At their small frames, their frail flesh and body. In comparison to our noble form, these things might well be insects. We laughed at their demands for equal accord, we laughed even as they took injury by our insult, and laughed harder still as they rallied their forces and sought war against us. We laughed as their ships, more deadly to them than they possibly could be to us, burst into flames at the slightest jostle from our weapons, exploding brilliantly as their consumnable gasses mixed with their crude, liquid propellants creating small novas of lights on the battlefield. We ceased laughing for a moment when they organized a retreat while a few damaged ships attempted to ram our own, I say attempted since all were turned into brilliant motes of light before they could cause any harm, and then we laughed again. Even if that act of incomprehensible behavior had ceased the laughter for a moment, we had laughed at these things from the beginning to the end.

A short time passed and the small things returned, much to our amusement. This time there were new faces among their delegation, but the reaction was amusingly familiar, such expressions their soft-skinned faces could emote! And again they rallied their ships, but they were different this time. Somehow they had managed to improve their designs, and by all that is good and holy they had stolen elements from our own ships! I saw engines and guns that resembled our own - passingly of course, they could never truly copy the divine aesthetic of our race - and though we sank their ships again the laughter had quieted. They had managed to damage some of our smaller ships, a stunning increase in military compared to their showing only a short while before. Still, we had won the day, and the quiet laughter became a loud roar as we witnessed, once again, their retreat from our territory.

>>5035593
Another short time passed, and again they appeared. New faces again, again they were met with laughter, and again they rallied their military might to test against ours.

The loud roar of laughter died in the throats of many that day. They had not only copied our strengths, but had surpassed them, had solved flaws in systems that we didn't even realize existed. Where before these battles had been a comedy we were confronted with a tragedy - a sound defeat at the hands of these small, imperfect things.

We were forced to acquiesce to their demands for recognition, but this is where it becomes strange. One of their delegates I spoke with gave me one of those odd emotive looks the species was known for when I inquired about the other delegates. Had they, I asked, been executed for their failures in previous negotiations?

That was when I learned of one of the most shocking things I heard in my life - what we considered a short time was over... what was it the thing had said "one hundred and twenty years" by their reckoning, and that this was a significant passage of time. The delegate then informed me of their lifespan and attempted to put to scale with our own. By all that is good and holy these creatures lived but short lives, mere moments in the life our noble race. In the time we called "short" and insignifcant generations of these "humans" had been born, lived, and died, giving way to others.

>>5035610
It was only later that I came to the sickening epiphany of their seemingly miraculous ability to match our might - it was not despite or in spite of their short lifespans, but because of it. Because they were faced with a dreadfully short life, because their own mortality stared them in the face daily because of their weak bodies and predisposition to death by disease and injury that they even more willingly threw themselves against death, daring it to take them at any moment. Mankind pitted itself against death itself so that even when they had died that they would be remembered for their deeds and would live on in that way. As new generations rise new ideas spring forth from young minds who pursue it for glory and the greatness of their society. That is how they were able to emulate and surpass our technology in what, to us was a short time. I learned a bit more of their culture before it turned my stomach, but this is what you should know - they make sport of it too. There are humans who will make sport of defying death while others watch. We have a non-aggression pact with them now, a fact for which I am dreadfully grateful for. We can outlast them, but we cannot beat them. All I will say to those who wish to treat with humanity is this, a single warning for those who examine their form and their spirit and are amused and unimpressed.

Never laugh at humans, you will regret it.

We all know of the human's warfighting capability, how they harness the power of stars and unleash it upon worlds. We also know of their mercy, that psychological desire to help those enemies they decimate, as some form of penance. We seldom study how they fight so effectively.

We S'lek understand our enemy as we fight them. Sensor logs, salvage operations and communication intercepts serve to inform us during time of war. Humans, however, know their enemy BEFORE they fight.

Shortly after first contact with the Humans, but before the war, our civilian data- nets were bombarded with requests for data. No sensitive information was lost, and the Human ambassador claimed "curiosity" on behalf of their population was responsible for the near crippling comm traffic. Where we may seek additional information when our current knowledge proves insufficient, they consume information and are driven to know even the most trivial details.

>>5035388

Fortunately, all of their society was splintered, the planets had demanded their own sovereignty like the “nations” they had left back on earth, so there was not a single united group among them besides alliances different groups had against others. Our ships descended upon the moon of what they called Titan. Our delegates landed and forced the inhabitants to submit or else we would employ force to make them do so. Our translators caught a single word from the moon’s military leader; it simply said “Nuts.” We did not know what it meant, so another warning was sent. We intercepted an outgoing distress signal to the other colonies around it. I found it amusing, as the moons around Titan weren’t even in a non-aggression pact, no one will come to their aide.

>>5035640

Their curiosity is not simply innocent ignorance of the novel. The latest investigation by this ministry finds that no sooner had contact and diplomatic ties been established, Humans began to talk. They approached our people, our generals, our bureaucrats, even our lowest ranking tax collectors and asked questions. Thinking this simply more human “curiosity” little suspicion was aroused by these actions and our people talked back. Our soldiers bragged about our great military capacity, our shipbuilders gave tours of our newest battle-line ships, our scholars provided unfettered access to social databases. It would prove to be our downfall in the coming conflict.

>>5035677

Our sensors indicated that they were picking up multiple signals off of our starboard side. Many signals indeed, hundreds of the colonial attack craft had been summoned from all across the system. This instant unification had our commander flabbergasted, we all had assumed their independence was one out of inherent genetics, not of circumstance. How horribly wrong we were. We found more communication flaring to and from all of the planets in their solar system, more warnings, more information, more united resolve. We began to calculate the total miniature empires and alliances they had, coupled with all of their individual armies and the technological might of each one. We soon realized that we needed more ships.

++Excerpts from An' yuir's "On Philosophy"++

"I have only exchanged words with Terrans twice in my life. Twice with the same Terran. Once during peace and once during war.

In peace, I asked if it feared death. It said yes. I looked into its eyes and saw some truth.

In war, I asked if it feared death. It said no. I looked into its eyes and saw only truth."

"What we observe regarding Terrans:
- They are savage.
- They are vindictive.
- They are transient.

What we cannot deny regarding Terrans:
- They are noble.
- They are forgiving.
- They are eternal.

What we know of Terrans:

They are unfathomable."

>>5035739

What we thought was a simple policing action on a broken and faulted race such as these turned into an outright war against an entire solar system consisting of tens of billions of souls, all of whom would die before submitting to our divine rights as rulers of the galaxy. Our efforts soon shifted from social progress to keeping this tiny system at bay, they had already forced us out multiple times, and had taken many more of our systems around them. Their empire was growing, unknowingly, we had united them. All of their millennia of war and strife had trained them and bred them to this moment in their history when all of their accumulated data would finally be taken out on some ignorant outsider, something they could completely focus their hate and resolve on. We did not realize what kind of mistake we had truly made until we received the last transmission we ever would get from them, “No survivors, no prisoners, no mercy, and now no more homeworld.” We were finished, because though their diplomatic branch had withered and fell, their martial branch never showed us respite.

Humans. Pfeh.
Worthless worms, if you ask me. A few rotations ago, on Helio Major, a group of human "Slavers" tried to take one of our weaker colonies by surprise. Obviously they were shocked by the speed at which we arrived to defend it, but they didn't relent. Inevitably we had beaten them into submission. I met with their leader, a male named Rasmussun, and offered him a final request before he was executed. He asked a question about the location of our genitalia. A confusing request, but I shrugged it off as a strange aspect of an alien culture. I approached him to deliver the killing blow, but he KICKED me in my genitalia while screaming the human's final warcry "Fuck you!"! After this his men opened fire, they were all handily slain with minimal casualties on our side, but I dont think Ill ever live down the shame of being brought to the ground by a single kick from that human.

To be perfectly honest, I don't know why I'm alive. It was supposed to be routine. We were investigating a crash outside of one of our cities when we saw him, the first contact with the Human race.

I don't know what it is about Humans that let them do what they do, but what happened will always be in my memory-cortex. I know now that they called him a "special forces operative" but I don't can't make the distinction between that monster and any normal Human. He came armed with the human's primitive metal-spewing weapons, primitive, but effective.

In moments of us sighting him he was gone again, disappeared into the terrain, but not before those metal shards spit from his weapon and dropped two of our number with precision that would make our finest sharpshooters envious.

He struck again, equally as quick but twice as vicious, coming in close with a knife. It was impossible to keep track of his movements, he was simply too quick for us to keep our eyes on.

But we were much too slow. He took the first of our number under the chin with the knife, while his brutish muscled arm held my squad mate around the neck and with a sudden flex, snapped it like a twig.

He fought dirty, using our dead as shields to block our shots, moving too quickly for us to get a bead, throwing dust in our eyes. We did manage to hit him once, but he simply shrugged off the wound that would have dropped one of our race and kept fighting.

At one point he even spit on my friend Grexk, his face melted away in mere moments, his agonized screams echoing in my ears as he died.

Humans are beyond dangerous, they're natural born killing machines. Their bodies are more effective at causing death than our guns our, they're faster, stronger, and hardier than any of our race, or races we've come to meet.

>Humans are creatures of incredible passions and - in equal parts - perversity.

They are *always* ready for sexual activity. Humans have no mating season. They also seem to have no limit on imaging new and inventive ways of conducting sexual activity. They use orifices not meant for sexual activity for pleasure, couple up in same-sex pairs, use a variety of objects or unusual methods (such as binding one partner up, inserting foreign objects into orifices, while partaking in some sort of strange game where they take different roles than they actually possess in life, etc.) and even copulate outside of their species with other sentients. Both the ones that are similar enough to appear attractive to the average human and the ones that are radically different from the average human and may not have equivalent genitalia.

Research into ancient human ttexts and data infrastructure only reveals more and more of this sexual depravity. Data dredged from databases containing information from the old "Internet" information network is riddled throughout with pornographic content.

I am certain there is no act or thing that some human, somewhere in the galaxy does not find sexually arousing.

Aliens judge humans by the content they find on the internet?

OH FUCK

>>5035868
i lolled

bamp

lol

>>5035774
New thread.

++The following story is appropriate for Post-Natal Broodlings Stage 3 to 5++

"How Xiulaqu'e'th Learned to Breath Fire"

One day Xiulaqu'e'th left his progenitor's nest to procure nourishment at the nearby hub of exchange. As he walked the road, he was beset by broodlings many cycles his elder.

"Give us your exchange-helpers so that we may exchange with the humans!" cried one of the elder broodlings quite fearsomely.

"Oh!", exclaimed Xiulaqu'e'th as he fearfully tried to run past them. Alas, he could not do so quickly and struck by many mighty blows before escaping.

At the hub of exchange, Xiulaqu'e'th, in great pain, procured nourishment but dreaded his return. The elder broodlings would surely be waiting for him. In his fear, he forgot his eyes and ran right into a human.

Fearfully, Xiulaqu'e'th looked up at the figure, towering over him on two limbs. The human held a FIREWAND and breathed in its flame before exhaling its ghost like the soot wyrms of myth. Xiulaqu'e'th turned pale as the giant began to bend down.

The battle for Zerule Prime was as fierce as they come. The humans were the ones attacking in this case, so we thought we'd have the homefield advantage. We were wrong. Before they even landed they reshaped by way of orbital bombardment to not only soften our defenses, but to make the battlefield into something they were more used to, a disjointed and chaotic mess. We'd learned long ago that the humans were masters of asymmetric warfare.

>>5036591

In one little skirmish we'd managed to pin down a lone human of the variety we found they liked to call "Snipers." That's another thing that's unique about the humans. While our most elite warriors are definitely our best protected, afforded the heaviest armor and most powerful assault equipment, as is the case with the majority of civilized species, the spectrum is reversed for humans. Their best protected and most close assault oriented soldiers are their most common, typically called "Grunts" "Troopers" or "Marines." To be sure there are different levels of proficiency in their well armored ranks, but their most elite soldiers were, as a rule, tailored for high mobility and as such afforded much lighter armor than the typical heavily plated powered armors used by their common soldiers. The human Snipers, arguably one of the most elite class of human soldier given their unique tendency to work alone or at most in teams of two amidst an army composed of soldiers dedicated to teamwork, were almost completely unarmored by human standards, their only protection being the suit that would mold itself to the environment to make the sniper difficult, if not impossible to detect before he spotted you first.

>>5036601

In this case, we got lucky. He'd already begun firing on another group of our own warriors, and we were called in to deal with him. We surrounded his position, while he fired back with the compact, long ranged rail gun the humans are so fond of. We lost Oros to the fire, and had to take cover. Keltan, our least experienced member, hadn't faced down rail guns before, and the cover he took was too thin; the human simply shot through it and killed the young warrior. We were preparing to move on his position when a screech and an incredible buzzing noise filled my ears as a swarm of small, armor piercing darts filled the air around me, slicing into my comrades. I was lucky in that I'd taken shelter under a sturdy overhang. The human must have called in some sort of artillery support. Even though I wasn't dead, the shock had disoriented me, and I struggled to regain my bearings. When I looked up, I saw the blade of the human's knife staring me in the face. I was terrified, and thought myself a dead man for sure. My world went black as the human must have done something to relieve me of my consciousness. When I came to, I discovered a human standing over me, tending to my health. I forget the minor details, but we had a short conversation. I asked why the human sniper would have gone to the trouble of taking me alive rather than killing me outright. The "Medic," as he called himself, said that a very wise general named "Sun Soo" or something to that effect had said "if you know not yourself or your enemy, you will always lose. If you know yourself but not your enemy, you may win, or you may lose. But if you know both yourself and your enemy, you may march to battle a hundred times with no fear."

>>5036620

It was then that I realized that while humans were famed for fighting until the end, for fighting as hard as they could, it was not this that made them so successful in war. It was because while humans were trained to fight harder, they were, above all, trained to fight smarter.

“Thrusters aft, evasive ac—”
The impact was so powerful, yet so quickly over, that it was like a subliminal flash; one quake and it was gone.
SolCore Commander Joseph Alsace quivered in his command seat like a thrown knife, bellowing out of the side of his mouth without turning his face for an instant from the field-of-combat display. “Status!”
His Control first, Lieutenant Don Perkins, spun to face him. “It was a grazing blow, sir. Took off an entire section of the lower deck, but our lateral motion was enough to carry it past us instead of gutting the ship.”
Alsace pulled up a quick wireframe schematic of the damage. The piece carved cleanly from the side of the ship looked like a bullet wound. Fortunately, though, the decks hit were only storage and auxiliaries—the damage was minimal.
“All right, keep moving, keep moving! Steph,” his voice was suddenly compassionate, “how are you doing?”
The officer on Helm, Second Lieutenant Stephanie Swift, nodded her head at him slightly with a quick, jerky motion. Her hands were flying over her command board in an uninterrupted stream; a sheen of sweat glistened on her face. Alsace grimaced and rubbed one of his fingers across the knuckles of his left fist. She wasn’t even the Helm first; his first had gone down with a nasty mutation of the gravs, and Swift, the second, had been brought up to fill in for her shift.
Now, she was running sequence after sequence of overlapping evasive maneuvers, manhandling the ship on one cracked engine chamber, and despite it all, managing to bring the ship about for repeated strafing runs on the Skree cruiser.
He wasn’t sure if he could have handled the burden. It was a wonder that she could.
A new voice cut in from the side.
“Launch, launch! Plasma launch, twelve MPs off port!”

Alsace whirled once more to confront the massive, glowing projection of the field-of-combat holopanel. The FOC was shimmering and flickering with a chaotic mixture of blue, red, white, and green dots; golden threads connected them with tiny boxes of text displaying sensor readings and data tags.
“What’s the velocity?” He addressed the question to the empty air. The sensor officer picked it up.
“1200 feet per second, sir. Accelerating.”
Fast one. Shit.
“All about, give me as much speed as you can. See if you can maintain those engines at 80.” One of the three engines had sustained a huge crack in yesterday’s engagement when a pulse of plasma had passed too close. Last-minute heroics from engineering had been enough to keep it partially running, enough to fight with, but Alsace had been assured that if he pushed it to hard, it would melt down.
“C’mon, let’s sprint the bastard for the finish! Aft camera, magnify to size.”
The camera’s vision doubled, tripled, and finally found the approaching plasma torpedo with a 10x visual magnification. Looming on the screen, it closed with terrifying speed.
Nervously, Alsace gave a compulsive smack of his palm against the side of his chair. “Faster, you shit!”
With any other bridge crew, he reflected, people would be starting to wonder by now. The catalog of engagements against the Skrees, mostly crushing defeats with horrifying losses, told one thing for certain: evade, escape, or destroy the enemy before they let off a shot, but of all things, you will never, ever outrun them.
The officers worked quietly and efficiently at their various tasks, nobody giving off even a murmur of dissent.
Such trust could be dangerous.

“Plasma closing,” the sensor officer reported calmly. Lieutenant Steven Donahue was a lifer, a veteran of a dozen engagements against the Skrees; he spoke as if he were ordering dinner. “Impact imminent.”
With a quick hand, Alsace set collision alerts ringing throughout the ship. Then, facing forward, he fixed his gaze on his command display and issued a series of machine-gun orders.
“Positional thrusters, rotate to 70° contraspin. Give me two sets of emergency thrusters online and hot, route control to my board. Side camera! And don’t let up that speed.”
With his eyes, he tracked the approach of the shot on his display and the visual screen. 10,000 . . . 5000 . . . too fast.
Quietly, he said, “No matter what happens, Stephanie, don’t stop what you’re doing.”
He wasn’t sure if she’d heard him. He prayed that she had.
Suddenly, with only a momentary flash of unmistakable light as its harbinger, the massive charge of molten plasma was on the side-viewing camera—and with a hammering fist, he slammed into activation every emergency thruster he had.
The entire bridge of the Winterborn seemed to freeze for a heartbeat.
Then, in the space of one infinitesimal mote of time and the next, it leapt fifty horizontal meters, and cleanly, neatly, the charge of plasma slipped through the gap in the keel of the cruiser.
Thrown against the side of his console with brutal force, Alsace wrenched himself back into his seat, every muscle aching. The plasma was on the screen, then past—coughing, he croaked out, “Aft,” and the sensor officer flicked the main display to the aft camera—there it was, turning in a tight, elliptical arc. Half of the glowing mass was dissipated already into the surrounding maw of vacuum, and the charge was moving more slowly, but it was still very much there.
He coughed around bruised ribs. “Control,” he said, “damage?”

He could sense Perkins shaking his head. “Negligible; some bubbling of the hull from the close pass. Cauterized a few conduits.” Alsace turned slightly now, to see Perkins exhaling, wiping his forehead with the back of his arm. “That was a . . . hell of a move, sir.”
Maybe. Alsace decided not to mention how much of a role luck played in such maneuvers. Luck and desperation. Some things were better left unsaid. “Let’s make it worth something.
“Weps, what’s your status?”
The lumbering Sam Deville looked up from the weapons station. “We lost a couple dozen missile pods from that stunt of yours. Cooked off right in the chambers. Kinetics are hot and ready.
“Battery’s as charged as it’s going to get with one engine on the fritz. Laser CIWS and point-defenses are all online.” Deville shifted uneasily. “All ten of the nukes are still off-safe and armed. You’re sure—”
“Yes.” He didn't have time to debate the exigency of that particular order. Not now. “Countermeasures are active?”
The weapons officer gave a perceptible tilt of his head. “Yes, sir.”
The plasma was back on the screen, streaking in for the kill.
“Very well. Helm, prepare for cold-start burn, 30 degree starboard rotation and all speed. Weps, on my signal—” No, that wouldn’t work. No time. “Belay that. On the signal to burn, I want you to launch every rear chaff pod that we have.”
Deville blinked. “Chaff?”
“Now!”

It was a credit to their training that despite being bewildered, they both moved instantly and simultaneously, with absolute faith in his orders.
A thought chased across his head. These are the kind of people we’re fighting for.
As the Winterborn exploded into motion, Deville entered a rapid-fire string of commands, bringing online and then auto-salvoing the entire rear array of 250 chaff pods. They blew out in a thick, silent, glimmering cloud, filling the air with hundreds of pounds of electrically-charged shrapnel.
The ship screamed in protest as Lieutenant Swift squeezed every last joule of energy from the agonized engines. A cold burn brought the engines into use faster than anything else, but its output of power was stutteringly irregular until the tubes could catch up to the heat of the reactors.
They were just beginning to gain real speed, pulling toward the altered course, when the remaining plasma struck the cloud of steel chaff.
It was like watching a tidal wave smash through fifty miles of dense cotton. At first, the enormous, powerful blast of molten fire tore through the storm of metal like a cannon through glass. But slowly . . . ever so slowly, it seemed to stumble, as if tripping on its own weight, and catch, and lose coherence.
The Winterborn, desperately scrambling for velocity, arched onto its new heading—just as the shreds of the plasma ripped out of the metallic haze. Its energy dispersed, its containing field ruined, it was literally torn to fragments.

It missed the Winterborn by five hundred meters, and sailed past into space, all control lost.
The chaff field was almost wholly destroyed; its pieces had been first vaporized, then slowly condensed into liquid, and finally solidified into a single, massive sphere of ruined metal.
Alsace released his death grip on the arms of his chair, closed his eyes, and took three full, deep breaths. Only then did he look up once more at the FOC display and begin to think.
He considered doing a full status round of the bridge crew, as was proper, but decided not to bother. “Anything drastic I should know about?”
Shaking of heads.
“Okay. Steve,” he said, “What’s that Skree bastard up to?”
The sensor officer consulted his board.
“She's . . . still just sitting there, sir. I don’t . . . I don’t know. She hasn’t moved an inch, but readings still have her fully powered and active.”
Perkins looked over at Alsace. “Maybe a mobility kill, sir? That nuke we threw at her might have nailed something with EMP.”
Alsace shook his head. “Doubtful. EMP’s never done shit in any previous engagements.”
“We did put a few Kinetic rounds down her gullet before that, sir. Maybe something got jarred loose. Or maybe another ship got to her before us and damaged her.”
Sighing, Alsace massaged his temples, trying to mitigate the pounding in his head. “Maybe. But in any case, they’ve still got their guns—so they’re still dangerous.
“Especially this son of a bitch. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not normal.”
Deville spoke up. “There have been those rumors of that rogue flagship that’s been rampaging through the systems. Supposedly bigger than any cruiser we’ve seen before, travels without any support. And they say she’s taken on two full-sized task forces that were assigned to handle her and ruined them.”

Trying to smile, Alsace got only a wretched half-smirk. “This would be the same one that they say single-handedly dusted the entire Ganymede defense fleet without taking a hit?”
Swift finally took a moment to lean back from her board. She looked exhausted as she put her two cents in—“That part’s no rumor, sir. My brother was staffing the Ganymede planetary defense center when it happened. Six out of the seven ships defending the colony, including the cruiser Queen Mary, were either wiped out or crippled. The Mary managed to jump out, but only on AI—everybody aboard was dead.”
She met Alsace's eyes with her own. “I don’t know what did it. SOLCORE Fleet’s still saying it was just another attack force. But . . . ”
“How could a single ship destroy six of ours in one go, without us at least tagging her?” Alsace scowled. “They’re good, people—but they’re not that good.”
“Permission to speak freely?” asked Donahue drily. Alsace looked at him in mild surprise, but nodded. Donahue raised his voice slightly.
“They jumped into the system without any warning, but with an energy reading that was off the charts. They were using some kind of thermal ducting, though, so not even we saw her at first, and we were right next to her."

“Ten Kukri’s. All of them were snapped out of space practically before they left our shadow. Then no less than six Kinetic heavies—including the prototype super heavy that the Sanctuary tech heads have been raving to us about—and she took every one of them without even flinching. By the rough-and-ready color charts, her shields didn’t even lose more than 25.
“Then the nuke, which Sam managed to drop practically up their asses, but that didn't take her shields by more than a third, either.
“Following this she launches her own fighters, and those frickin’ tricked-out Lilim decimate our entire 10th Fighter Squadron, save for a handful. You pull ’em back, and it takes us almost 90 of our point-defense capability to finally hose them all. In the meanwhile, long-range comms are lost. Not that they’d have done much good—as you know, communication have been on the blink ever since the Skree ship de-spaced in the system. What a surprise.
“And finally, allow me to remind you that she then proceeded to pump no less than three torpedoes at us in a single volley. This from more than twice the range of any previously recorded plasma attacks, and half again the speed. We dodge one until it sputters, we eat one, and we play with that last one until you, Sam, and Steph pull off a nice bag of miracles.”
Donahue crossed his arms and sat back in his seat. “And mind you, they’ll do this all again as soon as we get back into range.
“I don’t know about the rest of you, but it sure sounds to me like this sumbitch could take on a couple battlefleets of our guys—especially if she had her engines.”
Grimacing, Alsace fingered the exposed muzzle of his pistol where it sat on his belt. “But we have to do something. If this ship gets out of the system, God knows what she’ll do.”
Nobody spoke, until Deville said quietly, “Yes, sir.”