Gottlieb wanders down the station, whistling as he goes. For the most part, he tries to stay down in the gunner’s bay. Kai mostly has the monsters out here under control, but there are always one or two who have an attitude problem of sorts. They aren’t a threat to the others, as monsters seemingly just ignore other monsters. But given his very human nature, he’s still on the menu.
The man whistles, a towel over his shoulder, as he goes to take his shower. Ever since hydro got fixed, Kai has been increasing his allotment of water. He’s up to forty seconds now, which is good because the stronger and more muscular he gets, the more water and time he needs to properly wash himself. Forty is living on the edge, but then again, ten was already a disaster to start with.
There’s a reason the station smells like it did.
He enters cryo, walking past the many unused tubes, and then throws his towel up at the blue light above the doorway, letting it flop down to the ground behind him.
The man hits the button on the shower, standing under the water as he stares at Kai’s light. Gottlieb flexes his muscles, just to remind Kai who is in charge around here.
He half expects the water to shut off in retaliation, but it doesn’t.
Suspicious.
Well, whatever. Gottlieb runs his fingers through his greasy hair, scrubbing it. His and Kai’s playful rivalry is behind them now. What matters most now is the continued survival of the station, so that it can be used as a tool to help humanity grow.
The most important task he has at the moment is to make all of the arrangements Kai needs, so that they can get one of those crystals from the planet up to the station, that they can then use to fix up the gun and subsequently destroy what may be one of the largest threats to humanity right now.
— A long, metallic arm reaches over towards him from another stall.
Gottlieb turns his head, looking at the bot that he recalls carrying back to hydroponics, which is standing in the shower cabin next to his.
| [Request] - Got any soap? |
“Get the hell out of here, Kai!” barks Gottlieb, somehow managing to feel intruded upon after all.
| [Auxiliary Gunner Grunheide] |
Grunheide racks her head, trying to run the numbers again. She obviously doesn’t understand half of this to begin with, as it’s far above what she as a goblin is expected to know, but her massive increase in intelligence points from shooting the gun so often has allowed her to certainly become one of the most quick-witted of her kind.
This is in and of itself a tragedy, honestly. She can’t help but watch her kin on the monitors as the station zooms over them, scrounging through forests, eating bugs and mushrooms, living in squalor.
Although at the same time, she has, of course, understood the moral difficulty involved here in the work of the heavens. The human-god must protect his own kind, that much is clear.
She looks down at her hands.
But if she resides in the heavens, as the most wise out of all of her species, does that not make her eligible to own the title of the goblin-goddess?
Is it not her duty to look out for her people, the goblins, then?
Or is she just a puppet? A plaything brought into life by the human and the machine gods, to be used as a whimsical toy?
— She looks back at the others. The harpy, content with their staple food, no longer follows her instincts of the hunt and instead, sits in puffed up comfort up on her roost, while things are quiet.
Grunheide looks over to the ooze, imprisoned in a suit of fake skin like her own, dressing up as a mockery of humanity, rather than embracing her natural state. This, too, has transpired on the whims of the human-god.
But she is over-thinking. If the harpy is just a harpy and the ooze is just an ooze, then, all calculations point to the fact that she herself is just a goblin. She may be a little more lucky in her circumstances than the others below, but she is hardly divine, right?
A loud chime rings out from above.
Everybody stops what they’re doing and looks up toward the ceiling. The noise of the bell comes several times a day, a reminder that the gods are always watching them.
| [Azimuth] |
“The gods are always watching us!” proclaims the man at the altar, looking out over the crowd. Azimuth rubs the back of her head, looking around. Her mother, sitting next to her, pulls her hand back down. “We know this now to be true,” explains the preacher, as he begins to go on a whole rant about exactly this topic.
It’s been a while since this whole ‘hero’ thing started for her, but honestly, it’s kind of a cushy gig. She still doesn’t really understand the nature of what happened to her. All of those lights and explosions, and now she’s here, sitting in the front-row of some noble filled temple.
It’s a long way for a chicken farmer to have come.
She sighs, thinking about her chickens. She wants to go to them. One of the perks of this job is that she can have basically anything she wants, so of course, she used the first of her money to buy a lavish piece of property and a whole bunch of chickens.
— But now she doesn’t have the time to go and see them, because the job is so political and ceremonial that she’s always being dragged around this way and that way.
Oh well.
As long as no weird, horrific crises appear again for her to have to ‘fight’, then she’s pretty sure she can coast this out for a few more years until she finds a way to mysteriously vanish into the sunset.
| [Wood-Mother of the Goblin Tribe] |
Teeth gnash as the goblins tear into the carcass of the bear they’ve hunted, eating the flesh raw and bloodying their faces and teeth. Goblins are usually above such behavior, having advanced in many ways, but perhaps that is their problem.
They have, as a tribe, grown to live in comfort and safety under her guidance. They’ve made advancements in cooking and food storage, and they’ve honed their crafting techniques and concepts of shelter. Under her tutelage, they’ve become more and more like the humans, living in comfort and prosperity.
— This has to stop.
These bad mannerisms have to be unlearned.
She realizes as much as she joins them, lowering herself down to break the neck of a growling cub at her feet.
Comfort has decayed their society. It was a false promise that has made them weak and incapable.
They must return to the old ways, in order to provide the contrast to humanity that the great skylight seeks for them to be.
| [Gottlieb] |
Gottlieb wanders down the corridors of the station, just checking up on a few things here and there. His capabilities are limited, but it’s still worth taking the time to just look around and make sure everything is as it should be.
Everything looks fine, so he grabs a few nutri-bars from the canteen and heads back to the gunner’s bay.
Life is good.
— Wheels whir behind him.
“Kai,” sighs the man, looking at the hydroponics robot that has followed him out of the showers and around the station. “This is going to be a problem. We need that bot in hydro.”
| [Response] - Incorrect. This maintenance unit is currently not required in hydroponics. |
The man lifts an eyebrow. “…Why not?”
| [Response] - Due to contamination. A significant portion of the hydroponics system has failed. |
Gottlieb stares at the robot. “What?!” He leans in, grabbing it. “Kai! This is a huge problem!” says the man. “Why didn’t you say anything sooner?!”
| [Response] - Orbital Gunner Gottlieb’s personal hygiene was deemed to be the highest priority. |
“Very cute,” says the man, letting go of the robot. He sighs, shaking his head. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Okay, so their food source is failing, the gun is breaking, and they need to surmount the impossible task of getting physical materials from the planet to the station, which is in orbit. “Anything else?” he asks.
| [Clarification] - Yes. The contamination is due to a - |
The power goes out.
Gottlieb stands there in total darkness for a moment, before the emergency lighting kicks back in, painting the station in a gloomy shine.
The man looks around himself, assuming that the sun has vanished once again. Talk about timing.
He picks up the deactivated bot, carrying it down the labyrinthine hallways of the station with heavy, stomping steps. He's got to figure this mess out, once and for all, or they aren't going to make it.
Gottlieb wanders down the station, whistling as he goes. For the most part, he tries to stay down in the gunner’s bay. Kai mostly has the monsters out here under control, but there are always one or two who have an attitude problem of sorts. They aren’t a threat to the others, as monsters seemingly just ignore other monsters. But given his very human nature, he’s still on the menu.
The man whistles, a towel over his shoulder, as he goes to take his shower. Ever since hydro got fixed, Kai has been increasing his allotment of water. He’s up to forty seconds now, which is good because the stronger and more muscular he gets, the more water and time he needs to properly wash himself. Forty is living on the edge, but then again, ten was already a disaster to start with.
There’s a reason the station smells like it did.
He enters cryo, walking past the many unused tubes, and then throws his towel up at the blue light above the doorway, letting it flop down to the ground behind him.
The man hits the button on the shower, standing under the water as he stares at Kai’s light. Gottlieb flexes his muscles, just to remind Kai who is in charge around here.
He half expects the water to shut off in retaliation, but it doesn’t.
Suspicious.
Well, whatever. Gottlieb runs his fingers through his greasy hair, scrubbing it. His and Kai’s playful rivalry is behind them now. What matters most now is the continued survival of the station, so that it can be used as a tool to help humanity grow.
The most important task he has at the moment is to make all of the arrangements Kai needs, so that they can get one of those crystals from the planet up to the station, that they can then use to fix up the gun and subsequently destroy what may be one of the largest threats to humanity right now.
— A long, metallic arm reaches over towards him from another stall.
Gottlieb turns his head, looking at the bot that he recalls carrying back to hydroponics, which is standing in the shower cabin next to his.
| [Request] - Got any soap? |
“Get the hell out of here, Kai!” barks Gottlieb, somehow managing to feel intruded upon after all.
| [Auxiliary Gunner Grunheide] |
Grunheide racks her head, trying to run the numbers again. She obviously doesn’t understand half of this to begin with, as it’s far above what she as a goblin is expected to know, but her massive increase in intelligence points from shooting the gun so often has allowed her to certainly become one of the most quick-witted of her kind.
This is in and of itself a tragedy, honestly. She can’t help but watch her kin on the monitors as the station zooms over them, scrounging through forests, eating bugs and mushrooms, living in squalor.
Although at the same time, she has, of course, understood the moral difficulty involved here in the work of the heavens. The human-god must protect his own kind, that much is clear.
She looks down at her hands.
But if she resides in the heavens, as the most wise out of all of her species, does that not make her eligible to own the title of the goblin-goddess?
Is it not her duty to look out for her people, the goblins, then?
Or is she just a puppet? A plaything brought into life by the human and the machine gods, to be used as a whimsical toy?
— She looks back at the others. The harpy, content with their staple food, no longer follows her instincts of the hunt and instead, sits in puffed up comfort up on her roost, while things are quiet.
Grunheide looks over to the ooze, imprisoned in a suit of fake skin like her own, dressing up as a mockery of humanity, rather than embracing her natural state. This, too, has transpired on the whims of the human-god.
But she is over-thinking. If the harpy is just a harpy and the ooze is just an ooze, then, all calculations point to the fact that she herself is just a goblin. She may be a little more lucky in her circumstances than the others below, but she is hardly divine, right?
A loud chime rings out from above.
Everybody stops what they’re doing and looks up toward the ceiling. The noise of the bell comes several times a day, a reminder that the gods are always watching them.
| [Azimuth] |
“The gods are always watching us!” proclaims the man at the altar, looking out over the crowd. Azimuth rubs the back of her head, looking around. Her mother, sitting next to her, pulls her hand back down. “We know this now to be true,” explains the preacher, as he begins to go on a whole rant about exactly this topic.
It’s been a while since this whole ‘hero’ thing started for her, but honestly, it’s kind of a cushy gig. She still doesn’t really understand the nature of what happened to her. All of those lights and explosions, and now she’s here, sitting in the front-row of some noble filled temple.
It’s a long way for a chicken farmer to have come.
She sighs, thinking about her chickens. She wants to go to them. One of the perks of this job is that she can have basically anything she wants, so of course, she used the first of her money to buy a lavish piece of property and a whole bunch of chickens.
— But now she doesn’t have the time to go and see them, because the job is so political and ceremonial that she’s always being dragged around this way and that way.
Oh well.
As long as no weird, horrific crises appear again for her to have to ‘fight’, then she’s pretty sure she can coast this out for a few more years until she finds a way to mysteriously vanish into the sunset.
| [Wood-Mother of the Goblin Tribe] |
Teeth gnash as the goblins tear into the carcass of the bear they’ve hunted, eating the flesh raw and bloodying their faces and teeth. Goblins are usually above such behavior, having advanced in many ways, but perhaps that is their problem.
They have, as a tribe, grown to live in comfort and safety under her guidance. They’ve made advancements in cooking and food storage, and they’ve honed their crafting techniques and concepts of shelter. Under her tutelage, they’ve become more and more like the humans, living in comfort and prosperity.
— This has to stop.
These bad mannerisms have to be unlearned.
She realizes as much as she joins them, lowering herself down to break the neck of a growling cub at her feet.
Comfort has decayed their society. It was a false promise that has made them weak and incapable.
They must return to the old ways, in order to provide the contrast to humanity that the great skylight seeks for them to be.
| [Gottlieb] |
Gottlieb wanders down the corridors of the station, just checking up on a few things here and there. His capabilities are limited, but it’s still worth taking the time to just look around and make sure everything is as it should be.
Everything looks fine, so he grabs a few nutri-bars from the canteen and heads back to the gunner’s bay.
Life is good.
— Wheels whir behind him.
“Kai,” sighs the man, looking at the hydroponics robot that has followed him out of the showers and around the station. “This is going to be a problem. We need that bot in hydro.”
| [Response] - Incorrect. This maintenance unit is currently not required in hydroponics. |
The man lifts an eyebrow. “…Why not?”
| [Response] - Due to contamination. A significant portion of the hydroponics system has failed. |
Gottlieb stares at the robot. “What?!” He leans in, grabbing it. “Kai! This is a huge problem!” says the man. “Why didn’t you say anything sooner?!”
| [Response] - Orbital Gunner Gottlieb’s personal hygiene was deemed to be the highest priority. |
“Very cute,” says the man, letting go of the robot. He sighs, shaking his head. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Okay, so their food source is failing, the gun is breaking, and they need to surmount the impossible task of getting physical materials from the planet to the station, which is in orbit. “Anything else?” he asks.
| [Clarification] - Yes. The contamination is due to a - |
The power goes out.
Gottlieb stands there in total darkness for a moment, before the emergency lighting kicks back in, painting the station in a gloomy shine.
The man looks around himself, assuming that the sun has vanished once again. Talk about timing.
He picks up the deactivated bot, carrying it down the labyrinthine hallways of the station with heavy, stomping steps. He's got to figure this mess out, once and for all, or they aren't going to make it.
