Speaker for the Dead

[oleg]

As a tribute to this briliant book, I decided to make a Pequeninos race. I put a test ship set in race forum. It has no AI, since I'm not yet sure if this ship set is good enough. I thought that Pequeninos will make ships from farther-trees, like all other tools, and chose ship's colors and texture to reflect this. Obviously, piggies will have organic manipulation trait. How do you like them ?

[Val]

Nice, like the color scheme.

My fav is the Battlecruiser!

Using DoGA?

[oleg]

Yes, Thanks to you Val! It is indead rather easy
to use Doga. Since battlecruiser appears in race selection menu, I always try to put the best picture in that slot.

[Val]

Good call on putting in the Cruiser!

What did you do for the texture/colors on it?

How did you make out on the Soul Hunter ship? What you had was pretty good, would you mind posting the DoGA files for it?

[oleg]

Texture is wood-1, colors are green or light green.

I may come back to Soul Hunters. I thought I have sent you the doga files for that ship. It is probably not a good idea to download doga files here since only few people are using Doga, others will be confused. But If anybody is interesting, I can do this.

[Val]

You're right, you did send them! It's been a long week already

[oleg]

Judging by the overwhelming and ruptures number of Posts about this topic, the forum is full of Orson S. Card fans. Prompted by this, I remade some images (see race download forum) and also decided to publish the short story from my SE IV game over weekend. Hope somebody will find it mildly amusing. My apology for grammar and syntaxes. English is not my native language.

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Lusitania is no more. Despite all the efforts by Ender and his sister Valentine, Starways Congress' fleet arrives and executes the second Xenocide. If history teaches anything, it is that nobody learn from the history. As in the first Xenocide, the Xi'Chung Hive Queen escapes the mayhem. The pequininos race survives it too. But at terrible cost. Only a tiny fraction, all what we could squeeze into the space ship given us by Her Majesty Queen, is able to leave Luisitania before the Apocalypses. Millions and millions of brothers were left behind and have been incinerated by "little doctor". Human colony is spared as a personal tribute to Ender, even though it means the sacrifice of our brothers. From my personal point of view, humans should be left in Luisitania, confront their farmlands face to face and spit the essence of a living human being existence into the face of a brotherly executioner. Still, our fathers are all dead , there was simply no place in the starship to transplant even a single one. And all our wives are dead. Whoever is reading my diary, please read it again, and tell me now, are the humans really utlanders or are they valrese, bound on killing anybody and anything they perceived as a potential threat ? We had to leave our beloved behind and condemn them to death. There was no other choice, as to salvage the remnants of our race we must take to stars only mothers and brothers. We will plant new fathers and we will have new wives, as long as we find new home.

Our journey is cut surprisingly short. Just as we passed several inhospitable star systems, our ship was entered a very strange space-time continuum turbulence and traveled many light years in an instant to a some star system with habitable planets. The nature of the space time anomaly eludes us and even Ender can only shrug shoulders. We christen this beautiful and hospitable world Kornephorus. The name was suggested by Ender who insisted that it is imprinted over here by some mystic being Malfador Machinations(tm). Despite all my efforts to call off this nonsense and call our new home as New Lusitania, I failed and had to abandon the silly dispute. Whatever the name, it will take many years before we settle in and plant enough fathers to make spaceships. The thrust to be a spacefaring nation is a noble one. We must have powerful spaceships , and as a Speaker for all dead in Lusitania, I swear that another Xenocide will not happen again. This time, we will be ready for the adversary.

Years past and for my contribution to the Pequineaity, I was planted and made farther. By all means, it was not a pleasant experience. My sincerely thanks to the old chap Bishop de Peregrino who spared his invaluable collection of yeast metabolic products. When I woke up I was a tree, both factually and literally with only a slight recollection of a bloody orgy the night before.

2400.2 At Last, all the knowledge of our forebears, Hive Queen and humanity have been put together and younglings sing the father’s song, the most powerful one ever . Lo and behold - the new beautiful ship, alive and well, ready to carry us to other planets!

2400.4 Our astronomers persists that we are extremely lucky with our new home. There are two colonisable planets with life-sustainable atmosphere and all efforts are put for their colonization. Regardless of the production capabilities, the colonies Kornephorus III and Kornephorus I are directed to perform the most throughout study of indigenous life forms in order to protect the native biosphere from Descolada. The building of new research centers is of utmost priority. Incredible discovery. Our colony ship lands on a small planet Kornephorus I A and discovers the remains of some ancient civilization. Science teams study the recovered artifacts and come with the blueprints of an amazing device. It is able to dissipate the energy concentration above the Plank limit into quantum fluctuations . Such an extreme energy focussing is a trade mark of space ship engines. Apparently, we can now manufacture a very powerful engine disrupting weapon. In spite of this leapfrog in science, or rather because of it, alarms are raised as why did such a powerful ancient civilization seized to exist but as a result of another Xenocide? I'm worried as well and when I am called to speak to the next assembly, my motto will be "Constant vigilance !!!"

2401.0 Two more planet are colonized and we are ready to explore the galaxy. There are three space-time anomalies in our home system. Small but powerful ship armed with two nuclear missiles is build and heading towards one. The very first expedition beyond the event horizon arrived to a system we catalog as Sorrous. To our disappointment, it is nebula star system and Ra I is ordered to explore the another wormhole.

2401.1. Something is horribly terribly wrong. Her Majesty Xi'Chung Hive Queen Kaziktra ship warps in our system. At first, there is no limit to the planet-wide jubilation. Buggers survived the Xenocide and were not lost in a space during the exodus ! We are united at Last. But not for long. Almost immediately, a shock message arrives: The Hive Queen declares that "Xenocide is the only logical way do deal with Pequeninos Tribe infestation". Our first and only military ship Ra I scrambles and intercept the intruder. Victory ! Hive ship was armed with short range direct-fire weapons and she was not able to close in to Ra-I who maintained the safe distance and fired deadly nuclear missiles.

2401.2 Following her pursuit, Ra I jumps to Nevers system and by Locky, it is rich in colonisable planets. There is no sign of Hive presence yet but buggers must be near by. Several squire miles of fathers are sing in and produce new colony ships. Nevers system is a next logical step in our survival and if Queen's subjects want to live here under our scrutiny, we would welcome all.

2401.3 New and disturbing transmission from Queen : "Genocide is the only logical way of dealing with the Pequeninos tribe infestation. Another Xenocide is upon us. Some of the most respectable fathers insists that we must abandon the Nevers system and push the exploration of wormholes not connected to the Hive domain. Certainly, it is a sound proposition and if we follow, we may find the even greener pastures than Kornephorus. But then, some other ramens will arrive and order us to be gone. Escapism is not a solution, at least in my opinion. Instead, the line must be drawn and as it is now, Nevern system is ours and forever shall be.

2401.4 Ender mutters /for all we have and are, /for all our childrens fate/ stand up and take the war,/ XiChung is at the gate/. Yes, this ancient human rhyme is all that left to guide us now. Xi'Chung Hive Queen, once our savior, has been turn into a valrese. The brave brothers in Neveres are frantically building weapon platforms. The ugly bags of Hive ships are closing in. All our colonies are at peril, with little help from Homeworld.

2402.1 Thanks to Ender's tactical prowess, the colonies in Nevers system survived countless attacks by the Hive frigates. Weapon platforms and satellites with point-defense cannons provide the shield against Xi'Chung nuclear missiles. We even extent our exploration to the Xi'Chung Queen's homeworld, Greebok.
This is a fateful year. Ships from so far unknown race, Pyrochette Empire visit our homeworld. Just to be in a safe side, the infrastructure construction is put on hold on all our planets and the resources have been transferred to the production of military installations.

2402.2. It was a wise decision. We greeted this new race with warm and hospitality, and what do we hear in return? “You Father Rooter ignored our petitions, then, here is our War declaration. Now, we will take the spoils of the Pequeninos, after submit your race into the extinction.”

2402.3 Our attempts to reason with Pyrochette Empire collapsed. We have a war on two fronts. Scouts discover the solar system with several planets suitable for our colonization but we can not spare nor minerals, and no space yards time to produce new colony ships. Protection of already colonized planets is a priority.

To be continued...

[ 20 February 2002: Message edited by: oleg ]

[Atrocities]

Very nice set. Looks like DoGa has become the unoffical 3d ship building tool for SEIV.

[pathfinder]

Hehe, I tried DoGa out (free d/l Version) and it IS easy. Guess I'll pony up th $$ and get the full Version.

Been fooling around a year trying various programs and what not and this just may do the trick. Still take awhile to do a set "right".

[rdouglass]

I dunno' - I found Strata 3D quite nice. They too have a free Version available as download thru many shareware sites (I use tucows). I have found it quite easy to use and built my first 3D model in about 10 minutes.

I took a quick look at DoGa but isn't that primarily focused to animation? (I may not know what I'm talking about - just MHO) Besides, just didn't seem to fit........