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Pacho posted:Either time jump or they were in some sort of stasis for decades until the stasis system broke down (around the Roswell incident?). I'd suggest mentioning that earth has changed since the cyclops was lost (don't mention how many years), that we have spacefaring tech and are here under our own volition for exploration purposes and that we need a status update on them and potential hostiles if we need to do a rescue mission If it really is a person then yes, I'm guessing they were held in some sort of suspension that failed recently enough that they've been able to stay alive since then. Either way, this has turned from an archeology mission into a humanitarian mission exceedingly fast, and we need to confirm how many folks are down there and find a way to get them to safety ASAP. 
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Dec 17, 2020 09:09
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| # ? Jun 4, 2024 02:42 |
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very nice piece (lol)
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Dec 17, 2020 09:14
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We've run into so many problems where new solutions were required. But with guns... well, even the aliens we ran into didn't have handheld versions of their super weapons. Our guns ain't broke. So why fix them? I also feel like it's an extremely human thing, to carry a weapon that seems antiquated because it means something. Eventually, diplomats in the future get issued ceremonial Makarovs, Lugers, and Brownings as signatures of their status.
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Dec 17, 2020 09:30
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Mister Bates posted:There's also the Barsoom outpost, which has rovers and is staffed by expert scientists, engineers, and cosmonauts. They have no spacecraft, though, so that would require an overland journey across thousands of kilometers of Martian wilderness that would take weeks at minimum and would itself be one of the most ambitious undertakings in the history of human space exploration, though. Couldn't our two little ships transport experts and/or gear from Barsoom to Cydonia? If there's enough space in the ships, with 3-5 landings it would be possible to pick up people at Barsoom, they'd stay in their suits not to strain the ships' life support systems if any, travel to Cydonia at 1000+km/s, land for the second time and stay there, until the Barsoomian need a lift back home (where there'd be the third landing). Or take off after transport if the Barsoomians managed to bring enough to stay until the Luna and Petrograd can bring more, which would take a few days, right? Our Proton/Electron are rated for 36 months of operations, they could unload some of their supplies in Barsoom to make space for people or their gear, and let go of some more when they'd drop the Barsoomians at Cydonia.
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Dec 17, 2020 18:09
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The landing legs on the Proton/Electron are an afterthought stapled on Just In Case that the nerds aren't really sure will last more than one or two uses, trying to press some listening posts made out of duct tape and spit into service as planetary shuttles probably isn't the best idea. Unless the signalman down there is convinced they're all gonna die in a week, everyone can hang tight long enough for the freighters to show up with something at least slightly more useful than a SIGINT outpost with a nuke strapped to the back.
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Dec 17, 2020 18:13
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Yeah, this is why we have dedicated hauler ships. If ALL else fails, we can slam together an away team with 300-odd pressure suits to get these poor people out of there, that'll fit in one of the larger transport ships.
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Dec 17, 2020 22:31
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If you’re panicking about encountering aliens, remember Posadist theory would presumably be well entrenched in the politburo - it started in the early sixties and has been proven completely correct in this timeline. Therefore all aliens are apriori good communist space comrades. There is no need to worry! The forces of the dialectic have led us to our friends.
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Dec 17, 2020 23:36
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Mister Bates posted:March 25 1982, around 9AM Ascension Standard Time Mars Contact: WELL IF YOU HAVE TO ASK I ASSUME NOT HAHAHA Mars Contact: THE MARTIANS Mars Contact: WE WERE CAUGHT IN A FREAK STORM, WE WERE CERTAIN THE SHIP WAS GOING DOWN, BUT THEY LIFTED OUT OF THE WATER AND CARRIED US AWAY Mars Contact: WOKE UP HERE, ALONG WITH A FEW GERMAN CHAPS AND THEIR SUBMARINE, WHO ARE JUST AS CONFUSED AS WE ARE. Electron-B: HOW MANY SOULS ARE YOU CYCLOPS Mars Contact: 337 AWAKE Electron-B: CLARIFY: 'AWAKE'? Mars Contact: WHEN WE WOKE UP WE WERE ALL IN SOME KIND OF GLASS TUBES. NOT EVERYONE IN THEM WOKE UP. DON'T KNOW HOW TO WAKE THEM UP. WE TRIED TO PRY ONE OPEN, IT WASN'T PRETTY. WE THINK THE REST ARE STILL ALIVE - WE WERE, AFTER ALL. Electron-B: HOW MANY TOTAL PLEASE Mars Contact: NOT SURE. THOUSANDS. ROWS AND ROWS OF THE drat THINGS. Electron-B: HOW LONG AWAKE? Mars Contact: A YEAR, MAYBE? HARD TO TELL HERE Mars Contact: I WANT TO GO HOME
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Dec 19, 2020 08:02
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Time to fasttrack a rescue mission and xcom's science investigation teams.
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Dec 19, 2020 08:11
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oh god oh gently caress this is loving huge on MANY levels
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Dec 19, 2020 08:50
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Did not see this twist coming.
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Dec 19, 2020 09:29
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Well, at least if they're in cryopods they should be easy to transport?
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Dec 19, 2020 09:30
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It being a Rip Van Winkle situation at least explains why they're still alive after all these years.
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Dec 19, 2020 09:38
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Guys: Martians. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eCAphdQPck
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Dec 19, 2020 10:33
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Dec 19, 2020 11:14
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OK, so we need a quarantine facility for the people we rescue, either at Barsoom or Lunagrad. We will need psychological support for the debriefing as well, and we need a transport ship out there ASAP to bring in supplies and start ferrying people. Keeping the site pristine is no longer a priority, Earth bacteria is already spreading down there. We still need to worry about alien bacteria getting into our habitats, but bacteria are unlikely to spread quickly on Mars or Luna.
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Dec 19, 2020 14:03
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Barsoom isn't even a little bit prepared to handle this many people, but it could be quite feasible to set up a quarantined refugee camp near (not in) Lunagrad. I agree that shipping these people right back to Earth isn't worth the risk, but we can certainly give them a view of home, a lot less light-lag, and some creature comforts. Make it a nice propaganda piece.
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Dec 19, 2020 14:21
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Servetus posted:OK, so we need a quarantine facility for the people we rescue, either at Barsoom or Lunagrad. We will need psychological support for the debriefing as well, and we need a transport ship out there ASAP to bring in supplies and start ferrying people. Keeping the site pristine is no longer a priority, Earth bacteria is already spreading down there. We still need to worry about alien bacteria getting into our habitats, but bacteria are unlikely to spread quickly on Mars or Luna. They've been down there are year, so unless they've run out of food and water and are on the verge of death I say they can sit for a week or two while we set up the infrastructure to create a proper research base/medical facility/quarantine hub just outside the ruins. It'll also lay the foundations for the eventual xenoarchaeological site we'll be setting up... in three years or so.
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Dec 19, 2020 14:29
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Jesus, thousands!? This is bigger than we thought, who knows how long they've been nabbing people. Pretty much any mysterious mass disappearance of people on record could be up there in those tubes. Ninth Roman Legion? Titanic passengers? The Roanoke colony? Sky's the loving limit. Also, the timing's a bit weird. Why now, what defrosted these guys just in the last year? It could be coincidence I guess, people could have been periodically coming out of stasis for who knows how long and it's only now that someone down there was able to send a signal and someone overhead was there to listen. Or maybe this is some Martian machination we don't have all the pieces to yet. Man, disregarding the humanitarian rescue mission aspect of all this, we need to get some of these guys THOROUGHLY debriefed and the site gone over with a fine comb, every dot and dash we get out of these guys just raises further questions faster than we're getting answers.
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Dec 19, 2020 14:47
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So the downed UFO at Roswell should probably coincide with the bombing of the Mars base. Queu a couple decades later and the stasis pods are starting to fail? Two intergalactic players in our backyard. We shouldn’t rush this. A slow and steady retrieval of the people here with a thorough debriefing and medical checkups at Lunagrad. We start by figuring out how much time we have and if we need to send a few food shipments and / or volunteer doctors.
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Dec 19, 2020 15:19
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Antilles posted:They've been down there are year, so unless they've run out of food and water and are on the verge of death I say they can sit for a week or two while we set up the infrastructure to create a proper research base/medical facility/quarantine hub just outside the ruins. It'll also lay the foundations for the eventual xenoarchaeological site we'll be setting up... in three years or so. Those people have had no training of any sort to be living in a base off earth long term. They should be transferred over to the Moon, if only for psychological reasons.
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Dec 19, 2020 15:45
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HiHo ChiRho posted:Those people have had no training of any sort to be living in a base off earth long term. They should be transferred over to the Moon, if only for psychological reasons. "They've had no training living in a base off Earth, so they should be transferred to a different base off Earth."  In any case, that part's handled by the medicine/quarantine wing, psychiatrists would definitively be part of the staff sent there.
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Dec 19, 2020 16:37
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They've been living on Mars and have already accepted that they're (probably, they think) on Mars for the past year, leaving them on Mars is probably fine psychologically? If human ships full of human food and human doctors and human infrastructure keep showing up that's enough to not go insane while getting debriefed in a Martian processing center we put up next to the ruins. The Moon is a hell of a lot more alien than Mars, at least on Mars there's still an atmosphere (thin but at least it exists), a day/night cycle roughly the same as Earth instead of a month long, and the gravity is closer to Earth. Hauling them all back to the Moon and making them stare at Earth every day while they barf all over the place from the gravity change and see constant ships zipping back and forth every 45 seconds that they aren't allowed to be on is probably the worse option.
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Dec 19, 2020 17:03
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Wait a second...Mister Bates posted:Electron-B: HOW LONG AWAKE? And it's March 25 1982... what happened in March 1981? Mister Bates posted:March 25, 1981 ...did our flyby wake them up? Has some automatic monitoring system been keeping track of the sky and de-frosted them when we did our first geosurvey of the site? Asterite34 fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Dec 19, 2020 |
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Dec 19, 2020 18:24
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We don't know from how many eras this people have been abducted. The ones who are more resilient can be quickly debriefed but there are thousands of people so I think the most practical and humane solutions is setting up artificial villages that carefully recreate their original enviroments for an ease of transition. We could have "Medieval Burg" "Sengoku Burg" or "West Burg" and afterwards, when all the rescued people have been integrated to our time, we can use these Burgs for education purposes
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Dec 19, 2020 19:26
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The PRNZ would like to note that defense should also be considered. We have discovered a decades, likely centuries long project to abduct earth citizens and store them for purposes unknown. Something about that has just changed, and there is every likelihood a signal has gone back to the aliens homeworld. It is possible that agents of interstellar reaction are already headed our way and we are unprepared for dealing with that. PRNZ proposes to activate a dedicated defense program, details to be confirmed by discussion.
sebmojo fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Dec 19, 2020 |
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Dec 19, 2020 19:38
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Crazycryodude posted:They've been living on Mars and have already accepted that they're (probably, they think) on Mars for the past year, leaving them on Mars is probably fine psychologically? If human ships full of human food and human doctors and human infrastructure keep showing up that's enough to not go insane while getting debriefed in a Martian processing center we put up next to the ruins. The Moon is a hell of a lot more alien than Mars, at least on Mars there's still an atmosphere (thin but at least it exists), a day/night cycle roughly the same as Earth instead of a month long, and the gravity is closer to Earth. Hauling them all back to the Moon and making them stare at Earth every day while they barf all over the place from the gravity change and see constant ships zipping back and forth every 45 seconds that they aren't allowed to be on is probably the worse option. I agree with cryodude here, I think making sure they have as comfortable a settlement we can provide to them where they already are is the best plan, especially while we set up for an inevitable xenoarcheology dig.
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Dec 19, 2020 23:29
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Looks like we might have to call an emergency meeting on this issue, though I guess we'll have to wait until Mister Bates has finished the encounter so we have a better idea of the scope of what we're dealing with.
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Dec 20, 2020 01:41
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some great thread art here
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Dec 20, 2020 02:06
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I'm actually kinda digging the big flag here, could be a decent contender for the comintern flag...
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Dec 20, 2020 03:47
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OOC: I’m still tickled pink that I was able to have the initial Martian colony be named “Barsoom.” Also, I’ve been keeping an eye on the thread; been trying to catch up, but it would be great if there was a table of contents for me to check for new updates.
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Dec 20, 2020 06:59
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HereticMIND posted:OOC: I’m still tickled pink that I was able to have the initial Martian colony be named “Barsoom.” Also, I’ve been keeping an eye on the thread; been trying to catch up, but it would be great if there was a table of contents for me to check for new updates. What's the significance of the name?
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Dec 20, 2020 07:07
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zanni posted:What's the significance of the name? It's a little sci-fi nod: the native name for Mars in the book that became that John Carter of Mars movie.
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Dec 20, 2020 07:11
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Akratic Method posted:It's a little sci-fi nod: the native name for Mars in the book that became that John Carter of Mars movie. Aw, that's a nice touch! Honestly, I'm now kinda wondering if the TNE revolution and subsequent increase in space exploration might have sparked a newfound craze for sci-fi stuff among Comintern citizens? Or would reality becoming a living science fiction story day by day kind of make it moot?
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Dec 20, 2020 07:24
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Akratic Method posted:It's a little sci-fi nod: the native name for Mars in the book that became that John Carter of Mars movie. I also chose the name “Johnathan Carter” for the Delmarva Commonality’s chief ambassador from that book because I am a huge nerd.
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Dec 20, 2020 07:32
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Antilles posted:I'm actually kinda digging the big flag here, could be a decent contender for the comintern flag... While I don't know where the specific design originates from, I know it's pretty old. That icon--the hammer, sickle, and cogwheel--is the symbol of the Communist Party of America, CPUSA, which today is basically just one big fed honeypot, but back in the heyday of American leftism it was a decently-sized force. HOI4 uses a very similar flag design for the communist USA.
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Dec 20, 2020 08:43
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Yeah, while the flags are very neat, they're also very specifically american. The big pillars of the comintern are france, russia and china, with american and polynesian states being the two rising stars in terms of participation in the federal project, so any flag's gotta be internationalist if it's to work.
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Dec 20, 2020 08:55
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Mister Bates posted:Mars Contact: WELL IF YOU HAVE TO ASK I ASSUME NOT HAHAHA Electron-B: GOING TO SEE WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT GETTING A RESCUE PARTY TO YOU SOON CYCLOPS, JUST HANG IN THERE Electron-B: WE'LL HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU BUT REST ASSURED HELP IS ON THE WAY. ARE YOU IN IMMEDIATE DANGER? Mars Contact: NO IMMEDIATE DANGER. THE AIR OUTSIDE IS DEADLY COLD AND YOU CAN'T BREATHE IT BUT IN HERE WE'RE FINE. FOOD MAIN ISSUE. FOOD ON SHIPS NEARLY ALL INEDIBLE WHEN WE WOKE UP. HARDTACK WAS STILL GOOD AT LEAST. FOUND ALTERNATE FOOD SOURCES BUT NOT SUFFICIENT. CAN STRETCH CURRENT SUPPLIES MAYBE 2 MONTHS WITH CURRENT RATIONING BEFORE WE HAVE TO START CRACKING SLEEPING TUBES. Mars Contact: WE DON'T THINK WE'RE ALONE HERE BUT IF THERE ARE STILL MARTIANS AROUND THEY HAVEN'T BOTHERED US. WE SEE THEM FLYING THEIR ZEPPELIN SOMETIMES. RIGGED UP DIVING SUIT AND SENT MAN OUT TO TRY TO CONTACT THEM BUT HE HAD NO LUCK. Electron-B: ACKNOWLEDGED. WILL RELAY INFORMATION TO EARTH. STAY ON THE LINE CYCLOPS. Mars Contact: WHERE ELSE WOULD I GO ELECTRON-B Mars Contact: JOKING ASIDE THANK YOU, ALEX WILLIAMS FROM GLASGOW. WE OWE THE ROYAL NAVY A GREAT DEBT. message from the Cydonia Expedition: will keep you apprised with anything noteworthy that comes up. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE FOLLOWING IS STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL Initial Report on 'Objects E-H' GRU Ninth Directorate April 13, 1974 Objects E, F, G, and H are the vivisected, frozen bodies of four members of a presumably-alien species, recovered from storage lockers in a subbasement of the abandoned US military facility known as 'Area 51'. The Americans recovered them from the crash site of the alien spacecraft whose debris is collectively known as Objects A, B, and C (the spacecraft, the loose materials within the spacecraft, and the liquid presumed-fuel stored in tanks within the spacecraft, respectively). The specimens are humanoid, and in general resemble humans to a frankly shocking degree. Even more surprising is that they generally conform to an existing pop-cultural depiction of 'an alien', specifically that which UFO enthusiasts have historically referred to as 'Greys'. The entities have a head containing a brain, two eyes, two ear-analogues, a nose-analogue with two nostrils, a mouth containing teeth and a tongue. They have two arms ending in hands with three fingers and an opposable thumb, and two legs ending in feet with four toes each. There is a skeleton of hard bone, a spine containing a spinal cord, a nervous system, a muscular system, a cardiovascular system (using an unidentified compound as a hemoglobin substitute which gives the specimens' blood a distinct green color), a respiratory system, and a digestive system. Though the shape, number, and exact arrangement of internal organs differ from humans, in some cases significantly, they nearly all have identifiable functions which are clear analogues of functions in human anatomy. They possess internal reproductive organs and aside from these organs have no outwardly obvious sexual dimorphism. Two of the specimens are presumed male and two are presumed female based on these organs. The bodies vary in height and weight but average about 1.5 meters tall and, in their current condition, about 38-40 kilograms in weight (this is certainly less than they would have weighed while alive). Their skin is almost entirely hairless, with the exception of Object G, a presumed-male, which has a long 'ponytail' of hair-analogue growing out of the back of the head. The skin coloration differs in exact shade but in all cases is a light greenish-grey. Object H has mottled skin with patches of highly varied shades. All four have been marked with what are presumably tattoos on the arms, chest, and back. No two of these are alike between subjects. The tattoos are uniformly black and consist of highly varied and intricate geometric patterns; hypotheses that these may represent a language have so far not borne fruit. All four of the specimens display evidence of having suffered extreme blunt-force trauma immediately pre-mortem, consistent with impacting a hard surface at very high speed, including broken bones and ruptured organs. Combined with evidence from Object A, including blood, the reasonable assumption is that they died on impact with the Earth's surface, or very shortly after from the injuries sustained. Object F also displays signs of past puncturing wounds to the chest that have healed and scarred. The clothing the specimens were wearing was also recovered and has been catalogued, collectively, as Object I. It consists of: four jumpsuits made of a soft, supple, and as-yet unidentified black fabric, with pockets on the torso, legs, and buttocks; four belts with eight small evenly-spaced pouches; four pairs of very sturdy black boots made out of another as-yet unidentified material; and padded metal-shell, open-faced helmets made out of the same composite material as the ship's exterior hull. The contents of the pockets were not recovered but were reported by the Americans to contain various small trinkets of no obvious use, an image on glossy paper of more members of the same species (carried by Object E), weapons including a mundane steel knife (carried by Object H), and various electronic devices of unclear purpose. The clothing is unmarked, with no evidence of anything that might be considered insignia or any other identification. Speaking candidly, BALCONY VIEW's opinion is that the odds of such human-like creatures evolving independently is, while not zero in the infinite vastness of space, unsettlingly low. note: nearly all of this information has long since been declassified and is publicly available; if you've taken courses on xenology at Interkosmos Academy you've studied it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The crews of the Luna and Tranquility have already been placed on standby alert and calls are going out on the red phones in Mission Control as we speak. What do we do? An Emergency Meeting of the People's Congress is now in session. I apologize for the unusual hour comrades. We will aim to have a proposed plan in place quickly, and voting will only take place if there is no clear consensus. Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Dec 20, 2020 |
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Dec 20, 2020 09:02
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PRNZ propose PROJECT FALX, a crash course to upgrade our space combat readiness. This should have a goal of achieving a practical (taking into account current or readily achievable technology) but effective space fighting force, under the jurisdiction of XCOM, within two years, comprising at least ten craft capable of engaging and defeating a similar size force of the crashed Grey ships. What say you comrades, should we huddle and die on our homeworld, helpless at the hands of interstellar Capital?
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Dec 20, 2020 09:10
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| # ? Jun 4, 2024 02:42 |
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Well, first of all clarify that this is an international expedition. It'll make things easier. As for a plan, we need more information: how much food can we get there and how fast?
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Dec 20, 2020 09:39
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