Challenge #02508-F318: An Asynchronous Encounter in Ships’ Night
You ever fall asleep on the couch only to wake up in your own bed? Ever fall asleep in your bed and wake up realizing you’re standing in your living room? Sleepwalking can be from stress, it can be from night-terrors, it can be from many things. When they hired their young warrior / linguist, they didn’t realize he sleepwalks. It wasn’t in the file, after all, and this was the youth’s first assignment. Though they would find him asleep in the oddest places. His kitchen, standing up as if looking out the window, sometimes wandering down the hall, until someone turned him back toward his quarters. When awake, though often tired, his skills were very much the high quality they’d hoped for, patient, soft-spoken, and yet strong. But these poor havenworlders had to deal with a sleepwalker, what in Power’s name were they to do? – Anon Guest
“Human Wyn… these are your scheduled rest hours, are you having a problem?” Shrui asked. Ze had never seen Human Wyn so unprepared for duty, in fact the Human was dressed only in hir Skins, and barefoot with it.
“I’ve come seeking the crystal of enclave,” said Human Wyn. There was something strange about the way ze said it. “I have been through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered. I have fought untold foes… I have endured decades of pain. It is my right.”
Shrui attempted to process this information from what ze knew of Human Wyn’s file. “You have given your age as seventeen. You can’t have endured decades, and your health profile was High Green with no problems…”
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Challenge #02507-F317: The Jewels of the Tour
A feathery flash of ruby red, then several bright flashes of green. These tiny birds flit amongst the gardens on the space station as the havenworlders watch them in wonder. They came from a 4.5 deathworld. These beautiful, flying gems. They are more delicate than the most delicate of havenworlders, some humans brought them here to the garden to act as pollinators and to make the place, “more like home,’ she’d said. Little nectar-filled feeders can be seen swarming with these sweet little birds that make the softest of sounds as they flit from feeder to flowers past all who watch them. When asked what they were, one human whispered uncharacteristically as they were normally quite boisterous, "Hummingbirds.” – DaniAndShali
They call it Bejewel Station, and it is an otherwise out-of-the-way whistlestop with the standardized everything that a traveller could need. Standardized food vendors, standardized hot-bunks, standardized medik bays, standardized living spaces, standardized repairs, standardized shops… standardized boredom… Yet people are willing to endure longer trips across Hyperspace and true space alike just to get there and stay for a day. Why?
They call it Bejewel Station, but that’s a mispronounciation of its original moniker. Bee Jewel Station. Someone in this stations forgotten past could not import Terran bees because of the venom and the inherent danger, but they needed pollinators… so they went for the next-best, and most harmless replacement. Tiny, delicate, beautiful, and iridescent Deathworlder birds.
Many visitors to Bejewel Station do not believe the birds come from a Deathworld. They are tiny, they are fragile, and they subsist on simple sugars like many, many Havenworlders do. There is even a helpful poem on a stelae by Big Flower Park entitled When a Bird Be a Bee that explains the evolutionary path on a lies-to-children basis. So many pictures are taken of people feeding the birds next to the stelae, it’s almost mandatory to have one. Yet, despite this, they cannot believe the birds belong on the same planet as bears or wolves or snakes.
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Challenge #02506-F316: Put a Saddle On
Havenworlders, depending on where they’re from, are generally small, fairly lightweight, and fragile. On their own homeworlds, they have little to fear. But outside their own homeworlds, there is a vast array of things that can harm them even when just trying to get around. However, one group of Havenworlders find an interesting way to go around the space station without risking getting stepped on, or harmed. They ride on the back of their new, well loved, and very well trained animal they call “Horse.” Humans have to correct them, it’s a Great Dane. Which, some humans admit, is as big as a small horse. – BridgetK
Firrit had a pet. If you could call it a pet. It was also a mount and, in lieu of a friendly Deathworlder escort, a bodyguard and helpmeet for interstellar travel. The animal - and it was definitely an animal - was named Horse. That was, after all, her primary function - to act like a horse for Firrit to ride whenever he went into spaces shared by non-Havenworld species.
As far as names went, it was very serviceable. Horse was well-trained by a different animal handler and had learned some basic GalStand commands and would respond to handling via reins. The extra bulk of Horse’s presence helped other, larger species recognise that -yes- Firrit was there. Or, for some Deathworlders, that Horse was there.
The Human currently paying attention to Horse had lapsed into some primitive mode of communication not easily translated into GalStand or GalSimple by Firrit’s HUD. “Aaaww wookit da cute ol’ puppy… hoozagoopuppyden? Hoozagoopupper? Yoosagoopupper! Yessooiz! Yessooiz!”
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Challenge #02505-F315: Useful in a Pinch
A: how pure should the acid be?
B: doesn’t matter as long it be acidic
A: kk
then I proceeded to watch the human put their finger down their throat – Anon Guest
[AN: Content warning for vomiting]
Humans are great at improvising. Provided, of course, that you don’t mind the kind of improvisation that Humans are capable of. For example, do not lock them in an empty room with nothing but a screwdriver and a hammer. Don’t even think of locking them in a room with nothing. That’s even worse.
Zhyruk knew this, and was sure to look for any interesting playthings for the Ship’s Human, Zan. Today, though, that was not the problem. The problem was being stuck in a partially-collapsed old hulk left on a Trashworld. The main article blocking the way could, fortunately, be dissolved by acid.
“Can it be any acid, and does it matter how pure it is?” asked Human Zan. So far, they were doing the heavy lifting, and had picked up a number of objects that ze had said could be useful. Since ze had also figured out various means of carrying them, Zhyruk was not yet ready to complain.
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Challenge #02503-F313: Life Echoes Art
Sometimes reality is indeed Stranger than Fiction… As far as finding strange space-faring beings, humans had a knack of seemingly finding those that somehow matched almost exactly the “creatures” of their wide and varied mythologies. From the Thumruth (whom bare an astounding resemblance to Qu-tze Bears) to the Karmorp'se, Humans had learned that pretty much anything was possible! That’s when humans came upon a society that developed on the outer regions of their stars habitable zone(thus darker and colder than an Earth like environment) who’s “plant life” relied more on Chemo-synthesis than on Photosynthesis.. and who’s main source of sustenance was a naturally occurring Haemoglobin produced by their Flora. – Adam in Darwin
Humans have some wide-spread imagination spaces. They have imagined technologies, civilisations, entire universes of content and they show no signs of stopping any time soon. When technology renders one such space impossible, Humans carry on imagining it anyway. They like thinking about six impossible things before breakfast.
They also have the unfortunate habit of referring to new, theoretically impossible lifeforms by the names of their imagined counterparts. The Karmorp'se got called ‘zombies’, the Thumruthi were called 'qu-tze’ by absent-minded Humans or their minors. It could be construed as a slur if the reactions weren’t generally benevolent.
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