Beyond Our Goddess’s Moon {Sci-Fi, Science Fantasy, Camp, Raygun Gothic-ish, Possible Sex, Robots, Magic, Spaceships, and As Many Subtitles As I Like}

H.M.S.S. Solaris

Cryogenics Bay #1


A cloud of steam, the hiss of a hatch sliding out of place, a blinding light shining down from the heavens.

“Hello? Are you awake? Oh, good, you’re alive. I am the Holographic Audiovisual Masticatory Multi-Optical Number Distributor, or Percy, for short. You have now been chosen to assist in the continued operations of the HMSS Solaris, please have a nice first day of life away from home, and DANGER. DANGER. ALERT LEVEL: KESSLER. PILOT INPUT REQUIRED. CRYOGENIC SYSTEMS DAMAGED. NTFS CODEC CORRUPTION DETECTED. LEVEL FIVE INFECTION IN EMERGENCY WARNING SYSTEMS. please enjoy your first day out of stasis; you are to be allowed to adjust to the world again before beginning your duties. Have a nice day.”

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[TRANSMISSION INTERRUPTED]

Look, I cannot exaggerate this enough: This reality is utterly unlike the one you’re used to. In this world, the ponies are far more emotionally extreme, while at the same time, their emotions seem extremely forced, perhaps even “fake” to the untrained viewer. I assure you, however, that no matter how “ridiculous” these ponies may seem to you, they are utterly serious about their seemingly-insane issues.

For example, the Solaris’s AI unit has a horrible habit of using terms that have some sort of relation to orbital mechanics or space travel, but with little-to-no regard to their actual meaning. When questioned on such, he claims that the “technobabble must be babbled to retain the techno”. It seems that even the logic by which the entities here will defend their insanity is itself...insane.


Honestly, I theorize that all of this has to do with the relationship between magic and the ponies here. Magic is the external expression and control of a form of energy known as “mana”. Mana is found only in living things, though it can be stored in inanimate objects, if only fleetingly; such storage tends to work about as well as keeping hydrogen in a tank, though. It leaks, and has to be renewed from some living source, typically a unicorn.
Mana on the whole seems to be a sort of life energy, and is produced by a pony’s metabolism; unicorns produce it in much higher proportions than the other pony races, but they also seem to gain less physical energy per calorie of food than the other races. They are also the most apt at utilizing it in its purest form, as spell matrices, but both pegasi and earth ponies can channel mana into objects through force of will.

As to the matter of its use, mana can be used largely in two ways: to power “raw” magic and to power “pure” magic. Raw magic is the sort that earth ponies and pegasi largely use; it requires physical contact and simple force of will, and it is limited to doing only a handful of things. It can reinforce a physical object, or it can perform some rudimentary magicks, like cloudwalking, passive fertilization, or forcing a cloud to shoot lightning. In the gap between raw magic and pure magic stand runes, physically-crafted spell matrices, fully capable of mimicking pure magic, and powered through raw magical energy. They are, however, hard to make, notoriously difficult to learn, and require a lifetime to master. But runes are the only way an earth pony or pegasus can match a unicorn’s spellcasting.
Pure magic is an art in and of itself. Pure magic involves the same force of will as raw magic, but depends far more strongly on concentration and sheer volume of power. An unfocused use of pure magic results in telekinesis or the creation of a construct, depending on the user’s intent. Proper pure magic involves the creation of a mental spell matrix, through which the mana is directed, casting the desired spell. Masterful mages can create very complex spells on the fly, and their concentration is uninterruptable.

I cannot stress enough that you do not act foolish with your supply of mana. It might seem great and endless right after a nice, big meal, but running low on the stuff is bad. It’s almost like it’s part of a pony’s immune system, given the effects of running low on it. Signs of acute mana depletion include headaches, nausea, fainting, and the common cold.
Experiencing severe mana depletion repeatedly or continuously over a long period of time results in a chronic form of a disease known as Taint, which is very rarely recovered from, even if one returns to normal mana levels for years. Taint has obvious physical symptoms, with early stages causing a green tinge to the sclera, and mild paranoia. More severe cases tend to result in greying of the fur, the transfiguration of teeth into canines, and paranoid schizophrenia, though the exact symptoms depend upon the pony in question.

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By the way, feel free to do some rewrites on any characters you submit; vastly different world than most threads, and throwing in a bit of chaos is always fun. Oh, and if you so desire, you can be a robot.
You know you want to be a magickless space robot. You know you do.

I would like to sign up Mind Blaze as the ship's weapon system AI.
The character history is much the same, however at some point Blaze was captured and (partially) reprogrammed to work as a ship AI. Side effects of this include emotions, bitterness, and a craving for anti-matter weaponry that must always never ever be satisfied.

I will also Lolk as Science Officer. In this world, Lolk as adopted a Victorian manner, but secretly loves everyone. Lolk will arrive disguised as a unicorn mare with a white coat and green mane.

Llama, you're pretty crazy.

Sharp reporting for duty, history as is. Let's see what insanity you pull us into.

Diamond Mind will be joining this little excursion into space.
History is altered. Diamond Mind was raised as female, and thus is her preferred form. Diamond defied her royal heritage to instead run off and become an engineer and a scientist. After an accident involving replication magic that required a robot arm to replace the exploded limb, she finalized her replication magic and got involved on a spaceship.

Autumn Crocus will be joining you as a medical on this delightful space trip. The last bit of her history, in which she sold poison to mercenaries, isnt active in the course of this AU.

I'll sign up with Star Sentinel for Vice Officer. And no I do not want to be a robot without magic because robots.

Looks like I'll be signing up little Sena for this one. The biggest change here is merely an extension to her history in that after an accident, she's found out a bit more herself and knows what she can actually do.

Ippotis shall be joining this as Security. No robot parts for him.

Illicio will also go into this. I believe she'll be one doing basic maintenance and cooking.

Okay, okay, everyone. Everyone so far is accepted. You're all awesome people, except Aes because fuck you Aes. Stop naming characters as stupidly as I do, and stop making trap trappers who are traps. Fuck you.

I'll work on an intro post including everyone popping out of their lovely cryo pods, soon.

As a note to everyone about how I GM:
You will want to talk to me a lot. I suggest Skyping me whenever you have a question, or whenever you're planning to do something crazy. I like hearing your crazy ideas anyway. If you don't want to talk to me, conspire amongst yourselves as a group. Remember, campy camp, there is no such thing as over the top here. Because we are going to chew that scenery to shreds.
There's no concept of "post order" here. I will post when I want to. If you and someone else are all alone, you don't need to wait on everyone else in the thread to post again, just try to keep it under control and don't leave everyone completely behind without asking around first. If you feel like you need to double-post within a single round with a group of people, talk to them first; if you think you need to do something before someone interrupts your chance, TELL PEOPLE.
Communication in the OOC is key here, laddies and lasses.

Notification to everyone: I'm delaying starting up the thread. I don't have time for it until I've done some paper writing for my college classes. I've got a big one due on the 20th and I need the time to research and write it. I should be starting it at least by around then, but I doubt I'll really "feel" like I have the time until then. I hope this isn't too much of an inconvenience for everyone, but this is honestly going to be eating my time.
I'll be keeping up with threads I'm already in, but nothing else I'm doing involves running a thread for this many people.