Akreonic Search

[Joe Joerson]

The five vessels had left Xengari space and split to cover the largest amount of space possible. This corvette was one of these vessels. As it approached a system, other than being a vital connection in the hyperlane network, was uninteresting. That was until they actually arrived in system and detected something very odd.

Just barely detected it on their Gravitational sensors, a small anomaly. It had a differing composition to an asteroid, either something was very odd here, or this was something else. The Xengari ship approached intending to study this artifact further. It may be nothing...

...Or reveal a great threat to all Xengari. This could not be left to chance.

[Zuko Darkborn]

Unknown to the Xengari, this was actually an Earadar scouting drone, sent to look for unusual signals. The main goal was to find any hostile aliens before they attack any Earadan planet. The drone reacts to the approaching ship, and sends out distress signals to other drones nearby, as for them to leave the system and report back. The drone in question starts its hyperdrives, programmed to be evasive.

[Joe Joerson]

The lone Xengari corvette, startled at the charging hyperdrive signature, unsure to respond until it was realized that this might be a drone of some sort. With this, and the fact that there might be other undetected drones in system, they sent out a broadcast. Hoping that this would be taken back to the drone's masters and cause them to come here to communicate, where the Xengari might learn more about these new Xenos' dark intentions.



(Also just letting you know because they may be some confusion. There is only one Xengari ship in this system the other four are elsewhere.)

[Zuko Darkborn]

(That was what I originally thought, don't know why I wrote "ships" instead of "ship". Changed it now.)

The drone do indeed pick up the broadcast in time. Sometime later, when it reached Earad, the Grandest Master decided to send a starship to deal with this. Believing the broadcast to be music, they found one of their own, similar music tracks to respond with. Now an unknown starship yet again approach the system.

[Joe Joerson]

The Corvette has taken up position over the star of the system, presumably waiting for a return of the aliens. The Xengari ship is smooth and curved, no hard lines along the the surface of the hull. It's darker colors and the curves of the hull make it appear as though designed after some Marine animal. When the Alien vessel arrives they begin to slowly move toward it, transmitting once the earlier Broadcast and attempting to scan the vessel using their Gravitic sensors.

[Zuko Darkborn]

The incoming alien vessel has a weird, impractical design which most xenophobes would view as bizarre and alien. An ocean of differently colored symbols and images cover the hull, and the form has wavy curves. The main color scheme is blue, purple and white.

They transmit a similar song to that of earlier, in almost the same format.

[Joe Joerson]

The Xengari Corvette continues it's slow approach towards the Alien vessel. Many of the Xengari themselves agreeing that such a garish and ugly vessel does seem to fit aliens.

They transmit this song, combined with an image of the local stars with the Hyperlane connections between them shown. The star system that the two ships are in is highlighted in yellow. The Xengari intend for this to request map or some such showing claimed space, whether such intent might be known to the alien mind they have no idea.

[Zuko Darkborn]

The Earadan starship believe this to be an attempt at exchanging map information. This seems like a far more civilized and peaceful alien race to the Eogons. Still, they are unsure whether this is just another factions of the Swarms, who already had shown some sort of political divide. The Eogons did not wish to become food, so they proceeded with caution.

They transmit an image of the known stars, drawn by the astronomer and painter "Stormgrape", known more commonly as "The Painter of a Hundred Songs, who threw grapes at he who sowed, and who crossed the Fields of Ancient Swords". Similarly, the star system they are currently in is placed in a yellow circle (since this painting includes more stars in a bigger area). Otherwise, a red circle highlight the star where they met the swarms (Delta Home), and above it is a picture of the alien corvette. The Eogons had the intent for this to be a question, on whether the corvette was part of the swarms.

[Joe Joerson]

The Xengari Corvette speeds it's approach slightly not so much so as to pose immediate threat but enough decrease interception time from days to hours. They transmit another message as they do this.

The Message is of the before local area the star is still highlighted in yellow and the connections in the hyperlanes are still shown. However there are no ships or other indicators besides a blue glow from one side of the screen. Almost a completely different direction than one taken to go to the system highlighted in red on the Eogon map. From this direction traveling down a hyperlane path is an image of the Xengari corvette highlighted in blue. It continues traveling until reaching the star system highlighted in yellow upon which an image of the before probe is shown. Then the Probe disappears then an image of the alien ship appears.

The animation is switched off as another image is shown it shows a image of the probe and the alien vessel close together with a line connecting them on the left half of the screen. Then on the right half it shows the probe and the alien vessel far apart with no line between them. The Xengari attempt to phrase this as a question to their identity in relation to the earlier drones.

The view switches again to the local area this time showing the alien vessel moving down the hyperlanes from the red highlighted star system to the yellow one. Once arriving in the yellow system the view switches to a view of the solar system with the alien vessel and the Xengari corvette. They attempt to convey a request of whether the red system was their ope system or some such.

Again they hope that the Aliens understand but grow more wary as they did not answer as they had hoped. During the image broadcast music such as this was transmitted.

[Zuko Darkborn]

Captain Wornstorm believes this to mean that the alien ship is not part of codename Swarm. He transmits another version of the same painting. The picture of the (Xengari) corvette is no longer there, but the red and yellow circles are there still. They surround some of the space, where the Eogons currently are operating, in a large blue highlight. A picture including several drones similar to those of earlier, in addition to the Eogon spaceship, is transmitted in addition, on the blue-tinted background of an unknown system.

Believing the music as an attempt at sharing music (yes, he thought that...), he decided to send one of his favorites, as an attempt at showing his peaceful intent.

[Joe Joerson]

Though the alien music is not very well liked due to it's alien arrangements, it is not entirely disliked by the Xengari.

The Xengari ship having so far been fairly successful in regards to communicating intent transmits a new message to the Alien Vessel.

The Message includes an animation of the Xengari ship approaching the Eogon vessel and launching a Xengari shuttle craft which docks with the Eogon vessel in the animation. The shuttle craft docks with a large airlock of the Eogon vessel a cargo bay opening or some such. This is intended as asking for permission from the aliens, but they hope to gather valuable information either way.

[Zuko Darkborn]

The crew on the Eogon ship are conflicted about what to do. If these aliens were cannibals, this could go bad. On the other hand, they would now meet on their own ship, with their own defensive weapons. They decide to accept.

They send back the same animation, and lights are turned on around the large, round cargo airlock. It gradually opens, with an empty, large space at the inside.

[Joe Joerson]

After the animation is sent back the Xengari approaches the Eogon vessel and launches a Xengari shuttle which in turns docks as was shown in the animation. The shuttle tests the inside of the Eogon ship, determining atmospheric composition and any other dangers to disembarking.

[Zuko Darkborn]

After the airlock closes, they are welcomed with the sight of a Eogon, on the other side of a hard glass wall. He has three horns on his head, all shaped differently, which are all longer than the rest of the body itself. His humanoid body is covered in a patched black and white fur, ending on the neck. The head itself seems more leathery, with a small mouth, and what seems to be nostrils on the chin. The upper part of the face is covered in nine black dots, actually eyes.

Even to normal Eogons, he was a strange one. He was of a rare subspecies found on the largest Earadan island, commonly called "The Sands brought from the Northern Sand-star" alongside countless other names. The shortest of which is "Og", found in the local languages, famous for their short but artistic words. (The unique part is his eyes, and his leathery head, not his chin nostrils, which are normal.)

The Ogader Eogon was chosen due to be being the only crewmember brave enough to face the Hydra-like aliens, even protected by an invincible wall. He greets them by playing a similar song like earlier, to symbolize that he is part of the starship.

[Joe Joerson]

A lone Xengari disembarks from the shuttle, whether this there are more Xengari on the shuttle is unclear but their numbers would have to be small. After slight revulsion at the sight of Eogon, and anger at the rudeness of barrier blocking the Xengari sonar pulses, the rightmost head continues to watch the Eogon as the other two turn back to it's entourage of robots. The Xengari came with four Bipedal robots, not obviously armed but it is possible that such is hidden in their mechanical bodies, and six floating robots, using magnetics or some other such device to stay aloft, which appear to be either guards or servants to the Xengari. The Bipedal robots are about two meters tall but are dwarfed bu the sheer mass and height of the three meter tall, roughly one and four fifths meters wide at the torso and six meter long Xengari.

The Xengari was wearing what was obviously an armored pressure suit, though the head pieces had been removed except for one on the leftmost head, presumably the other two were removed after a breathable atmosphere was detected and the one kept on for any radio or other communications purposes for the Xengari.

High Lady, Dame Vramois, Head Xenologist of the Xengari scout Corvette and worked on the Coordination project, the project to develop a complex coordination program for translation of alien languages. She was the Xengari assigned by her Captain to go aboard the shuttle and communicate with the Aliens, while slightly repulsive their ftl drones were something the Xengari had not considered, and wanted dearly. So here she was having to put up with the aliens rudeness and any other traits of their malignant species to try to speak to the ugly things. In any case she listens to the alien music as various robots begin moving equipment from the shuttle that is necessary for the correlation machine that the Xengari use to attempt to translate alien languages. So she listens and waits as the alien plays.

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