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Dual Universe Lore (Part 1)


NQ-Nyzaltar

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(Posted Friday 31th of July 2015 on the DevBlog)

 

arkship-new-version-small.jpg

 

"Sohan ?? ?? !, ;? Sohan Decker, /? ?? ? ; :?

Sohan Decker. Your neuronal system is reporting initial stages of activation in the frontal lobe. Can you confirm your cerebral awakening?"

 

?Brrlllm??

 

"You have newly entered into a state of decryonization. Your body temperature is 32.4 degrees Celsius. Can you confirm the rebooting of your language center? If you understand the meaning of my words, respond ?Yes.?"

 

??Where?me??

 

?You are in the hibernacle 6JKP-Sohan of the arkship Novark, built in 2536 by the United Nations. You are awakening from a cryogenic sleep that has lasted 9,854 years. Your semantic and factual memory is functioning at approximately 12% of its original capacity. The retrieval of your procedural memory is currently under way. Do you have questions??

 

?I?m?cold? Who?s?talking??

 

?I am the Artificial Intelligence system of this ship. I function by distributed processing. I am currently in conversation with 99 other awakening pioneers aboard the arkship. For you, my name is Aphelia.?

 

?Your voice?is familiar??

 

?You chose it upon your departure from Earth. It is the resequenced voice of your fianc?e, Stella Maris.?

 

?Stella? Where is Stella??

 

?She died in the Final Collision on August 8th, 2538. She was among the Last Terrans, those who chose to remain on Earth until the end. You chose to join the survivors. You left your solar system on a voyage through space, in hibernation until an inhabitable planet would be discovered. I was programmed to awaken you first, should such a discovery occur.?

 

?I can?t understand you. Talk slower??

 

?You are a member of the Alpha pioneers ? those who are the most suitable to begin colonizing a planet. The moment has arrived. We have just entered the orbit of the planet Alioth, which meets the minimal parameters for human settlement. You must proceed to establish a new civilization here.?

 

"Freezing. I?m fucking freezing. I?d like to open my eyes. They?re glued shut. Why?

...I?d like to see Stella.?

 

 ?Your physical state is acutely anemic. Your biochemical functions are currently being reestablished. Your body temperature will progressively return to 37 degrees Celsius. It will take approximately ten hours. I am going to take advantage of this to teach you the greater part of the knowledge you will need to maintain your survival on the planet. As a member of the alpha team, you must acquire the fundamental skills which will facilitate colonization. I will begin by stimulating your factual memory. Can you tell me which events you remember??

 

I feel like I?ve crossed Siberia on a scooter with a loose-knit pilled sweater ? and without a helmet. My skull is a block of ice. I try to move my fingers, I can?t control a thing. My neck is jammed. Everything smells like snow. I have a tube in my lungs chiming like a metal rod. I can?t believe I?m still alive. I?d just like to be a little warm, for someone to give me a blanket, to have a warm cat, yes, to feel Stella up against me. I want to cry but I?d need tears for that. Nothing but my lips move, like two pieces of wood scraping together with each syllable I manage to squeeze out of my icebox.

 

What do I remember? Sonic weapons firing at the foot of the ship to keep the population at bay. A crowd stuck to the force fields, thousands of bodies sizzling as they strike the electric wall, and me standing on the gangway into the ship, looking for Stella and not finding her. Too many people, too many candidates, too much panic everywhere. I was going to enter the ship, everyone was pushing me. And then, I saw it, lifting my head one last time toward the horizon, thanks to the immense kite that she had borne into the sky, although among umpteen others. ?The earth is blue like an orange,? she had written on it. It?s the last I saw of the Earth. Stella?s minuscule silhouette, wrapped in her burnt-orange dress, with her blue-lagoon kite dancing against a cloudy background, amidst a hundred others that were just spam to me. I don?t know if she waved her arm. I want to believe she did.

 

?What do you remember??

 

?Nothing.?

 

?Your cortical region appears to indicate otherwise.?

 

?I remember wars over the building of the arkships. Millions of people that weren?t able to get on. The UN having broadcast open source space travel technology to every country. All the arkships that crashed before they could take off! I remember they called it the Great Exodus. But for Stella, it was the Great Abandonment.?

 

?What else??

 

?Thaw me out, have pity on me? I?m dying of cold??

 

?I am going to connect you to a neural induction-based skill simulator. It will slowly reconfigure your past learning and activate new skills in you. You will be able to acquire only one skill at a time. I must warn you, Sohan: it is possible that the induction will provoke anamneses. Are you ready??

 

?Show me the ship first. I want to see where I am.?

 

 

 

 

... to be continued

 

Written by Alain Damasio

Translated by Alexander Dicko

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New arkship design is pretty sweet, looks like what a colony ship we would develop right now would be (in my opinion). The story is pretty awesome too, is there an ETA on the next part? And will there be any lore like this in a the game, and/or the possibility of creating a written backstory for our characters like in the MMO Neverwinter?

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i'm amazed, that the arkship isnt damaged after creating such a crater :D

At the same time i want to point out again, that the timing with the neutron star can't ift because even the fastest known neutron star has only a fracture of the needed speed for our background story^^.

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i'm amazed, that the arkship isnt damaged after creating such a crater :D

At the same time i want to point out again, that the timing with the neutron star can't ift because even the fastest known neutron star has only a fracture of the needed speed for our background story^^.

 

The ship is probably build out of solid titanium. :) or it has some sort of propulsion system that decelerates the momentum to a sustainable impact shock...

as for the star and the time frame... :o I need to read stuff again :) lol

 

 

 

btw, when viewing the forums on mobile version, the AI's monologue doesn't show... all I see is Sohan's replies. Unless I highlight the text then I can see everything. white text against white background ?0?

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Ooooh nice job, both with story and artwork. There appears to be a romantic backstory embedded into all this. Hmm...

 

One thing though: Do you really think curse words, at least curse words to the degree of "fucking", should be placed into the opening script?

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In my opinion, curse words are fine. They make characters seem more human, and keep away those people that get upset about the little tings (curses, among other things).

I agree. I don't mind them either but personally i think it's better when they are used appropriately and not said after everyother word lol :)

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Hi everyone!

 

We are glad to see that you enjoyed the first part :)

And thanks a lot for your feedbacks! Now, to answer the questions and comments:

 

@Hylios:

- Yes, the design of the Arkship has been changed for two reasons. One of them was it should look like something that the players could build (or something with a similar look). 

You can expect other artworks to be in this direction in the future ;)

- The ETA for the next part is... this week. The complete short story is already written. We plan to release one part per week and there is five parts.

- There will be a bit (but not too much) of lore ingame, to give some base for further stories but keep in mind: most of the story will be made by players, as is should be in a sandbox.

- Yes, we plan to let players create a written backstory for their character, like in Neverwinter or EvE Online.

 

@Vylqun:

- Indeed it's surprising that the Arkship hasn't been damaged after the impact, but the reason will be explained in a following part of the story ;)

- Indeed, from what we know nowadays, the timing of the Neutron Star doesn't fit realistically. It would take much more time than five centuries for the nearest neutron star to reach Earth. We shorten the time on purpose for two reasons: first to give more a feeling of urgency to build arkships, without seeming too much unrealistic. And second, it is particularly hard to to project ourselves far in the future to imagine our civilization. Look what we already did in one century: Humanity has made unbelievable progress in technologies. In the team, we made an imaginary timeline of technological discovery leading to the Arkship feasibility. But technical progress in reality might evolve faster than what has been imagined in Science Fiction. All in all, we thought the small inconsistency about how fast the neutron star reach Earth would be unnoticed. Apparently we were wrong :D

 

@Comrademoco:

Thanks for pointing the color issue on mobile version. We will fix that as soon as possible (it is planned to change colors for the mobile version to be more in line with those used for desktop version)

 

@Astrophil:

We won't put curse words in every sentence. However, it seemed logical to us to put some in appropriate circumstances: 

If you were waking up, feeling like you sleep in a fridge with all the uncomfortable sensations that come with it, won't you let some curse words slip?

Another reason for seeing a few curse words: as you mentioned it, Dual Universe is not aimed for children or young teenagers. Therefore, it seems okay to us to have a few curse words where it seems appropriate :)

 

Best regards,

Nyzaltar.

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All in all, we thought the small inconsistency about how fast the neutron star reach Earth would be unnoticed. Apparently we were wrong :D

 

heh, having a neutron star traveling at 1/3 of the speed of light isn't really inconspicious xD

Oh well, but who knows, mabye it, by chance, passed an ancient alien acceleration devide :D

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- Indeed it's surprising that the Arkship hasn't been damaged after the impact, but the reason will be explained in a following part of the story 

Will it be magic? Is there going to be magic? I hope so, I'll cast magic missile before I even get off the ship.

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@Vylqun: 

Very few people knows knows the average speed for a Neutron Star, and even if they know, 100.000 to 150.000 km/s is quite impressive at first glance. So even less people would make the calculation between the nearest Neutron Star and the time it would take to reach Earth. Let's say one of them has slipped through the space surveillance system. Or maybe governments were perfectly aware that a Neutron Star was nearer than the official nearest one but didn't disclose the information immediately, fearing chaos before humanity reached a certain level of technology... who knows? ;)

 

@Hylios:

"Once you will put a foot on Alioth, you will discover hordes of hostile aliens protected by the "Shield" spell so unfortunately your magic missiles will be useless.:o

Private joke aside, nope, it is not planned to have magic in the game at this point. Unexplained phenomenons, yes (like the current situation with the EM Drive story: many scientists are now pretty sure it works, but they don't know yet how and why it really works :D). But there won't be magic.

 

Best regards,

Nyzaltar.

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@nyzaltar

 

you could take the archeological route, in a 10000 year old cave painting scientists discovered a painting of the night sky and there was an extremely bright star(the supernova) at a location where currently none can be seen. Upon closer observation of the space, they actually discovered a neutron star racing towards us, arriving within the next 500 years.

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I'm glad you're around Vylqun. We have plenty of people to come up with ideas, but precious few to actually think of a way to make them physically work (in game, of course).

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  • 2 months later...

Hi all,

 

First, I want to say "nice job" to the writer.

 

Then, a few remarks.

 

heh, having a neutron star traveling at 1/3 of the speed of light isn't really inconspicious xD

Oh well, but who knows, mabye it, by chance, passed an ancient alien acceleration devide :D

Don't forget that we would see the neutron star with 150 year of late (if it is at 150 ly, light would take 150 years to reach us).
Thus, the star has 500 + 150 = 650 years for arriving, which only requires about 1/4 or 1/5 of the speed of light (which is, still, a decent speed for a star ;)).

 

Now, if you try to compute the chance that this neutron star hit us... you just stop worrying about it  :D.

Or... maybe someone or something directed it right on top of us...

 

All in all, we thought the small inconsistency about how fast the neutron star reach Earth would be unnoticed. Apparently we were wrong :D

Never underestimate fans. After all, they even know Dagoba's gravity :) (https://what-if.xkcd.com/3/).

 

Regards,

Shadow

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  • 2 weeks later...
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  • 5 months later...

I have just started reading the background, and will try to read up on everything in the dev blog. This is some amazing writing, and some great constructive criticism from the community. I usually determine how I like a story based off the picture it paints in my mind. If it feels like I'm watching the story I'm reading, then, to me, it is very well written. Although, at this point I haven't read through the next parts, I have to wonder, why did  Sohan leave Stella? What mindset drove them apart? I guess I will find out if it is in the next few parts!

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