Void Rift (rp) - Intermission

“No, it’s the arkship that contains unstable dying stars in my absence and moves them to a harvesting site. It does draw some energy off them, but that usually just gets recycled by the containment field. Or used for FTL, since moving something half the size of a small galaxy takes a ton of energy.”

 

"You could probably use those stars as a weapon. They go supernova when they die, don't they?" I ask.

 

I'll shapeshift into my wolf form.

 

I make sure I'm not too close for comfort.

 

“We do, but usually with artificial stars. Natural ones are typically harvested for resources.”

He seems to wait to go through until you’re next to him, though the portal brings you to the town you found Scurn in instead of O’rogal’s palace.
“Huh... I wasn’t counting on that.” Scurn mumbles. “Uh... do you remember how you got here?”

Your bestial form takes off down the coast, heading towards the mountains after getting a fair distance away from the fire.

Her scent is here, but barely. She’s pretty far ahead at this point.

 

"What kind of resources do you get from them? Aren't they just giant balls of burning gas?" I ask.

 

“What do you take me for?”
I joke, affirming.

 

“They’re mostly balls of burning gas, but most have some superdense material in the center. Some much more than others, but using natural materials of that caliber is easier than procuring synthetic versions.” Idhaenna says. “Especially the ones that are potential black holes. Those are motherlodes.”

“Someone who’s been here exactly once and doesn’t know their way around town.” Scurn says half-jokingly. “You lead.”

 

"We got a scent. That's a good start."

 

"I guess your reality has been picked pretty clean of resources, then?" I ask, "Or have you reached such a grand scale that the resources gathered from planets just aren't enough?"

"No offense. Just curious." I add.

 

“The latter. Stella, the AI Praecantatia threatened to tamper with, has over 200 artificial moons worth of backend hardware. Entire planets and stars are harvested every day. Plus, it takes a lot of planets to make a ship on a galactic scale.”

We’re gonna be running a while, and I don’t want to get too close to the mountains. Unfortunately, her scent is very much in the direction of the mountains.

 

"She is probably hiding in a cave. Safe from the storm."

 

"How would you even navigate a ship of a galactic scale? It'd take multiple generations to walk from one end to the other, wouldn't it?" I ask, confused.

 

“That is correct. The answer is pretty straightforward; different crews live on different parts of the ship. The less straightforward bit is keeping that many civilizations happy.”

Caves in the mountains mean dragons. Do you really want to deal with more dragons without that wyvern around?

 

"I assume you needed a ship that big for all the planets you drained of resources?" I ask.

 

“No, I built it so I don’t have to go handle every unstable star myself. Rogue black holes are a pain.”

 

I think for a second, then head back to the place I entered from.

 

"You have a way to deal with black holes?" I ask.

 

“Yes, I also harvest those and use them as generators.”

There’s no portal back, but the interfering magic left over the town is gone. Opening a portal should be easy.

 

"Do all of them have dragons? If so, Anne would be dead if she went into one."