Let's Play The Ur-Quan Masters
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Chapter 5: Evil Mushrooms From Outer Space VS Amazon Women from Betelgeuse
Part 3: The Destroyer of Worlds
October 23, 2156
Before we do anything else, we need to head back to the bse to re-stock on crew/fuel.
While we're doing that, though, we get some news from Hayes:
SUBJECT: Mycon Egg Case
DATA: We really didn't know Mycon came from eggs, but our analysis of this sheath shows that it has been subjected to phenomenal temperatures and pressures. The most unusual aspect of the egg case is its size; we know Mycons range in height from .5 to 3.5 meters, but out reconstruction of the whole egg case shows it to be over 25 meters high!
SUMMARY: If a Mycon came out of this, it's gotta be really big.
SUBJECT: Syreen Pilot Shuttle
DATA: As yet, the field research team has failed to report back to their group leaders. When we called them, they described being deep in study, and wished to attend to a few important details before returning to base.
SUMMARY: Several leaders have volunteered to assist the team to 'help them where they can.'
The most important of these is the first one, the distress call. Our revenge quest against the Mycon will have to wait for a bit.
To Alpha Tucanae!
Upon arriving in the system, nothing seems particularly amiss. Then, however, when we attempt to contact the planet itself...
KOHR-AH
We cleanse our destiny. You will soon die. Make whatever rituals are necessary for your species.
((You may remember this next line from a dream that the Pkunk told us about back in chapter 1!))
ZELNICK
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Who do you do this thing?
KOHR-AH
THE WORDS!... the Words... the words...
...Alien, you have spoken the Words. You have spoken them rightly. We will explain to you about the Dnyarri, our slavemasters, the Taalo, our only friends... whom we exterminated... and our reasons why we cleans the galaxy of all other sentient life. We have explained this before, over twenty thousand years ago. Your words, 'Why do you do this thing?' echo that ancient plea.
You see, alien, we were a proud and mighty race, who were cruelly enslaved. For thousands of years, we had no free will. We were nothing more than tools. Never again will anyone enslave our people. We cleans the galaxy of such threats.
ZELNICK
Kohr-Ah, tell us about yourselves.
KOHR-AH
We evolved on a hostile world, the descendants of solitary hunters. In a world where one species is the dominant killer, one's only threat is one's brother, one's sister, anyone of one's species. Civilization did not come easily to us; we earned it. We mastered our hatreds and murderous desires to form a mighty culture.
In those ancient days, there was no Kohr-Ah or Kzer-Za, only the Ur-Quan. We explored our world, and then the space beyond. Here we met the six races of the Sentient Milieu... here we met the Taalo... the only species we ever called 'friend'.
Our association with the Taalo and the Milieu lasted for three thousand years. We, the Ur-Quan who could not tolerate the presence of others, became the Milieu's scouts, their solitary explorers.
ZELNICK
Who or what are the Dnyarri?
KOHR-AH
It was on a routine planetfall that one of our Milieu scoutships first met the Dnyarri, the creatures you know as our Talking Pets. But the Dnyarri were different then. They were evilly intelligent and wielded psychic powers to control the minds of others. They wanted to rule the universe. We had no choice but to give it to them. Our Ur-Quan scoutships transported the Dnyarri through the Milieu. The war for dominance, such as it was, was quick and bloodless. Within weeks, the Dnyarri controlled all races but one... the Taalo.
ZELNICK
Who were the Taalo?
KOHR-AH
Of all the species we have met, only the Taalo did not trigger our instinctive territoriality. They were the only people we could stand with, or talk to, without the hunter inside us screaming, 'Kill the interloper! Rip out its life!'
We believe that the same factors that made the Taalo non-threatening to us -- their unusual rock-like biology -- also gave the Taalo natural immunity to the Dnyarri's psychic compulsion. The Dnyarri would not permit this.
After they had conquered all six of the other races in the Milieu, they commanded us to attack the Taalo and we did. The Taalo would not fight back... they died.
ZELNICK
How did you defeat the Dnyarri?
KOHR-AH
For thousands of years, we were unthinking slaves to the Dnyarri. Like the five other races of the old Milieu, we had no choice. The Dnyarri's compulsion was too strong to resist. But the Dnyarri were not satisfied wtih their slave races. The Vuli and the Drall were inferior, they decided, and so they instructed us to incinerate their worlds, and we did. The Dnyarri had a special liking for us Ur-Quan, so they began to tinker with our genes... to improve us, their favored slaves.
Their efforts split the Ur-Quan into two sub-races; the Green Ur-Quan, effete scientists and bureaucrats, and the Black Ur-Quan, their Effectuators, the builders, the fighters, the doers. The Kohr-Ah are the Black Ur-Quan. The Kzer-Za are the Green.
I grow tired of talking, alien, and your time grows short. I will continue for but a moment longer.
When we discovered that intense pain could block the Dnyarri's mental powers, we were able to destroy them, but it took years. Can you imagine, alien, what it must have been like to wear an Excrutiator? To live in endless, screaming pain for months on end? No, you cannot.
ZELNICK
I guess that's it. Thanks for the info. We'll just leave now.
KOHR-AH
No, it is not. There is more you must hear.
When the war was over, the great Kohr-Ah rose from our ranks, and declared the Path of Now and Forever. We would cleans the galaxy. No one would ever threaten the Ur-Quan this way again.
We had cleansed one of the three remaining Milieu races and were in orbit around a second's homeworld. From the surface came a plea... identical to the words you spoke a few moments ago. The one-eyed creatures, the Mael-Num, asked so simply, so clearly, that we felt compelled to explain. While we did so, the Kzer-Za appeared. They would not permit us to destroy, they said. Enslave, yes. Imprison, yes. But never destroy. The moment was tense. Someone opened fire. The first Doctrinal War had begun.
While we fought, the Mael-Num escaped. We never found them again. When our battle was done, we, the Kohr-Ah, were defeated; however, the Kzer-Za let us go. We were exiled. We travelled through space, rebuilt the strength of our battle fleets, and continued our plan, to cleans threats from the galaxy, for all Ur-Quan.
You have heard our words, and perhaps you understand us a bit better. But not, it is time for us to cleanse you.
To leave an impression of how dangerous these guys are, I'm going to fight them with my starfleet rather than my flagship.
The Kohr-Ah Marauder has two weapons. The first is an arbitrarily long-range spinning blade weapon, which can be fired as far or as short as the pilot desires. When stopped, it remains in space, slowly drifting towards its target for a long time. The damage from an impact is immense.
One might think, by this weapon, that the trick would be to get into close combat...
...but at that range, you encounter the fury of the FRIED system. The Kohr-Ah Marauder can unleash an immensely powerful ring of destructive flames at short range, obliterating all weapons - and most ships - within range.
While I'm engaged in this battle, I'd like to talk briefly about some of the ships I'm using. The Pkunk's vessel is a short-range fighter, with three machine guns firing to the front and each side. Since it is powered by psychic energy, its special ability is to insult the enemy, recovering power to attack with.
More notable, and displayed in the above screenshot, is the true power of the Pkunk hippie spirituality. Whenever a Pkunk ship is destroyed, there is a random chance that the ship and all its crew will be reincarnated immediately, at full health. This can, theoretically, happen up to eight times in a row.
The Arilou Skiff is another short-range attacker, its primary weapon being an auto-targetting laser of short range and moderate power. Its special ability is a random teleporter, jumping the ship instantly to a random point in space. Also notable is the fact that the Skiff is one of only two ships in the game (the other being the Slylandro Probe) to have an inertialess drive: if you stop pressing the thruster button, the ship instantly stops like a rock.
In the end, after all four of my Pkunk and all three of my Arilou ships are obliterated, it is our trusty captain Fwiffo who deals the final blow to the Marauder. With seven ships sacrificed, I managed to destroy one Kohr-Ah battleship. ONE.
ZOQ
You have rescued us from certain destruction!
PIK
Howee-baby! That was a close one!
ZOQ
The black ship appeared in orbit several days ago, and began raining down bolts of destructive energy on the surface of our planet!
PIK
Fortunately...
ZOQ
...we were able to focus our planetary shields to deflect the energy blasts away from our cities.
PIK
Unfortunately...
ZOQ
Large sections of our planet's beautiful wilderness have been annihilated... entire ecosystems destroyed.
PIK
Oh! That makes me REALLY mad! I mean, attacking helpless, intelligent, alien species, that's one thing, but toasting our cut little wood Jukes and tree Narfs, that is really low!
ZOQ
If the black ship had been accompanied by others of its kind, we wouldn't have been able to stop the rain of destruction. They would have killed us all.
PIK
Well in that case, better those Jukes and Narfs than us, right?
ZOQ
Captain, it is clear that in matters of war, you are more capable than ourselves. With this in mind, we would like to give you our four finest starships and crew. I hope they bring you many victories.
PIK
Try not to lose them all right away.
ZELNICK
So, what's happening around here?
ZOQ
It's been pretty quiet, Captain. Nothing new to report.
PIK
Are you CRAZY?! What about the Frungy Championships!?
ZOQ
Why should we tell the Earth Captain about that? He wouldn't be interested.
PIK
Oh, yeah? How do you know?
ZOQ
Because I'M not even interested. Nobody with any brains is interested in Frungy!
PIK
Well what about me, huh? I LOVE Frungy! It's the Sport of Kings!
ZOQ
Sheesh!
PIK
Oh, all right... he wouldn't know any of the teams anyway.
ZELNICK
Bye, Zoq. Bye, Fot. Bye, Pik.
ZOQ
Goodbye, Captain.
PIK
See ya.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you: The most dangerous region of space.
NEXT TIME: Back to what we were doing before!
<< | ^^ | >>
Chapter 5: Evil Mushrooms From Outer Space VS Amazon Women from Betelgeuse
Part 3: The Destroyer of Worlds
October 23, 2156
Before we do anything else, we need to head back to the bse to re-stock on crew/fuel.
While we're doing that, though, we get some news from Hayes:
- We are receiving a priority distress call from the Zoq-Fot Homeworld at Alpha Tucanae. The signal was urgent but extremely weak. The only portions of the transmission that we can be sure of are: 'HELP!' 'BLACK DESTROYER' 'PLANET UNDER ATTACK!' 'HELP!' 'WORSE THAN ZEBRANKY!' (whatever that means) and finally, 'HELP!'
- This seems strange to me, and I considered not bringing it up, but not long ago, six of my people fell unconscious simultaneously for no apparent reason. When they awoke hours later, they reported being overwhelmed by a feeling of something VERY wrong that had taken place. The Med Techs couldn't find anything wrong with these crew members, but they discovered one correlation: All six of them have exceptionally high esper ratings.
SUBJECT: Mycon Egg Case
DATA: We really didn't know Mycon came from eggs, but our analysis of this sheath shows that it has been subjected to phenomenal temperatures and pressures. The most unusual aspect of the egg case is its size; we know Mycons range in height from .5 to 3.5 meters, but out reconstruction of the whole egg case shows it to be over 25 meters high!
SUMMARY: If a Mycon came out of this, it's gotta be really big.
SUBJECT: Syreen Pilot Shuttle
DATA: As yet, the field research team has failed to report back to their group leaders. When we called them, they described being deep in study, and wished to attend to a few important details before returning to base.
SUMMARY: Several leaders have volunteered to assist the team to 'help them where they can.'
The most important of these is the first one, the distress call. Our revenge quest against the Mycon will have to wait for a bit.
To Alpha Tucanae!
Upon arriving in the system, nothing seems particularly amiss. Then, however, when we attempt to contact the planet itself...
KOHR-AH
We cleanse our destiny. You will soon die. Make whatever rituals are necessary for your species.
((You may remember this next line from a dream that the Pkunk told us about back in chapter 1!))
ZELNICK
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Who do you do this thing?
KOHR-AH
THE WORDS!... the Words... the words...
...Alien, you have spoken the Words. You have spoken them rightly. We will explain to you about the Dnyarri, our slavemasters, the Taalo, our only friends... whom we exterminated... and our reasons why we cleans the galaxy of all other sentient life. We have explained this before, over twenty thousand years ago. Your words, 'Why do you do this thing?' echo that ancient plea.
You see, alien, we were a proud and mighty race, who were cruelly enslaved. For thousands of years, we had no free will. We were nothing more than tools. Never again will anyone enslave our people. We cleans the galaxy of such threats.
ZELNICK
Kohr-Ah, tell us about yourselves.
KOHR-AH
We evolved on a hostile world, the descendants of solitary hunters. In a world where one species is the dominant killer, one's only threat is one's brother, one's sister, anyone of one's species. Civilization did not come easily to us; we earned it. We mastered our hatreds and murderous desires to form a mighty culture.
In those ancient days, there was no Kohr-Ah or Kzer-Za, only the Ur-Quan. We explored our world, and then the space beyond. Here we met the six races of the Sentient Milieu... here we met the Taalo... the only species we ever called 'friend'.
Our association with the Taalo and the Milieu lasted for three thousand years. We, the Ur-Quan who could not tolerate the presence of others, became the Milieu's scouts, their solitary explorers.
ZELNICK
Who or what are the Dnyarri?
KOHR-AH
It was on a routine planetfall that one of our Milieu scoutships first met the Dnyarri, the creatures you know as our Talking Pets. But the Dnyarri were different then. They were evilly intelligent and wielded psychic powers to control the minds of others. They wanted to rule the universe. We had no choice but to give it to them. Our Ur-Quan scoutships transported the Dnyarri through the Milieu. The war for dominance, such as it was, was quick and bloodless. Within weeks, the Dnyarri controlled all races but one... the Taalo.
ZELNICK
Who were the Taalo?
KOHR-AH
Of all the species we have met, only the Taalo did not trigger our instinctive territoriality. They were the only people we could stand with, or talk to, without the hunter inside us screaming, 'Kill the interloper! Rip out its life!'
We believe that the same factors that made the Taalo non-threatening to us -- their unusual rock-like biology -- also gave the Taalo natural immunity to the Dnyarri's psychic compulsion. The Dnyarri would not permit this.
After they had conquered all six of the other races in the Milieu, they commanded us to attack the Taalo and we did. The Taalo would not fight back... they died.
ZELNICK
How did you defeat the Dnyarri?
KOHR-AH
For thousands of years, we were unthinking slaves to the Dnyarri. Like the five other races of the old Milieu, we had no choice. The Dnyarri's compulsion was too strong to resist. But the Dnyarri were not satisfied wtih their slave races. The Vuli and the Drall were inferior, they decided, and so they instructed us to incinerate their worlds, and we did. The Dnyarri had a special liking for us Ur-Quan, so they began to tinker with our genes... to improve us, their favored slaves.
Their efforts split the Ur-Quan into two sub-races; the Green Ur-Quan, effete scientists and bureaucrats, and the Black Ur-Quan, their Effectuators, the builders, the fighters, the doers. The Kohr-Ah are the Black Ur-Quan. The Kzer-Za are the Green.
I grow tired of talking, alien, and your time grows short. I will continue for but a moment longer.
When we discovered that intense pain could block the Dnyarri's mental powers, we were able to destroy them, but it took years. Can you imagine, alien, what it must have been like to wear an Excrutiator? To live in endless, screaming pain for months on end? No, you cannot.
ZELNICK
I guess that's it. Thanks for the info. We'll just leave now.
KOHR-AH
No, it is not. There is more you must hear.
When the war was over, the great Kohr-Ah rose from our ranks, and declared the Path of Now and Forever. We would cleans the galaxy. No one would ever threaten the Ur-Quan this way again.
We had cleansed one of the three remaining Milieu races and were in orbit around a second's homeworld. From the surface came a plea... identical to the words you spoke a few moments ago. The one-eyed creatures, the Mael-Num, asked so simply, so clearly, that we felt compelled to explain. While we did so, the Kzer-Za appeared. They would not permit us to destroy, they said. Enslave, yes. Imprison, yes. But never destroy. The moment was tense. Someone opened fire. The first Doctrinal War had begun.
While we fought, the Mael-Num escaped. We never found them again. When our battle was done, we, the Kohr-Ah, were defeated; however, the Kzer-Za let us go. We were exiled. We travelled through space, rebuilt the strength of our battle fleets, and continued our plan, to cleans threats from the galaxy, for all Ur-Quan.
You have heard our words, and perhaps you understand us a bit better. But not, it is time for us to cleanse you.
To leave an impression of how dangerous these guys are, I'm going to fight them with my starfleet rather than my flagship.
The Kohr-Ah Marauder has two weapons. The first is an arbitrarily long-range spinning blade weapon, which can be fired as far or as short as the pilot desires. When stopped, it remains in space, slowly drifting towards its target for a long time. The damage from an impact is immense.
One might think, by this weapon, that the trick would be to get into close combat...
...but at that range, you encounter the fury of the FRIED system. The Kohr-Ah Marauder can unleash an immensely powerful ring of destructive flames at short range, obliterating all weapons - and most ships - within range.
While I'm engaged in this battle, I'd like to talk briefly about some of the ships I'm using. The Pkunk's vessel is a short-range fighter, with three machine guns firing to the front and each side. Since it is powered by psychic energy, its special ability is to insult the enemy, recovering power to attack with.
More notable, and displayed in the above screenshot, is the true power of the Pkunk hippie spirituality. Whenever a Pkunk ship is destroyed, there is a random chance that the ship and all its crew will be reincarnated immediately, at full health. This can, theoretically, happen up to eight times in a row.
The Arilou Skiff is another short-range attacker, its primary weapon being an auto-targetting laser of short range and moderate power. Its special ability is a random teleporter, jumping the ship instantly to a random point in space. Also notable is the fact that the Skiff is one of only two ships in the game (the other being the Slylandro Probe) to have an inertialess drive: if you stop pressing the thruster button, the ship instantly stops like a rock.
In the end, after all four of my Pkunk and all three of my Arilou ships are obliterated, it is our trusty captain Fwiffo who deals the final blow to the Marauder. With seven ships sacrificed, I managed to destroy one Kohr-Ah battleship. ONE.
ZOQ
You have rescued us from certain destruction!
PIK
Howee-baby! That was a close one!
ZOQ
The black ship appeared in orbit several days ago, and began raining down bolts of destructive energy on the surface of our planet!
PIK
Fortunately...
ZOQ
...we were able to focus our planetary shields to deflect the energy blasts away from our cities.
PIK
Unfortunately...
ZOQ
Large sections of our planet's beautiful wilderness have been annihilated... entire ecosystems destroyed.
PIK
Oh! That makes me REALLY mad! I mean, attacking helpless, intelligent, alien species, that's one thing, but toasting our cut little wood Jukes and tree Narfs, that is really low!
ZOQ
If the black ship had been accompanied by others of its kind, we wouldn't have been able to stop the rain of destruction. They would have killed us all.
PIK
Well in that case, better those Jukes and Narfs than us, right?
ZOQ
Captain, it is clear that in matters of war, you are more capable than ourselves. With this in mind, we would like to give you our four finest starships and crew. I hope they bring you many victories.
PIK
Try not to lose them all right away.
ZELNICK
So, what's happening around here?
ZOQ
It's been pretty quiet, Captain. Nothing new to report.
PIK
Are you CRAZY?! What about the Frungy Championships!?
ZOQ
Why should we tell the Earth Captain about that? He wouldn't be interested.
PIK
Oh, yeah? How do you know?
ZOQ
Because I'M not even interested. Nobody with any brains is interested in Frungy!
PIK
Well what about me, huh? I LOVE Frungy! It's the Sport of Kings!
ZOQ
Sheesh!
PIK
Oh, all right... he wouldn't know any of the teams anyway.
ZELNICK
Bye, Zoq. Bye, Fot. Bye, Pik.
ZOQ
Goodbye, Captain.
PIK
See ya.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you: The most dangerous region of space.
NEXT TIME: Back to what we were doing before!
<< | ^^ | >>