Remember that you are dust (Renteg)
Posts: 1913
  • Posted On: Dec 10 2005 11:30pm
It was a dusty day. It was a dirty day. It was cloudy and grimy day on Renteg. Then again, so was every day. Ter Sudt exhaled and watched the atmosphere swirl around him as he waited idly for the next filtration to finish. Ter adjusted his dust mask as he looked at the timer. Three minutes to go.

A few hundred yards to Ter’s left, enveloped in the dusty air, was his home. It wasn’t much, very average in the grand scheme of things. It was home, though, and it served him well. The man who lived within it, like pretty much everyone else in his area of the Continent, was a dust farmer. In short, he filtered through the air, extracting useful and valuable materials from it.

Ter glanced at the dials on the controls. Nothing outstanding there, a good amount of iron, some aluminum and steel, a few ounces of silicon and zinc, everything else was barely measurable. He hadn’t expected the aluminum to run out so fast, he had been getting pretty high concentrations of it recently. Then again, that silver reading was beginning to look hopeful.

The reset light blinked and the capsules to Ter’s right filled up with the various dusts. Yes, it was about time to be heading back with those capsules. Ter took them down and replaced them with new ones. He initiated the cleaning process and queued up another filtration. Swinging the capsules of compressed air over his back, Ter checked the controls once more and headed for home. He envied the rich dust farmers who had automated this whole process, but the Sudts couldn’t afford all that. No, they, like most dust-farmers, couldn’t afford a very big filter, and still had to compress each filtration separately. But where was the value in pretty little chunks of metal harvested without a single thought as to how? What “honor” is there in earning a living if you hardly even know where it comes from?

Ter reached his humble home. He lived alone. Silence greeted him as he went through the airlock and took off his mask. He stepped through the second door and glanced around the room. Two pieces of furniture were perpendicular in the far right corner, with a small kitchen, table, and chairs to Ter’s left. There was a half-finished steak on the table, but Ter wasn’t hungry. Instead, he took the capsules off his back, put them on the floor, for now, laid down on the grey furniture in the corner, and closed his eyes.

Ter had trained himself, as many dust farmers had, to wake up after having slept for a medium-short amount of time. He certainly didn’t give thought as to why it worked, but he opened his eyes… basically just in time to go out and get the next round of capsules.

Ter took the very familiar and short trek out to his filter after dawning has dust mask. It was exactly the same outside as when he had gone to sleep. In fact, it would remain exactly the same until Renteg rotated such that the northern area where Ter lived was in the dark. There wasn’t enough moisture on the planet to form decent ice caps, and the temperature didn’t get much cooler anywhere.

With a sigh, Ter reached his filter and checked the readings. Sure enough, even less aluminum, and, excitingly, even more silver. The ferocious noise that the filter made penetrated Ter’s well-trained consciousness for a moment. Ter glanced at the vents, but everything was normal. The filtration had just a little bit longer to go.

Blinking, Ter looked beyond his filter. Of course, he couldn’t see very far at all, but he knew it was there, the sea of dust. Vast and uninhabitable, the line between air and earth was completely nonexistent. Light dust to dust to molten dust. It was there that the precious metals in the atmosphere came from. Ter shifted on his feet, suddenly thankful for the ground beneath him.

---

“You said that this was a fine landing site.”

“Well, I thought that the planet would have ground, didn’t I?”

“Wasn’t that in your briefing?”

“My briefing was about ten words long!”

“Uhhh, sir, we might want to pull up a bit.”

“What’s that, officer?”

“Our shielding can’t take this heat.”

“Heat? What heat?”

“Sir?”

Captain Dapan looked at his readings to find that the ship was in a dangerously hot environment. The shields were taking significant damage.

“Pull up! We’ve gotten too close to the core!”

With quick movements of his fingers and a full tug on the piloting stick, Rij had the ship vertically facing in no time. He drove full throttle upwards until the ship was safe. Oh yes, We’ve gotten too close to the core he mouthed, mimicking.

“Really, captain, your observance is simply awing.”

“Thanks, Rij. Straight ahead, let’s try to find some solid ground.”

Rij was already moving forward. He just rolled his eyes and kept on going.

“Hey! Elim!”

“Huh? What?”

“Are you awake?”

“Uhm, yes. I’m… engineering.”

“Good. Pay attention.”

“Paying attention, cap’n.”

The Fearless sped through the thick clouds of dust as it searched a place to land. Renteg was so large that the ship would have a while before it found its query, but certainly land couldn’t be too far away.
Posts: 1913
  • Posted On: Oct 13 2006 8:50pm
A fat man sat on a huge, purple chair. Perched on the arm of the chair was a bronze lizard with a hawk-like head and strong-looking wings. In fact, this animal was hardly a lizard at all. It was a dragon, a dust dragon.

Dust dragons were very rare and nearly extinct animals. To purchase one cost about as much as an average dust farmer would earn in his lifetime. To find one in the vast, unfathomable seas of dust on Renteg took years and years of searching in a specially-equipped vehicle, which itself cost a small fortune.

"Sir Grandor, I have the most recent report from our collectors," offered an aide. He already knew what the practically royal man's response would be.

"Oh ho ho, yes, yes, very good. Show it to Kjistoff," waved Fruulian Grandor, the fat man, in response. He never bothered with those reports.

Fruulian Grandor was a dust farmer of the complete opposite breed than Ter. His filters were huge, literally square miles from side to side, and each year he would just purchase more with the money he had made from the ones he already had. They were no where near his estate, floating in the precise location where they could harvest the most money out of the planet's metal-rich atmosphere.

His compression facility was manned by experts in the field (who themselves would be unable to compress a single capsule if it wasn't for their expensive, advanced machines). His filter adjustments were handled by high-paid officials, and had been ever since Fruulian had inherited his father's fortune (who had in turn inherited his father's fortune, and a hundred fathers back from then, until the fortune had been bloodily squeezed by a tyrant from the farmers, barely more than slaves, in his domain.)

Kjistoff, a tall thin man, was Fruulian Grandor's chief advisor. He made all the "little" decisions… and to his credit, he did design the computer program that he used to make the decisions, while he lived a life of luxury simaler to Sir Grandor's.

The aide, a small and ruthlessly efficient woman, bowed and went off to give Kjistoff the reports. She happened to have been born nearby the estate of Fruulian Grandor, and was obviously far more intelligent than Kjistoff and Grandor. Of course, she had no fortune, merely the salary which Sir Grandor granted her with which to support her small family.

Most dust farmers hated people like the aide. They accused her of working for the enemy, among other, more hateful things. Really, though, she was simply trying to get by. She had no devotion to the poor, dark-lunged existence of the rural dust farmer, unlike the dark-lunged dust farmers themselves.

Honestly, Grandor was among the more generous of super-farmers. He didn't disturb the little farmers. His filters were far enough out at sea that no farmers were in his "shadow." He never stole (not that he would have anything to gain from stealing), and only bragged some. Mostly, he just enjoyed his fancy pets and fine drinks, one of which he sipped now.

The only activity Sir Grandor had schedualed for the day was a meeting with a tech developer about a new type of propulsion for his filters, which had to hold themselves up in the dusty air somehow. This would be held in the same building as Fruulian was in now. It would take a little effort for Sir Grandor to roll himself over to the meeting room, in which another large chair was waiting for him. He would probably then go to visit his beastiary, which he allowed anyone who wished to enter so that they could marvel at his collection of animals.

For now, the rich and metal-gobbling man just sat on his chair, petting the fierce-looking dragon. He was expecting someone to come with reports of his sales to the merchants who came to Renteg to buy his metals, most of which had binding contracts that allowed to trade with only him for a somewhat lower price than non-bound merchants. This was common practice among super-farmers, who competed often for the contracts of these merchants.

And Fruulian Grandor did enjoy looking at these reports... if just to glance at the nice, fat, black number that told him how much money he made.
Posts: 1913
  • Posted On: Nov 3 2006 10:52pm
Kjad While was a scoundrel.

He was no ordinary scoundrel, true, and he didn't even know he was a scoundrel, but he was a scoundrel, strong and true.

There was one particular reason that Kjad was a scoundrel. It wasn't his method of locomotion, allthough he drove a ship made from a "modified" dust filter and scrap metal. It wasn't his occupation, allthough what he did was certainly not normal. It wasn't even his family, allthough he came from a family of notorious disconformists (however much of a disconformist a dust farmer could be).

Kjad was a scoundrel because he had to be. With no navigation system of any sort, Kjad was hopelessly lost at sea. Sometimes, he found land, landed, and sold his collection of valuable metals and whatever else he could find, but he never knew where he was in comparison to the rest of the planet. Maybe if he had a sense of direction.... but he didn't. Kjad just went towards the most precious metals he could find.

Literally, Kjad While hunted for gold. If he saw silver collecting in his left filter, he went left. If he saw a platinum reading anywhere above 0.001 ppf, he went toward it. If he went up and his gold collection increased, he went further up.

It made perfect sense to Kjad, that skinny scruffy-faced human. Other people wasted their time filtering on the shores of dust-oceans, finding things like silicon and iron. Not him. Ever since he had this idea and built a ship out of worthless metals, he had been the ultimate dust-hunter (a phrase he coined himself). If he said so himself, he made a better living than most ordinary dust-farmers... allthough if the truth was told, his living was just different. He just collected the credits he got... for something. Who knows what.

Now, Kjad saw an imperceptably small reading of gold to the starboard. Eagerly, he pointed his top filter's exhale-tube port, his right filter the same direction, and his filter down, lowering the intensity on the floating-filters. Yes, this was how he traveled. Yes, he used levers to move these parts of his ship.

This also made perfect sense to the arguably strange Kjad. Filters all spat out a lot of air... so that air made the perfect way of keeping his vessle afloat in the atmosphere of dust. It was better than those fuel-burners or whatever so-called "starship pilots" used. This way, Kjad's filters, propulsion, and, yes, his entire ship was powered with nothing but a little fuel cell that could focus on one output of its energy. It was an effeciant fuel cell.

A fuel cell which, Kjad reminded himself, he would need recharged relatively soon. But Kjad didn't have enough metals to make a trip inland to his liking. He would hold out in the ocean for a little bit longer. It had always been easy for Kjad to find land, anyway, no need to worry just because of low fuel.

So was Kjad really a scoundrel? Just because he had to fly with the wind his entire life... scoundrel? Kjad never scammed anyone, wasn't good with a blaster, and didn't know an engine from a razor. Maybe explorer, or opportunist would be a better word.

But in the next few days, Kjad was going to find that he could be a scoundrel, too...
Posts: 1913
  • Posted On: Jan 29 2007 10:53pm
Months later.

"And for the heroes never made,
we rest them in this glade,
for though their bodies float at sea,
with us they will always be."


There were some people on Mon Calamari, mostly humans, who attended every single soldier's funeral they could get to. It was a matter of respect for them. They thought so highly of the coalition that they thought it would be wrong of them not to attend the memorial of those who died fighting for it.

Of course, this was silly. Especially since these particular soldiers weren't dead.

"They were a good crew, they will be sorely missed."

A lie. The person saying this never met a single member of the crew. Of course, they are a good crew. The lie was the "was."

The ironies continued on for another quarter, but their importance is minimal. Let a passage from the coalition military code suffice:

Should a member of the Coalition armed forces on an exploratory mission fail to make contact within three months of their designed check-time, an investigation should be launched. Should that investigation prove unsuccessfull, after one more month the crew should be declared lost in action, until further evidence can prove their existance.

---

"Frelling turnovers, navigator! You mean to tell me that we've been drifting aimlessly for two months?!"

"I only even found out, captian, because I did a full hull-search with one of our remobots... hey look, there's another one of those copper-headed things."

They were more sane then you might expect after being adrift for four months. Rij had retreated to some lala land thinking his piloting stick was a cucumber sandwich, but other than that the crew of the Fearless was basically still capable.

Yes, they ran out of cucumber sandwiches a month ago. And yes, that might explain Rij. And Rij was the most apt of the crew, so maybe they weren't lying when they said that intelligent people were the closest to being insane. Or the most dependant on cucumber sandwiches. I don't know who said that.

"Well where the frelling pecan did our aft engine go, if it isn't attached to our ship?"

The Navigator, Egger, seemed to consider that. "Maybe somebody took it."

Captain Dapan was about to retort that idea (reflexively, of course, he had no evidence to the contrary) when the first good thing to happen in four months occured.

Like a throwing-disc into a sand-trap, the Fearless crashed headfirst into land. The pain of being thrown across the 30-foot-wide bridge was nothing compared to the idea that the Fearless had just struck land.

Later on, someone in some office would calculate that an initial velocity of 200 meters per second, a time of two months, and a mildly strong air resistance figured to some 4,000 kilometers of distance drifted over by the Fearless and her hover-engines. Right now, the crew woulden't care if they floated around in circles for the whole time or if their wake-trail had drawn the prime minister. They had struck land.

Yes, land on an unknown dust-planet. But land.

Now there was just the problem of their pilot and his cucumber sandwiches.
Posts: 1913
  • Posted On: Jan 31 2007 4:13pm
It was difficult until they realized that Rij would fly the ship if promised cucumber sandwiches.

Then, it was easy.

Relatively easy, at least. Without an engine, it was difficult to fly a ship. The only unexpected part of this being that it was not impossible. The Fearless, being a new-wave enforcer corvette, had advanced maneuvering thrusters meant for high-flying evasion tactics in space. In capable, or in this case cucumber-lusting, hands, those maneuvering thrusters could be used to pilot the ship backwards, up, and onto safe land.

--- Hours later ---

"Are you sure this is really land? Yelled Egger over the wind's roar, his eyes closed to the dust-sand berrating his face.

"You're walking on it, aren't you?" Retorted Captain Dapan loudly.

"Am I?" returned Egger, though his voice was mostly lost to the wind.

The walked on for painful minutes in silence, until Rij saw something. "Do they have cucumbers there?" he said cryptically, pointing to a mound-house at the edge of vision.

Captain Dapan paused for a moment, considering the best responce. "Maybe," he decided upon, "let's go investigate."

Another few minutes of painful walking and they arrived, their faces scraped and rawed from the dust-wind. All save for Captain Dapan, that was, who was a Azgaurd and subsequently had rather resistant skin.

They approached the door and, finding it locked, knocked.

There was no answer.

They repeated the process several times, merely thankful for the little relief the door-frame provided from the onslaught of barely breathable dust-atmosphere.

Elsewhere, Ter was returning from a mediocre visit to his dust farm. He was, needless to say, startled when he saw three men and a large blue person knocking on his door.

"Who the dust-eaten Gooler are you?" shouted Ter through his mask at the crew of the Fearless.
Posts: 1913
  • Posted On: Feb 2 2007 3:36pm
The crew froze, their diplomatic training sudenly catching up with them. Feeling repremanded, they straightened up, and Dapan spoke.

"We are the crew of the Fearless, and I am captain Dapan" he said, trying not to cough due the dust invading his breathing, "we have come to explore this planet and perhaps offer it entrance into the coalition."

Dapan expected Ter to be dumbstruck, his small farmer's mind unable to handle the sheer scope of what Dapan had just said. Perhaps Ter didn't even speak basic, realized Dapan. Maybe the dust-atmosphere of this planat effectively isolated them from the rest of the galaxy. Dapan was about as wrong as he could be.

Ter laughed exageratedly through his breathing mask, then, trying to contain his rudeness, spoke his mind, "Ha! Offworlders. Great! Just what we need. Buddy maybe your ship got blown off course because we sure as the Gooler aren't going to enter into any Coalition, even if you DO want us. Which you won't."

So much for not speaking basic. And so much for the small-minded farmer.

"Look," he continued, "you better come in side before you die of Sleezia."

With all the dust swirling around, sometimes biting their faces and always damaging their lungs, it wasn't too hard for the crew to figure out what Sleezia was, and even easier for them to go into the farmer's house.

Ter removed his dust-mask. He's human thought Dapan significantly. And how indeed could humans be on this isolated un-chartable dust-planet? Dapan remained standing, most of the furniture unaccomadating for a creature of his stature. The rest of the crew sat down exhaustedly on Ter's chairs and couches.

"Allright look, blue guy," said Ter, adressing Dapan, "Am I to understand that your ship crashed in the dust-sea, barely allowing you to reach land, and you came stumbling through the atmosphere here from the shore?"

"Well... not exactly-"

"Sure, sure," interrupted Ter, "stay here. I'll be right back."

Ter left to get something, and the crew was left to sit and breath the good air. He must have something filtering the dust out of his house, thought Egger.

"Captain," Egger adressed Dapan, "what do you think he does for a living? This isn't quite your average self-sustaining farmer's home."

Dapan looked around, "Well, I don't suppose you can farm here especially well, unless you plan on farming the air!" Dapan joked, his chuckle becoming a cough.

Ter then returned. He had heard Dapan's statement, "Skinned-right we do," he said, offering to further explanation. In his hands he held three spherical objects that looked like inhalers.

"Unless you want to die from Sleezia," said Ter, "you'll use these to get the junk out of your lungs... I don't know how well it'll work for you, blue-dude."

The two humans of the group: Rij and Egger, accepted the breathers. Simultaniously, they breathed carefully into the mouth-piece...

And were stuck by the horrible sensation of having every last bit of air sucked out of their lungs and then rocketed back in as the black, spherical objects made loud whining-whooshing noises. Ter didn't seem to think anything of it. He was watching Dapan

The small machine Dapan recieved whirred uselessly when the Azgaurd attempted to breathe into it, unable to fight against the magnitude of the Azgaurd's breathing apparatus. Dapan looked quizically at Ter.

"Well, whatever. You are probably fine anyway," said Ter, rolling his eyes and taking the lung-cleaner back from the crew. Between Rij and Egger, Rij was the first to recover.

"Ugh! Are you people humans, or windbags?" exclaimed Rij in his delayed reaction to the lung-cleaner.

"You'll get over it," murmured Ter. Dapan and Egger, though, were pleasantly suprised at the synical outburst of Rij. Perhaps he had regained his sanity.

Seeming to find this the time to discuss the situation, Dapan started to speak.

"So, human. What is the history of your planet? We expected you to be isolated from the rest of the world due to your planet's dust atmosphere and unlikelyness to evolve intelligent life. However, I see you are not native to this planet. How did humans come to live here?"

"Here on Renteg? How should I know? My family have been dust farmers since forever. Maybe we're the descendants of some crashed explorers like you." Ter smirked.

"I see. You say you are a dust farmer? Do you farm the air as I said earlier?"

"What else is there to farm?" responded Ter, no longer standing face-to-face with the Azgaurd and now wandering over to his kitchen to tinker with some controls on what, Dapan thought, might be the atmosphere controller for this home.

"Indeed..." said Dapan. The conversation was then taken up by Rij. "Well if you're a filter-farmer, I don't suppose you make alot of money... the process is notoriously innefficiant."

"You would know?" responded Ter.

"Well... usually it's filtering some kind of ocean..."

"We filter the air." stated Ter, simply.

"Heck, works for me," said Rij, finding it odd to talk with another human as if the human was from a strange planet, "Say, you don't seem too suprised at the idea of offworlders. Do people from other planets come here often?"

"How else would we get food?" said Ter, finishing up what he was doing and then sitting on his counter, looking idly at his visitors as if they were a mildly interesting new filter-pump.

"Fair enough. So it's merchants who come here and trade for... what you filter out of the air?"

"Yes, or what our fleets of machines filter out of the air... in some cases."

"Hm?"

"I'm a poor, rural farmer, mister. There are people inland who sit and do nothing while their giant machines buzz away with little people who pretend to know what they're doing fixing them if they break down. They take all the good farming air while they are thousands of miles away in practical palaces and they make pacts with the traders so the traders only buy their metal."

"Ah... I see..." grunted Rij

Egger had something to say. "The government doesn't feel these land-lord type plantation-owning folk are a bit dangerous or unfair to more rural farmers or what-have-you?"

Ter snorted. "What government?"
Posts: 1913
  • Posted On: Feb 2 2007 11:18pm
Back on the Fearless

Elim had stayed back with the ship to make sure nothing came and swatted it out of the air. He didn't think that that was particularly likely, so instead of watching the hull he decided to inspect the missing engine.

Something sure took it all right... thought the young human male, switching buttons and using the control stick on his remote.

Inspecting... read the human-interface display. It reminded Elim of being back in his fighter with his R-8 unit. Of course, this droid-brain was a little more advanced, but basically it felt the same.

Elim was making suprising little progress. As far as he could tell, whatever ripped the engine out didn't touch any other part of the ship.

---

Ter's home

An awkward momnt of silence.

Captain Dapan was the first to speak. "Oh... well..."

Ter chuckled softly, "I TOLD you you woulden't want thisplanet to become part of your Coalition."

"Well wait a minute," said Egger, "maybe the Coalition could sort of set up a government-"

"No chance! The rich people are more than used to making their own rules, and breaking them when they see fit. To get them to join any government except their own would take a miracle."

"Hm." grunted Rij.

"Look, do you people still have a ship? Because if so, it would be better for all parties concerned if you just hopped aboard and flew hope."

"About that..." started Egger.

"Something attacked our ship!" interrupted Dapan, "They stole our main engine and dissapeared."

"Right. I'd almost believe you if the chances of one ship running into another out in that ocean weren't zero."

"Something did take our engine..." said Egger.

"Or it fell out." concluded Ter.

Each occupant of the room looked at each other significantly. It seemed that their hopes of another planet for the Coalition were basically gone. Ter was right. It WOULD be better for everyone if the crew could leave.

"Well, needless to say we won't be able to get off this planet with our maneuvering and hover engines. Is there anywhere we could buy a new engine here?" spoke the captain, trying to make the best out of the situation.

Ter tapped idly on his counter. Then traced a picture as he spoke. "Yeah. Suure. AN engine. Not a Coalition engine, but then again I'm sure you space-goers have the know-how to overcome that, right? And of course you'll need something to buy it with. If you go south-west of here for about a kilometer you'll reach a small village of sorts with a hover-car stop that will take you inland... and you might be able to buy an engine from Fatty McGrandor or whatever his name is. Of course, you'll need masks..." Ter rolled his eyes and got off the counter to go fetch three masks.

Time passed silently, Egger and Rij not very enthusiastic about the idea of more breathing equipment. "Nice of him..." said Egger into the silence.

Ter returned and shortly ridded himself of the offworlders, who had to stop back at their ship to get hand-weapons which they believed they could trade for an engine. Elim was confidant that he could make the neccecary adjustments if Dapan, Egger, and Rij were able to procure an engine from Gandor. Rij suggested using the manuevering engines to just fly there, but Dapan decided that would look suspicious. How flying a ship was "suspicious," Rij didn't know.

It took a few days for Dapan and crew to find any normal merchant- Ter's suggestion of talking to Grandor didn't hold out. But it turned out that the hand-weapons were a good enough trade for some type of engine, and within a week they were back out in space. Flying home. Without a victory speach, without a new diplomatic agreement, and after being proclaimed dead.

And what could have been a mission for expanding the coalition ended up being a mission to get off an anarchical planet whose inhabitants only were kept off eachother's throats because they lived farther away from eachother than anyone could hold a grudge.

And Renteg was one planet that would NOT be joning the Coalition.
Posts: 1913
  • Posted On: Feb 3 2007 12:30am
For now.

Slowly but surely over the next few years, Ter became an inspired farmer. Inspired farmers inspire other farmers, and groups of inspired farmers lead rebellions and rallies and get noticed. It's been proven time and time again.

Yes, inspired farmer's rallies nine times of ten get quelched and never lead to any change. But the problems with nine-times-out-of-ten happenings is that one time out of ten when the whomever they are rallying infront of makes them mad enough, or is enough of a sympathiser.

Fortunately, the latter was the case in this instance. Grandor was a softy, and he who had never gone so far as to opress his farmers now listened to them and formed what they wanted: a sort of agreement with him and a meeting with the other rich snobbs.

Ter didn't know he was such an inperational speaker, such a revolutionary. But after seven years of dedicating himself to the cause, that one dust-farmer made a huge, important chapter in his planet's history. Years later he would have books written about him. For now, he had one thing in the back of his mind while revolutionizing his planet: that when his planet formed its own government, decentralized as it may have to be, he could send a call to the Coalition and ask for captain Dapan. That mission that ended as a difficult escape could be redone with proper landing coordinants as a diplomatic mission with a high chance of success.

Plus, Ter, now the first elected speaker for the Grandor province in the Republic of Renteg, could have his partner in the whole revolution, Kjad While, give back his stolen engine.