sort:byplace
Federation >>>>
Core Sectors >>>
Centaurus sector >>
Earth >

subsort: bytopic
History >>>
Post-Contact >>
Weird/Unexplained >

A lot of weird stuff has happened on Earth over the centuries, but for for sheer "what was that about?" value, the Fleet of Fog incident takes some topping.

In SY 2012, a few years after the end of the Contact Wars (a global conflict precipitated by the xenophobic backlash against Earth's First Contact, which happened in 1999), people started reporting sightings of so-called "ghost ships" in various far-flung corners of the planet's oceans. These vessels varied widely by sighting, but there were always two common factors which eventually began to form a pattern in the eyes of those few people (mostly enthusiasts of the paranormal) who were looking for one:

1) They were invariably surrounded by a dense fogbank, which was often not consistent with the prevailing meteorological conditions at the time; and

2) Those few which were seen clearly enough to be identified always appeared to be warships dating from Earth's Second World War, some 50-60 years before First Contact, except they were often unusual colors and/or sported strange and indecipherable markings. These were usually found in areas where it wouldn't have been odd to find the originals during the war, so that, for example, almost all the ones that looked like Japanese vessels were sighted in the western Pacific, while the eastern Pacific was home to mostly "American" ships and the Atlantic sightings mostly resembled British or German vessels.

Fig. 1 A typical Fleet of Fog ship (Takao-class Japanese heavy cruiser)

Fig. 2 For comparison, a vintage photograph of the real IJS Takao, taken in 1933.

For decades, the "World War II ghost ship" sightings were considered either a hoax or a paranormal conspiracy theory by mainstream society... until 2038, when they started showing up in numbers that could no longer be dismissed as people's imaginations or mistaken identifications of normal traffic. Doubly so when they started shooting.

Two more things quickly became apparent about the "ghost ships". One was that there were a hell of a lot of them; once the shooting started, they appeared in much greater numbers, whole fleets of them roaming around the planet's various seas. The other was that they only looked like ships from World War II. They were equipped with weapons and defensive technologies far ahead of Earth's most advanced starships of the day (which were based in large part on Salusian technology, so we're not talking about the usual pat-on-the-head, aren't-you-guys-precious space navy technology most civilizations have managed to come up with 50 years after First Contact).

Most of the bigger combatants had Class Omega or near-Class Omega gravity beam weapons; all of them sported more plasma beam weapons and advanced missile systems than you could shake a really big stick at, as well as a weapon that appeared to function rather like a heavy disruptor in warhead rather than projector form. Instead of an explosion, these weapons (dubbed "corrosive torpedoes" by the beleaguered United Earth Navy) generated a high-frequency oscillating spatial distortion capable of disintegrating virtually any matter caught in its radius of effect.

Within less than a year (the conflict is called the Hundred-Day War, which is a slight exaggeration, but only slight), humankind had been swept from the seas, which, given that Earth's surface is about three-quarters sea, was a problem. Moreover, the enemy - inevitably dubbed "the Fleet of Fog" after the conditions under which they customarily appeared - interdicted the airspace above the seas as well, apparently bent on confining the people of Earth to the landmasses and isolating each landmass from the others. This policy extended to intercontinental telecommunications as well, with satellites destroyed, submarine cables cut, and most radio frequencies jammed.

Conditions on Earth, where the world's economy had been heavily globalized for more than a century by that point and was well on its way to full interstellarization by 2038, deteriorated rapidly. Forced into a much more circumscribed existence than Earthpeople had been accustomed to for centuries, some peoples reverted to barbarism, or at least medievalism, while others clung grimly to modernity while their material readiness for same crumbled.

Interestingly, one thing the Fog didn't appear to care about was people leaving the planet. They would shoot down any aircraft whose destination was below the Kármán line, but those bound for interplanetary or interstellar space were free to depart - just so long as they didn't try to turn back and land somewhere else on Earth. Word therefore got out to the rest of the galaxy in fairly short order about what was going down on Earth - but the United Galactica Navy was to discover in short order that the Fog's "no arrivals" policy extended beyond aircraft that had departed from points on Earth.

The downward spiral in Earth's standard of living and the Fog's evident indifference to departures converged to result in the Second Diaspora; and there is much persuasive evidence to suggest that Earth's second colonial wave was so much bigger than the First, which immediately followed the Contact Wars, precisely because conditions on the homeworld were so ever-increasingly dire under the Fog blockade. Many of Earth's most prominent colonies were founded in this period, including much of the Greater Rigel Sector Co-Prosperity Sphere (only New Japan, of the CPS's most notable worlds, is a First Diaspora colony), the Vega Sector Crown Colonies, and the first of Earth's Rimward and Coreward settlements. It is estimated that between the casualties of the Hundred-Day War, attrition from the various economic and political collapses caused by the blockade, and the Second Diaspora itself, Earth's population fell from nine billion in 2038 to less than four twenty years later.

In that time, the UG Navy and the Wedge Defense Force mounted six separate attempts to relieve the planet. All of them failed, not because the Fog's ships were so much more capable than those of the outer galaxy (although they were more capable, on average), but because defeating them completely would have required a massive concerted assault on the entire planet at once. While logistically possible (the WDF could, for instance, have called on their Zentraedi allies, whose fleets would have outweighed the wildest estimates of the Fog's strength by a factor of about 20), every forecast model predicted that the devastation it caused would be worse on every meaningful level than just leaving bad enough alone.

Instead, the WDF chose to focus on intelligence-gathering, trying to figure out what the Fog were and what they wanted. During the Hundred-Day War and its aftermath, there were several theories, the most prominent of which was that it was some sort of alien invasion with a strange sense of style. However, no Fog ship was ever seen to have any crew aboard at all. The most advanced sensors of the day could detect no lifesigns aboard any of them, and on the rare occasions when the UEN managed to destroy one, no survivors or casualties were ever seen. As for the ships themselves, they never surrendered, and those few that were sunk disintegrated in the process. No Fog ship was ever captured or salvaged.

Those details, and the fact that the Fleet of Fog never displayed even the most rudimentary sense of tactics or strategy - they simply possessed numbers, firepower, and durability so much greater than their enemies' that they rarely lost a fight no matter how stupidly they fought - led many to conclude that the ships were automatons of some kind. As for their origins, no theory ever appeared that had any convincing evidence behind it. Their technology, though highly advanced, conformed to no known standard. They never issued demands or instructions - never communicated with anyone nor answered any attempt to communicate with them. The only message a Fog ship ever issued came in the form of weapons fire.

Two decades after the Hundred-Day War, then, intelligence agencies and military forces both on and off Earth were no closer to fathoming the mystery of the Fleet of Fog than they had been on the day the shooting started. And then, one day in the summer of 2059...

... they were gone.

Literally. One day they were there, all over the world, patrolling the coasts like always, and the next... they weren't. At first the world's remnant navies assumed it was some kind of trick and refused to emerge from their fortress ports, but within a few days, the first tentative scouting expeditions began poking their noses tentatively outside. When nothing happened, they got bolder. Within a month, a UGN/WDF expeditionary force had made unopposed planetfall and worldwide searches were underway. By autumn, the only conclusion was that the Fleet of Fog had left the planet - their reason for doing so as unknown and unknowable as their reason for coming in the first place.

In the centuries since the incident, there have been unconfirmed sightings of Fleet of Fog ships traveling singly or in small groups, sometimes on Earth, but sometimes - stranger still - on the seas of other human-inhabited worlds. No one has ever seen a Fog ship traveling in outer space (though there are reports from the Hundred-Day War of Fog ships flying at low altitude - their drive systems appeared to work by some form of gravity gradient manipulation). If they are appearing on multiple planets, it is entirely unknown how they're getting there.

But then, even at 400 years' remove, most of what we can say about the Fog involves the word "unknown". Who made them? What were they supposed to accomplish? Did they? If not, why did they leave? Where did they come from and where did they go? None of that is known; most of it can't even be guessed at.

Even today, Earth governments' defense policies are partially informed by the lingering fear that the Fog may return. Analysis of records from the 21st-century occupation indicate that if they did, Earth would be able to put up a better fight... but would probably still lose. It is, perhaps, this grim possibility that accounts for the paranoid strain running through successive Earth world governments, from Olympus to the present-day Earth Alliance.

Interestingly, if the suspected Fog sightings on Earth and elsewhere since 2059 really have been Fog ships, they haven't seemed to be looking for a fight. There are instances on record of naval vessels and aircraft attempting to engage them, but they always disappear.

Just, some authorities muse darkly, as they always did when challenged during the period between 2012 and 2038.

This Guide entry was written by Soviet heavy cruiser Kirov, who won the Order of the Red Banner in the Great Patrioic War and is pretty sure he could take IJS Takao in a fight if he had to.

>This Guide entry was written by Soviet heavy cruiser
>Kirov, who won the Order of the Red Banner in the Great
>Patrioic War and is pretty sure he could take IJS Takao in a
>fight if he had to.

*giggles helplessly*

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

First off, very cool. It has that essential UF quality of taking something and putting it into the universe in a not-where-I-expected-to-see-that place (or at least I would have expected a> it to be a pre-Contact-ish problem that was solved with judicious application of proton torpedoes or b> have happened in space, possibly tied in to the Salusians' naval motif) and making it fit in very nicely.

It also carries that Golden Age "the Universe must be personally *fucking with us* for this to work out this way" feeling (which I suppose Core 4 and the Ragnarok showed was true). Tying it in to other things, one could imagine a Salusian blockade runner parked in Boston, the crew frantically shoving crates of ice cream in the hold while USS Whoever-the-hell-has-a-problem-today is bearing down on the city.

Second, I see the entry was written by a one Mr. Kirov. Is that a ship (or a Transformer? I'm probably getting wires crossed with the Vozdushnikons) of a later provenance, or did an actual Fog ship do a writeup of his people for the H2G2? If so, either we're seeing the thin edge of the wedge for their becoming emotional, or one hell of a convoluted and overly-clever (on the Fog's part; I think the idea is excellent) psychological warfare campaign. On a similar note, is it only Terran humans that are plagued with the Fog? Or do Corellians et. al. have them too (or their own local variation of the same problem)?

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

LAST EDITED ON Sep-06-14 AT 05:49 AM (EDT)
 
>First off, very cool. It has that essential UF quality of taking
>something and putting it into the universe in a
>not-where-I-expected-to-see-that place (or at least I would have
>expected a> it to be a pre-Contact-ish problem that was solved with
>judicious application of proton torpedoes or b> have happened in
>space, possibly tied in to the Salusians' naval motif) and making it
>fit in very nicely.

This. I was half expecting a space version of them from a distant place, just like the other unknown threats we've seen. Putting them in the oceans, despite the setting of Arpeggio, I did not expect.

What really struck me was how well it fits into earth history! Giving a solid reason for a mass exodus we've known about for many RL years, such that it's genuinely reasonable to have happened (well, through an anime watcher's definition of 'reasonable' anyway), is the kind of world-building gift I wish I had. Reminds me of a Mekton campaign I once ran, except I never -did- determine why everyone left. And I never would have thought of this.

>
>Second, I see the entry was written by a one Mr. Kirov. Is that a ship
>(or a Transformer? I'm probably getting wires crossed with the
>Vozdushnikons) of a later provenance, or did an actual Fog ship do a
>writeup of his people for the H2G2? If so, either we're seeing the
>thin edge of the wedge for their becoming emotional, or one hell of a
>convoluted and overly-clever (on the Fog's part; I think the idea is
>excellent) psychological warfare campaign. On a similar note, is it
>only Terran humans that are plagued with the Fog? Or do Corellians et.
>al. have them too (or their own local variation of the same problem)?

I...hm. Not sure about these questions, but I was thinking about all of this as well. I do know that that's not a typical Transformer name--they're usually named after personality traits and can't be named after Earth vehicle models because many Transformers existed (with alien vehicle forms) before ever coming to Earth. Also, a Transformer the size of a battleship would be a LARGE Transformer, on par with Omega Supreme or a combiner gestalt, but whose vehicle form would be rather niche (not that that doesn't happen.)

He could very well be a Mental Model. Which is a rather strong indicator of why the Fleet of Fog disappeared...they'd have never gone away. They just went native. Can you imagine the nations of the galaxy FLIP OUT when they found beings THAT powerful hidden all over society? Ohhh that might be a fun read.

--------

this world created by the
hands of the gods
everything is false
everything is a LIE
the final days have come
now
let everything be destroyed

--mu

>He could very well be a Mental Model. Which is a rather strong
>indicator of why the Fleet of Fog disappeared...they'd have
>never gone away. They just went native. Can you imagine the nations of
>the galaxy FLIP OUT when they found beings THAT powerful hidden all
>over society? Ohhh that might be a fun read.

Especially considering certain groups' penchant for close encounters of the nearly-terminal kind;

"Agent A, you told me there weren't going to be any Experts of Justice on scene!"

"There weren't, we triple-checked the intel!"

"Then who else stocks what looks like a deranged schoolgirl and hits like a battleship?! All we did was shoot the piano she was playing, hell, even the rest of the hostages were on our side on that one!"

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

LAST EDITED ON Sep-06-14 AT 01:44 PM (EDT)
 
>"Then who else stocks what looks like a deranged schoolgirl and
>hits like a battleship?! All we did was shoot the piano she was
>playing, hell, even the rest of the hostages were on our side on that
>one!"

Poor Maya gets no respect.

mental image: Lord Alberto and Ivan arrive in the aftermath of what can only be described as a gala evening to find wrecked mecha, extensive collateral damage, and defunct Black Hoods strewn everywhere. They find that the crew's Q-Boss, half-pinned under the wreckage of a collapsed portico, is still alive, if only barely.

ALBERTO
What happened here, 748?

Q-BOSS doesn't seem to hear him. With one trembling hand, he's still trying to reach his weapon, which lies just out of reach.

Q-BOSS
(barely audible)
C... c...

IVAN hunkers down and waves a hand before the man's terror-filled, unseeing eyes.

IVAN
Q-Boss 748, report! What happened? Who did this?

Q-BOSS ignores him and keeps reaching for the gun.

Q-BOSS
(still barely audible)
C... c... carnival... da... yo.

He dies. IVAN looks up at ALBERTO, utterly mystified. ALBERTO gets out a cigar and lights it, looking off toward the docks.

IVAN
What does it mean?

ALBERTO
(after a contemplative puff on his cigar)
It means Komei needs to re-think our strategy for this city.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

To me, Kirov is clearly either a member of Fleet of Fog, or a Mental Model-type intelligence (one that identifies as, rather than simply occupies and crews, a vehicle) of known origin (CLUELESS, STACI, or Unusually Clever Example of an otherwise dumb type of controlling intelligence).

LAST EDITED ON Sep-06-14 AT 01:30 PM (EDT)
 
>This. I was half expecting a space version of them from a distant
>place, just like the other unknown threats we've seen. Putting them in
>the oceans, despite the setting of Arpeggio, I did not expect.

To me, the neat thing about leaving them where they were (so to speak) is that a lot of people in the 25th century, in particular, aren't accustomed to thinking of planets' oceans, unless they're fishermen or in the bulk surface shipping business. For ordinary people, outer space has kind of taken over that mental pigeonhole, as the thing you have to cross to get from place to place - everything's sort of psychologically scaled up in an era of commonplace interstellar travel. So for a Mysterious Alien(?) Threat to have appeared that treated them as a priority - well, it's just weird. Like the submarine UFOs in X-COM: Terror from the Deep, or the kaiju in Pacific Rim coming from the sea. Nobody expects that, and the effect is exaggerated in a routine-spaceflight sci-fi setting.

Similarly - I was talking with Nathan about this stuff in PMs the other day, and it occurred to us that 25th-century people would find the thing about the Fog popping up in different planets' oceans without ever being seen arriving, departing, or in space really creepy. As he put it, it would be like realizing that all the world's lake monsters are the same lake monster, and not knowing how it was getting from one to another.

>What really struck me was how well it fits into earth history! Giving
>a solid reason for a mass exodus we've known about for many RL years,
>such that it's genuinely reasonable to have happened (well, through an
>anime watcher's definition of 'reasonable' anyway), is the kind of
>world-building gift I wish I had.

That was one of those "oh hey" design moments. My internal explanation for the Second Diaspora has always been pretty much the same as for the First - "because it's there" - but the timing of the (canonical) Fog incursion lined up so neatly with it that I realized it couldn't really have happened another way.

I'll answer (or dodge :) Nova's questions here, too, for efficiency's sake.

>>Second, I see the entry was written by a one Mr. Kirov. Is that a ship
>>(or a Transformer? I'm probably getting wires crossed with the
>>Vozdushnikons) of a later provenance, or did an actual Fog ship do a
>>writeup of his people for the H2G2?

I'm not going to answer this, but I will note that it's not uncommon for the listed authorship of Guide articles to be... questionable. The publication's editors are not the most thorough fact-checkers. :)

Then again, it's also not uncommon for the stated authors to be exactly who they say they are, however improbable, because, well, it's that kind of book too.

It's worth noting, though, that the UF-universe Fog never displayed anything like a Mental Model during the 21st-century incursion; most people don't even suspect that they might've been properly sapient. They certainly didn't fight as if they were most of the time.

>>On a similar note, is it
>>only Terran humans that are plagued with the Fog? Or do Corellians et.
>>al. have them too (or their own local variation of the same problem)?

No, it only seems to be something that happens on worlds with a preponderance of Earth-descended humans. The people who don't think they really exist in the "modern" era assume the sightings are some kind of Jungian collective unconscious thing unique to that population, though there is no scientific basis for this belief.

>I do know that that's not a typical Transformer
>name--they're usually named after personality traits and can't be
>named after Earth vehicle models because many Transformers existed
>(with alien vehicle forms) before ever coming to Earth.

Transformers change their names all the time, though, often to reflect whatever their new altmodes are when they get reconfigured. Hell, practically the whole cast of Beast Wars does it in the first episode, except for Megatron (and Megatron already wasn't his real name anyway).

Someone mentioned the Vozdushnikons earlier; they're a good example of that, as their names are all the NATO reporting names of their 20th-century-Soviet-jet altmodes. Those were almost certainly not their names before they came to Earth. So if some Transformer had reformatted his altmode after scanning historical documents on the topic of World War II Soviet heavy cruisers, he might well start calling himself Kirov as a result.

I doubt that's what happened in this case, though. More likely it's a joke on the part of whoever did write the article, referring to the Fog's strange habit of mimicking WWII warships and the fact that the Soviet Navy didn't accomplish much during the war.

Or it might actually be the Kirov reporting. Who knows? :)

> Also, a
>Transformer the size of a battleship would be a LARGE Transformer, on
>par with Omega Supreme or a combiner gestalt, but whose vehicle form
>would be rather niche (not that that doesn't happen.)

I refer you to the most preposterous canonical Transformer of all time, Broadside: a Triple Changer whose two altmodes are a) a weird jet fighter and b) a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. I am not making that up.

>He could very well be a Mental Model. Which is a rather strong
>indicator of why the Fleet of Fog disappeared...they'd have
>never gone away. They just went native. Can you imagine the nations of
>the galaxy FLIP OUT when they found beings THAT powerful hidden all
>over society? Ohhh that might be a fun read.

So in this scenario, you figure they all just parked their ships someplace unobtrusive and slipped into the general population,* and have since been Wandering Among Us unnoticed? Hmm... interesting. In that case, it would follow that people are seeing Fog ships occasionally on, e.g., Tomodachi, simply because Kirishima got bored with the rave scene in Nagasaki and moved to Nekomikoka, and every now and then it amuses her to go and prowl the Narrows at night and scare the socks off some poor Coast Guardsmen. ... I have to admit that could happen, though it would have required a hell of a moving van to get all of the odd young woman's personal effects from one planet to the other, given that one of them is an inexplicable Kongō-class battleship. :)

--G.
* This is more credible for some than others. Hyūga, for instance, would fit in as a member of the general public in a way that calls to mind Indy's much-reffed-around-here rant in Last Crusade about Brody. "Uh... does anyone here speak English? Or even ancient Greek." :)
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>To me, the neat thing about leaving them where they were (so to speak)
>is that a lot of people in the 25th century, in particular, aren't
>accustomed to thinking of planets' oceans, unless they're fishermen or
>in the bulk surface shipping business. For ordinary people, outer
>space has kind of taken over that mental pigeonhole, as the thing you
>have to cross to get from place to place - everything's sort of
>psychologically scaled up in an era of commonplace interstellar
>travel. So for a Mysterious Alien(?) Threat to have appeared that
>treated them as a priority - well, it's just weird. Like the
>submarine UFOs in X-COM: Terror from the Deep, or the kaiju in
>Pacific Rim coming from the sea. Nobody expects that, and the
>effect is exaggerated in a routine-spaceflight sci-fi setting.

Thing is, I kinda imagine that's something that would get a major rethinking post-Contact. The influx of new technologies, new materials, and new building methods would quickly revive a lot of old ideas about exploring and exploiting the oceans.

>Similarly - I was talking with Nathan about this stuff in PMs the
>other day, and it occurred to us that 25th-century people would find
>the thing about the Fog popping up in different planets' oceans
>without ever being seen arriving, departing, or in space really
>creepy. As he put it, it would be like realizing that all the
>world's lake monsters are the same lake monster, and not
>knowing how it was getting from one to another.

"So we had this lake monster back on Earth, called it the 'Loch Ness Monster.'"

"They have a Nessie on Earth too?!"

>That was one of those "oh hey" design moments. My internal
>explanation for the Second Diaspora has always been pretty much the
>same as for the First - "because it's there" - but the timing of the
>(canonical) Fog incursion lined up so neatly with it that I realized
>it couldn't really have happened another way.

Yeah, it's sort of a boon that so much of Earth's history from Contact to 25th century is a broadly marked blank. We have the major periods, we have the major events, but there's plenty of elbow room left to shoehorn in more.

Puts me in the mind of UF-Gryphon having a filing cabinet somewhere filled with files on all those strange events of pre and post-Contact Earth. Whether it's marked with an "X" is open to one's imagination.

>It's worth noting, though, that the UF-universe Fog never displayed
>anything like a Mental Model during the 21st-century incursion; most
>people don't even suspect that they might've been properly sapient.
>They certainly didn't fight as if they were most of the time.

To be fair, when you've got enough firepower to slag anything that gets within range, such that planners have to seriously consider orbital bombardment, then being dumb as a post is not that much of a handicap.

>No, it only seems to be something that happens on worlds with a
>preponderance of Earth-descended humans. The people who don't think
>they really exist in the "modern" era assume the sightings are some
>kind of Jungian collective unconscious thing unique to that
>population, though there is no scientific basis for this belief.

"Ah yes, 'Fog,' the immortal race of sentient warships that allegedly defeated humanity. We have dismissed this claim."

>So in this scenario, you figure they all just parked their ships
>someplace unobtrusive and slipped into the general population,* and
>have since been Wandering Among Us unnoticed? Hmm... interesting. In
>that case, it would follow that people are seeing Fog ships
>occasionally on, e.g., Tomodachi, simply because Kirishima got bored
>with the rave scene in Nagasaki and moved to Nekomikoka, and every now
>and then it amuses her to go and prowl the Narrows at night and scare
>the socks off some poor Coast Guardsmen. ... I have to admit that
>could happen, though it would have required a hell of a moving van to
>get all of the odd young woman's personal effects from one planet to
>the other, given that one of them is an inexplicable
>Kongō-class battleship. :)

She keeps it in her back pocket.

>Puts me in the mind of UF-Gryphon having a filing cabinet somewhere
>filled with files on all those strange events of pre and post-Contact
>Earth. Whether it's marked with an "X" is open to one's imagination.

Well, it is, but only because it's between Cabinet W and Cabinet Y.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Well, it is, but only because it's between Cabinet W and Cabinet Y.

"What's in Cabinet Y?"

"You Don't Want To Know."

"If I didn't want to know, I wouldn't be asking."

"No, I mean, it's one big file, under the name 'You Don't Want To Know.'"

---

"Mathematics brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis."
- Kenneth Boulding

---

>>Whether it's marked with an "X" is open to one's imagination.
>Well, it is, but only because it's between Cabinet W and Cabinet Y.

And here I thought it was because he bought it at Charles Xavier's yard sale...

-- Bob
-------------------
My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.

>To me, the neat thing about leaving them where they were (so to speak)
>is that a lot of people in the 25th century, in particular, aren't
>accustomed to thinking of planets' oceans, unless they're fishermen or
>in the bulk surface shipping business. For ordinary people, outer
>space has kind of taken over that mental pigeonhole, as the thing you
>have to cross to get from place to place - everything's sort of
>psychologically scaled up in an era of commonplace interstellar
>travel. So for a Mysterious Alien(?) Threat to have appeared that
>treated them as a priority - well, it's just weird. Like the
>submarine UFOs in X-COM: Terror from the Deep, or the kaiju in
>Pacific Rim coming from the sea. Nobody expects that, and the
>effect is exaggerated in a routine-spaceflight sci-fi setting.

I imagine that would raise some eyebrows when it came across in the budget: "Wait, you're building a *navy*. An actual float-on-the-water navy, with graviton deflectors and enough firepower to slag a Galaxy-class starship? What kind of arbitrary silliness is this?"

>This is more credible for some than others.
>Hyūga, for instance, would fit in as a member of the general
>public in a way that calls to mind Indy's much-reffed-around-here rant
>in Last Crusade about Brody. "Uh... does anyone here speak
>English? Or even ancient Greek." :)

I imagine Hyuuga would fit in quite well- she'd be the 25th century equivalent of the crazy woman who lives on the edge of a village that everybody thinks is a witch. (I still maintain she's going for obfuscating craziness rather than simple rampant lunacy, or possibly none of the Fog cap ships are right in the head to begin with).

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>I imagine Hyuuga would fit in quite well- she'd be the 25th century
>equivalent of the crazy woman who lives on the edge of a village that
>everybody thinks is a witch.

... so, for values of "fit in quite well" that involve not fitting in at all, then. :)

>(I still maintain she's going for
>obfuscating craziness rather than simple rampant lunacy, or possibly
>none of the Fog cap ships are right in the head to begin with).

Well, there's plenty of evidence to support that hypothesis, at least on TV. Apart from Hyūga (who, in addition to being a central casting mad scientist lady, has the most extreme case of "I am your slave 'cos your kung fu is best" going on that I've seen in a while), you've got Kongō, who goes slowly berserk because everyone around her is being so stubborn about accepting that she's an emotionless machine like they're supposed to be; Haruna, who appears to have a severe Vitamin D deficiency despite not being a biological life form; Kirishima, who was having a bit of a psychotic episode there before she got blown up became a stuffed animal (?!); and Takao, who may actually be the normal one, since basically she's just horny and confused (and who isn't at that age?).

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>I imagine that would raise some eyebrows when it came across in the
>budget: "Wait, you're building a *navy*. An actual float-on-the-water
>navy, with graviton deflectors and enough firepower to slag a
>Galaxy-class starship? What kind of arbitrary silliness is
>this?"

"See, back in the old country, there was this pastime called 'fishing with dynamite'..."

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

>"See, back in the old country, there was this pastime called 'fishing
>with dynamite'..."

Just don't mention that where the Fog can hear you; the Assault Ship* Zuikaku's Mental Model is something of a fishing fanatic, as in like "your war can go rot, there's fish to be caught", and if she found out you can throw explosives into the water and get fish, pre-cooked even, I think the Fog would go bankrupt in a week keeping her stocked with munitions.

*Zuikaku was an aircraft carrier in real life, but the Fog don't use planes, so she's classified as an "Assault Ship" instead, i.e. carries so more missiles than a normal Fog vessel that it's noteworthy.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>To me, the neat thing about leaving them where they were (so to speak)
>is that a lot of people in the 25th century, in particular, aren't
>accustomed to thinking of planets' oceans, unless they're fishermen or
>in the bulk surface shipping business. For ordinary people, outer
>space has kind of taken over that mental pigeonhole, as the thing you
>have to cross to get from place to place - everything's sort of
>psychologically scaled up in an era of commonplace interstellar
>travel. So for a Mysterious Alien(?) Threat to have appeared that
>treated them as a priority - well, it's just weird. Like the
>submarine UFOs in X-COM: Terror from the Deep, or the kaiju in
>Pacific Rim coming from the sea. Nobody expects that, and the
>effect is exaggerated in a routine-spaceflight sci-fi setting.

Well, it makes for a dandy secret staging area, the Pacific Ocean. Seriously, though, I do agree with you here; it's jarring and disorienting for a spacefaring people.

>
>Similarly - I was talking with Nathan about this stuff in PMs the
>other day, and it occurred to us that 25th-century people would find
>the thing about the Fog popping up in different planets' oceans
>without ever being seen arriving, departing, or in space really
>creepy. As he put it, it would be like realizing that all the
>world's lake monsters are the same lake monster, and not
>knowing how it was getting from one to another.

See, this point right here is why I was thinking--hell, I was assuming for some bizarre reason the girls were just packing their ships up in Hammerspace like Optimus Prime's trailer, taking the 3:15 shuttle to Tomodachi, and settling in their new seaside apartment with a great view of the bay. That stuff is such that I took it for granted...didn't even think that it wasn't possible. Then again, they had to get around somehow. Maybe their fold drive works on the water.

>>>Second, I see the entry was written by a one Mr. Kirov. Is that a ship
>>>(or a Transformer? I'm probably getting wires crossed with the
>>>Vozdushnikons) of a later provenance, or did an actual Fog ship do a
>>>writeup of his people for the H2G2?
>
>I'm not going to answer this, but I will note that it's not uncommon
>for the listed authorship of Guide articles to be...
>questionable. The publication's editors are not the most thorough
>fact-checkers. :)
>
>Then again, it's also not uncommon for the stated authors to be
>exactly who they say they are, however improbable, because, well, it's
>that kind of book too.

Wow. It kinda sorta might be true, and it kinda sorta might not. XD

>
>It's worth noting, though, that the UF-universe Fog never displayed
>anything like a Mental Model during the 21st-century incursion; most
>people don't even suspect that they might've been properly sapient.
>They certainly didn't fight as if they were most of the time.

HERE is new information. Before we only knew they appeared and disappeared. I thought there was a decent chance the events of Arpeggio were what caused the Fog to leave. Now it seems as though that's not the case...

>
>>I do know that that's not a typical Transformer
>>name--they're usually named after personality traits and can't be
>>named after Earth vehicle models because many Transformers existed
>>(with alien vehicle forms) before ever coming to Earth.
>
>Transformers change their names all the time, though, often to reflect
>whatever their new altmodes are when they get reconfigured. Hell,
>practically the whole cast of Beast Wars does it in the first
>episode, except for Megatron (and Megatron already wasn't his
>real name anyway).

Hm, I see.

>
>Someone mentioned the Vozdushnikons earlier; they're a good example of
>that, as their names are all the NATO reporting names of their
>20th-century-Soviet-jet altmodes. Those were almost certainly
>not their names before they came to Earth. So if some
>Transformer had reformatted his altmode after scanning historical
>documents on the topic of World War II Soviet heavy cruisers, he might
>well start calling himself Kirov as a result.
>
>I doubt that's what happened in this case, though. More likely it's a
>joke on the part of whoever did write the article, referring to the
>Fog's strange habit of mimicking WWII warships and the fact that the
>Soviet Navy didn't accomplish much during the war.
>
>Or it might actually be the Kirov reporting. Who knows? :)
>
>> Also, a
>>Transformer the size of a battleship would be a LARGE Transformer, on
>>par with Omega Supreme or a combiner gestalt, but whose vehicle form
>>would be rather niche (not that that doesn't happen.)
>
>I refer you to the most preposterous canonical Transformer of all
>time, Broadside: a Triple Changer whose two altmodes are a) a weird
>jet fighter and b) a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.
>I am not making that up.

...Well. I was more right than I knew.

>
>>He could very well be a Mental Model. Which is a rather strong
>>indicator of why the Fleet of Fog disappeared...they'd have
>>never gone away. They just went native. Can you imagine the nations of
>>the galaxy FLIP OUT when they found beings THAT powerful hidden all
>>over society? Ohhh that might be a fun read.
>
>So in this scenario, you figure they all just parked their ships
>someplace unobtrusive and slipped into the general population,* and
>have since been Wandering Among Us unnoticed? Hmm... interesting. In
>that case, it would follow that people are seeing Fog ships
>occasionally on, e.g., Tomodachi, simply because Kirishima got bored
>with the rave scene in Nagasaki and moved to Nekomikoka, and every now
>and then it amuses her to go and prowl the Narrows at night and scare
>the socks off some poor Coast Guardsmen. ... I have to admit that
>could happen, though it would have required a hell of a moving van to
>get all of the odd young woman's personal effects from one planet to
>the other, given that one of them is an inexplicable
>Kongō-class battleship. :)

I, um...well, yeah, that's pretty much precisely what I thought, modulo hammerspace and maybe a carryon bag. Is it a bad sign that I see that kind of thing enough that I didn't even consider more conventional logistics?

--------

this world created by the
hands of the gods
everything is false
everything is a LIE
the final days have come
now
let everything be destroyed

--mu

>>I refer you to the most preposterous canonical Transformer of all
>>time, Broadside: a Triple Changer whose two altmodes are a) a weird
>>jet fighter and b) a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.
>>I am not making that up.
>
>...Well. I was more right than I knew.

Just in case you thought the scale disparities between the other Triple Changers' two altmodes were ridiculous (an F-15 and an M60 tank? a steam locomotive and an STS orbiter? a Mack truck and a KC-135?!), along came Broadside to show you that you hadn't seen anything yet.

>>So in this scenario, you figure they all just parked their ships
>>someplace unobtrusive and slipped into the general population,* and
>>have since been Wandering Among Us unnoticed? Hmm... interesting.
>
>I, um...well, yeah, that's pretty much precisely what I thought,
>modulo hammerspace and maybe a carryon bag. Is it a bad sign that I
>see that kind of thing enough that I didn't even consider more
>conventional logistics?

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not making fun of the idea - I think it's kind of cool, actually. I was just making a joke about unwieldy baggage. The Fog showed no particular aptitude for things like the "hammerspace" trick when they were last seen, but then, they weren't cute girls with weird mannerisms at that time, either. :)

That said, I've seen official artworks in which the Mental Models are shown holding (what I presume are supposed to be) scale models of their own ship forms. Maybe they've actually got a Bottle City of Kandor thing going on there. :)

As an aside, I know they're just cute out-of-band images, but I kind of like the unspoken implications if they are scale models. It's like having an action figure of yourself. I like to picture Takao displaying a heretofore-unseen bent for carefully focused precision work: sitting at a desk, tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth, painstakingly assembling an Airfix kit of a Takao-class cruiser. :)

Come to think of it, there's a bit in the TV series where we see a bedroom in the Blue Steel team's sekrit base on Iwo Jima. I'm not sure whose room it is, but whoever it is collects models of Iona (so I'm assuming it's Hyūga's). There's at least one of the I-401 and two or three of her Mental Model in different outfits (making it seem pleasingly as if someone on the team collects Arpeggio of Blue Steel merch). It's often hard to tell what Iona is thinking, but I like to believe that she finds that room slightly creepy.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>As an aside, I know they're just cute out-of-band images, but I kind
>of like the unspoken implications if they are scale models.
>It's like having an action figure of yourself. I like to picture
>Takao displaying a heretofore-unseen bent for carefully focused
>precision work: sitting at a desk, tongue poking out of the corner of
>her mouth, painstakingly assembling an Airfix kit of a
>Takao-class cruiser. :)

There's actually a print about like that from one of the art supplements (I can't recall what the images policy here is, or I'd try to find a link); Iona and Takao are sitting around the Tea Table working studiously on their respective kits, and Maya (because of course Maya) is caught in the process of spilling her half-built kit all all over the place.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>There's actually a print about like that from one of the art
>supplements (I can't recall what the images policy here is, or I'd try
>to find a link)

Well, in this case the policy is, "Awww, I want to see that." :)

More seriously, there's a little trick you have to use to link images (otherwise DCF will inline them and break everything, especially if they're really wide) - you put them in a square-bracketed "link:blahblah|text" tag like usual, but tack "?x" onto the URL after the filename extension. That tricks DCF into thinking it's a CGI script call and ignoring it instead of trying to inline the image. (Don't forget to take the "http://"; part off, too. I know, DCF weirds links, I didn't build the, etc. :)

>Iona and Takao are sitting around the Tea Table
>working studiously on their respective kits, and Maya (because of
>course Maya) is caught in the process of spilling her half-built kit
>all all over the place.

"Wahhh, mine looks weird and I have all these parts left over!"

"That's because you didn't install any of your gun turrets or your radar."

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Trying it this way, because I'm not sure I can get directly to the image: image is here.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>Trying it this way, because I'm not sure I can get directly to the
>image: image is here.

Ha, I called it - she hasn't put the gun turrets on. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Oh, wow. I used to build all kinds of model airplanes when I was a kid. Had to get rid of them--no space--but this brings back memories.

--------

this world created by the
hands of the gods
everything is false
everything is a LIE
the final days have come
now
let everything be destroyed

--mu

>See, this point right here is why I was thinking--hell, I was
>assuming for some bizarre reason the girls were just packing
>their ships up in Hammerspace like Optimus Prime's trailer, taking the
>3:15 shuttle to Tomodachi, and settling in their new seaside apartment
>with a great view of the bay. That stuff is such that I took it for
>granted...didn't even think that it wasn't possible. Then again, they
>had to get around somehow. Maybe their fold drive works on the water.

The bolded is pretty explicitly the case in the manga, I think. We meet Zuikaku when she frickin' teleports in right next to Yamato.

That said, the mental image of, say, Hyuuga hiding her battle hull on her model shelf is kind of fantastic.

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

>That said, the mental image of, say, Hyuuga hiding her battle hull
>on her model shelf is kind of fantastic.

I now have the accompanying mental image of one of them - I'm thinking probably Haruna - receiving A Visit in her new digs from some kind of investigator who has no idea about the Fog thing, but thinks he's onto something hinky in re her, like those people who hunt vampires and other long-lived paranormals in various modern-urban-fantasy settings. You know the kind of thing - both parties outwardly cordial, but the whole conversation seethes with barely veiled intimidation and menace, as one party tries to get across the "I'm Watching You, and One Day You're Gonna Get What's Coming To You" message and the other counters with the "You Have No Idea What the Fuck You're Messing With" message without either of them coming right out and saying so.

Only in this one, part of the vampire hunter's schtick is roaming aimlessly around the living room, picking up various nicknacks and looking at/fiddling with them while he's talking, one of which is the extremely detailed model of a Kongō-class battleship that was on the shelf above the TV. It's slightly eerie. Heavier than it looks, and if he didn't know better, he'd swear the gun turrets were tracking him.

--G.
"That is not a toy."
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>>That said, the mental image of, say, Hyuuga hiding her battle hull
>>on her model shelf is kind of fantastic.
>
>I now have the accompanying mental image of one of them - I'm thinking
>probably Haruna - receiving A Visit in her new digs from some kind of
>investigator who has no idea about the Fog thing, but thinks he's onto
>something hinky in re her, like those people who hunt vampires
>and other long-lived paranormals in various modern-urban-fantasy
>settings. You know the kind of thing - both parties outwardly
>cordial, but the whole conversation seethes with barely veiled
>intimidation and menace, as one party tries to get across the "I'm
>Watching You, and One Day You're Gonna Get What's Coming To You"
>message and the other counters with the "You Have No Idea What the
>Fuck You're Messing With" message without either of them coming right
>out and saying so.

As someone who occasionally plays WoD games and reads urban fantasy (though I'm finding it's really hard to find GOOD urban fantasy) this is definitely a very familiar conversation. =)

>
>Only in this one, part of the vampire hunter's schtick is roaming
>aimlessly around the living room, picking up various nicknacks and
>looking at/fiddling with them while he's talking, one of which is the
>extremely detailed model of a Kongō-class battleship that
>was on the shelf above the TV. It's slightly eerie. Heavier than it
>looks, and if he didn't know better, he'd swear the gun turrets were
>tracking him.

>
>--G.
>"That is not a toy."

"...Is that paint or are these weird hull markings actually glowing?"

--------

this world created by the
hands of the gods
everything is false
everything is a LIE
the final days have come
now
let everything be destroyed

--mu

>I refer you to the most preposterous canonical Transformer of all
>time, Broadside: a Triple Changer whose two altmodes are a) a weird
>jet fighter and b) a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.
>I am not making that up.

Add to that the ridiculousness of a carrier named Broadside. The Nimitz class only has point defense weapons.

Polychrome

Maybe if it was a Kiev. Maybe.

>To me, the neat thing about leaving them where they were (so to speak)
>is that a lot of people in the 25th century, in particular, aren't
>accustomed to thinking of planets' oceans, unless they're fishermen or
>in the bulk surface shipping business. For ordinary people, outer
>space has kind of taken over that mental pigeonhole, as the thing you
>have to cross to get from place to place - everything's sort of
>psychologically scaled up in an era of commonplace interstellar
>travel. So for a Mysterious Alien(?) Threat to have appeared that
>treated them as a priority - well, it's just weird. Like the
>submarine UFOs in X-COM: Terror from the Deep, or the kaiju in
>Pacific Rim coming from the sea. Nobody expects that, and the
>effect is exaggerated in a routine-spaceflight sci-fi setting.

The X-COM reference now makes me wonder if the UF X-COM Initiative (assuming it existed) had any greater luck against the Fog than the WDF did. And if so, what happened to the records?

Brian

>The X-COM reference now makes me wonder if the UF X-COM Initiative
>(assuming it existed) had any greater luck against the Fog than the
>WDF did.

That's a little like wondering whether the FBI's computer crimes unit ever made any significant strides toward reducing car bombings. It's kind of... not their field. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

"No, Congressman, X-COM covers *extraterrestrial* threats. These 'Fog' ships are *interterrestrial*, and hence, not our problem. Besides, sending light infantry to take down a robotic superweapon battleship is, in fact, the dictionary definition of 'futility'."

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>"No, Congressman, X-COM covers *extraterrestrial* threats. These 'Fog'
>ships are *interterrestrial*, and hence, not our problem. Besides,
>sending light infantry to take down a robotic superweapon battleship
>is, in fact, the dictionary definition of 'futility'."

On the other hand, it just occurred to me that boy was X-COM's job easy during that 20-year period when the Fog shot down everything that tried to land on the surface of the Earth.

Including the Greys.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I have this picture of the XCOM team turning soft. There's ocean splashdowns with no recovery possible and crashes on land with no survivors. Pity the gravity cannons leave so little salvage.

--------

this world created by the
hands of the gods
everything is false
everything is a LIE
the final days have come
now
let everything be destroyed

--mu

Bah, you know Dr Valen would have been begging for the Commander to capture a live specimen. :)

Brian

>Bah, you know Dr Valen would have been begging for the Commander to
>capture a live specimen. :)

"And just how do you plan to interrogate a battleship, Doctor?"

LAST EDITED ON Sep-10-14 AT 11:34 AM (EDT)
 
>>Bah, you know Dr Valen would have been begging for the Commander to
>>capture a live specimen. :)
>
>"And just how do you plan to interrogate a battleship, Doctor?"

I was going to say, live specimen of what? I'm sure at some point, either X-COM (if it existed back then) or some badass commando outfit got a team aboard a Fog ship and discovered to their dismay that there was nobody on board, and that the ship itself didn't appear to give a shit that they were there. It just kept shelling Vladivostok or Darwin or Puerto Vallarta or wherever until they gave up trying to find stuff on board they could break with their tiny weapons and left. :)

(That will have led directly to the "Hey, Let's Smuggle a Nuke Aboard One of These Things" plan, which... didn't work out.)

That said, I like the image of a battered and disheveled Dr. Vahlen standing by the jagged hole in the base that's where Alien Containment used to be (think of the bit of Yucca Mountain where they kept the other MUTO in Godzilla 2014), reporting to Bradford that as far as she could tell from the psychomonitors before they were destroyed, the captured X-ray Victor ("extraterrestrial vessel") seemed to believe that the entire process of destroying half the base and escaping was some form of carnival.

--G.
"Also, it spoke Japanese, which I suppose is not that surprising given that it was an Imperial Japanese Navy heavy cruiser."
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

One wonders what Dr. Shen thought of that whole scenario, all things considered.

My money's on prolonged gibbering and a lengthy stay in a room with very soft walls.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

>My money's on prolonged gibbering and a lengthy stay in a room with
>very soft walls.

Are you kidding, Shen would have a hard-on 65 feet long for Fog technology. No weird transhuman-posthuman bullshit, no paraethical dilemmas about body mods to the troops, just badass energy armor and missiles that disintegrate time. It's his dream job.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>One wonders what Dr. Shen thought of that whole scenario, all things
>considered.

Probably a lot of yelling about the damage Dr. Vahlen's latest hare-brained scheme had caused to the base...before conceding that they had obtained some useful data about the weapons used and the nanomaterial the ship was made from, with proposals on how to incorporate "lessons learned" into weapons and armor for the X-COM operatives.

>>One wonders what Dr. Shen thought of that whole scenario, all things
>>considered.
>
>Probably a lot of yelling about the damage Dr. Vahlen's latest
>hare-brained scheme had caused to the base...before conceding that
>they had obtained some useful data about the weapons used and the
>nanomaterial the ship was made from, with proposals on how to
>incorporate "lessons learned" into weapons and armor for the X-COM
>operatives.

Really, what WOULD be the difference between Grey Goo and Meld? They're both pretty much homogenous nanomolecular stuff that can be used to build complex objects.

--------

this world created by the
hands of the gods
everything is false
everything is a LIE
the final days have come
now
let everything be destroyed

--mu

>Really, what WOULD be the difference between Grey Goo and Meld?
>They're both pretty much homogenous nanomolecular stuff that can be
>used to build complex objects.

The difference is the Fog aren't nearly as stingy with their nanogruel (Cream O' Fleet?) as the Grays are.

What? Me, bitter about watching Meld canisters explode next to the corpses of newbie Assaults spawned solely for the purpose of fetching them? Never.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>Really, what WOULD be the difference between Grey Goo and Meld?
>They're both pretty much homogenous nanomolecular stuff that can be
>used to build complex objects.

Fog nanomaterial doesn't seem to be grey or goo; at least when it's deactivated, it appears to take the form of silver sand. (And it apparently can't be reinitialized once that happens; Haruna and Kirishima ended up strewn all over that beach, and they couldn't just go down there and build a sand battleship.) It's also not of immediately evident utility as a body mod medium for biological lifeforms... fortunately. Ew.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Now I'm wondering what the Flying Dutchman really was in UF.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

>Now I'm wondering what the Flying Dutchman really was in UF.

I'm more interested in where the USS Eldridge is in all of this, 'cos I'm about 60% sure it's if not the cause then at least connected in some fashion.

On another note, reading about the Fog makes me marvel at the tenacity (or foolishness, whichever you prefer) of Earthmen in general. All the shit Earth goes through, you'd think people would just abandon planet, drop quarantine markers in orbit ("WARNING: THIS PLANET IS THE SANDBOX OF A MAD GOD") and find a nice new M-class world somewhere to call Earth 2.

--
Mr. Fnord

>On another note, reading about the Fog makes me marvel at the tenacity
>(or foolishness, whichever you prefer) of Earthmen in general. All the
>shit Earth goes through, you'd think people would just abandon planet,
>drop quarantine markers in orbit ("WARNING: THIS PLANET IS THE SANDBOX
>OF A MAD GOD") and find a nice new M-class world somewhere to call
>Earth 2.

I've often thought that about the Earths of the Doctor Who and Marvel Comics universes, both of which contain as an explicit conceit the "a disproportionate amount of crazy shit happens to this planet for no reason anybody can figure" thing.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Earth: you don't have to be mad to live there, but it helps. =]

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

That reminds me of a panel in a DC comic I can't seem to find where aliens are planning on invading Earth and one is briefing the other. Their conversation roughly goes like this.

"Wait, is that a Kryptonian?"

"It gets better. Green Lanterns. Plural."

"We're going to have to do this very carefully."

"Or we could just leave."

------
Oh God, it was me. I was the grognard all along.

>"Wait, is that a Kryptonian?"
>
>"It gets better. Green Lanterns. Plural."
>
>"We're going to have to do this very carefully."
>
>"Or we could just leave."

Pretty sure that came from the John Rogers BLUE BEETLE run. Issue #13, IIRC.

>
>
>Even today, Earth governments' defense policies are partially informed
>by the lingering fear that the Fog may return.

This may also explain some of Earth's distain for the WDF.

>>Even today, Earth governments' defense policies are partially informed
>>by the lingering fear that the Fog may return.
>
>This may also explain some of Earth's distain for the WDF.

Mm, official Earth's relationship with the WDF has always been a bit... awkward, partly because the first and second things the WDF's founders did on the world stage was destroy Worcester. That kind of thing will tend to color conversations for quite a while afterward.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Mm, official Earth's relationship with the WDF has always been a
>bit... awkward, partly because the first and second things the
>WDF's founders did on the world stage was destroy Worcester. That
>kind of thing will tend to color conversations for quite a while
>afterward.

If only they'd have destroyed Detroit instead, they'd have gotten an award for helping with urban renewal, instead.

At least in the manga, Fog ships can easily break down their components into nanomaterials and use them for repairs (and even salvage destroyed bits into same). The only really essential part of the ship is the system core (which is kept in the mental model, usually).

A Kongou class ship may be hard to smuggle off Earth intact, but not so much when it's 27,000 odd tons of powder consisting of base elements that can fit in a bulk cargo ship.

>A Kongou class ship may be hard to smuggle off Earth intact, but not
>so much when it's 27,000 odd tons of powder consisting of base
>elements that can fit in a bulk cargo ship.

"Vyvyan! Where did you get that battleship?!"

"Found it!"

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Can't believe it didn't occur to me til now to ask, but did The Doctor try to intervene or make sense of the Fog? Or had he sort of decided, post-Contact, that Earth was already past the point where he needed to protect them from everything from the stars that creeped and crawled?

LAST EDITED ON Oct-03-14 AT 08:10 PM (EDT)
 
>Can't believe it didn't occur to me til now to ask, but did The Doctor
>try to intervene or make sense of the Fog?

Well, if he did, he didn't file a report. Which is not that surprising, really. You have to beat that guy with a stick to get any meaningful after-action documentation out of him.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Well, if he did, he didn't file a report. Which is not that
>surprising, really. You have to beat that guy with a stick to get any
>meaningful after-action documentation out of him.

Or UNIT just misplaced it. Government bureaucracy at its finest.

>Or UNIT just misplaced it. Government bureaucracy at its finest.

Sadly, the security cover for UNIT's archives is an obscure section of the BBC files.

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

>Sadly, the security cover for UNIT's archives is an obscure section of
>the BBC files.

Next to the missing episodes of Professor Enigma.