Mossfoot's Tales of Woe...

[spud42]

well done Mossfoot..... this is just getting better and better. havent had a lot of time to trade/fly recently so my 1.80 commander still is after his first kill..

just wish i had enough skill/talent to join in with the fun....

[Redspear]

(so the above is based on this neat little tweak Redspear made to the Neolite ships: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f= ... 60#p221359

Fame at last

That's one of the nice things about these boards: you can throw an idea out there and there's a good chance someone will pick it up and run with it.

Nice one mossfoot, and I like your idea of writing about game changes as history ...and thanks to Simon B for his inspiring design work of course.
The Neolites weren't his first redesigns either: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f= ... hilit=waka (sorry, not much in the way of pictures there , this has an update for one of them: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f= ... hilit=waka)

In any case, keep up the writing

[mossfoot]

I'm actually going to be reposting these on my personal blog, along with pictures scoured from the interwebz to go along with it, one a day. Hopefully it'll attract some new fans over here (or at least to get the game!)

[Zireael]

Mossfoot, I cried with laughter many times when reading it.

Not to mention the future is here, as you can enter apostrophes now in trunk, I believe.

[mossfoot]

I only use the official releases, but look forward to the bug fixes release

[mossfoot]

"Reow?"

Mossfoots Burden was getting some maintenance done and I didn't feel like spending my credits at this station's overpriced bar. Truth be told, since 4004, I'd been drinking less. Sure I might put a little something extra in my tea dispenser, but I hadn't had an evening that started with a blackout and ended with waking up in strange clothes with stranger women in weeks.

It wasn't because of some life-altering revelation or a need to change my life. It just felt like 4004 was the beginning of something, not the end, and I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. When it did I wanted to be sober enough to hit the fuel injectors and high tail it to whatever system was safest.

So I was hanging out in the docking bay, reading over some stuff in the ship's library, when I see this black cat sitting by my cargo ramp. It wasn't the first time I'd seen the little fleabag hanging around my ship. Pretty much every time I came to this system it was waiting there. Probably expecting me to offload a ton of Friskiers and hoping to grab a tin. Too bad you don't have opposable thumbs to use a can opener, fleabag.

"Reow?"

I looked away from the Neolite ship catalog I'd been perusing to look at the rear loading camera again. It was still there. What the hell was it waiting for? What was it looking at? Directly at the camera? Well that's a bit unnerving. I checked around the bay. The repair crew hadn't come back yet for final details and nobody seemed to be paying attention.

I turned the hydraulics off on my rear cargo door, then let it drop like a ton of bricks in front of the cat--CLANG! That scared the bugger off right quick. Ah, the things one does to get a chuckle, I thought as I turned the hydraulics back on and raised the door again. I saw it by some cargo containers in the back, peeking its head out to see if it was safe to come out.

I went back to my catalog. Dang, I know it would keep me from getting a ship I could actually do some decent trading in that much longer, but I was really liking how the Hobby looked. And that extra energy could go a long way in a fight. But the smart thing would be to save up for a Cobra at the very least. Really all I wanted was out of this rusty Add...er...

Why was the cat sitting on my ship's windshield staring straight at me? That's... unnerving.

Okay, its tail wasn't swishing around, so it wasn't angry. But its eyes were locked on mine so it was clearly the spawn of the devil. No cat can be smart enough to figure out that I was the one that half-heartedly tried to splat it on the floor of a space station.

My thoughts went back to one drunkened black out night months ago and who I woke up with. "Look, kid, tell your mom that cross species breeding is impossible without a heavy dose of genetic modification, so I can't possibly be your dad."

No, that was stupid. This was just a plain black earth cat, not some young kitten phase of a humanoid cat species. You found earth cats everywhere these days, it seemed.

Still... the way it was looking at me. I swear it cocked one eyebrow... as if it had eyebrows. As if it was letting me know that it knew what I did, and was not impressed.

I turned on the engine and test fired the fuel injector, just enough to make the whole ship shake and vibrate in the restraints, making the cat bolt once again and run back to the crates.

If that didn't work, the front of my ship had a hell of a laser pointer that it could chase. Once.

[Neelix]

If that didn't work, the front of my ship had a hell of a laser pointer that it could chase. Once.

- Neelix

[mossfoot]

"Reow?"

An old Earth ditty was stuck in my head and I couldn't get it out. Something about a cat coming back. I understand it ends well for the soul troubled by the feline.

Honestly, if I wasn't making such a killing on this milk run between systems, praying for the day I can buy a new Hobby or maybe something with more than tinfoil for armor, I'd be avoiding this station altogether. I think it knows that.

Today he's sitting on the roof of Mossfoots Burden, occasionally making his presence known, and is now more or less immune to the rumbling of my ship when I test the trusters trying to shake him off. Hell, I think it put him to sleep last time.

I asked the dock workers about the cat but they all shrugged as if they'd never seen it before in their life, that I was making it up or something. When pointing at the cat didn't work I went over, picked it up by the scruff of the neck, and dangled it in front of them. They just shrugged and said strays happen.

"You wants I should incinerate it?" one asked. "I only ask because some types gets all uppity if we talk about solving the problem that way."

I looked at the dangling black bag of fur held in my hand. He wasn't facing me at all. He just hung limp like a bag of trash. Maybe he expected me to dump him down the incinerator shoot after all. Maybe that's what he'd come to expect from life.

Ah crap.

"No... never mind. Leave him be. I guess he's not really bothering me." The workers walked off and I called after the loudmouth in particular. "Don't toss him in the incinerator, you got that? Leave him be."

I set the cat down. He walked off as if saying, "Don't do me any favors." Actually it was more like a strut. Huh. Strays happen indeed.

"Just stay off my ship, you stupid fleabag."

[mossfoot]

The politics of the universe are strange and varied. You not only have entirely different worlds to deal with, each with different cultures, but completely different species as well.

Thing is, with humans, we have this need to pigeonhole everything. Make things nice and neat. So when we call a particular alien bird-like, that's only because they have things that resemble feathers - even if they're microcapillary cooling apparatus that carries their water-thin blood to the surface in order keep their internal organs which are always a degree away from boiling reasonably cool.

Yeah, let's just call them birds. They look like a bird. If a five year old drew it. Next!

Same thing goes for politics. Megadodo Publications, for example, used to put out a travel guide you might have heard of, and not wanting to be bogged down by things like accuracy, decided to lump the governments of the various planets into nice and neat and completely inaccurate categories. Corporate State, Democracy, Confederacy, Communist, Dictatorship, Multigovernment, Feudal, and Anarchy. These became so popular that all guides took them on, and galactic maps use them as a shorthand for pilots to reference.

As general indicators of stability, they are okay, but consider the range of species and cultures I mentioned before and tell me if you think two Communist states are the same?

Actually, it turns out, closer than you think. Since all nav systems started using these for reference, and have for well over a hundred years now, you've had the strangest cases of conformity I think the galaxy has ever seen. Alien worlds classified as "Feudal" for example, looked to the ancient Earth culture to understand what these hairless apes were talking about. And they found that they liked what they saw.

Now you find these places adopting their own variations of titles like "Lord" or "Baron" (often with strange misspellings), arranging for duels and jousts (in hundred ton spaceships with frickin laser beams) and organizing "hunting lodges" where six legged reptilians can admire their collection of enemy heads (sometimes human), while smoking a pipe filled with Megaweed and saying things like "pip pip" for no discernable reason.

If these worlds weren't so dangerous they'd be amusing.

Same goes for Communism. You'd think that they'd take one look at how that worked out on Earth and decide to either go to war with us for the insult, or get their act together and try something with less oppression. But nope. They start putting up posters celebrating the glorious worker, go all minimalist and "efficient" in their ship and station design (other than what GalCop imposes for intergalactic trade purposes) and start hitting the vodka heavily.

Okay, so the last bit I can get behind, but the rest? I mean, most even use the hammer and sickle logo or red star.

And 4004 didn't help matters. They only got more paranoid and secluded and isolationist, not to mention adding on heaps and heaps of extra paperwork.

I go to a penal colony hoping to offload some alcohol (which should be no problem whatsoever) only to be put into a queue. Fifth in line. No big deal. Only ten minutes later I'm STILL fifth in line.

I look around at the other ships and there are one, two, there, yep, four prison transports all floating outside, engines off.

"What's the problem?" I ask mission control. "Why is nobody moving?"

And I swear to God for some reason these people, no matter how many arms or scales they have, insist on creating their own messed up versions of Russian accents. "Prison transport at docking position one require clearance papers to be delivered to dock."

"Fine. Don't they have it?"

"They have, yes, but papers must be delivered before clearance can be granted."

Oh God, I saw this in a bad sitcom once, I think. "And they can't deliver them because they don't have clearance."

"Exactly. We are asking for permission to have special exception made, which has been delivered on priority prison transport to allow this unfortunate matter to be cleared up."

"And let me guess, that's ship number two. Only you can't give them clearance to land to deliver the paperwork because the first prison ship is ahead of it in the queue."

"Errrr... yes. We cannot let any ship jump the queue without special permission, which this ship sadly did not have. So that is where third ship comes in."

"And why can't it jump the queue?"

"Is funny story..."

"So not laughing. You know what, I'm taking this booze to the main station. And if they give me any problems, I'm drinking it myself."

I kicked the ship around and flew off, and at the main station I didn't have much better luck.

Here I was only second in line. But what was ahead of me...?

"Worker's Commuter 451, continue on vector. Acknowledge."

"Worker's Commuter 451, acknowledging."

This was the fifth time I'd heard this exact same exchange. A Worker's Commuter is a like a brick, only a brick is slightly more esthetically pleasing and much much faster. I've been inside one once. It's like riding the most depressing subway in history on the same day your wife died and your dog blew up.

I'd been watching this thing drift towards the station for over ten minutes, like God had taken decided to be a postman for a day, was delivering His first letter, but took a moon-sized Valium beforehand.

And boring as this was, I was amazed that I was able to notice the inherent problem that was before me.

"Um... mission control, this is Mossfoots Burden. I think you have a problem with your current docking flight plan."

"Mossfoots Burden, all procedures are being observed. Please be advised you will be contacted as soon as it is your turn to dock. Acknowledge."

"Yeah, but--"

"Acknowledge."

"Mossfoots Burden, acknowledging. But--"

My comm signal got cut and I had just about enough time to face palm before the fireworks started. The Worker's Commuter has a very specific design shape, meant to slide into the docking bay like it was the aforementioned mailslot. Only both the pilot and the mission control had failed to note that this one was approaching it on the side, like putting a piece of bread in a toaster sideways. Nobody had set up a course correction and now...

Coriolis Stations are tough cookies. It takes more than a ship splashing off it to mess up its day. And from the looks of all the pods flying off in every direction, one could only assume casualties were kept to a minimum. But without missing a beat the guy at mission control contacts my ship.

"Mossfoots Burden, you are cleared for landing. Acknowledge."

Communist efficiency at its best, folks. No wonder they drink so much.

[vsfc]

Hi Commanders,

I feel like joining the fans of Mossfoot's stories. Especially want to relate to story about crazy miner. I had a good laugh reading it, because a couple of months ago I started new commander as a miner on mining transporter and spent lots of hours in one system going from rock hermits and mining asteroids until had enough credits to get Eagle Long Range Fighter. Now I am mainly hunter and spend lots of time in Thargoid homeworld shooting green bugs. In the last jump, I had 48 kills giving almost 4K of credits. In that space I scooped Thargoid witchspace drive and yet do not have it fitted properly, but already being taking for Thargoid by fighters from Jaguar Company (Had to shoot down a few, and then scooped them up and got thanks for saving them in the news ).

I tried to start my own line of story for my Commander, but find these stories very boring in comparison to pro writers. Anyway, keep it coming, may be our lines will cross again!

Cheers,
vsfc

[spud42]

i literally laughed out loud on this one... this is going in the signature!!!!!

If that didn't work, the front of my ship had a hell of a laser pointer that it could chase. Once.

[mossfoot]

"Reow?"

The cat had taken to sitting on top of a pile of cargo containers and watching me like some kind of lighthouse, its eyes reflecting light and concentrating it into a tight beam, no doubt trying to cut my ship in half.

I lowered the cargo ramp down and walked out onto it. I stared back at the black cat, arms crossed.

I have no idea where it came from, but a tumbleweed rolled across the hanger bay between us.

My eyes narrowed.

The cat lazily blinked.

Cats are not dogs. They do not bond with people in the same way. If this cat was attracted to my ship, it was because the ship vibrated in just the right way, or it was the right temperature, or it smelled like fish and I'd been inside it so long I no longer even noticed.

Cats are self-centered, selfish, and frankly egotistical creatures that don't think past their immediate concerns. Whatever its reason were for hanging around my ship, I was certain it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with itself.

I reached into my jacket and pulled out a bag of cat treats, shaking it loud enough for the stray to hear.

"Come on, fleabag, get in."

[Cmdr Wyvern]

Cats are self-centered, selfish, and frankly egotistical creatures that don't think past their immediate concerns.

This is certainly true of the common domesticated housecat. Although just how "domesticated" they are is questionable at best. As a friend put it, "You don't own a cat. The cat owns you!" Are they feline Soviets or what?

Anyway, may Fleabag earn his keep by keeping trumbles at bay.

[Bugbear]

Well if I may be permitted to start a derailment on the topic of cat quotations, let me just add: Cats were once revered as gods by the ancient Egyptians, and they've never forgotten that fact.

Disclaimer: I have two cats, one hates the other and has consequently sequestered herself in the spare bedroom...there's a long story there but it will have to wait for another time...

[spud42]

Well if I may be permitted to start a derailment on the topic of cat quotations, let me just add: Cats were once revered as gods by the ancient Egyptians, and they've never forgotten that fact.

Disclaimer: I have two cats, one hates the other and has consequently sequestered herself in the spare bedroom...there's a long story there but it will have to wait for another time...

I have only one Master titled Zac, the other Master ,Marvin passed on earlier this year. I have served them faithfully for 14 odd years and i am rewarded every so often with their presence on my lap or curled up on the bed or even my chest!!