Arrrrgh! I though the Ooniverse would have forgotten that dark moment of my history. Very well, allow me to elaborate.........Disembodied wrote:Hum. Well... there are so many stories out there... but I for one would like to hear Captain Hesperus tell us the tale of how, using a parking meter and a cannister of luxury goods, he started a religion on a low-tech planet, and how he managed to escape the consequences of his actions...
"As it happened, I was engaged in a 'lying low' operation after one of my schemes back-fired rather spectacularly on Onrira which involved forty desolate asteroids, mining rights and over a million tonnes of high grade Radioactives. I had sold claims to independant asteroid miners for what I had thought were utterly barren asteroids, making what I thought was a pretty neat bundle. It was only when each and every miner managed to strike high grade uranium with their very first borehole that the kitty litter hit the air circulation unit. At that point, the event came to the attention of the GalCop Inspectorate for Extra-planetary Ore Exploitation, especially the fact that the claims were not registered with them, so essentially those asteroids which were worth their weight in platinum were officially the property of GalCop. Since the miners were now more or less destitute, they came looking for me with the great idea of inserting a mining laser in one of my orifices and seeing how long it would take for my body mass to entirely vapourise. It wasn't like I could refund their money either, since the profits of my scam had been entirely seized by the Ore Exploitation Inspectors for selling falsified claims! Bereft of their money, and indeed unable to find yours truely after another successful escape from the local system, they took out hefty loans from the Black Monks and put a bounty on my perfectly formed head.
I was informed of this disturbing turn of events by Rus, while we were docked on Onrira High 3. I'd had to stay docked because I had to find someway of making up some of the money I'd lost so I could pay the mutinous rabble that passed for a crew on the ol' 'Dubious Profit'. This information he'd gained while on GalNet Hyperchat with one of his Lizard friends, who also happened to be a Bounty-hunter and was trying to get the dope on where I was bound next. This meant that all current plans for profit recovery were now out of the window and it was time to go to ground. My usual bolthole was Begeabe, simply because one of the petty monarchs there granted me a duchy in exchange for a million candela flashlight. Although the patch of land that I owned was a rocky, weedy expanse, it was all mine and it was so far out of the usual spacelanes, it was perfect for disappearances.
The best news came as D'vlin wandered back to the ship. He told me that he'd been approached in the spacer's bar by a human in a whiptail coat and a black hat. The human had asked where he was shipping out to next and where his ultimate destination was. D'vlin, being well-known through all Eight Charts as having no connection between his brain and his big mouth went and gave the human our full itinerary, from breaking dock on Onrira to touching down on Begeabe. A glance over to the dock's entrance showed that human in his big old coat waving cheerfully at me and making 'cut-throat' gestures.
At this point, I think I beat D'vlin repeatedly with the maintenance droid who was attempting to offer me a full service for the 'Profit'.
We had to leave. Immediately. I bundled the crew aboard and started to break from dock, telling the Outbound Traffic Control that my main drive was suffering a cascade meltdown and was only minutes from exploding and flooding the docking bay with lethal doses of radiation. This got me a priority launch position in the queue. As I attempted to turn the 'Profit' on the launch pad and take off, I heard a massive crash and felt the ship judder briefly. The sound of the Fuel Scoop working told me that Stepan had forgotten to close the damn thing again and we'd obviously broken something.
After leaving the station, I set the navi-comp to Oresqu, the next planet within jump range in the direction of Begeabi. I knew it was suicide to go all the way there, but at least I could try to shake off that Bounty-hunter and any of his friends. As the computer went about 'waving the chicken in the air', I checked the manifest to how much of my bought and paid-for cargo had been loaded. I sobbed to see only 1 Tonne of Luxury goods had been along with '1 Tonne of Unidentified Machinery'.
I had little time to investigate as I arrived at Oresqu and, rather than heading for Leesti and all systems Galactic North, I set the navi-comp to Larais. After dodging some pirates and scooping some 'sun-juice' it was straight to Teaatis. Dammit, but that Bounth-hunter must have slipped a tracer on D'vlin, cos the minute we jumped in-system, his Ferdy was all over the poor old 'Profit'. Through luck, skill, use of both of the Hardheads I had loaded and Rus' supernatural ability at keeping the shields maintained, we made it to close planetary orbit. It was only an unfortunate hit that knocked the engines out and forced me to ditch on the planet itself.
To add insult to injury, the 'Dubious Profit' sustained no damage on landing other than destroying the recently-repaired Docking Computers! We clambered out of the 'Profit's smoking hull to be confronted by a squadron of armed and armoured men on horses. They said very little, but the fact that they were using their sharp, pointy weapons to direct my crew and myself onto a nearby ox-cart spoke louder than any words I knew. We spent four hours being jolted around in the back of that cart until we arrived within sight and smell of the local capital. We were driven straight to what passed as the captial's palace and we were ushered into what I assumed to be the audience room of whatever petty potentiate ruled this place. After a half hour wait, during which we were offered a foul-smelling, but potent vicious brew, the monarch slouched into the room, followed by a flourish that was less fanfare and more a collection of flatulent killer mountain Esbionoids. The look on the human's face was one of either great distress or chronic constipation. The cause of this distressing expression he explained, almost immediately after he slumped into the lump of carved wood he called a throne.
"Greetings, aliens.", he said in a voice that was as much a nasal whine as it was a regal tone, "I am King Rhinitis the forty-second, ruler of Dalosin, Emperor of the mountains of Yod and Conqueror of the Far Western Peninsula. You are guilty of invading the sovereign realm of Dalosin and you shall be tortured and publicly executed forthwith."
The sound of Stepan whimpering and blubbering almost drowned out what the man had to say next.
"However,", he said, between Stepan's cries of 'Mummy', "This sentence shall be commuted and possibly even pardoned if you perform one simple task."
Now, my father always said there's no such thing as a simple task when your own life is at stake, and this seemed to be just the situation he was talking about. I was about to ask what this 'simple task' was when Stepan and D'vlin, who had been frozen with shock after Rhinitis' first speech, both screamed, "We'll do anything!"
"So glad to hear it,", Rhinitis replied and went on, "I have ruled here for ten years and never once has my benevolent rule been opposed. I have oppressed the serfs, imposed heavy taxes on the merchants and waged wars of acquisition against those most peaceable of realms that border my own."
I had trouble reconciling these two comments.
"However, recently I have had nothing but trouble from a band of barbarous ruffians who came down from the mountains and started killing my soldiers, burning my fields and stealing my taxes. They claim to be liberators and that I am a tyrant. A tyrant! Even though the statue in the town square clearly says 'King Rhinitis the forty-second'. I want you to bring these upstarts to heel and swiftly."
Being a newcomer, I had no knowledge of the barbarians, so I started asking questions around the royal court. Apparently the barbarians followed a war god call 'Ooyookallinphat', whose first and most binding commandment was to oppose any rulers. The war god was also noted as not being very benevolent, the stories surrounding him being mostly about how great barbarian heroes would fight for their god's favour only to be ignored and allowed to perish. This, I decided, would be where I would attack, so to speak. If I could supplant their god with another, I could change their belief system and make them, if not peaceful, at least no longer a problem for the king. This would get me and the rest of the 'Profit' crew in the king's good books and we might be able to escape.
With a new 'bodyguard' of soldiers, we returned to the 'Dubious Profit' and I scoured the ship, looking for anything that could be used to create a new religion. Only when I was fingertip-searching the Cargo Bay did I find what we hit leaving Onrira High 3. It was one of those nasty little docking meters that most Corporate Systems have started installing on their space stations to increase their incomes. The idea is that when you dock, you pay the machine a fee for each hour you remain docked. If you intend to remain over several days, there's a set rate per day. In the interests of free trade, the machine can accept commodities other than Credits from the pilot's Credit Card. This it does using a high precision scanner and a matter disintegrator coupled with a data transmission node that sent the disintegrated matter to a central reprocessing station within the station's trading centre. The scanner detects the component atoms and molecules of whatever matter has been placed underneath it, runs the data through it's processors and devises a basic value for the matter. If this meets the value of the docking fee, the disintegrator fires and reduces the item to it's components. This is then transmitted to the central unit which reproduces the matter from the data and places it into the station's market stock. Looking from the meter to the solitary container of luxury goods, a plan formed in my mind. If I could reverse the effect of the disintegrator and combine one of the ships' waste matter reprocessors with the meter, I could create a machine that could draw matter from its surroundings and create objects using data stored in it's processors previously taken by the scanner. The contents of the cargo container would give me a wealth of items with which my spurious, but benevolent, new god would shower his new believers.
It took two days, a cubic gallon of synthetic coffee and almost a mile of insulation tape to wire together the waste matter reprocessor from Stepan's quarters (he never used it anyway!), the docking meter and a small atomic power source taken from the backup power generation system. It looked pretty ropey, but after sticking some spare decking plates around it, it looked like a fair to middling shrine-cum-altar to the new god 'Jewbeusprophet'. With this done, I scanned and disintegrated the contents of my one cargo container and had the meter loaded onto a cart. This done, D'vlin and myself went into the mountain regions, while Rus, the Lobsters, Juanita (it was a weekend) and Stepan stayed behind to try and make the 'Profit' space-worthy.
It was only a matter of days before we were confronted by a scouting party of barbarians. It wasn't hard to detect them. My feline sense of smell and D'vlin's sensitivity to vibration made their approach as obvious as if they had been lead by a marching band. Having never encountered a Furry Feline from Orrira or a Harmless Furry Insect from Riredi, they were naturally cautious and a bit fearful, even though they fired a massed volley of arrows at us. Fortunately, we managed to get behind our cart and I was able to make them understand that I wanted to be taken to whoever lead them. This I was able to do by screaming, "Don't kill me! I come in peace, take me to your leader!"
A few days later, we arrived at would I could only describe as a fortess, high in the mountains. It was only approachable from one side, along a ridge that was barely wide enough for our cart and all around it the cliffs fell almost vertically straight into the valleys more than a mile below. We were swiftly ushered into the main courtyard of the fortress and a hugely muscled and bearded man confronted us, He was called Falcas and he claimed to be the true ruler of the land that Rhinitis had called Dalosin. I introduced myself as Surepseh, Grand High Poobah of the Cult of Jewbeusprophet and that I had come to offer the followers of Ooyookallinphat the chance to follow a god who would reward them for their prayers and devotions. At this point, as we had planned, D'vlin fell down on his many knees and began chanting, "Oh my god, Eye yam zogon nadiifdis gozrong."
As he did this, I pressed the concealed power switch that activated the meter and it duly reintegrated a gold lamé dinner jacket. The effect was truely mind-boggling. If I hadn't built the damn thing myself, I'd have probably converted to the faith myself. Almost all of the barbarians fell to their knees and followed the chant that D'vlin lead them in
"Oh my God, iyam sutcham oronicnub. Ifeyeyeva findoot thizizask ameyeal qillya."
The 'true king' invited me into his home and over a sumptuous meal of various meats, jugs of delicious cream and a tankard or two of vicious brew, I set about converting him to my 'faith'. He was a bit shocked when I told him he had to stop fighting Rhinitis' armies, but I told him that if ever the 'altar' which I had agreed to leave with him stopped producing gifts he was to attack Rhinitis' city and not stop until every building was burnt to the ground and everyone loyal to Rhinitis was dead. He seemed pleased by this and after the feast he had the 'altar' set up in the grand hall of his castle.
The next day, not wanting to overstay my welcome, I lead the barbarians in their first mass. It went perfectly, the meter creating a beautiful pair of boots made from Beenriian mountain A'oid leather that surprisingly fitted the barbarian's leader perfectly. Maybe there's more to this religion than I had believed possible. When the mass ended, I set the meter's timer to a twenty-four hour delay between reintegrations and told the barbarians that they must pray at the 'altar' every day at exactly the same time. This would mean that the 'altar' would keep producing Luxury goods for about two weeks. This done, D'vlin and I left their fortress and fled back to the king's city. When we arrived however, we were in for a shock. The minute we entered the throne room we were arrested and thrown into the diungeons where we found Rus and the others. Rus told us that the day we went into the mountains, the king arrested them and tossed them into cells. He'd told them that he had no intention of letting us go free and would execute us all in exactly a week. We spent those days desperately trying to find some way, any way, of escaping but to no avail. The guards were apparently too scared of the king to accept bribes, the walls of the cells were solid stone and there wasn't any secret tunnels.
Well, the fateful day arrived and we were lead out into the main square of the town. In the square, quite apart from hundreds of onlookers, stood a number of ghastly looking torture devices. I won't sicken you with the gruesome methods by which Rhinitis had devised our collective demises, but let me say that it would take years of therapy, strong medication and possibly a touch of hex-editing and neural re-mapping to truely forget them. We had a moment to make our peace with whatever gods we had and bid each other goodbye, before we were bullied each to his own torture device. As I was strapped into my machine, I said a short prayer, "If Giles the Creator, or indeed any of the gods, is listening, I really wish you would give me a break. Hell, I'll even pray to Jewbeusprophet, if it'd help."
Even as I said the name of my spuriously created god, a thick plume of black smoke rose from the far end of town and I could hear a chant echoing on the breeze
"Oh my god, Eye yam zogon nadiifdis gozrong."
Guards from the town began to run into the town square, blackened by smoke and spattered with blood. From their terrified screams, it appeared that the barbarians were attacking in force and had already overrun the southern side of the town. Rhinitis' face was a pasty white and he stood frozen in fear, even as the first of the shrieking barbarians raced into the town square, hacking down soldiers and civilians alike. At that moment, Rus appeared beside me. He'd managed to knock out his guards while they were distracted by the ensuing chaos in the square and had freed the rest of the crew. He cut me loose and we fled the burning town with a horde of civilians, stealing horses on our way out. Three and a half hours later, we were safely aboard the 'Profit' and had made her space-ready. I took the old bird on a slow circuit over Rhinitis' city and used the downward looking camera to take a picture of the town square. When the image came up and I zoomed in, it showed ol' Rhinitis strapped into one of the torture devices with Falcas cheerfully turning the screws.
