Tuxedo-Templar
Warming Up
Posts: 13
Registered: 08-03 |
Zdoom-only.
Story-intensive.
Event timelines.
Character interactions.
Custom graphics, sprites, sounds, music (maybe), and of course, maps.
I could format those into paragraphs or advertise it properly, but you'll just have to see it before it can get any credibility. For now though, you can read the 3 page story I wrote up in a few hours. Tell me if you like it or not... I'm hoping my writing skills have improved at least a little by now (lol).
Now for a lil cut n' paste action (no attachments allowed... is that postcount based or what?)
Part I: The Story Thus Far...
It's been 13 years since the demon invasion of Earth. After the destruction of the demonic forces' leader during the final "Icon of Sin" mission, the demon forces quickly became unorganized and scattered, allowing the remainder of Earth's military to successfully eliminate their otherwise unstoppable numbers systematically.
All is not well, though. Despite the gateway on the Mars UAC base being disabled, and all the deep subterranean spawning vats on Earth and Mars either destroyed or permanently sealed, the damage has already been done. Earth's great cities and habitats have been destroyed. It's natural life, oceans, air, and even its very soil have been saturated with alien filth and rendered utterly infertile. Worldwide climates are beginning to cool drastically, indicating the onset of a nuclear winter predicted to last for several thousand years. The remaining human population; less than 1% of what it once was, exists in increasingly poor health. Only by the tiniest thread of what remains of advanced technology is there any hope even of survival, let alone recovery.
It seems the demons have won after all.
Scientists in the years after the invasion have learned 2 important things about the demons: Firstly, though the Gateway was enabled by the UAC scientists, the demons had long since been underway in their invasion... millions of years underway, it turns out. The Gateway itself was already active, but the necessary missing components to make it a two-way connection were only recently provided by the UAC's scientists, and thus the invasion began. Though it is nothing new to peoples' understanding that the invasion was allowed by accident (nevertheless, the UAC was needlessly disassembled to satisfy people's scapegoat needs), the knowledge of the invasion already being in progress elsewhere in the universe was an alarming discovery by itself.
Secondly, the "demons" themselves are now known to be in fact the products of an alien microscopic form of life designed to either coalesce into or subvert existing larger life forms. Though human immune systems can repel small amounts this organism, heavy and prolonged exposure will eventually diminish natural defenses and compromise an organism, allowing it to be infested and successfully subverted against its will (hence the reported "zombies" of the invasion).
Through extensive research on demonic artifacts, captive and field specimens' behavior and interactions, and even the multitudes of various almost-intelligently designed alien constructs, scientists have been able to devise a thourough understanding on the origins of the demons. The actual organisms that are now known as the source of the larger demon forms were themselves once part of a larger single ancient collosal being that, through forces unknown, was "divided" and scattered throughout the cosmos. Since its division, the smaller pieces that survived in deep space and eventually collected on numerous celestial bodies adapted to survive by reconstituting themselves on even the barest of material, and slowly continued to propagate throughout the cosmos. Chance came, as it occasionally does, that it managed to propagate to a series of geologically and atmospherically stable planets in a distant star system, where it steadily began regenerating its once massive whole.
Unfortunately, the complete regeneration failed. Two of the main planets in the system, both of which acquired separate spores of the organism, began regenerating separately. In time, the two came in contact, but instead of merging back into their former whole, they remained divided. Inevitably, as resources and space for further growth of their tremendous, cancer-like masses became sparse, they came into conflict. At first they merely repelled one another's presence, but eventually they began actively seeking out and destroying one another. This conflict lasted many millennia, and through the ultra-adaptive designs of both, they converted from spreading by mass cellular replication to spreading through multi-cellular, specialized forms of steadily increasing complexity and utility.
Eventually, a winner emerged. A particular specialized form, known as the Omega strain, had adapted with the ability to undermine the very internal structures of any opposing organisms; not unlike a common disease. The introduction of this new strategy at first allowed one force to gain an overwhelming advantage over the other, but at a price. Both eventually adopted this new biological undermining strategy in their conflict, but neither had successfully adapted to adaquately control, counter, or even contain each other's infections, and it soon got out of hand. The strain started adapting its own specialized forms to assist in its process of spreading, subverting, and destroying, and eventually came under its own control. The gradual and violent breakdown of both entity's formerly seamless unity became inevitable, and only the strongest forms of either entity that were able to endure to the end.
In its final death throes, the remainder of both entities' forces evacuated what was left of their non-contaminated selves into deep space, where, interestingly enough, they “set aside their differences” and managed to remerg at another viable, distant location, but kept and refined much of their specialized adaptations for their future defense. The location of this merger, and its fate thereafter, remains unknown. Some believe it was soon overrun by the pursuing Omega strain. Others believe it still exists, even to this day, and that it is the last remaining pocket of order and unity against the ever-spreading infection of the Omega strain throughout the universe.
The force of the "demons", as we humans call them, are merely the more advanced specialized forms of the Omega strain itself, having adapted to utilize the various multitudes of human and terrestrial forms during the invasion... including even human technology (thus gaining them their "demonic" association). Over many millennia they have traversed the far reaches of the universe, occupying all inhabitable space and subverting and destroying all indigenous life to be found; even isolated pockets of those from its originator organism. Through its conquests it has acquired a veritable library of new forms and strategies to employ in its destructive strategies. In spite of the strain's ever-increasing efficiency, their ultimate progress was extremely slow, as movement beyond only a few hundred light years per millenia from their origin system was all but impossible. In time, necessity, the renown mother of all invention, granted the demons just what they needed to overcome this obstacle: wormholes.
Fortunately, there were yet three obstacles preventing them from utter dominance of known space. The first was the nature of the wormholes themselves. Wormholes, at least the long range ones, can only be created through cosmic events, like the collapse of a star or the collisions of galaxies and *******. Thus, their flexibility was limited, as well as their possible entry/exit locations: The other limitation. This made any available wormholes a rare and valued commodity to whomever sought after them, which presented the third obstacle: Competition. Though it’s currently unknown who or what might have had (or still have) the strength to compete with the demons for control over the scarce supply of wormholes, one thing is certain. The Gateways excavated on the Mars base, which were the entry points of a wormhole previously controlled by an apparently non-demon force, had been purposefully blocked to prevent their access. Whether this was done for our protection or theirs currently remains unknown.
Part II: The Bridge to Heaven
With humanity on a slow decline, the demons at large among the universe, and the growing realization of the end drawing near, what hope could possibly be left now? The answer, it seems, may have been discovered on accident by the UAC before the invasion began. Before the invasion, the Gateways were opened slightly to allow only micro organism specimens through, but the access was thoughtfully kept minimal until someone’s bright idea to simply “let it all through“ was made into reality. Laboratory research on some specimens of the organisms done before the Gateways were “officially” opened revealed an interesting discovery. All of the specimens, despite controlled conditions and careful management, eventually died out.
All except one.
The one that survived, remarkably enough, was the first one deemed to die off by the scientists since it was “contaminated” by another strain in its mixture (which was ruled out as being terrestrial in origin). The so-called contamination had an adaptation to overcome the natural subversive tendencies of its brother and organize together into cohesive structures, utilizing only the adaptations it needed to counter subversion of its rival strain and accumulate the needed resources from its environment to do so, and nothing more. Rather than extinguish one another completely, they eventually formed a sort of balance, and a miniature self-contained ecosystem began to emerge and thrive. The experiment was put on hold though, in favor of the somewhat larger endeavor of the Gateway itself, but the important files and logs about this project survived the invasion to make it into the hands of current scientists, who hope to put it to good use.
It turns out the strain was a completely foreign one, which while it may be a somewhat redundant thing to call something that's already an extra-terrestrial, it meant that it was not of the Omega strain itself. To have made it through the Gateway that was supposedly controlled by the demons in full could mean only a few things. Either the strain was a random rare bit that happened through by some extreme chance, the demons somehow allowed this strain into their fold (which was soon ruled out when no traces were found among samples of demon tissues from their corpses or spawners), or else the strain was sourced from something that was already there but previously undetected on the other side of the Gateway.
With no other real options to turn to, and unfortunately without having kept the specimen intact (the same lack of foresight that allowed the invasion, apparently), you, the surviving hero of the prior invasion, are to return to the Mars base, along with a team of UAC scientists and the largest affordable detachment of the Earth‘s remaining military forces that can be spared, and attempt to reacquire a new specimen. Hope against hope, your search may yet yield a path to the salvation, or utter destruction, of your race.
The story unfolds in more length and depth in the maps, including specific characters and stuff.
Last edited by Tuxedo-Templar on 10-15-04 at 04:25
|
10-15-04 04:10 
