Conspiracy Parties

It would seem that I can't stay away from trouble for any long period of time. *chuckles* I returned to the city of New Babbage one more to find it only slightly changed from how it had been when I last left, but one of the changes was not for the better, unfortunately. The Steamweaver company, led by one Mr. Steamweaver, of course, in a twisted vision of 'progress' had built a building known as the Atheum, containing a large machine, the purpose of which was to read the information on a large quantity of books and convert and input it into punch card format. While this on its own was rather harmless, the primary method of fueling this machine was to burn the books after it was done reading them.

Naturally, this raised moral objections in several Babbagers, led by Ms. Bookworm Hienrichs, decided to take action. With diplomatic avenues for attempting to convince Mr. Steamweaver to shut down, or at least alter, the Atheum having been exhausted, Ms Hienrichs decided to organize a more direct approach. A group of citizens (accompanied by myself) kept watch outside the building while one of her associates proceeded to sabotage the machine. During the operation, I helped Ms. Hienrichs rescue some of the more rarer tomes by replacing them with more common books, and then rearranging the orderly shelves enough that it would take them some time to discover the...removal, if they did at all.

Unfortunately, it seemed that despite the sabotage, Mr. Steamweaver would not give up so easily...



Since it seemed he was determined to keep the Atheum running, it followed that we may have to try again. However, I am not sure how far any planning went or if more peaceful methods were employed, because the next I heard, Steamweaver had issued a challenge! If Ms. Hienrichs could managed to raise L$10,000 for the local charity before the end of the weekend (the challenge was issued on a Friday I believe), he would not only suspend Atheum operations, but would MATCH the amount raised out of his own pockets!

Now I believe he thought that she would be unable to meet this challenge...he was VERY wrong I am pleased to say...



Throwing an impromptu street party outside the building in question, our little group, as well as many others, not only matched the amount specified, but, as of the final report, more than TRIPLED it. Needless to say, Mr. Steamweaver was probably not very happy about this, considering he would be forced to match the amount, and shutdown the Atheum, hopefully once and for all.

What I Did On My Spring Break...

Been a while since I made an entry, eh? Well, been a lot of stuff happening.


I suppose it all started with the Dalek I mentioned last time. It ambushed me during a takeoff in Caledon, popped right into the 85 behind me... It identified itself as Serrao, and demanded I take it to the coordinates of a Dalek signal it had detected. Naturally, I had no intention of doing so, and managed to activate the temporal grace defenses before it could open fire. Then I disabled the external shields and opened the doors, blowing it out into the vortex...along with myself, almost.



Strange thing is, that judging by its casing, it came from somewhere pre-time war. I've never seen a Dalek like that in SL space, at least the ones that were a threat a while back all seemed to be time-war varient Daleks. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of it...and I really need to note that one of the worst things you can do is toss a Dalek into the vortex. Their casings allow them to survive what would normally kill other species, so all I did was cause Serrao to end up in some random location in some random time period, and that's assuming it didn't have any time travel technology built in...


Well, like I said, that wasn't the end of it. A couple weeks later I was exploring a planet named Splintered Rock. Nice place, lots of sand (Second note: Never again use a fan powered hover vehicle on a desert planet). Anyway, I was there because I received a tip that something strange was going on out in the deep desert. It turns out, Serrao had ended up here and had gotten the equipment together to go play in the sand...and unearth a crashed Dalek warship. Of course, I didn't know it was Serrao at the time, or even what was going on, really. But I kind of got a big hint when I saw a saucer rising out of the dunes...



I knew I had to stop that ship before it reached any of the settlements, or made an attempt to escape. Unfortunately, the downside to a Type 85 TTC is that is was designed for exploration, thus very little in the way of offensive systems, and I didn't really have anything on hand capable of taking down a Dalek ship...so I improvised. I blew full steam back to the spaceport where I'd left the 85 (again, NO more fans on sand) and rushed down to the gateroom. Like I said, no weapons on hand, but one thing I could turn into a massive bomb, the alteran stargate.

It was already connected to the 85's power, of course, but now I needed to throw that link wide open, critically overload the naqudah it was mostly made of, and blow it sky high...hopefully after I'd gotten it off the ship. So after I'd set that to build up, I took off and rematerialized aboard the saucer, where I confronted Serrao. I got lucky, I admit that. It'd had to hook itself into the ship to be able to control it alone, and thus was unable to bring its gun to bear at the time. Long mutually threatening and insultful conversation short, it revealed what I already suspected about how it had arrived here, my fault. More concerning was the fact that it revealed that the saucer wasn't the original signal he had been looking for in our earlier encounter, it was something he had found here...

The sound of small muffled explosions from the 85 cut any further talks short. In my rush to put my plan together, I'd forgotten to properly guard against power feedback from the gate, and it was playing all sorts of havoc...and leaking enough energy to let Serrao in on what I was doing. While it began to disconnect from the saucer, I made a break for the 85 and dematerialized...leaving the gate behind. The resulting explosion was a sight to see. As it was, with half its systems damaged from the feedback, the 85 barely managed to get us away, and I don't know for sure what happened to the Dalek. We managed to limp back to New Gallifrey, where the 85 was able to begin its regeneration, restricting me to time ring and stargate(not my own unfortunately, blew it up, remember?) travel for a while.

Though now minus a stargate and gateroom because of the resulting damage, the 85 is back up and running again with a splendid new 'desktop theme' as you can see. Hopefully Serrao went down with his ship, but we'll see. In the meantime, I'm heading back to the steamlands for some more fun.

A Close Call

Victor Really needs to keep up with his pest prevention...

Anyhow, I'd popped into Zenobia for a drink as I do on occasion, and on my way out, I'm waiting for the stargate dialing sequence when what 'steps' (and I use that term metaphorically considering) out of the transmat behind me but a bloody Dalek! Luckily I was able to duck behind the gate just as it opened so I could use it as a shield against extermination and then quickly duck through it.

Victor said not to worry about it when I contacted him, but I hope this doesn't mean some kind of resurgence in the Dalek threat...

An Odd Occurance

It happened a few weeks ago, I haven't reported it until now because I wanted to eliminate other possibilities.

As I was saying...a few weeks ago, I was on approach to another visit to New Babbage, when out of no where the 85 seemed to lose power, and then it came back on at near overload levels, sending me, fully materialized, into a dive straight for the bottom of the Vernian! Luckily, the surge ended quickly and I was able to do a quick reset to prevent catastrophe. I set down at Fullarton House and performed a full system check. ...According to the readouts, the 85 briefly recieved power from TWO sources. Since I don't believe there's any way it could have been linked to the eye on Zenobia, and since the one it is linked to, on New Gallifrey, is the only other eye that I know of in this dimension, and no power source I have on board or that was in the area could match that of an eye...the only conclusion is that it somehow re-established its link to the original eye on old Gallifrey, if only for a moment.

Needless to say the implications of this are worrying. I hope there will be a council meeting announced soon so that I can find out more about what this may mean.